Japandamonium!!!

where to begin?

it's been a tremendous few days with lots and lots of surprise and fun and adventure, but I'm pretty drained from all the newness of things and I got really homesick last night to finish the weekend. I miss Robin. And the fam, and anything being straightforward. And Robin. So last night, after a really fun and adventurous day, had its downslide. Fortunately however, left behind in my predecessor's collection of VHS tapes was one with some random rerun TV, so I got to watch an episode each of That 70's Show and Seinfeld (and Girlfriends, but dude, shut up, it was the first unexhausting linguistic interaction I've had in days) and that cheered me up a lot. I never thought I'd miss American TV so much (ie: at all) but man, a little familiarity and ease can be just priceless. If anyone wants to tape and send me some TV shows, I'll so be your best friend. Seinfeld, Simpsons, 70's Show, Mash, anything anything anything (although I draw the line at Dawson's Creek, which is where I stopped watching the tape last night). Cheap yard-sale VHS movies are also highly desirable items, and almost anything's a winner. You can even M-Bag them from the post office, at a dollar a pound for printed or viewable media. Anyhow, enough fishing: on to adventure!

The last few days have been, as I've said, tremendous, and I think I'd better start at the start or I'll forget everything; and this one starts with my bike-ride home from work on Thursday. It gets to be about a thousand degrees out in the afternoon here and the air is thick like warm soup; it comes to a full boil at about noon time and spends the rest of the day simmering and spittering, not cooler but maybe quieter, until suddenly it's past nine and the sky and the air realize that their pot must be all boiled bone dry by now so they take it off the flame and the sun goes down Whoomp! and then it's nighttime and balmy and just a touch hotter than a summer night could be back home but still, it's night time and a gift, if only till tomorrow.

But it wasn't yet past five-thirty when I was roaring downhill on my way home from work, or at least doing my best to be roaring downhill when the most my bike can really manage is a hoarse kind of half-hearted growl ... I've heard that a bike and rider can get to be like a married couple, closer than merely night time lovers like a car and driver should get to be, and now I can understand first hand the long deep unhappiness that an arranged marriage-as this romantic project with my bike surely is-reifies anew with each slope and hill... and it was hot. Not, again, the blazing kind of sun-scorched hot you think of when you think of hot, but the thick whelming heat that runs just one step behind you waiting until you stop moving: and then slaps you across the back like a God on the battlefield to knock the fight right out of you but not quite finish you off (you are only my third killer, so Patroklus says to Hektor). I stopped only for a moment when something caught my eye and then it was too late; the second I stopped moving it was like a dam broke beneath my skin and I found myself suddenly drenched with sweat already near to boiling itself off my face and body. And so, stopped and stymied, I looked upto see what I could see.

The old stones steps started right at the edge of the bike path, crowned with a shinto-style torii-gate, but they remained invisible until you were right on top of them, looking right at them. You couldn't see them until you noticed them first, a paradox of placement.
Fucking fuckitty fuck fuck fuck, I just lost the whole big rest-of story that I'd written and now I'm really upset about it, and I lost it cuz i don't read stupid japanese and i hit teh wrong choice when the stupid popup window came up on this stupid japanese computer and i really liked it all and it was super cool and now i totally don't have enough energy to try to re-write it or write something new and that just sucks, and I can't even indulge in being upset about it because there's no one to share it with since no one understands my stupid language anyway. And now there's all just verbose preamble and no story to make it worthwhile and that sucks, and i guess i'll just have to try again tomorrow but it's going to be totally half-hearted now cuz i really like what i wrote and now this just sucks. Boo!