Chapter 14: The Splash of October Swimmers

OK, so this was a weekend I wasn’t expecting. Lets see, where to start...Friday and Saturday nights were rather calm. Scrabble, watching DVDs, nothing too serious. Everything went down on Sunday and Monday nights. Saturday was a shit day at work, so I think I just wanted to rest. So lets start with Sunday, shall we?

The day was rather calm. Didn’t do a lot really. I had plans at night though. My friends band in Tsuchiura (Neighboring town) were playing a gig. I really wanted to check out their band, but sometimes Tsuchiura can be difficult to travel to and from, especially late at night. What I had planned on doing, was going with a few people from Tsukuba. We would take the bus there, then split a taxi back. The taxi runs Y4000, which split 4 ways, not bad, but not something you want to do on your own. Unfortunately, ALL of my friends bailed on me. So like so many gigs in Seattle, I was looking at going by myself. This was a dilema. I didn’t want to pay for a taxi back by myself. It was a nice night out though, so I decided to just ride my bike. I’ve done the ride before, it’s only an hour and a half or so. Not the end of the world. And if the weather holds out, it’s quite a nice ride.

For the ride there, the weather did hold out. Nice ride, made it in just under 90 minutes. I went to the concert, had a great time. Their band sounded pretty cool. The gig got over at 1:00am, and I looked outside. It was a total fucking downpour. I did NOT want to do this ride in the rain. So I went to another bar with my Tsuchiura friends, and ate squid rings for a couple of hours waiting for the rain to stop. At 3:00am, I decided it wasn’t going to stop, so I should just deal with it and ride off. So I did. About 10 minutes into my ride, I was flying down the street in the outskirts of Tsuchiura, when at full speed I hit a curb square. The bike stopped, but Scott went flying forward. I flew forward and landed in a puddle, which is OK I suppose, I mean it could have been straight pavement or a fucking telephone pole or something. I wasn’t hurt really, just bruised here and there (Actually I’ve never seen so many bruises on my body at one time) but I ruined my jacket, and a nice pair of jeans. Fortunately I had my glasses in my bag, other wise I think they would have been fucked.

I’d like to say it got better from there, but it didn’t. I proceeded to ride through the weather. Only this time I was shaken up from a nasty bike crash. The ride took me just over two hours. I got home just after 5:00am.

And the next day, I had plans to meet Naoko in central Tokyo. In the morning I felt terrible, but once I met her in Ueno, I was feeling OK. I had a lovely day with her, just walking around Ueno, then went to Akihabara where I purchased a new digital camera. I quite like it, it’s tiny as hell.

But then I got a text from Aohdan, who is another teacher at my school from Australia. He was supposed to meet a friend in Ginza, who didn’t show. So I invited him up to Ueno to go to an izakaya with Naoko and myself. The izakaya was quite nice, reasonably priced, strong drinks, and pretty damn good food. After the izakaya however, we went to an English style pub, where we drank absinthe and tequila. And thats when all hell broke loose. Naoko went completely out of her mind. It was still raining, really hard, and she was going out nuts, running and falling all over Ueno. At one point we ended up on a roof top of a karaoke, sitting in the rain. Well Aohdan and I were sitting in the rain, Naoko was laying on the ground struggling to breathe. I someone how managed to calm her down, and we rushed back to Akihabara to catch our transfer to Tsukuba. Then back in Tsukuba, we got some gin, iced tea, and a pair of scissors.

I love Japan. I want to be a Japanese gutter punk.