Welcome To Japan.

There are a lot of Japanese people here. Hundreds of them. Thousands even. They're everywhere and they speak Japanese all the time. It's weird. I got into Japan and Barrett met me at the airport and showed me around for a week, which was good times for sure. We went down to Osaka for the weekend and stayed at a "capsule" hotel, where you sleep in an actual capsule (like an MRI machine) in the wall with Japanese businessmen all around you. We went to a sweet club both nights of the weekend, which had all-you-can-drink for 30 bucks and models dancing on stage, which was fun. Met some guy named Jose from Peru who started off kind of cool and slowly became creepy as the night went on. My night with Jose:

Bouche: Hey man, where are you from?
Jose: I am from Peru.
B: Sweet, a Peruvian. What are you doing in Japan?
J: I paint trucks. Here look at my pictures.
(He brings out a picture of a half-painted crappy delivery truck like it was a picture of his son)
B: Oh. Um, cool. Do you draw any designs or anything? Or just white?
J: (Gives me a weird look). Just white. What is your job?
B: I’m going to teach English. Why don't you teach Spanish or something? Not much demand for it?
J: I, uh, don't speak Spanish.
B: Oh, do you speak an indigenous language or something?
J: No.
B: Uh-huh.
(I lose Jose for a while, then see him again on the dance floor creeping out some Japanese girl. He's comes over to me and the girl I'm dancing with with a sloppy grin on his face).
J: Heeeyyyy, what's ....(unintelligable).
B: Hey Jose. Your hand seems to have accidentally slipped into my back pocket.
(He has done the same with the girl I’m with and starts trying to push our genitals together while giving me a big grin).
B: Um, please stop that. What happened to that girl you were dancing with? She seemed really into you.
J: Bah, she was (something). I have a wife...(something)...dog home...(something that sounds awfully Spanish).
B: So you don't speak Spanish?
J: (Gives me a stern look) No. No Spanish.
B: Ok.
(He fucks off and I don't see him for like an hour. He comes back and gives the girl I'm dancing with a kiss on the cheek and I think tries to bite her ear. She is terrified. Then he whispers something in Spanish in my ear and grabs my ass before walking away).

So that club was pretty fun. Mark and I saw some sights and hung out at his place in the rice field district of Japan. Dominated some Asian kids at basketball. There was lots of Japanese schoolgirls taking pictures with Mark before running off giggling like a bunch of Japanese schoolgirls.
There is lots of weird stuff about Japan. The hair and the clothes are worth the trip alone. I think most of my pictures will be of awesome hair and clothes. If you enter a restaurant in Japan everyone including the cooks and dishwashers will yell some Japanese phrase at you. The only time I've had cooks yell at me when I enter a restaurant back home, the place was closing, so I just turned around and walked out. Then I realized it was like 7pm and other people were going in so I hung outside on the sidewalk for a while peering into the place before deciding to try again. They yelled extra loud this time so I yelled something in Japanese back at them. I think it was "I am an English teacher" or something. Also, everything has chimes or bells over here. The garbage trucks even have the ice cream song playing as they go around on their route. I can only imagine how disappointed Western kids are when they run out onto the street for some delicious ice cream only to find a truck full of wasabe and rotting eel meat.
The people here are so nice and helpful though. They will go so far out of their way to do things for you. I went for a run one morning and got pretty lost in the maze of buildings and lights and asked some guy in a suit where the train station was. He ran (because he didn’t want to disturb my jog) like 20 minutes with me and led me directly to it before heading off to work. My favourite people, however, are old Japanese men. They look so wise and noble. Then you start a conversation with them and they get all flustered and nervous and after they manage to talk to you without shitting their pants or having a seizure, they love you and will sometimes stroke your arm like you're a new pet. I've spent a couple times on the trains having an old man gazing into my eyes while muttering Japanese to me. There are a lot of ways to offend Japanese people however, but since gaijins are ignorant barbarians, they give us a lot of leeway. I could probably kick someone right in the balls and have them be like, "Ah, he doesn't know any better, he's a gaijin." So I might try to exploit that.
So I am now staying in a hotel training for my job. I was really worried that everyone in my training group would be social outcasts, trying to escape the embarrassing attempts of fitting in that plagued them back home, but its not bad. There's one token quiet Asian girl and a pretty cool Aussie (who would have guessed?) and a cool Canadian chick. Then there's Mark from Kamloops who is a poster boy for the previously mentioned group of social lepers. When introducing himself he said, "Yeah Biggie Smalls is probably my favourite artist of all time. And my hobbies include billiards and....um, I'm from Kamloops”. When asked if he had any experience working with children he replied,” Well, at the pizza place I worked at, some kids used to come in there sometimes. So yeah, I guess.” He's about 5'10", 260lbs and has decided that the baggy-jeans-with-half-of-his-boxers-showing look is about right for him. I figured that, coming from Kamloops, he would at least like hockey so I brought up the Bertuzzi trade with him yesterday. He froze and then started to panic for something normal to say and came up with, "Um...so, uh, how do you, uh, feel about that?" I gave him a blank stare for a couple seconds before excusing myself.
The good people went out this weekend to the same club Barrett and I went to and had a good time though. This one Japanese girl we started talking to was an artist and looked pretty funky until we realized how out-of-her-head drunk she was. She gave everyone the googliest eyes I have ever seen and was not speaking any language. She tripped when coming back from the bathroom and did a header right onto the corner of the table. I thought she was dead. I was thinking to myself that even though that probably wasn't the most ideal way of getting rid of her, we were still better for it. Then she got up, put her beer to her head and googly-eyed everyone again like nothing happened. I found myself alone with her later and, out of nowhere, she blurted out, "I did not fart." Which made me start to think that she did. Shortly after, she left, tripping over the same stair that got her the first time and landed on her face. I did not see her again.
So yeah, Japan is pretty cool. Sorry about the length of this one, I have free Internet in my room now and had some time this weekend. I will try to reply to people when I can but during the week I am kept pretty busy. I move into my place next week, which should be pretty interesting. Ok, that's it.

Bouche

P.S. Fruits are soooooo expensive here. Apples are like 3 bucks each. The weird thing is you can get 100% real fruit juice that’s really good for like a dollar a litre. It doesn't add up.