i bought three plants today. they're all in identical white plastic pots on my shelf. the one on the left is purplish and squatty. the middle one is the tallest. it has long bladelike leaves that are green in the center and outlined in yellow. then there's the bright green one on the right. it's cute. sorta like a small bush in a white pot. i think it's a lime plant. i can't remember.

i went to the nursery of the the hardware store down the road. i told the woman working that i needed her help finding good plants; that i was new at this and i didn't want to get in over my head. i also said i needed house plants. they must stay indoors with me.

now we are here together in this apartment. i am satisfied with my plants. they are well behaved and keep to themselves. but they make me feel satisfied and happy. i will love them and care for them and we will make each other happy.


at some point i life i want to get a dog. i will care for it. i will love it. we will make each other happy.

but i'm too irresponsible for that to happen now. it'll have to wait.



wish me luck.

so ralph nader wants to be president. this is the third time he's entered the race. i like the guy, i'd likely have more agreements on social and political issues with him than i would any other presidential candidate. i'm not sure he'd be a great president. but i'd be willing to give the guy a shot. he seems reasonable.

but the man is not electable. obama is. so is clinton. so is mccain. huckabee wouldn't stand a chance in a general election. but he could probably sneak in as vp. that would suck, but cheney was worse. nader couldn't carry a majority. i wish a man with his ideas and values could, the man's head is in the right place. but people aren't ready for nader. it's not going to happen.

people are ready for obama. people are ready for hillary.


hillary wouldn't be a bad president. she'd be a vast improvement to what we've had to deal with for the past two terms. and i believe her when she says that she could come in there on day one, pick up the ball and play. she could take action from the moment she sets in. i have little doubt of her ability to do so.

but she'd just be a new face in the same game, running plays out of the same book.

i need change. i think we all do.

if hillary were to be elected and served a full term, it would make more than twenty years of clintons and bushes in the oval office.

legacy doesn't need to be part of our political process. we need to move away from that, for the sake of the country. that's my biggest beef with hillary.


there's probably several thousand american citizens living and working in japan. i wonder how many of them will still be here in november, and who will actually take the time to cast an absentee ballot from abroad.

it's a presidential election. it's a big deal. you have to vote. but how much do votes from abroad count. the media controls the election results. as soon as a candidate gets a majority, the associated press will call the election, then other news outlets will follow suit to keep up with the game. this is all done before every ballot is actually counted. statistically, it's a reasonable thing to do. but it makes me think my vote is not going to matter. and that's shit.

but fuck it. i'm going to vote anyways. and it's going to be for obama. and maybe things will get better. or maybe they'll stay the same.

file under: fever dream

You can see me. I know you can.
I know this because I can see you too.
Why don't you say hey you?
I always initiate these things, it seems.

I sit here and wait for it.
I watch you from afar.
Maybe you’re busy,
But our talks are always good,

Even if they’re short.
So I’m sitting here, waiting.
Watching.
I want to say something,.
But everything inside says to hold off

And so I do, because for whatever reason,
It seems right.

Then I watch you close the door behind you.

"Instead of taking the teenager home, the Arlington man drove to an abandoned house in Fort Worth, beat his stepson with a baseball bat and sodomized him with a metal tool, police said."

This is an actual quote from an AP news story.

It is also the kind of sentence every journalist dreams of writing.

This must mean at least two things:

1.) The world, especially Texas, is fucked up; and,
2.) Journalists can be sick fucks.

To give this quote a little more context, The Arlington Man is the stepfather of an 18-year-old who allegedly sodomized his stepfather's biological 8-year-old daughter.

I might be wrong on this, but I also think Arlington, Texas is the setting of the animated FOX series King of the Hill. While I'm sure this is purely coincidental, I am also not surprised to hear this this bizarre act of sodomy occurred by the hand (?) of a man from such a place.

(EDIT: I just Wikipediaed King of the Hill, which is set in the fictional town of Arlen, Texas. Not Arlington. But that doesn't matter. My position still stands.)

During the the relatively brief time I was employed as a professional journalist, I got to see and do a number of ridiculous things in the name of good journalism.

Sneaking around the scene of a murder looking for a witness of sorts to give me a quote, waiting in suspense for a bank to blow-up by the hand of an deranged methhead hunting for cash, sitting next to real journalists who cover important national issues, such as the time when the President made a stop in KC to tout his new health care plan (which, uh, I'm still waiting to see, Bushy), these things made my job interesting. It was without doubt the most interesting job I ever had.

But it was also one of the most boring. When you're covering an area like Eastern Jackson County, Mo., there's honestly not a lot of excitement. There were days where I'd be begging for a fire or a robbery or something, anything to get me out of my desk and away from the hopeless and/or pointless story I was chasing only because I had run out of options and I had to file something for the next day.

It's a sick, sick thing to actually be happy when there's a fire or a bank robbery. And whenever there was and it was my job to cover it, I couldn't help but feel a little happy. An important assignment, a story that will be on the front page, that everyone will read, something to do at 2:30 on a Wednesday, a reason to quit making calls to the city waterworks department to find out if Mrs. Robinson really did step on a manhole cover and fall through, or if that woman was just fat and crazy.

I've just gone through the archives of the old newspaper, looking for sentences I wrote that could compete with the likes of the aforementioned metal tool sodomy, this is the best thing I could dig up in about five minutes of searching:

"A house party in unincorporated Jackson County went awry early Sunday morning when a man shot his brother in the face."

Nowhere near as good as metal tool sodomy. But still. I remember when I wrote this, I was working the weekend shift and I was the only one in the newsroom and I got a press release from the sheriff's department and jumped on it. I think we even joked about it over coffee the next morning.

That's sick.

Also sick: The Dead List that circulated throughout the newsroom; A list of names of newsworthy people that were to believed to be dead within the year. The person with the most correct names on the Dead List was to win some sort of cash prize. And of course notoriety.

I can only imagine the sick shit that goes on in a newsroom in Arlington, Texas.

so it's tomorrow and i call you to discuss Everything and you don't answer and not just that but the skype tells me that the Call Is Refused and i don't know what that means other than that you don't want to talk to me because it's nearly one in the am but you should be awake right now because it's a good time for the conversation and when i speak with you i undoubtedly have the Good conversation and that's what i need about right now and everybody is gone and the songs are sad and the sunshine is far far away and i am here in this cold and smokey place with the whisky and the empty wine bottle and the half smoked joint and i'm looking for some person to speak with because i am rather frustrated and behooved with most things at the moment and i think everyone has to be working tomorrow and i do too but i'm far, far beyond caring about that at this point and i think it would be good to talk about how your new year was and what you did for christmas in the american wasteland. i think tomorrow there is a primary election in new hampshire and i hope that barack obama does well and that mike huckabee is destroyed and put back in his place at the bottom of the food chain. maybe a week ago i returned from thailand. i was in bangkok for a few days and also on these islands off the coast of the gulf of thailand. on christmas eve it was a monday and some time in evening as the sun was sinking down somewhere below the ocean i was on a boat filled with hundreds of people from all over the world and we were all dancing and drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and waiting for the full moon to show itself and when it did it was massive and scary and bigger than i have ever seen it before in my entire life because i was so close to the equator. and this boat was taking us to The Full Moon Party, but this wasn't just any full moon party it was The Full Moon Party, the biggest in the world. they all started on this small island called Ko Phang Nang and when i turned up when the moon was bright and high in the warm winter sky; and there were thousands and thousands and thousands of people roaming and dancing and crawling all over the place like freaks and drunken monsters. this dirty place was covered by scourges of boozed-out freaks sketchy transvestites and drug dealers and firedancers and zombies and ridiculous people fucking in the sand and pissing in the ocean and passed out and robbed on the beach. i was there high of cheap marijuana, talking with Randal and this stark raving man comes up to us and he says, "hey man, have you had the Mushroom Shakes?" and i tell him that it's imperative that he tell me were to get one and he points somewhere far far down the beach and says go towards the red lights, and pull him close to me and tell him to not lie and say the truth and this man is fucked up and i can tell it from his wild eyes and he says to go towards the red lights and so i tell Randall that we're going and we trek down the beach towards this psychedelic zombie factory and and there are signs on the way up the stone steps that read MUSHROOM SHAKEs and i that is exactly what needs to happen and so i go into this discotech and the lights are swirling everywhere and everything is fabulous and i ask the seedy Thaiman to give me what i'm looking for and he looks around with an eye of caution and then gives me the plastic cup of this thick black liquid and i carry it away down to the shore and sit on a rock and drink it quickly and start walking and maybe 15 minutes later i can feel something different and i have this urgent and compelling urge to get rid of this horrible plastic cup and i see this place where many others have put their cups to rest and so i do the same and join the rest of the zombies and i wander all night long looking for nothing and searching for everything and i meet people who are lairs and i meet people who are true and there are others who don't know what's happening and there are more who are just there to rob me but i am able to swim through all of this madness and enjoy the lights and the firedancers and the glowsticks and the heavy dance music and i smoke a lot of cigarettes and i started conversations with random folks from all over this rock and some of them are normal and some are too fucked to comprehend, like the fat guy from the UK who kept raving in my ears about Cambodia. this man who would never blink kept looking at me like i was his only friend, and say, " the Killing fields, man. the Killing fields. you have to go and see the Killing fields. it will Change you. and i heard him but at that point i could do nothing. i could barely understand this crazy person and so i escaped and went back to that party and by this point i had lost Randall in the fray. and i felt a little bad about it because i had encouraged him to drink one of these psychedelic cocktails and then left him alone because he was starting to Make Me Crazy and i had to get out of this horrible place and so I left the man raving about Cambodia and went and pissed in the ocean and when i was looking at what all was around me there were lifeless bodies and people naked and sandy and full of ecstasy and fucking on the shores and there was trash and discarded clothing and all kinds of unwanted shit and dregs and so i had to get away from this place and went towards the fire and this skinny thai man pulled me on to the ground and stuck his nasty beard in my face and asked me what kind of pills i wanted to buy and i didn't know how to answer this freak so i said i needed to have a cigarette and we smoked one and he kept trying to sell me drugs and i really wanted to have The Drugs but i didn't' trust this lunatic man, because i thought he would sell me over priced goods and then turn around and sell me to the cops to make another buck and so i smoked with this seedy man and then i left and and wandered down some alley and met these old people who must have been at least 45 and i asked them were they were from and they said, "We're European," and I asked them What The Hell that meant and they said they wanted to buy me a drink because i had a cute face and so i let them and eventually I found out they were Germans and we had some cocktails and then i told them i had to leave and I started looking for my friend Randall but in the horrid mix of transvestites and zombies and dead bodies it was too hard to find him and by then i was in need of some company and so i pretended to lose my cigarette lighter and sat down next to these people form Australia asked for a light and this guy said they didn't' have one but that he was Really Good at finding lighters and so I sat there and waited and he came back with a lighter that i really didn't' need and it came along with this schizophrenic man from Scotland who had a gigantic talking lizard and this crazy fucker talked with me and these Aussie girls until at somepoint they left to use the bathroom and they never came back because I think they realized there was more than just one crazy fucker talking to them in the middle of the night on christmas day.

the bird man

tham dii
dâi dii
tham chûa
dai chûa

Good actions bring good results. Bad actions bring bad results.
-Thai proverb

I don’t think any of us got much sleep. The guesthouse was alive with commotion early in the morning. I snapped into consciousness on the cold floor, I could hear the voices from the next room. They did not sound familiar. I opened my eyes. Ryan was sleeping heavily on the futon next to me. It took at least an hour before I could bring myself to rise out of bed. The consequences of the first night in a new city were wrecking havoc on my insides. I needed as much rest as I could afford.

When the noise and commotion and sliding doors and loud voices and passing cars became too much to ignore, I got out of bed. Ryan was gone. The gigantic tatami room was deserted. Rays of mid-morning sunlight beamed into the room. All but three futons were put away. One was mine. One was Ryan’s. I would meet the owner of the other soon.

I slid open the door and walked into the kitchen. Other travelers were shuffling about, doing the morning necessities. I made a cup of tea and lit a cigarette. Leaning against the counter, I tried to piece together what needed to be done before noon, when the guesthouse will kick everybody out for cleaning.

A young Japanese guy was sitting at the table across from me. A small television was on but he didn’t seem to be watching it.

I told him good morning.

His head was shaved with clippers and the sharp angles of his glasses gave his face definition. His left wrist was encircled by a tattoo that looked like waves breaking on the shore.

He said his name was Ando and he was from Toyota City.

“What are you doing in Kyoto?” I asked.

“I study Buddhism and meditation. I am here to visit the temples. Why are you here?”

“I came to see the leaves.”

“The koyo is good here. The leaves are beautiful.”

“How long are you staying?” I ask.

“I leave today. I’m going to the next city.”

“Have you been traveling long?”

“We are always traveling. I started my journey in Okinawa, then came to Hiroshima and then to Shikoku and then Nara. I’ve only been in Kyoto for a short time.”

“I have a friend who lives on Shikoku, I said. “In Ehime. David. He’s an American like me. He’s a painter.”

“I’m a painter too.”

“He’s also a Buddhist. I think you two would have a lot to say to each other.”

An employee of the guesthouse passed through the kitchen. I finished my tea and rinsed out the cup.

“We have to be out of this guesthouse by eleven,” I said.

“Yes. Eleven.”

“It would be nice to have a shower. I think the bathroom is still full. It was full a little while ago, overtaken by the women.”

He thought for a second before speaking.

“Sometimes they take longer.”

***

When I came back from the shower Ando was sitting on the floor of the tatami room.

“Look at this,” he said, motioning to a small brown paper bag.

I knelt on the ground and looked inside to see a small, brown Japanese dove.

“She is hurt.”

“What happened?”

“A crow attacked her neck. She can’t fly.”

“What’s her name?”

“Heiwa. Heiwa means peace.”

“What will you do with her?”

“I know a doctor who will make her better,” Ando said. “He’s not far.”

“She is very lucky you found her.”

“I am lucky she found me, too.”

a day in the floating world

This was originally part of a facebook message to a friend who asked me for an update, but it was too long to send on facebook and i don't have the friend's email so i'm putting it here because i want to



It was Thanksgiving last week. They don't really celebrate Thanksgiving here, but there is a public holiday on what's known in America as Black Friday. So I took a day of paid leave and had a nice four-day weekend. I waited too long to book my tickets to Kyoto, so the journey there was long and arduous. I left my house and walked to the train station though nasty ice cold wind blowing over the island. Fortunately, It was warmer down south in the ancient city. I took an express train into to Tokyo and got there about 8 o'clock and I had to get from Ueno to Shinjuku and the station was bustling with people all clamoring over each other to get a spot on one of the billion commuter trains. I hadn't been to Ueno station before and I was a little disoriented so when I located the right platform the train doors were just closing and people, cramped shoulder-to-shoulder like sardines in a metal cans, were being taken away.

Here in my countryside town, if you miss a train you're waiting at least thirty minutes before the next one comes, and that's just during peak hours. But in the heart of Tokyo, it takes all of thirty seconds before the next one arrives. An identical metal box of sardines ready for disposal. I squeezed in and took the ride. Maybe 20 minutes later the crowd thinned a bit and I was on the other end of the metropolis at Shinjuku station, which is like a strange zoo with all sorts of flavors of Japanese sardines flopping around. Some have suits and ties and some wear slutty boots and layers of makeup and some dress like gansta rappers with lugz boots and baggy pants and some are still in high school and wear regulation uniform, but the strange thing about Tokyo is that no matter where you look or who you look at, everything is beautiful.

So I left the sardine cannery and walked outside and smoked a cigarette and started to look for the bus depot, but I got distracted by a brilliant display of Christmas lights covering the whole of a random pavilion. Japan is an odd place. It has such a rich and incredible history, but tends to gloss over it all in the name of foreign western rituals. Japan has no cultural or religious stake in ideas like Christmas or Halloween. But they're here, in all their consumerist and capital-driven glory. Japan is a society of blatant, shameless mass consumption and consumerism. That's the dark side of this place. But I try not to let it get to me. I go with the flow of it all, and enjoy the pretty lights.

I found the bus depot and killed the time in between my departure by drinking beer from a convenience store. Kyoto is about eight hours away from Tokyo on the highway. In (what at the time) seemed like a reasonable and logical decision, I booked a seat on an overnight bus that would have me all the way down south by dawn the next day. This was not the best idea. The original plan was to drink heavily and then pass out, only to awake the next morning in a new city far away. Passing out did not happen. In fact, real sleep didn't happen. Just 8 hours of trying to fall asleep, dozing off for an hour or so, then waking back up. Over and over. On and on into the night. I didn't manage to make it through a full cycle of sleep in the entire eight hour bus ride, so when I arrived in the city I was drained and exhausted.

I also smelled. So I managed to orient myself and locate a public bathhouse on the third basement floor of a massive building near Kyoto station. The place was crowded and my naked white body drew the usual amount of stares from foreign eyes. I don't bath publicly often. Especially here, where just about every man has a physique superior to mine. Welcome to inadequacy.

I bathed and changed and paid and left quickly. The morning air was crisp and the sun was bright and warm. The city was alive. I needed to recharge to keep pace. So I found a Starbucks nearby and bought a medium sized cup of Sumatra coffee and sat outside, watching the masses bumble about. Kyoto is a massive city. I'd venture to guess that at any give point, there are at least 100,000 people in the train station (which is absolutely massive and also THE best station in Japan. Google it.).

I sat there drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Watching people. Lots of foreigners in Kyoto. For some reason that irks me, it's like they're invading my space or something. And they all see you and your white skin and shoot you this obligatory glance of acknowledgment: "Hey look, I'm not Japanese! Hey, neither are you!" I can't fault them, the first time I came here I did the same thing. You can identify the foreigners who actually live here by the blank and disinterested expression they wear as they pass you by.

So I sat there, soaking in the vibe of the city, watching is ebb and flow. I messaged Ryan and Danielle and Kipp. The plan is to meet up later. We all originally met in Chicago at pre-departure orientation, and spend the first four days together in Japan together at the massive Tokyo orientation.

They didn't respond immediately, so I finished the coffee and put on my backpack and walked away. I stayed on the main road and came to a large temple that I had seen before on previous trips to Kyoto, but had never visited, so I went in side an looked around and it seemed like there was something going on inside, so I climbed up the stairs and took off my shoes and entered the temple. Scores and scores of people were all sitting down, waiting for something to happen. They were generally all older and Japanese. I asked the woman next to me what was going to happen and she said that the service would begin soon. For a brief moment, I thought I better leave, that I had fallen into a horrible trap, but then I thought about how I've never had an experience like this and since bought the ticket, I better take the ride.

The monks filed out in unison and took their places. The head monk recited a prayer, then begin to chant. Soon the rest of the men joined in and the temple reverberated with the deep droning chant of the monks and it sent chills thought out my entire body and I closed my eyes, but my mind was wide open. I could feel my body, I could hear what it was saying to me, I could feel the strain on my feet and legs from sitting Japanese seiza style, I could feel the fatigue throughout my body from the restless night. And I could also feel the natural diarrhetic effects of the black coffee coursing its way through my system.

I've never been a huge fan of using the restroom in public. Obviously, over the span of my 23 years, there've been numerous occasions where I've had to get over myself and take care of business. But I will say that if you ever have to drop a bomb in public, a Zen temple is really the best place to do it.

After that was over I took a walk around the temple grounds, looking at the colorful autumn leaves. The word for autumn foliage in Japanese is koyo. This city is renowned for its koyo. It's the reason I came.

***

So you loose your mind for a minute in a forest exploding with yellow and red and orange and green and you think you're on acid but you're not and you kick yourself a little for misplacing those three tabs you smuggled in from back home. Then you walk past a sign that says Let Us Discover The Significance Of Birth And Joy Of Living and that seems like something we all need to agree upon. And afterwards you keep on walking and still haven't heard from any of your friends so you keep on walking because you know there is a park nearby that you want to see but you don't have a map, but you think it's okay because you have a basic sense direction and as you walk through alleyways and side streets, past all the little shops and cafes and houses and vending machines you wonder if you're going in the right direction, but then you reach a gigantic forest surrounded by a Japanese wall and it occurs to you that you must have found what you were looking for.

And so you walk around the wall looking for the entrance and it takes 10 minutes and it was a long walk and you realize once you get in that it's not a public park, but a private garden that you have to pay to see. But you pay the 500 yen anyways and walk in behind an old man from Sapporo who has traveled much farther than you to be here in this ancient city in the autumn. But you can't help but wonder if the old man was disappointed to walk in through the gated entrance and turn the corner around the tall Japanese hedge only to see a field of dead plants. Brown and lifeless corpses, hardened by the sun and wind, somehow still standing proud and tall in a pond of green water. And you wonder if the old man who came so far was disappointed that death came quicker than he, or if he was able to find the beauty in it too. And so you walk through the garden and you look at all the beautiful things and some are full of autumn red and green and yellow and others have already finished the annual pilgrimage across colorful death and are now bare and lifeless, but there is still beauty in it all.


***

Later on Danielle and Ryan send for me and I walk back to the station from the garden and it's not too far to walk and along the way I can't help but think how much I enjoy this city and the fall.

So I catch a bus to another part of the city near the palace and imperial park and I find Danielle and Ryan on the second floor of a restaurant overlooking the palace grounds. With them was a girl from New Zealand called Anna. I hadn't met Anna before, but she is a friend of Danielle's who was in Kyoto too. I hadn't seen my friends in four months and it was wonderful to be in their presence again, because they are my kind of people, and those are hard to come by here.

They had mostly finished eating, but ordered dessert while I decided on a light lunch and the first of the day's beers. Danielle said she liked my pinstripe jacket. Anna criticized Ryan for being abrasive and blatantly foreign. I tell them the story I've just told you. Kipp sends a message. He wants us to meet him in the park. We paid for the meal and smoked a cigarette and walked to the park.

The palace grounds, covered in trees and plant life, had exploded in a fiery symphony of autumn colors. I had to put on sunglasses to keep from going blind from the beauty. Ryan and I wandered aimlessly, trying to lose ourselves in the wonder. Danielle followed not far behind. Anna went in a different direction and I never saw her again.

We spent hours in the park. Kipp came as the sun was beginning its decent behind the mountains. We looked at leaves and saw families walking dogs and couples sitting on park benches, looking young and in love.

When we left we made a quick stop at the guesthouse then took a bus to the Zen temple called Ginkaku-ji and it was very crowded, but still beautiful, especially in the twilight.

Afterwards we walked down the bustling sidestreet that led up to the temple and wanted to have a rest so we stopped in a small shop for a cup of tea, but ended up having coffee instead. And the shop had just opened back in August and the owner build all the tables and chairs (along with a wood cabin in Nagano) with his own hands and he also smoked meat and cheese in his little shop and he had two brothers who lives in the states.

We had coffee and smoked cheese and got up to leave and the man told us to take care and then we walked out into the night. And the street that was once bustling shoulder-to-shoulder with people less than an hour before was now deserted. All the shops were closed and it was dark, so we decided to go.

We saw an advert for nighttime leaf viewing and agreed that we should try to find the spot so we started walking towards that part of town. It was far enough to hire a cab, but we had trouble hailing one, but eventually did after walking halfway there.

The shrine was in Kipp's old neighborhood and he knew his way around. As we passed a tree that looked enshrined he told us the legend of the swordsman Musashi and how this was the tree that he hid in before jumping down to the ground and singlehandedly slaying 20 men. Then we went to the shrine and saw leaves lit up in the night and we took off our shoes to go inside and it was cold to walk on the tatami floor but everything was all right.

Then we left and needed food and drink so we made a quick stop for a beer and a snack then got on a small train with just one car and I almost lost a glove but Danielle found it and then we got off at a different station and caught a subway to a part of town that was glowing with neon and flashing lights.

We entered the floating world.

Music was blaring and people were in every direction and everything was illuminated and very different from the ancient temples and gardens we'd visited earlier. The exploding autumn forests had been replaced by neon and commerce and trying to navigate through the madness was a wild trip. We floated past hostess bars and love hotels and porno shops and bars and pubs are restaurants and clubs and game centers and everything was glowing in the night. We saw a sign that looked good and walked underground into an Indonesian restaurant.

It wasn't crowded, the only other table was also foreigners, which was odd because you suddenly have to watch what you say when you realize that other people in the room can understand English.

We ordered beer and spring rolls and tandoori chicken and pahd thai and curry and more beer and had a good meal.

What did we talk about? What was said?

I can't think of it now.

Except that Ryan asked the waitress if she thought the sheep brain curry was good. And she said that she liked curry but had never tried that one. I said I didn't blame her.

Afterwards we resurfaced back to the neon streets and met up with an old university friend of Kipp's and floated to a bar on the 5th floor of some building and paid 1000 yen for an hour of all you can drink so I switched from beer to whisky and soda with lime.
Then we left and found a skybar on the ten thousandth floor of a building on a hill and from the top we could see the entire city pulsing beneath us. We ordered another drink and a pizza and it was all overpriced but the atmosphere was good and at the table next to us were five Japanese and at some point three of them left and two girls stayed behind and struck up a conversation with Kipp and his friend Ikketsu and Danielle and Ryan and I ordered another drink and smoked cigarettes until Kipp pulled me into the other conversation and so then I talked with these Japanese girls and had a drink and then we needed a change of scenery and more affordable drinks so we got up to leave and invited the two girls to come with us and they said that would be fine. And they weren't very lovely, which was sad, but still true even after the drinks, but we floated to a bar somewhere and the interior décor was comprised mainly of bud leaves and other stoner paraphernalia but there were no real drugs but we stayed anyway and had two drinks and a shot of whiskey before we left the floating world and returned to the guesthouse by taxi and ended the first day in Kyoto.