i don't buy watermelon

this is a suika. we call it a watermelon in english.

i took this photo with my cell phone while i was at the store earlier today.

that number, 2980, is the price of the watermelon in my local grocery store.

2980 yen.

right now, 2980 japanese yen are worth 29 US dollars.

$29!

I love watermelon, but I don't love it for 29 dollars.

I don't even think I'd love it for 10 dollars.

Guess I'll keep eating bananas.

the plants are dying. don't know what to do.

thought this would be easy:

i provide water & sunlight,
the plants photosynthesize.

we are happy. nothing dies.

must be dreaming.

all things die.

file under: random saturday.

If you ever get thrown into the back of a police car, Japan is the best place for it to happen.

I was sitting in the police station explaining to them how everything went down, filling out forms, giving fingerprints and what have you.

“We need to go to the scene of the crime.”

“Okay.”

“Did you walk here?”

“Uh, yeah. No bike. Remember?”

“Ahh, yes. Right, then. Let’s go. We’ll drive you.”


This is the second time somebody has stolen my bicycle in Japan. Both times the bike was not locked.

Perhaps I bring these things upon myself.

I came home from work Friday afternoon to find that my bicycle was no longer standing in the bike rack next to my building. I rode it home the night before and walked to work the following morning. Sometime in between returning Thursday night and getting off work Friday afternoon the bike was taken.

So I went to the police on Saturday to report the bike as stolen.

The police took me quite seriously.

They had three men on the case asking serious questions.

“What color was the bike? In centimeters, how tall is it? How many gears? What color was the seat?”

So this is how I ended up in the back of a police car somewhere in semi-rural Japan.

In America, I’ve been in a police car one time. Different story all together. What's important about that is when I was in said police car I took in a few key details.

First, there's a Plexiglas and wire screen dividing the front of the cab with the back. Second, the back seats are plastic and have no seatbelts. And, there are no handles on the doors or any way to manipulate the windows.

Not a luxurious experience.

Quite the opposite in Japan.

Brand new Toyota Prius, with plush cloth seats and seatbelts and automatic doors and windows and all. And there was nothing whatsoever partitioning the cab.

The ride was pleasant.

When we arrived to the scene of the crime they got down to business. Flashlights, digital camera, tape measure, sketch pad.

It was quite an ordeal.

I smoked a cigarette and watched as they measured the distance from the street to the bike lot and from the bike lot to various spots adjacent to the lot. I stretched my mind, trying to answer their questions about which cardinal direction my bike was facing and what type of lock I used.

I can’t help but wonder if I would have gotten the same treatment if I weren’t a foreigner.

If this had happened in America, the situation would have went down like this:

Me: My bike was stolen from outside my apartment.

Police: Was it locked?

Me: No.

Police: You’re a dumbass. Get out of here. Lock it up next time.

Fortunately when I bought the bike in December I paid a few extra yen to register the bike as mine. That bought me an orange seal with a number on it. Right now, somewhere out there, my number is being used illegally by some lawless fiend. And the Japanese police are out to get them. Maybe.

***
The neon streets bustle with the revelry of Saturday night.

Earlier I had made a plan to meet Minsky and two of his Chinese friends for dinner and drinks. I was late because of the ordeal with the police. They didn’t mind.

I found them on the second floor of a nondescript izakaya. The place was warm and small. An old acoustic guitar rested in a corner. The woman in the kitchen was old. When I sat down there was already food on the table and they were not yet done with their first drink.

The girls were a little older. The cute one didn’t know any English. The one who knew a little English was unfortunate looking.

I ordered gin and tonic.

We talked causally and drank at a quick pace. Before sitting down they secured a deal on a two and a half hour all-you-can-drink course.

Gin turned into beer and beer turned into hot sake and the night drifted by like clouds passing in the sky.

We stumbled out of the place and into a clear night.

I tried to get the cute one to come home with me.

Her friend kept her safe.

I walked home alone in the night.

I was pissed.

Pissed off at my bike being stolen, pissed off that the girl didn’t come along. Pissed off of booze.

I was halfway home when I saw the white mountain bike. It was unlocked.

In a moment of drunken brilliance and self loathing, I got on the unlocked bike and started riding. I was hungry and needed to go to 7-11. I rode the bike there and bought a bento. As I was paying for the midnight snack, I was hit with a overwhelming sense of guilt and moral confusion.

Where is the logic in handing over hard-earned money to a massive, faceless corporation, yet stealing from unsuspecting individuals who stupidly leave their bikes unlocked?

I returned the bike to where I found it and walked home with my bento.

When I woke up the next morning my bike was still gone, I was alone and the bento lay on the floor unopened.

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.