I'm not dead.

I'm sorry I've delayed the first real deal blog for so long. The gig is, apparently my brothers from other mothers over here only use two-pronged outlets as opposed to three, and my laptop cable suffers from the Apple curse of electronic abnormalities. But, Yuya and Ayumi helped me through the electronics store in Machida and helped me buy a converter plug and a LAN cable. THANK YOU SO MUCH YOU GUYS I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!11111111

Day One.

"Reach out and touch faith."

I yawned incessantly as the car taking me to Sea-Tac airport smoothly glided along misshapen I-5 South. It was completely silent in the car other than myself tapping my rings against my studded belt, quietly flipping my shit in the back of the car. Usually, the driver will bring up some kind of stupid small talk. This time, I was on my own. After about 15 minutes of nerve-racking silence, I sputtered out,

"HaveyoueverbeentoJapan?" He looked at me with big, white eyes in the rear-view mirror. (Okay, I'm not racist, but just so you can get a better grasp on the situation, the man was African-American.) 

"That where you're goin'??" 

"YES I'M TERRIFIED AHAHAHHAAHHH!!" I shouted. He immediately went into this super-enthused trip about how he thought I was some rock star because of the guitar and how it's going to be amazing and how I'm going to have the best time of my life. When I told him that there was a very slight possibility that I won't come back, he totally shit. He said that he went to Germany when he was 20 years old, and stayed for 6 years. He said they were the best years of his life. Temporarily revived by his story and encouragement, we pulled up to the airport, probably inappropriately enthusiastically waved goodbye, and I waited in line for the rest of my life for my damn boarding pass. The fun didn't end there--after waiting in the security line, the bastards confiscated my belt. Who cares that it had useless bullet shells hot-glued to it! Suggestive my fucking ass!! Anyway, I went to some random airport store to improvise by wrapping a laughably long scarf around my waist to hold my pants up. Because I apparently have this inability to purchase clothes that fit.

I found Rory and Alec, and boarded the plane. I was wired and kind of tripped out because I hadn't slept the night before in order to sleep on the 11 hour flight, and be ready to start my day in Tokyo upon arrival. So I popped  Melatonin that was in my pocket and prepared myself to go to sleep. For 5 minutes. 10 minutes. 20. An hour. Two hours. Around the third hour in I sort of realized that nothing was going to happen. Melatonin usually puts me straight to sleep, however in this case it did little more than subdue me. Which was still more than welcome. So I plugged my headphones into the plane's armrest and watched Paul Blart: Mall Cop, twice...in both English and Japanese. For the record, both versions blow. I pulled out my notebook and continued writing this dumbass short story I started about a man that gets kidnapped by the circus. The middle-aged Japanese man next to me asked (in English) if I was a writer. To which I overenthusiastically responded, 

"Yes! I mean--no! I mean...no. No, not at all, really." He lol'd at my desperation for human contact. We got to talking, and I found out that he had attended school in Ashland, Oregon (WHEE I love Ashland!) and that he had just moved to Kent for work. As a correspondent for some massive tech company dealing with electronics and overseas negotiations every 5 minutes, this guy was their wingman and had to make trips from Seattle to Tokyo every few months. But his wife apparently lived in Tokyo, so he didn't mind. He asked where I was from, and apparently he knew Brookings very well, having spent so much time near the ass-crack of Oregon. He said he loved the Salmon-Run Golf Course, and that he was also one of those eccentric aristocrats who drives by Coos Bay and actually buys driftwood from that crazy outdoor driftwood store. Had there been a wall, I would have slammed my head against it. However, he was very nice and friendly and had a lot of fatherly things to say about being careful and having an umbrella and not getting raped and so on. I snuck over to one of the apparently unoccupied window seats to get a look at the anticlimactic view as we touched down into Tokyo.

Alec, Rory and I waited until everyone that had connecting flights got off the plane before we left. We were delayed about an hour and a half because we had to fly around some active volcanoes on the way there. Psshh. Islands. We got off the plane and staggered out into the wettest, warmest, thickest air of all time. We giggled incessantly as we slowly plodded through the customs and immigration line. Having been awake for way, way, way too long, plus the confusion surrounding the massive cultural changes, made everything seriously funny. The Japanese men directing the line wearing face masks were funny. The Japanese signs with little mascots were funny. The wack-ass bathrooms were REALLY funny. Giggling like fucking school girls, we went out into the airport lobby to try and figure out the ATMs, vendor kiosks, and payphones. We must have looked just mad--Alec, a pale guy with a dark beard and mustache wearing an oversized Mariner's t-shirt, Rory, an extremely tall, distinguished looking young man with Versache glasses, and myself....I don't even need to begin to go there...running around speaking in broken Japanese trying to find the train to Tokyo station. After we boarded the Narita Express, the weight of the lack of sleep began to sink down onto us. We met a couple from New Zealand who just randomly decided to take a trip to Tokyo on a whim, with absolutely no plans of what to do or where to stay. They had a nice, big map, though. I commend them for that.

We separated around Shinjuku, if I remember correctly, and I blindly bought a ticket for the JR line the lady at the airport had scribbled down for me. I got on the train with my giant-ass suitcase and guitar with my sunglasses on because, in case no one told you, Shinjuku looks like a neon light show threw up on a huge pile of fiber optics. So I get on this train, and I'm freaking out because apparently the farther away you get from the main hub of Tokyo, the less English the train displays use. I asked the woman next to me wtf I was supposed to do, and she magically said she was getting off at the same station, Higashi-Koganei, and that I could follow her. I was so fucking happy I almost died at this point. I probably should have been dead anyway, actually, due to dehydration and lack of sleep. But I got off at the station and followed the crude map that was drawn for me by the owners of the Artistic Gaikokujin Guest House. 

Wandering through the streets of the outskirts of Tokyo at night rolling a giant suitcase, I think now that I probably should have felt endangered. But it was entirely the opposite. As I slowly trekked down the main drag to find my temporary room until the next day, I was passed by businessmen and young people on bikes, and for some reason I have never felt more at home. Maybe because it was so warm, maybe because it was so late, maybe because I'm just fucking bonkers, I exhaled a huge sigh of relief because it felt like after 20 years, I was finally home. I found my key and got into the violently colorful complex, lovingly named "Apple House". I dragged my enormous suitcase up three flights of stairs, and I swear it was like an episode of I Love Lucy. I'm so surprised no one came out of their room to slap me for making such a fucking ruckus in the middle of the night. I got into my room, tried to make a journal entry, failed miserably due to relentless dizziness, and passed out, happy and confused.