(insert Japanese word for Happy New Year here)

I must have asked 100 times what the word for that was last night. Still can't remember thought my vocabulary is improving. Hai-Dozo = Here, have this thing, Hai-Domo = I will take this thing and thank you for it. You can seriously get by in Japan just knowing the words for thank you = Arigoto-Gozaimas, and I'm good = Daishoubu. You hear those two words constantly. Thank you thank you thank you thank you, yes yes yes, and I'm happy, thank you, I'm happy thank you, yes. The politest people on the entire earth.



I haven't been to Tokyo yet. Tokyo is the New York of Japan, Osaka is the Chicago, working class. And Shinsaibashi is the Bucktown (but on acid. Shinsiabashi IS like being in Blade Runner) and Namba is the Wicker park. I spent new Years in Namba. A friend of Miron's, AKI, just opened a bar there called, get this, "You'rewelcome GlobalGeneration" Yeah. If I were to write a Japanese character with a bar called that and put it on the radio show we'd get fired for stereotyping. Brief caveat: Only speaking six words in Japanese, I have spoken a lot of English to the Japanese (they all know a teeny bit of English), and I've found the best way to get them to understand english is to speak it like a Japanese-sterotype. Slow with words pronounced Japanese-ey, sometimes even substituting L's and R's. It works.



So Yourwelcome GlobalGeneration is a great bar. It's the size of an efficiency in Chicago, actually everything is the size of an efficiency in Chicago, stores, bars, restaurants. They're a small people. They need less room than us. It looks like a hip Wicker Park bar, at one end of the efficiecy is the elevator you exited to enter and the other end is a glass box that looks six floors down onto the main street in Namba. Actually every street in Japan looks like a main street or an alley. There are no actual alleys, just streets that look like them. Big enough for a tiny Japanese car. Main streets are any street that runs under a Highway (their freeways are ginormous and criss-cross above your head while walking the main streets) or Elevated Train line (there are so many trains running everywhere in Japan).



So we counted down to 2005 in Lost In Translation, then Aki took us to a Temple. Everyone in Japan goes to Temples at midnight. We got there and it was like a County Fair, thousands of people coming to pray for the new year and buy Fair Food. The Japanese have their own regular food, but they also have their versions of Elephant Ears and Funnel Cakes. Check out what I ate; a Flat Waffle cone (same shit they feed the deer in Nara) covered in barbecue sauce with rice krispies sprinkled on it, then and egg with bacon on top of that and the whole thing is covered in mayonaise. What the fuck? I thought, well it's stupid in conception but I bet the taste justifies it's stupidity...NO! It's not even a good combo on any level, they should add oranges just to make it stupider.



Gotta go, people are coming over for Tako-Yaki (Octopus Balls) I'll report back later tonight.



Yeah, I know, Octupus Balls...funny.