Ohio-Gojiyma

That is probably the most mispelled Japanese word ever, but it's 2am and I don't feel like doing a google search. Hello, from Japan, fellow travelers. I am currently in Osaka, Japan, using up the valuable real-estate of a holiday combined with a week off of Schadenfreude to make a little trip before we busy ourselves into writing Season 2.5.







So I had this roommate named Miron, he was a Russian who wanted to do children's theatre and he got a job playing Doc Brown from Back To The Future in a show at the Universal Studios in Osaka, Japan. Weird. I know. So as I type I'm overlooking the Osaka shipping harbors from one of Miron's two balconies. Universal Studios treats their boys well. Plus the actors who do the shows at the them parks here, might as well be Brad Pitt. Unlike in America where "theme park actor" has all the prestige of "circuit city commercial actor" the guys have rabid fans visiting the park two or three times a week and giving the actors gifts, mostly picture of them and the actor taken the last time they were int he park in a hand-sewn puffy picture frame. It sounds pretty Play Misty For Me, but it's not actually creepy, because they're Japanese. And Japanese stalkers are very low pressure.







So I've been here 24 hours and it appears as though I'm learning a Japanese phrase every 12 hours. Sumi-Masen = Excuse me. My favorite things so far: how small many restaurants are; they all have a small bar and four to six tables crammed together with the kitchen in view. The front doors step right out onto the sidewalk, they don't open, they slide. I was here for two hours when I got bombarded with Japanese in one of these joints, they found out Miron was Doc Brown and flipped, they all crowded into our booth and I had excited japanese spoken to me for an hour. That was a pretty awesome inauguration.







My next favorite thing are these vending machines that are EVERYWHERE. They dispense, Cola, Hot Tea, Hot Coffee, Soup, gatorade, beer, whisky, cigarettes, saki. Fucking brilliant. I can't walk by one without wanting hot coffee. I've blown like twenty bucks on those machines so far. I want one in my apartment.







So when you think of Japan, what do you think of? Exactly, same here, so the first thing I did was go see a Godzilla movie. Godzilla: Final War, the best Godzilla movie since Destroy All Monsters. I had read that a new one was out, but only playing in Japan. It should hit the states in March, and when it does, HOLY SHIT GO SEE IT! It's awesome, but no time to talk about that, I'm going to Kyoto tomorrow. I'll tell you how it went.



Sumi-Masen,

Adam Witt

Osaka, Japan