IF YOU WANT CUTE, PUT A FACE ON IT

so japan, let's see:

- typhoons and being stranded in them
- sleeping on local trains and having to transfer every half hour, for 8 hours at a time
- sleeping in internet cafes
- sacred deer that nip at your crotch
- eating horse
- eating squid ink ice cream
- hanging out with brazilian models
- Manuela (the brazilian tornado), punk bar, marker face tattoos, and vomit
- climbing mt. fuji (never again)
- AMAZING bad-english t-shirts (not the best example)
- vending machines every ten feet
- other foreigners always avoiding eye-contact
- the hip-hop homeless man giving his food to the turtles
- no trash cans anywhere in public
- five different types of trash: cans, paper, pet bottles, burnable, non-burnable
- chicory coffee and beignets at the famous New Orlean's landmark Cafe Du Monde. . . in tokyo
- a love motel in a chirstmas theme, with playful santa statues decorating the outside
- watching old folks playing croquet in a small town while waiting for yet another local train transfer
- rice fields, rivers, and roads
- pretending i only spoke portuguese to a "club promoter" so i wouldn't have to tell him why i didn't want to go into his club
- buying boobs from a vending machine
- the weird ganguro girls
- stores where you can buy anything you never knew you wanted, from high-end designer clothes, to anime girl love dolls (the fancy kind, not inflatable), to Black Man brand underwear with the word RAP across them and a picture of a Fred Durst-looking dude
- chopping the tip of my finger off in a chair in an internet cafe (yes, i did hurt myself in an internet cafe, what about it?)
- white girls dressing up with the costume girls in harajuku
- having my umbrella stolen, in a typhoon
- being popular with the fish market workers because of my tattoo
- constantly getting stared at hard in public because of my tattoo
- dropping in on a kickboxing gym
- trying to figure out how to break in to an outdoor pool
- Manuela singing along with the homeless harmoinca man
- getting threatened by a homeless man in ueno park
- sneaking into the fancy hotel at shibuya crossing
- shopping malls upon shopping malls upon shopping malls
- taking two hours to walk two train stops
- "jumping the turnstiles"
- old ladies hunched at a ninety-degree angle from picking rice
- america town in osaka resembling greenwich village
- women only subway cars
- men so stylish they look like women
- boiling sexual repression in food commercials
- being considered very unattractive by japanese standards
- Manuela helping the drunk businessman passed out in the street
- blisters and torn shoes
- real japanese school girls
- sushi on a conveyor belt
- ordering uni, and regretting it
- my friends landlord, the japanese Marx Brother
- always looking for the cracks in the facade
- being treated well
- the toothless homeless man who made a string toy for the kittens hanging out with him. . . i have never seen a happier person, ever
- eating fast food for the first time in years
- hanging laundry on a serene rooftop at night
- trying to understand a culture based on insecurity and consumerism
- listening to M.I.A., The Arcade Fire, and Sleater-Kinney on the in-flight radio station

oh, and i can't resize photos here. so any pics from japan will have to wait till i am back home (and homeless) in brooklyn.

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MP3:

this is a track from the new album by Cage. as i listened to this, i saw the entire song played out by a combination of a girl i used to know from college, and an ex-girlfriend. it was an odd if not potentially devastating pairing. i think denziens of nyc will especially appreciate this, i certainly do.

• Cage - Scenester


buy music, especially independent.