{"id":908,"date":"2008-06-06T00:36:01","date_gmt":"2008-06-06T10:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studionewmedia.com\/blog\/?page_id=908"},"modified":"2008-06-06T00:36:01","modified_gmt":"2008-06-06T10:36:01","slug":"december-11-2000","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/man-in-japan\/december-11-2000\/","title":{"rendered":"December 11 2000"},"content":{"rendered":"

Subject: “I do not understand, is this a double date?”<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Date: Monday, December 11, 2000 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Sunday, and I get a phone call from the office guy with the bitchin’ car. He wants to know if I’m free.<\/p>\n

All I had planed was to sleep, eat, ride, and go shopping in hopeless attempt to make my apartment parent safe, for the impending “Parental Okinawa Xmas Tour 2000.” I need blankets, pillows and maybe another futon.<\/p>\n

“Sure, not doing anything” ‘Anything’ being anything that requires doing by a specific time, the stores are open to till 9pm, so I can work that in between nap and eating and riding and hanging out.<\/p>\n

He picks me up and we go driving. This time I was smart, I brought along some Hawaiian music to offset the impending rap onslaught.<\/p>\n

Seems Friday night, he and the office boys (except me, naturally), went to a “singles” bar\/club\/something, and he got a number from this young lady who wants to learn English.<\/p>\n

The bells should have been going off by now, but after the whole “Western World” thing, I was still a little mentally numb (if that isn’t a perfect opening for a Kammiism….).<\/p>\n

He asks me if I’m hungry, “Well, sort of”, so we pull into Mos Burger. Totally random, or so I think.<\/p>\n

We sit down and start eating. At this point, he starts to tell me that the girl he met is going to be joining us at Mos Burger to practice her English. “Shit!” I think, cue “Chris the Dancing Bear”. See him speak English! And use chopsticks! He evens eats raw fish and seaweed! Wait, there’s more, listen to him butcher the Japanese language. And he smiles and nods! It’s Chris, the friendly Gaijin Bear. Don’t pet him folks, he’s hairy, don’t know where he’s been….<\/p>\n

Anyway, the girl shows up, with another girl. That starts a nine point five hour date, that takes us all over. We went shopping, were we followed the women into the stores. I picked up a nice pair of chopsticks and was playing with them, and one of them was amazed that I could use them. So I pinched her finger with them. Hehehe.<\/p>\n

After that, we went to the “infamous” tunnel\/bridge\/TUNNEL, but I couldn’t find Nekko anywhere. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

We ate dinner at a place called “American American Steak”, where I had some sort of meat byproduct with cheese on it.<\/p>\n

After that, we went to a shopping center, where, sadly, the high light of my day occurred. At the game room I found the mountain bike video game! YUP! Can still kick the crap outta a video game! And, I even managed to shred the insides of both my ankles! It was like a real mountain bike ride! Not the same, not without Team EBR and Hamma Dog and Momma Bear and the rest of the delinquent bike group. Shouts out to Scat Master Doo, some where up in Japan, probably freezing his bolo head off….<\/p>\n

Sorry, I’m having waay too much fun writing this. More fun writing it then I had yesterday.<\/p>\n

My plea to leave me in the game room went unheeded, so we went downstairs to the 3-D movie theater. Okay, it was a lot like the “Star Tours” ride. You sit in this chair which shakes and moves and bounces you all over the place in concert with what you see on the screen. That’s probably why my kidneys hurt today….<\/p>\n

Then my day ended, as we dropped the women off and we drove back to my apartment. I told my coworker that he and Kaori made a nice a couple. He asked me if I liked her, and I quickly shook my head. I thought about explaining the whole separation of Church (private) and State (public) life, but I figured, why bother? I didn’t give anyone my number, and I was very boring and un-Chris like. How boring? I fell asleep in the car.<\/p>\n

My weekend. Yikes. I was glad for Monday.<\/p>\n

Chris<\/p>\n

\n

Subject: “booooooy, I don’t see no horns on yer head…..”<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve seen Hell. Really. I spent three or four hours hanging out there. It’s bad when you spend your Saturday nights in Hell. Very bad indeed. I don’t think that this was Hell proper. I didn’t see anyone standing on their heads, deep in da kine. Maybe this was a vision of my personal Hell if I don’t change my evil ways and repent. Dunno. I have to admit, cover charge into Hell was cheap, only $3.<\/p>\n

Hell was populated with big people. Very large people. I was on the small size, both in height and weight. The denizens of Hell looked like they had been raised on grade A, prime American beef, and I wondered what the hell they ate on base. And the men were also huge! Not only that, but I lost out in the belt buckle contest. Unofficial of course. I guess belt buckle size matters. “Hey, can you fit a large pizza on that thing?”<\/p>\n

My Hell was a country western club located near the massive Air Force base smack in the middle of Okinawa. I think it was called “Western World” or something equally dumb. And it was all Country Western. All the state flags, card board cut outs of Clint Eastwood, a huge desert landscape (I walked around the mural, going “I’ve run into that kind of cactus, and that one, and Dave smacked in to Palo Verde on Trail 100, and Shila had that Cholla cactus on her leg…”) Sort of a barn theme. Lots of wood, first time in a while I’ve seen so much wood in one building.<\/p>\n

It was full of military guys and military women and other, American women (wives?), and about ten Japanese. And me. The only American that wasn’t military. It was obvious, maybe because I had a shirt with a zipper on it, Oakley sneakers, and my short but not military short hair. Talk about culture shock. Okinawa hasn’t bothered me at all. It’s like home. This place was like no place I’ve ever been. Totally outside of my experiences. AHHH big haole men and bigger haole women dancing AHHHHH!<\/p>\n

My two escorts were Japanese women. One was a former co-worker of mine (she’s responsible for many STRANGE outings in the past. Now I ask important questions before I go out, like; ‘am I old enough for this?’), and one of her friends. Her friend is a regular, and she can dance. I can’t. Go figure. I tried line dancing a couple of times, but the really short (but really wide) dude I kept kicking was looking pissed, so I quit. Oddly enough, the only line dance I can fudge is “Electric Slide”, even more oddly, they played it. They also played “pretty fly for a white guy” by the Offspring. I wonder if I was the only one that appreciated the irony of that one (I think so).<\/p>\n

The music sucked. Sorry, right to the point. It was all the new country crap (sorry Dave), nothing old that I like. The dancing was interesting. I’ve never seen this kind of dancing before, and it was neat to watch. Some of the guys were damned good. Their feet were flying, the cowboy boots were stomping, it was cool. Some of the Japanese guys (wearing punk t shirts) were also as good as the down on the farm boys, mixing it up.<\/p>\n

I actually managed to go the whole night without getting hit. Surprising since everyone was tripping over my feet, be it when I was dancing or standing around drinking my coke. And I was laughing the whole night. Should have seen the size of the bouncers. And someone got lippy with him. Hello!<\/p>\n

Hell. Yikes. And I thought all this time it was going to be riding a Huffy with squeaky brakes and having meals with Barbara Mooney. Nope. Going to be at “Western World”, with all the Country Western weirdoes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Subject: “I do not understand, is this a double date?” Date: Monday, December 11, 2000 Sunday, and I get a phone call from the office guy with the bitchin’ car. He wants to know if I’m free. All I had planed was to sleep, eat, ride, and go shopping in hopeless attempt to make my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":31,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/PaJYlx-eE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/908\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}