Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.

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Japan, day Six

aka: Demon Children and all is Well

Labor Day weekend was spent at Pismo Beach. This isn't an entry about the weekend though, it's actually the latest in my overly delayed Japan vacation entries. I should be posting more vacation entries as the week rolls on. Who knows, I may actually finish it. Now that'd a laugh '-)

Tuesday 07/03/01

The thing about going on vacation with John is that no matter where you go, you end up at the zoo. In this case Ueno Zoo. To get to Ueno Zoo, you just have too find Ueno Park, which unfortunately turned out to be harder than it should have been. John and I took the wrong exit when we left the subway and ended up getting turned around a bit. We weren't lost per say, we could easily see the trees of Ueno Park. The only problem was figuring out how to get across the rail line that stood between us and those trees.

We had been warned by a couple of people that Ueno Zoo was kind of depressing with small cramped spaces and cages. We had also been warned by other people that while it been remodeled and wasn't that bad anymore, it still wasn't that great. I think that the later sentiment was more accurate. Not that bad, but hardly the best zoo I've ever been in either.

There were the usual animals and the not as usual, such as a pair of Pandas. I had my usual poor animals being all locked up, except that if they weren't here, they would probably be dead/poached/eaten/starved for lack of food and or space internal monologue/ argument. All in all, the usual, no big whoop.

Oddly, the signs scattered throughout the Zoo ended up being more interesting than many of the exhibits. There was a sign warning that each year, a hundred children were lost in the zoo. There no explanation to be careful that you didn't lose your kids or any indication if these children had ever been found. We joked that the sign was a warning that the there were feral kids living in the bushes. Possibly demon children as well.

That deserves an explanation.

There was another sign which showed a child climbing some bars. There was no X or slash though the picture, so it did not seem to be saying that this was a bad idea. It did show an animal claw about to strike the boy, but the kid was grinning, not caring at all that some ferocious animal was gunning for him. I'm guessing his cavalier attitude may have had something to do with the fact that that the boy's head was on backwards. It may have had to do with the large horns growing out the top of head, or was that merely a bad haircut?

There were signs everywhere showing this backwards headed, demon child doing naughty things like feeding orange balls to pregnant baboons who appeared to either be hung over, or suffering from morning sickness. The demon boy seemed to be everywhere and he was up to no good.

It was all very...odd.

John and I were looking at penguins when there was an announcement over several loud speakers. A woman with a pleasant speaking voice said that it it was noon at Ueno park and that all was well. For some reason, there was no Japanese announcement, only English. Did this mean that English speakers couldn't tell time? That only English speakers would be at a zoo in the middle of the day? The absolute worst time to view animals? I had no idea why, other than that the zoo was again, very...odd.

After the zoo, we had lunch at a very good Indian restaurant. The food was amazingly good. The smoking situation, not so good. Once again, John and I were the only nonsmokers in the entire establishment. Since the nonsmoking section seemed to consist of one solitary table, there wouldn't have been anywhere to put them if any more nonsmokers had shown up.

Two women were seated at the table across from us and I couldn't help but look at them. One of the women smoked before her meal. Then she fixed her lipstick. Then she ate her lunch. Then she fixed her lipstick. Then she smoked another cigarette. Then she fixed her lipstick. Then she smoked again. Then she fixed her lipstick again. Then they finally left, which was a good thing, since I was getting exhausted seeing all the work she was putting into keeping her lips looking good. It was all so futile, I didn't see why she even bothered.

It was museum time after lunch, first the Shitamachi History Museum, then the Tokyo National Museum. The Shitamachi had mock sets of old Tokyo neighborhoods. It was neither thrilling, nor boring. It was, well, just OK. I found the Tokyo National Museum more interesting. Lots and lots of arts and crafts. Wood crafts, paintings, wood blocks, metal work, armor, swords, textiles, there were tons of stuff to check out. Which meant that we spent a long time walking through the place.

We were tired by the time we finished and were ready to leave the park and call it quits. Except that I wouldn't let us leave until we looked at the statue of Saigo Takamori. According to my guide book, it is not merely a statue of a samurai walking his dog, but it is in fact, the third most famous statue in all of Japan and dang it, I was going to see it. Unfortunately, the third most famous statue in Japan is at the top of long flight of stairs. So after forcing John to climb up said stairs, I looked at the statue, then turned around to leave.

John was mock angry at me for dragging him to the third most famous statue in all of Japan, only to have me look at it for all of one minute and I had to put up third most famous jokes the entire subway ride back to Ropungi. I didn't care.

One of Carlos' co-workers (Guy) was being transferred to Korea, so there was a dinner that night in his honor. Guy's girlfriend Sakura chose the place, her favorite Korean Barbecue restaurant appropriately enough. The food was very good. The kim chi was very hot. The beef was very tasty. It was also very, very, very expensive. It was the most expensive meal I have ever eaten. A lot of money for the privilege of having the proprietor sneak octopus into everything, even into John's vegetarian side dishes '-)

More later

nico

note: Johnny still makes third most famous jokes even now and I still don't care.

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