Good Old Japan

I'm uncomfortable with how close Chile is getting to us in terms of obesity.

USA #1!!!

beta, I see your point but I'm not sure I can see retiring in America either, for some but not the exact overlap of reasons.

Also: USA #1!!!

Not yet squire.

Thought there would be minimum physical requirements, eg, if you can't run 10k in under 30 mins while wearing combat boots then you can fuck off.

Only one thing for it; time to find the appropriate online forms and enlist Sukebbo GG in Seal Team 6.

Do us proud, young man. 

ugh, yeah been in a couple of dodgy onsen at the insistence of japanese hosts. only ones i ever trusted enough to get in voluntarily were natural volcanic onsen outdoors. especially great while its snowing.

57 is too old for Seal Team 6, MORAN.

You'll have to go the instructor route. Barking at cadets like in the movies.

---

japantoday.com/category/national/last-students-graduate-school-closures-spread-in-ageing-japan


So fahhking bizarre. The amount of resources required for these two country spackers to have their little school experience. They've probably kept a squadron of hangars-on in jobs for years. Cooks, cleaners, grounds staff, teachers, Principal, Vice Principal...

The heating bill for the entire school in frozen boonfuck would be astronomical. Just get the fucking teacher to visit them at home for some one on one shit and save BILLIONS of yen ffs. I bet the "Vice Principal" still gets a massive bonus even though he would not have a SINGLE fucking thing to do all day.

Hay Fever season japantoday.com/category/national/sniff-test-japan-declares-war-on-hayfever-woes


That dont sound right. That's NZ's GDP for 100 years.... each day ffs

Oh fuggit, trying to stay awake for the final day of Premiere league footy, watching at home to save my energy for State of Origin and the Cup final next Saturday soooo...Here's a yak story.
 Preface
Used to see them around the single main drinking area, Nagarekawa, with a little office right next to the tiny pathetic "main square" of the area. My translation company office was across the street from one end of the drinking area and I knew where some small offices were located - I would see the underlings washing cars but one time I saw an older yak off his head on something wandering deliriously and dangerously close to falling off the sidewalk of a fairly trafficked boulevard..."Oh he's fakkked - good luck ya pill head" I thought speeding past him on my bike. I have a few other yak anecdotes but
****

The wildest yak event was summer 2001, after a department store 3,500-yen four-hour free-flow and a few drinks in a local watering hole, I was gathered with four or five other ex-pats in the above-mentioned main square of Nagarekawa when someone started laying on their horn...just non-stop. "Who the fuck is doing that shit? Fuck them" says Canadian Allan, probably early 30s, been in Hiroshima quite a while. Beeeeeeep beeepbeep..."Fuck it - let's go" We stroll over some 50 meters, cans in hand to see it's a black Mercedes making the noise. Allan pours his beer on the the Benz medallion. The driver or front passenger pops out and starts giving him heavy gangster threatening talk and then Allan gives it right back. "What.the.fuck..." probably was my pickled-brain thought. The yak gave up, got in and took off. We just go back to the square and continuing consuming and talking about how insane that was. Motorcycle-riding Allan smirked...and then two young dudes in plastic track suits with sweet DAs and holding bats showed up. I don't remember it all super clearly but it actually wasn't that threatening with the bat being given to one of the ex-pats and me asking them if they were Ichiro...but at one point, maybe before they left, I slowly backed away, got to my bike and sped off. "They have eyes everywhere, don't want to clipped in the hammies with a bat or worse some other night, drunk again..." I was 36 and still single so of course you look for your future bride in a bar...Anyhow, I am pretty sure I went on to some other bar on the other side of the area but I cannot quite remember.
Allan unfortunately passed away a few years later in a late-night motorcycle accident.

I don't check japantoday often but I was surprised to read that

also surprised i don't have any yak stories. friends told me basically about a guy being really drunk and obnoxious at a hanami but i've never even seen that, just sort of, you know, driving mercedes, quietly doing yak stuff.

what's sweet DAs?

a bandmate of mine had some convoluted light yak-related work, pretending to be a guy on a dating site, i guess he like went to an office to do this and they create these profiles and what were described to me as lonely older women sign up and i think it's like pay as you go to talk. so the job is to just string these poor biddies along. i don't think it escalates to like "hey buy me a gift" it's just sort of a light scam, as described to me, as my feeble mind can recall.

i asked what happens when they finally really push to meet and he basically said at that point you just cut all communication. he indicated this was definitely illegal and he was at technically light potential for arrest worst case scenario but that's about it.

so even reaching, i don't have much of a yak story....

Havent seen a Rugby League game since the 80's but those SOA games were a big deal in NZ. NRL media did such a good job of pumping up the tribal parochial aspect

right, so a good excuse to get a bit rowdy over a few beers and a snag. i can dig that.

the thing for me is. i do get invested in a big way. no way could i ever watch a state of origin as a neutral observer. y'know, "as long as its a good game..." which is how i watch most sport including the few bits of nrl i might see over the course of a regular season. like, i generally genuinely don't get the whole parochial loyalty around sports teams. i don't own any team merch and can't stand the media manufactured rivalry and jingoism in the build up. yet come game time...all blues and their supporters become instant subhuman scum. and i am a one eyed maniac that doesn't care by what means or by how much my team wins by, i just NEED them to WIN. and i don't even really understand why i get like that or why i care. its just deeply ingrained in my childhood psych. if queensland win, everything is good with the world. if they lose then all hope dies too. weird.

hey mods. in relation to the topic. i am planning to come back to japan for three weeks in january '24. wife and kid in tow. we going to shinkansen it from honshu to hokkaido to kyushu and back again. taking our shoes off and putting them back on again all over the fucking place. just saying.

thanks man, we most probably will be stopping in at hiroshima and may well shake you down for info.

the missus and i had probably our best nihon nights ever in 2009 at a tiny okonamiyaki shop (definitely wouldn't call it a restaurant) in the backstreets about 3 mins walk from hiroshima station. we had been doing some washing at a laundromat next door it was about 6:30 and we decided to give it a go because we were tired and hungry. inside was a salarymen and a couple of factory workers eating awhile watching baseball on tv and the owner/cook. they were extremely wary and suspicious of gaijin coming in there at first. but by the time we stumbled out of there laughing after a dozen draught beers sometime after 10pm we were all the greatest of friends.
experiences like that make all the bullshit of traveling worthwhile.

please explain!