Stars of the Lid – December Hunting For Vegetarian F*ckface

Ignore the title… I’m assuming it’s meant to be stupid and offensive to drive off pretentious people (which this music arguably is). Anyway, this is seriously beautiful, hypnotic, droning stuff… at high volumes, it seems it should almost be illegal. The whole album (The Stars of the Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline) is basically just as great, too. Gives me goosebumps every time.

With Japanese even I can handle. At the top, it says “This is not a toilet”, then next to the peeing (or gushing) man, “No!” or “Bad!”. Incidentally, this sign was posted pretty close to my neighborhood.

Well, this retro Showa-themed yakiniku place (Japanese-style Korean barbecue) looked innocent enough. Little did I know that I’d be eating raw heart and liver within a few minutes upon entering. I can definitely live happily without eating most of the stuff again, but, hey, now and then I need to push my limits. Most of the meat/organs/guts we ate were cooked at the table, by the way, but the second photo, although blurry, is of the liver meant to be eaten raw (and done that way). P.S. I definitely realize the real appeal of this place is not in shocking/grossing out Americans… it’s all about the texture of the food (very important in Japan!).

What did I say about the technology getting better?

Went on a walk today with H around Shinjuku, and then kind of randomly decided to take a train to the east side of Tokyo, where we did some more walking and then ended up in Asakusa, where we had some pretty delicious tendon (that’s tempura and sauce on top of rice, not body tissue, although both are pretty easy to come by in Tokyo). The walk, especially around Asakusa, provided a goldmine of wacky camera phone pics, the winner of which is posted above. Maybe I’ll post some of the others later, but this one deserves its own little space for sure. I’ve never really hung around in Asakusa before, but I intend to make it my new summer hangout, as there are tons of homely little izakayas (Japanese pubs) with seating areas that spill out onto the street. Finally, a place in Tokyo to enjoy a beer outdoors!

Just want to say thanks for those of you who came to our H’s party last night. It was a lot of fun, and I apologize to anyone I subjected my drunken rambling to (that means anyone I spoke to after about, oh, 7PM). And by the way, if anyone wants to stop by this week, I will have that crab rangoon ready to go!

For those of you who are not in Japan, we had a quite a scary earthquake yesterday afternoon during the party preparation.

Hey everyone that bothers to check here for updates anymore. And sorry! It’s been quite an eventful last few months, and I haven’t felt like or had much time to blog. I’m back, though! I still have quite a lot of videos and photos and stuff to finish sorting through before I post them (soon, soon!), so for now, please accept this short teaser of a video and photo from Puroland. There are more to come!

That’s right folks, 3 weeks away and I’m finally planning the trip. Only snag encountered thus far is that online tickets for the Alhambra are already sold out for the days I’m in Granada. All 2,000 of them. Per day. That means I’ll be waiting in line for about 3 hours starting at 6AM or just skipping the WHOLE DAMN WORTHLESS THING! Anyway, should be a cool trip. I’m getting excited about it.

I’ve been doing way too much partying recently. This weekend alone I went out and saw Jeff Samuel DJ (was a great show, BTW), and then yesterday, whether you believe me or not, I attended a wine-tasting party. The wine-tasting was really pretty cool. I think I can get into activity that is centered around drinking (after the tasting, we did some drinking, of course). Now I need to get some stuff done!

Uh oh, I think I may have just accidentally, half-jokingly, not-quite-seriously agreed to visit this theme park in a few weeks. I am a little embarrassed, a litte regretful, and a little ashamed, but I am also very strangely excited! And now to answer the question on everyone’s mind: Will it be “cute” or will it be terrifying? Watch this space…