Tuesday, August 23, 2016

I Forgot: Landing at Kansai

Air Canada Boeing 767ER Seat 51K

Noise is group of high school girls seated around me. Sounds like chickens surprised by a fox in the henhouse.

Incidentally, where my plane is touching down was about 100 feet deep of Osaka Bay water only 25 years ago. Everything below the plane was put there by people.

Even the grass.

Sunday, August 14, 2016

My Suit WORKED!


My Suit Ploy worked! The cute little button at the Air Canada counter (perfect Japanese, but she said she was Korean!) apologised for not putting me in First Class, like I joked, but did put me in one of those exit rows—no seat in front of me! Over the WING! My favourite place to die—it'll be extremely fiery, as I will be above the wing tanks.

Yay times a hundred.

My suit finally worked! Look it up: Boeing 767ER, seat 27K!


Yay times five hundred! And maybe there will even be no one next to me! She made a special request on a phone! For me! Yippee-yip-yip-yipYIP*&*&*&*&*&*&*&(^=^)(^=^)(^=^)(^=^)

Uh, sorry.

Here. This'll take a load off.

Misery

In the bus, just having said goodbye to Tai-chan
Summiting is always a triumph, but what goes up must come down.

And flying from Japan to Montreal is the worst of the worst. Oh no—flying from Japan to Montreal through the U.S. is the penultimate Worst Journey In The World.

I will not go into the details of going through customs and immigration and security lines with your bags in two countries, one of them being one of the most disorganized in the world, and we'll just stick with Vancouver.

You get to Vancouver after an interminable 11+hour flight and have to offload any luggage and join the inevitable snakeline—you know the one—and depending on your luck, it will take you a weary ten minutes, or a hellish 40.

A surly immigration officer will cap off your happiness, and then there will be luggage inspection, checkin (you can never find a checkin desk, because WoW! You're in the Interational Arrivals terminal and you have to go to the Domestic Departures terminal.

It's always a throw of the dice . . . be pessimistic and it'll go smoothly. Be optimistic and no doubt it will be a nightmare.

But that is Part II of the journey, and I haven't even really begun Part I . . .

It doesn't get any better than THIS:


A Nightmare For Your Final Day? Why not!

It was a little late to find out that I can't buy my ticket for the 7 a.m. bus from here to the airport until 8:30 a.m.

Let's see . . . forget the 100-yen shop . . . I'll go to the Time-machine vendor.

Friday, August 12, 2016

ニコラスコーヒ熊

ナオちゃんがコーヒに書いた絵。ニコラスは全国世界中一番かわいい熊だ。


Trip To The 100-Yen Shop

The land of 100 million 100-yen items. And a shop girl who loves you without even knowing who you are.

It's a story for the ages.

Watch in HD this saga of ecstasy and remorse.

Mellow Evening

We were at our favourite haunt the other night and I managed to get this perfect shot of Tai-chan: a Portrait of Adolescence.


I've taken some great photos of him but this ranks up there with the best—mainly because of the neutral brown textured wall behind him, the artful shadows that make it look like natural light (it is! From a skylight).

Too bad this was taken with an iPad and is not ultra-high resolution—my Canon T5 is not something I can just whip out for every occasion but no one ever notices the iPad.

Perfect!

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Tai-chan Relaxes With New Gaming PC

What can I say . . . kids nowadays. I would have been happy with a new Pink Floyd album. These days only $1,500 will do.

But what focus in those beady eyes . . .




Mellow Animals

This were all given a blessing and poured down my gullet—and all brought me luck in some way. Bravo, Nao-chan,  Kaori-chan and Chihiro-chan!

むっちゃかわいくて美味しかった!

Various artworks done by Nao-chan and Chihiro-chan. I will name them separately when I remember who did which!

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Jerking My Way Home

At 11 p.m. most of the idiots I passed on my way back from Mellow Café had their main-braces well spliced—get a load of the guy in the white shirt that you see briefly at the beginning. He was staggering all over the place, the tool.

Later on, I took a walk around a lake (I'll film it in daylight,)

What blew me away was that the 60 or so people I observed wandering around the darkened lake, mostly couples, some couples in cars parked on the side, were all glued to their devices. Every man-jack of them had a device, at 12:15 a.m., and I could even see that one of the girls in her van with her boyfriend was playing a game on hers—don't know what he was doing on his. GLUED—EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.

Like zombies circling the lake . . .

Monday, August 8, 2016

Making My Pizza

The celebrated pizza man at Mellow Café makes my pizza.

Photos of Cake and Sunset

The light in the room was AWFUL. The camera didn't know what to do with it.
Even with post-processing in Photoshop it doesn't look even close to its real glory.
Tai-chan had the right idea—use the flash! I hate flash, but he did a good job. This was his custom-ordered cake.
While I was on the phone this evening he grabbed my Canon and snapped this shot from the window—spectacular, don't you agree?

Walking to Get The Cake

I walked to the cake shop yesterday and got hopelessly lost on the way back. But it was fun anyway, as Tai-chan was not with me and I brought my iPad to do time-lapse videos.

Sunday, August 7, 2016

At Last! Tai-chan's 15th Birthday

I know watching other people's birthdays (especially kids') can be boring as fuck but we try to entertain, not bore. And there is no better entertainment team on earth than Tai and Daddy.

Just seeing Watch Guy alone makes this video all worth it!

The music is My Foolish Heart by the Horace Parlan Trio.

In which we go from Mellow Café by train to Kintetsu Nara department store and shopping centre . . .

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Fun At The Nepalis'

It's an Indian restaurant, but the people are from Nepal. Their English is worse than their Japanese, but that's okay. Their Japanese is worse than their food, which is actually pretty good. They even made me a pilaf to order—with real basmati rice! (When I lived here it was impossible to get basmati rice anywhere. Only sticky white Japanese crap. Which does not go well with Indian food.)

Tai-chan even ordered more after dinner was done!

I put it all into a funky package.

My little baby man turns 15 today!

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Wow! Photos With My Canon Rebel Kiss: Portraits

It really blows my iPad out of the water.

Right click to open in new window for high resolution!

Whoa. I made THAT? Tai-chan in the last two days of being fourteen years old.
Looking Rembrandt-y in my shiny Thai silk shirt. I'm conducting a silent orchestra of one. Zen, you know.

Stumbling Home

But at a high rate of speed! I'll have to do this more often. Drink 25 espressos in 20 minutes, I mean.



Down Day

Tai-chan is at school all day today . . . and tomorrow. Sunday is his birthday, and mercifully, he will have the day off. We'll go to a shopping centre nearby and fuck around.

But meanwhile, I will twiddle my thumbs. No projects today, and it's just too hot to wander around in the full 35° heat of the day.

I guess I'll just go home to the hotel and twiddle my thumbs there, instead of here at Mellow Café . . .

Twiddling my thumbs at Mellow Café

Cicadas—Like You Won't Believe!

Here they are called "semi"—and there are about 100 times more of them every summer than anywhere else in the world.

Hark! Tai-chan and I were walking back from the cake shop down a side street.

After Hours

I bought a cool "summer rerax" pajama set. Only ¥1600!


Yikes. My Big Mouth

Yesterday Tai-chan and I had a blast, like I knew we would.

Poor little boy, he's obviously trashed . . . he has to go to something called "Juku," even now that it's his goddamned summer vacation. Like, six days a week, 8 hours a day. So it's no wonder he gets tired . . . I don't want to drag him around on my shopping excursions, in which I'm sure he has no interest, so whaddayagonnado.

We went to dinner at his favourite Italian place, an the moment I got served I remembered something that had happened two years before: the food is excellent, it really is, but there is so little of it.

It's really my only meal of the day, and normally I'm not a pig—I physically can't eat a lot—but with pasta, I can eat more than two cups at a time. But they were serving what seemed to be a lot less, and I think two years ago I casually said something and they gave me more pasta from then on.

But this time, it seems they had forgotten. (Judge for yourself:


Hmm . . . kinda looks like a lot here. But I swear it wasn't! Anyway, I, having my back to the bar, apparently started griping (in English!) about the amount, and my happy son neglected to mention that the owner/waitress was "cleaning glasses" behind the bar in the empty restaurant.

Well, I was quite surprised, when, having finished my meal, she came over and asked if I wanted another serving! I was, umm, shocked, to say the least. Whaaa?

It was only when I sussed to what must have happened that my antennae started buzzing in tune . . .

Oh well. I guess we won't be revisiting that place.

Although as I recall, that time a couple of years ago, they started giving me more pasta every time I came.

Whatever . . .

Tai-chan looks unhappy with his serving, too . . .
His serving actually looks even smaller than mine . . .

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

The Trip Halfway

Check out the scenery from that plane coming (and climbing out) of YVR.

Video Accompaniment

What A Day

By my watch I've been on the road without a sleep break for thirty hours.

When I go lie down, which will be in a few minutes, no doubt this will be my vision just before I fall asleep . . . it sums up my day perfectly.


Almost Forgot

The bad dog I left behind!




What's In That Drink?

Why, honey and lemon, dear.

And it's delicious!

This is the first time I have ever been in Japan without drinking alcohol.

In general, while in Montreal, I've avoided any sort of sugary drink—so the one I'm drinking now, which is something with sparkling water, honey and lemon, would have been verboten.

But these two weeks I'm blowing the diet to the winds—I just polished off an excellent pizza—the whole thing!—which was made, of course, with the forbidden white flour.

But what the fuck! Like I said, I'm just going to eat whatever I feel like this time, and damn the torpedos.

(Finally, one of the waitresses remembered me, after I showed her this video from two years ago, when we celebrated Tai-chan's 13th birthday in the very room in which I am now typing):

Mellow Yellow

In Japan!

Long Flight!

But I'm here.


Monday, August 1, 2016

Here at YVR

Here I am, none the worse for wear. Those six hours went by in . . . well, six hours.

In Seat 51K in the Gulag of an Airbus A300dom.

Sitting next to some dumb hippie with six backpacks and three devices . . . you get the picture.

Wolfed down a greasy ham-n-cheese croissant—no hot dogs. There goes the Biome!

Next stop: Ōsaka.

Greetings From The Void

The Docteur is in

Docteur Neeque has arrived at planet Dorval in one piece. On my way to the airport a cop almost pulled over my taxi for speeding, but let the driver off with a warning. High drama!

Absolutely nothing to report—all the checkin procedures are boringly automated–almost no human interaction at all. Perhaps this $250 silk cream jacket and raw silk wasp-stripe tie won't get me that First Class upgrade after all, but the day is young and the gate agent is not here yet.

When they arrive, I'll spring my trap!

All correct and on track! Now to browse my Time 50 Years of Star Trek magazine.

On My Way

4 a.m. and everything is packed and ready. I sip my scotch fuzzy water and try to relax, seeing that my flight is on schedule and has a usual departure time of being seven minutes late.