Yesterday I woke up incredibly tired and wanting just to go back to sleep. I did drag myself to the gym and wasn’t all that clear-headed afterwards. I had a short list of things I wanted to do and it seemed like I’d never get them done. The list wasn’t that long: laundry, haircut, rake the leaves, clean the gutters. I postponed the gutters but got everything else done, including getting a haircut that I’m really not that happy about. I just get my hair buzzed very short so it doesn’t take all that much skill, but there’s a stripe of longer hair that I can see. I mean really, it’s just clippers, guard, and five minutes. Sheesh.

Not much to say about today, either. Cleaned the gutters right before it started raining.

I remember when I was a kid, I’d watch the weather reports hoping that it would snow. Now I’m the opposite. I watch the weather report hoping that it WON’T snow. Snow makes it hard to get to work and also gets all the yahoos out on the road. I know I sound like a boring old man, but you are who you are.

There are a few songs I try to sing along to in my car, and I really can’t remember all of the words to most of them. Fortunately, I don’t feel the need to do this when anyone else is in the car. The songs I can’t completely remember (I get the verses mixed up most often) today are “The Humpty Dance”, “Blue Monday (New Order)”, and “Oh Sherrie (Steve Perry)”. But I did find a song where I knew almost all of the words: “Message in a Bottle (The Police).” I’m not sure why that is. I had some grand theory about the songs of my youth, but they’re all from when I was a lot younger. I suppose “Message in a Bottle” was from high school while everything else was from college on, after I was permanently mentally scarred by my institutionalization at MIT. Or I could just blame it on Differential Equations or Organic Chemistry. It’s just as well. The fewer songs I know well, the less likely I am to torture anyone at karaoke.

I also realized I’m intolerant of certain vegans eating certain vegan foods. I don’t care if they eat vegetables or whatever odd things that are their own thing, but when they start eating “fake meat” products like Boca Burgers, it pisses me off. I don’t care if other people eat them, so I tried to figure out why I felt this way. I think it’s because I don’t like anyone tricking me, and that includes religions and other cons, and most vegans have their own fake food religion and use their tofurkey and such to try to fool omnivores into their way of thinking. I honestly don’t give a crap that an animal had to die for my dinner, and I’m a Buddhist, not some pasty white boy who thinks it’s cool to have self-imposed limits on his diet. OK, so that’s not quite true, I do feel some guilt from time to time, but I’m still going to eat whatever it is that I’m eating. I don’t care how many Twinkies had to die to provide my dessert.

The other thing that pisses me off is vegetarians/vegans who hate tofu. Tofu is tasty and I’m not sure what’s wrong with them. So is lard and bacon. We’re all going to die and all life is suffering, so why not have some tasty pork products?

I’m sure fries aren’t good for you, and I think I ate more fries today than I should eat in an entire week. Lunch was at the Cruise In Country Diner with good burgers (Oregon Country Beef) and unlmited crispy fries. This kind of slowed me down at the gym later in the day. But I’ve been relieved of my gym cleaning duties on Mondays and Wednesdays so I went to Killer Burger for dinner with Sean and Jeff and had even more fries.

Before I say anything else, the peanut butter, pickle, and bacon burger is exquisite. The meat is well seasoned and well cooked but the sweet housemade peanut sauce, crisp bacon, and thin slices of sour pickle go together incredibly well. The whole time I was eating it I was telling Sean and Jeff how great it was. I’m definitely making the trip across town to 46th and Sandy to get another one, even though the place is run by god botherers. I don’t suppose there are many places that aren’t.

So there you have it. I found a great burger, and now I need a cleanse. Maybe not quite a cleanse, but if there’s some way to get organic Drano in my blood vessels, I’d probably be better off.

This is the power of positive thinking. It’s past the time I’d need to get to sleep to get 8 hours, but not too much.

HAH! I cursed myself. My computer just locked up and I’m back after losing 20 minutes.

I’m also not really helping myself out by working so hard at the gym and then going to Jack in the box to get free tacos. I did eat a salad as well, and I’m not a big dressing user, so it might have been almost healthy. Still, two days in a row at Jack in the box.

Well, I better figure out what’s going on and actually get to sleep. Still behind schedule, as usual.

I’ve had a lack of concentration lately, which is actually untrue because I’m concentrating on things but not the things I should be thinking about. For example, I’m looking in my ears every day with my microscope. I’m not sure why; there really isn’t anything in there like magicians coins or anything. I’m reading more comics that I’ve found. It’s all very nonsensical.

And here it is, past midnight paying bills and I have to be up at 6AM. What am I thinking? Maybe I should hide all the distractions, but then I’d be stuck in a blank room. Possibly with padded walls. Huh.

Yesterday I went to the gym and I felt quite beat up after that. It’s the second time I’ve been back since my 2 week hiatus (or vacation of gluttony and sloth) but yesterday was pretty darn hard. Besides actually redeeming a Groupon (the one from the Gap) I didn’t do much of anything else but catch up on more TV that I had on my DVR from the aforementioned vacation.

Well, I guess I was tired because I didn’t get up until 9:40, and I was pretty groggy. In fact, when I finally made it out to start cleaning the gutters, I found the neighbor’s keys, expired Timberline ski pass, and MP3 player in my recycling bin and I was so confused that I stood there staring at it for a while. I was thinking, do I call the cops? Do I try to find out what happened? I just got his dad (who is his landlord) and he took it all back home.

The excitement came later, when I actually did clean the gutters and even had to snake a downspout. Our trees, or at least the leaves on our trees, are very stubborn and most of them are still up in the tree. But the leaves and the rain don’t seem to coordinate their timing so I have to clean the gutters several times or we get a waterfall cascading out of odd places off of the roof. I did buy a gutter rake yesterday and I’m happy that I didn’t have to hang halfway off of the ladder in a precarious manner since the rake let me reach much farther. Or is it further?

In the afternoon I finally got my USB microscope working on Linux. I can’t get it working correctly on Windows or the Mac yet. It’s a silly gadget I bought a couple of years ago that even comes with a sharp plastic ear pick extension for cleaning your ears (cleaning your ears with a sharp ear spoon is a Japanese thing that lots of Japanese people do, I assure you). I spent a bunch of time looking in my ear and then poking around with a Q-Tip to try to clean out the canal. This microscope is probably not the best thing for me to have around unless I really want to permanently damage my hearing.

To the veterans, thank you for your service.

So, after I went and stayed up for, what, 32 hours, diid I go to sleep at a reasonable hour? I’m assuming reasonable would have been more than eight hours of sleep (more like the 13 1/2 hours my sister got) so no, I did not. And it doesn’t look like I’m going to be sensible today, either. I even went to the gym today after feeling quite sleepy in the afternoon. I was the worst off before lunch and on the drive home. I still was sleepy right before I left for the gym. Fortunately, we didn’t do anything too difficult, so I could sleepwalk through the parts that weren’t dangerous.

Earlier I was thinking one of the things I won’t miss is the hotel toilet paper. I even had an encounter in Narita Airport with the dreaded Japanese-style toilet that requires all the squatting and the balance. Good thing I go to a gym where they make me do a lot of squats and it didn’t turn out to be a disaster. Funny how that’s the most useful thing I can think of that I got from working out so much.

Right now it’s 2PM in Osaka and I’ve been up since 7AM yesterday. It’s all a part of trying to limit my jet lag and sometimes it works. Usually I’m a zombie by this time at night (it’s 9PM here at home). Got up in Tokyo, ate a morning set and did some shopping in Shinjuku before my sister and I took the Narita Express for the airport. Narita Airport is actually kind of fun as long as you don’t make the mistake I did a few years back and go through the security gate too quickly. A CD store, a Uniqlo, a selection of restaurants, a few gift shops, and there’s even a gift shop that has a selection of Kit Kat flavors that I haven’t seen anywhere else. Kind of a fun sendoff from Japan.

Tokyo was fun and aggravating at the same time. Loud at night with sirens and trucks and the air didn’t need cigarette smoke to make it dirty.

Today was our last full day in Japan, and the only full day we had in Tokyo. I spent the morning shopping with my sister at some athletic stores. For lunch we went on our pilgrimage to Mos Burger.

After lunch we split up because my sister’s further pilgrimage was to the giant fabric store in Shinjuku and mine was to Akihabara’s Denden Town. Oh, the sights I saw! There was even a store selling UV-erasable EPROMs, something that the newly graduated engineers were shaking their heads in disbelief about when I told them of their existence. Lots of cool stuff but I only bought a few presents and I went back to the hotel.

Today I had dinner with Suzuki-san, a co-worker I hadn’t seen for 19 years. We went to one of those restaurants in Shinjuku that the barkers try to get you into. 2 hours, all you can drink for ¥1750, plus food ended up as ¥8000 for the both of us. Not so bad. We caught up on old times and wondered why we both looked pretty much the same as the last time we saw each other.

Anyway, that’s it for my gluttony. Tomorrow we head back for the US!

I’ll try to make this short. My sister got sick from the cigarette smoke at dinner, but I think she’s also tired from traveling.

We left Okayama at 10:26 and arrived in Tokyo around 14:40. We met the designers Chico Hayasaki and Hiron for dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant, but spent the afternoon wandering around bits of Shinjuku, mainly Tokyu Hands and Yodobashi Camera. I went back to Yodobashi Camera with Hiron and Chico after my sister got sick so we could geek out for a while.

So basically, a short answer to a long day. Tomorrow I make my pilgrimage to Akihabara and see my old co-worker Suzuki-san. You know how it is.

Today was our only full day in Okayama, and it was a doozy. My sister’s friend Yumi drove us around all day. First it was to see some of my sister’s old co-workers. Then it was to Shikoku to have incredibly tasty udon and see Ritsurin Garden. Then it was around Okayama to go shopping and to a massage and dinner. Quite a full day.

The Sanuki udon was tasty and quite cheap if you don’t count the highway costs. I think it was probably ¥8000 to get there and back across the Seto Ohashi, but it was less than ¥2000 for our lunch. Even cheaper than our sushi yesterday!

I should have pictures of Ritsurin Garden which is the largest “cultural heritage garden” in Japan, but I didn’t even crop the udon picture because it’s getting close to midnight. It was quite nice, actually, and I’ll eventually have pictures.

After all that, we went to have some traditional Japanese sweets.

We were joking that my sister was going to die if we didn’t get to some shopping, so we did go to several places. Counterintuitively, she didn’t get anything and the one who was complaining (me) bought a Nike toque and a North Face jacket, both in colors I don’t expect to find in the US. We also had Japanese massages which were inexpensive but involved putting on sweats and being massaged through a towel. Whatever. It was still relaxing.

I keep saying I need to get to sleep because we’re off to Tokyo tomorrow!

We took the Shinkansen to Okayama today, where my sister worked for a year. It’s kind of an odd place, in the middle of nowhere, but seems to have plenty of tourists. We met my sister’s friend Yumi, who drove us around for a long day of shopping and sightseeing. We had lunch at an old school shopping area that supplies fish and produce and even flowers for the area. This sushi donburi only cost ¥1000, for example, which is half of what I’d expect it to cost anywhere else. And it was incredibly fresh and tasty. Probably better than most expensive sushi restaurants.

Dinner was at a tonkatsu restaurant and the reviews were mixed. I thought it was great and my mom thought it was so-so. My pork was incredibly tender and the tsukemono (Japanese pickles) were especially good. The only thing that could have used improvement was the miso soup.

In any case, we’re off to get udon tomorrow and I’ve heard so many stories of the udon in Kagawa Prefecture that I wonder if it will measure up to the hype. We’ll see!