Thailand Pics!

Ok! I have pics of Thailand but there were too many to post on here (and I am lazy) so I put them on Flickr. They are also not in proper order.....but check 'em out! http://www.flickr.com/photos/24035149@N00/.

Sea Urchin Dreams

I was thinking about dreams today. Not the kind that happen when you sleep but the kind that you have for the future. Mine are not very clear at the moment at all, but I am trying to compartmentalize and take it a few months at a time.

Some people however, have very clear dreams. I asked a co-worker of mine what his was and whether he has fulfilled it and he answered this – (translated roughly from Japanese) “I wish to drink Uni (sea urchin) from a large parfait glass with a straw”. At first I thought that my Japanese was failing me and that I had misunderstood but I confirmed it shortly after. Then I assumed he was joking and explained again what I meant by dream but he replied that he was serious. He had never really wanted to travel. He did not crave lots of money or fame. He loves his family and kids. But when he thinks of his future and his ultimate happiness, well it consists of sucking down on raw sea creatures from a dessert glass.

Life and our experiences of it are all so relative. I envy my co-worker. I wish I had such a clear dream. And I also wish I had dreams that could be fulfilled by a trip to the supermarket.

Pics!

Ok, for those of you who complain I never post pics....here ya go! Some of the ones half way through are outta order...but you'll figure it out. Thailand pics to come soon!

At our favourite crappy izakaya in Nag....Shawna helps Aaron put large objects in his mouth

At a russian hostess bar.....

Meg is a fellow Canadian, and completely adorable. Hayden however.....

Surrounded by boys.....ah life can be sweet ;)

Surrounded by girls AND boys.....

Ok....now I am just being crushed....

Hmmm....some of us are clearly more drunk than others....

Shawna gets ready to violate an unsuspecting Meg...

The boys show us their titties....

We think our tits look hotter....

Kara, Shawna, Moi.

Spooning like little puppies (6 of us had slept in one bed on the floor)

The morning after on the tram.

I can't believe she did this...but this is Shawna wiping herself on a shirt in a store.....

Shawna and Hayden re-enact Dirty Dancing....sans water...

Aaron demonstrates kata guruma (shoulder wheel)

Hand stands in the park -- what a perfect Monday off!

Someone had written on my chest....and on this poor guy's face.

Some people just can't hold their booze...this dude passed out right next to us and right inside
his udon bowl.

The morning after....Aaron wakes up completely covered in marker.

The worst train ride ever.....beyond full and suffocatingly hot, with a hangover.

Crazy chick with a random hottie (he was a soccer player..mmmm)

The boys again....

I'm such a groupie...


Omg, these girls were hilarious....as is the look on Hayden's face.

A crazy masked Japanese lady takes us to a bar and buys us drinks...

Yee-haaawww, bitches!

Naoko, Shawna, and random dude we met.


Aaron and Hayden take the stage....

before snowboardin' for the first time....


after snowboardin' for the first time and a night of drinking...


party time in Nag...Naoko always seems shocked in these pics but girl knows how to get down.

We were trashed on a wednesday and went bowling....I hate bowling.

Complain enough about not getting any lovin' and Aaron will give you some pity action....

Did I mention that I hate bowling?

After my 10th gutterball....

No money, but lots of luck.

It’s Tuesday and I only have 4 days of work this week – thank god for little mercies. I will be posting a bunch of pictures soon though thanks to the kindness of others. I will also be buying a new camera as soon as I get paid. Damn money just flows out of my hands like water these days, but what can ya do?

In other news, I had an awesome long weekend! I have been having awesome weekends for the past few months though so I gotta start knocking on wood when I say that. I went to the mountains of Oita for some more snowboarding (and learned to turn/stop on the front edge, woo hoo – though I paid for this dearly by heavily bruising my ass and right knee). Had a great party night in a hip-hop club in Oita city; Onsen day in Beppu (where it was so warm and sunny that we actually lay naked in the sunshine outside!) and then came back to Nag and went out again (ending up at a bar with Russian hostesses hard at work). I woke up spooning six people in a 2 meter wide space and felt as at peace as a newborn puppy. I have to say I really love some of the people around me here right now – things are always more fun when you have a good group to share them with. The Monday off I spent relaxing in a park near Dejima wharf in Nag, and as I lay in the grass in my t-shirt I sighed a bit thinking about how cold I will be in Toronto same time next year.

Tomorrow is Valentines` day and I am really feeling the love, though not the romantic kind. I am loving the single life these days! Maybe it’s the fact that the weather has been gorgeous or that I have so much to do, but I am not gonna question how happy I am right now. Instead I will work on becoming a snowboarding pro before all the snow melts in the mountains, and by that time I will be ready to work on my surfing again!

Aging but Optimistic.

I find it so weird that as I get older I start to get drawn more and more into things that I used to hate and make fun of. Dinner parties are a perfect example of this. Just a few years ago I was ready to drop everything and go three days without sleep in order to have a crazy weekend on the town, which involved more than anything else visiting club after club, then going to an after-hours, then somebody’s apartment for a shower, before heading out again the following night. I still have crazy party nights, mind you, but I find they are no longer the three day benders they used to be. I like to spice things up these days with tamer evenings.

People use all kinds of markers to measure themselves getting old, but I think for me, my recent fondness for dinner parties are what marked my exit out of youth and into full mature adulthood. And to think that I used to laugh at the mere suggestion of wasting a Friday or Saturday having a polite conversation over a nice meal with a bunch of good friends. In fact, the very idea took a while for me to comprehend – “you mean, we’re just supposed to…..sit there?? And ….talk?” used to be a typical response of mine to mention of a party of the dinner kind. Well things change, and now I love the damn things.

So, as you can probably guess, that was how I spent my Friday night – dinner party at mine. I even cooked (well, I made two dips, but still). However, I am not totally domesticated and so the following night was spent in Fukuoka partying my ass off until the wee hours of the morning. Life is about balance after all.

Fukuoka, as usual, did not disappoint. There were about 8 of us in total (with people coming and going as the night progressed) as we moved around the city with one mission in mind. I had a cold, but that didn’t stop me nor slow me down all that much – I just wore an extra layer of clothes and my beer tracksuit (to borrow a phrase from a friend).

We met a crazy Japanese lady who took us to an American bar, bought us drinks and then proceeded to stripper dance on a nearby table. The bar was also filled with gorgeous young Japanese university students, who were majoring in sports sciences. I remember trying to talk to a soccer player, a martial arts guy and a baseball player in Japanese, giving up, and then just staring at them and their fit bodies and smiling the rest of the night. It didn’t take long for the boys (Aaron and Hayden) to notice guitars sitting by the wall at this place, and so sure enough they were soon performing rock hits with the owner of the bar playing along on drums. Only in Japan.

Eventually we moved on to the clubs and proceeded to dance the rest of the night away. There was some kind of marker writing thing going on so some people bought white t-shirts so others could write on them. Shawna and Naoko each bought one. I didn’t and woke up with the word `sexy` written in bold letters across my chest. Aaron woke up with his body completely covered in marker with various phrases in both Japanese and English attesting to his overly large manly parts and his love for Japanese men. Good times.

January and February are generally horrible months for me. I am therefore happy to report that this is probably the best winter I have had in a long while. Like a young girly-boy from East Berlin with his first taste of American candy – I suddenly feel so optimistic.