On Beards, Car Parks and Towers

Well well. This sure is a lot of posts, deshou. Don't wanna be spoiling you now.

This post will probably not mean that much to many of you. But I for one do not give two fucks. Possibly one; definitely a third... but certainly not two.


髭 or hige, appears to be beard, but I keep encountering it in conjunction with other kanji. And that's just annoying and confusing and annoying.

鬚 or hige as well (nnghh) also seems to be beard

顎鬚 or agohige also appears to be beard as well. But the 'ago' part seems to specify the location of the jaw or the chin. Which to me seems unusually specific. Pogonolocality apparently needs defining here...


Car parks are fucking weird here. I remember my brother trying to explain them to me on like the first time we took a walk down Hirokoji dori. It seemed a bit too wacky and unreal at the time, but having only recently arrived here, everything was a bit like that.


So here is a video I found on youtube that seems to show exactly what was described (seeing it brought it all back), but it's kind of anti-intuitive, so it was easy to forget.




Methinks that you might like this a bit too much, ser.

One might think of it as 'intelligent design' if that phrase hadn't become so unadulteratedly a euphemism for RETARDED CUNT THINKING. Or 'Burn the witch !', etc.

I also got these pics of one. It's on Hirokoji dori, and it is the parking structure of that adjacent building. Swanky building. I know someone who lives on the top floor. Now that is status, bitches.

(And yes, I just went out and took these with the sole intention of putting them above.)

But on a more serious note, it is a very good way to deal with the vast amount of people in such a limited space.

Fucking cars, man. The one thing other than people you just can't get away from in an urban cityscape. That's one of the things I loved so much about the Isle of Arran. Hardly any cars (you could go for like a whole day without seeing one) and not so many people.

OK, this one's a bit epic...

立体駐車場 rittaichūshajō.  My definitions come out at 'multi-storey car park', 'parking structure', 'parking deck', 'parkade'.

I've never seen that last word before. To me it conjours up such wonderful images of the place I used to get pissed when I was twelve, incorporating coin-op SFII machines as far as the eye can see....

'Set-up (or rise) object stop-over car location' is a rough approximation of the deconstructed kanji meaning. Howzat for ze verfickte logic-desu ?  Deshou.


鉄塔 (tettou). This is 'pylon', or 'steel tower'. There are quite a lot of them here. All of them orange and white.

'Iron pagoda'. Deshou.

I have to say that those two are quality looking kanji. They look like actual Japanese kanji. A Japanese person would think that an incredibly strange statement, but as a foreigner (or bakka gaijin, desho) I can quite safely say that there are kanji that look FUCK ALL like what I would think kanji would look like.

Example: the kanji for 'craft' (the noun, I think) is thus: 工 (kō). It looks like a fucking capital letter 'I'. It is like why I was so pissed off when I learnt my name, which has to be in katakana, is リー. I do not have the words to describe to you how fucking robbed I felt when I saw that. Even as a child, I thought that Japanese writing was steeped in coolness and mystery. I've always loved words and calligraphy and suchwank, and to have that snatched away from you was a bit of a kick in the cunt.

No matter, I have recently been reminded (apparently I was told this when I was 11 oO), that because 'ri' is a syllable, there are actually kanji for it. 利 also means it. And is frankly much better.

I don't recognise the primitive element to the left, but the one to the right, which looks like an elongated リ is an element that means sword, specifically 'dancing sabre'. You're all entitled to make of that whatever the fuck you will. You would've anyway, desho.


Perhaps some of you might be wondering (if you noticed, that is) my repeated use of the word 'deshou' (shortened by the young to 'desho'). It's because I have very recently learnt that it means 'isn't it'. Or simply, and quite beautifully, 'innit'.  I don't think I need to explain further.


I am still working on the kanji for "All who work in marketing are pointless shitting fuckscum and must hang from the nearest pylon", but I'm getting there... We definitely now know that 鉄塔 will make an appearance. And bravo, ser.

So I need to find the verb 'to hang', and the verb for 'work', but I swear I know it already. I can't get the fucking word 'Arbeit' out of my head... Arschlochen.

Fuckscum, I can tell you now because it would be in katakana:  ファクスカム (fakusukamu). I think. I might have a few of the nuances wrong there. I don't think the words 'fuck' and 'scum' are oft transliterated into Nihongo...

新豊橋 - part XI - Trees and Other Random Shit

So a lot of these were collected over the space of the last week.

I got a whole bunch of trees because I'd never really looked at them that hard before... look at the branches - the offshoots grow almost entirely vertically upwards. It's well random.

There's a few more statues from Hirokoji dori that had remained up till now uncaptured.

Oh and the shirt I blagged off that promoter dude. That is such an Americanism... Still it's cool though. I like random crap.

Trees and shit.

Vending machine cluster.

Stuff under a post.

Hahahah, this is just on my road, Kanente Cho, and it makes me smile because it reminds me of Sumi-san.

Hahaha, also on my road. I think I was trying to do something with the sign in the middle.

Winged recon contingent.

Outside the station.

Winged recon contingent.

Random, disembodied, illuminated red triangle top.

I have no fucking idea what the fucking hell this shit is supposed to fucking be man.

This is walking across a bridge I'd not walked across before. Those of you that have been paying attention up till now will be able to work out where this is. Taken for rather obvious reasons.

Same as above, but with less zoom.

Random rocks on Hirokoji dori yielding an unexpected secret.

Other uncaught statue of, erm, something.

Walking up the road which is behind Atlantika on my way home one afternoon. Such a splendid image would have to have been caught, I thought.

These appear to be oranges, or some other citrus fruit growing in someone's garden !!  Same road as just mentioned.

Getting further to the end of the road.

I like this street.

Same as above, but with more zoom.

I wanted one with my shadow in it.

This is a statue of a fat man consuming what appears to be his own weight in alcohol. Before I could stop it, my brain had already dubbed him 'Sir Magnus The Great'... but then overdrive kicked in and all the synonyms I could possibly come up with for 'great' started playing out unontrollably, like a crack-addled child with spoons against a saucepan:

Sir Magnus The Vast
Sir Magnus The Portly
Sir Magnus The Round
Sir Magnus The Corpulent
Sir Magnus The Humongous
Sir Magnus The Enormous
Sir Magnus The Monstrosity
Sir Magnus The Galactic
Sir Magnus The Enormotron
Sir Magnus The Supersized
Juliet
Sir Magnus The Unbound
Sir Magnus The Carrier
Sir Magnus The Infinite

Et fucking cetera.

This awesomeness appears to be a child's painting of Godzilla and is attached to a signpost on Hirokoji dori.

Random building.

PROBLEM...?  WHAT... F-FUCKING... PROBLEM ???!!!

Illuminated vending machine cluster.

A shop window for some fucking reason. Sometimes I really do fail to understand my thought processes...

Mini-hole.

This is an empty bottle of Stoli, upside-down, in someone's basket. Marvellous.

Illuminated kanji. And no I can't read it. Actually, maybe a couple of them.

The moon in the sky in a street. I liked the moon that night. It looked like a marble.


We're on our way to go and meet someone. We end up in a fabulous and swanky Italian restaurant. Rather nice, actually.

Champers alright for you, Pats ?

Lovely, sweetie.

A selection of wines was brought when I suggested we should drink red.

After all, any council estate chump could tell you that one drinks red with antipasti.

This is Mr. Taka. Mr. Taka is my brother's friend and shachou. Do try your hardest to ignore the unbelievably gormless looking tosser prick in the right. I should really photoshop that out...

Another with we three.

Oh this is kind of complicated but is deserving of an explanation...

My coming to Japan was no accident really. The more I think about it (and I've been thinking about it a lot since arriving here), the more I can see this was always going to have happened. I don't believe in fate. To suggest that we're all living some pre-destined life that we all have no control over is horseshit and is a way for stupid people to cop-out of the mess they've made of their own fucking lives. Anyway, not fate, just an increase in probability.

But it starts in 1987, back on the estate in Arbury where it was not uncommon for families to put up a foreign student in their homes for a few extra quid. These students would often hang out with us kids on our park. In 1987, a guy called Makoto came to stay at my mate Lynda's house. And just across the road from them a bird called Makiko was staying with another family I knew...

So that's how my brother and Makiko met.

Fast forward about five years and it's 1992. I'm 11 now. Ashley was off travelling and went to America, so in his room we had someone stay with us. Japanese fellow by the name of Takamitsu. Or simply 'Taka'. On my brother's return, they became friends. A few years later, my brother went to Japan to go to his wedding and on returning, brought with him a 'PlayStation'. This was about six months before they had even been heard of in the west. "How terribly exciting..." I thought as I began to play a bizzarre '3D' fighting game. 'Tekken', its name was. Everything was so new and shiny...

Fast forward again to 1997. One evening I am at home, completely fucking wasted (as I often was, when I was 15), my brother throws me this PS game and says "here, play this... you'll like this."

Alrighty, I thought, and played it I did. I was still playing it about 18 hours later. Probably more, knowing me. That game was called Final Fantasy VII.

Now about 10 years hence, some of you might know that I suffered an unfortunate respiratory infarction that resulted in the termination of my doctorate in synthetic organic chemistry. Stupid fucking lungs.

This resulted, among other things, in me having to join the minimum-wage workforce. It was during this time I was playing the very recently released Final Fantasy XII round my mate's with whom I was staying. While completely stuck on that cunt of a level the Great Crystal, desperate for a map, I search for one on the interweb and am presented with the Square Enix Europe website. Odd, that I should find myself following that link, given I knew full well there would be no game maps on there. But on there I went, and found myself clicking the job section and seeing that they needed minionscum. Well my mate saw it too and dared me to apply for it. The rest, as they say, is poorly-remembered bitch nostalgia.


No Square would mean no Seb, no Tu, no beardy, and no Yuko (and none of the other awesome things I associate with it. Like Ratspank Danger Catastrophe, a whole bunch of other people I can't begin to be arsed to list. No píndejos, no Hoi-yee stylee, no cake and ニバルさん, no angry bald German bastards...) For Square, it would've meant no Mellar.

I really could go on here. But Square was a very important part of my life for a long time. Fucking Eidos motherfucking Cameroncuntwhores.

But. It would be churlish and deeply hypocritical of me not to view that last thing with the same eye as which I just previously described having my career and my dreams ripped away from me. If that ludicrous farce of an example of a risible horsepiss storm of the merger hadn't happened. And Mr. and Mrs. West hadn't hacked and fucked their way through Prod, ruining forever what it really once used to mean, then I wouldn't be where I am now. I'd still be calling people fat or bald and swearing a lot. Oh well. One out of three ain't bad.
Silver lining ?  Door closing, window opening ?  Life handing you lemons, and you then demanding tequila and salt ?  Who the fuck knows or cares. Bottom line is, the fucking Tory cunts and their banker bumchums aren't directly ruining my life. Any more.

That fucking pantomime horse that is Cuntmeron and Cunt and the rest of their band of tax-dodging, Eton-fed miscreants. The most ideologically driven Tories we have ever had the misfortune to witness. So long NHS. Without which I'd have no hands, no lungs and would long since have been sectioned under the Mental fucking Health Act. Bevan and Atlee must be doing backflips in their graves. You ideologically driven nasty bastards have seen the rift between the privileged and normal folk widen and deepen forever. If you're poor or disadvantaged in any way, Dave's Britain is not for you. Health ?  Education ?  Yes, but only if mummy and daddy can pay for it. Or if they have secret offshore accounts in some fucking post-imperial banana republic.

Oh I hate them so much it gives me diction.

I must say though, I take infinite fucking delight in learning that Michael Gove was adopted. I actually sleep soundly at night knowing full fucking well that the very moment he was expelled into this world, the very instant he drew his first breath, his progenitors took one look at him and thought 'Fuck.That.' It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they mistook him for a troubling birth defect such as teratocarcinoma. I would have trouble telling the difference.
But, they took one look at this malignant atrocity, looked upon him and saw what he would become, and they shuddered. They knew fear (and probably nausea) and then handed him off to a nunnery or wherever the fuck they dumped him. You, ser, are an unforgivable excuse of a sham of a human being. An abomination of nucleic acids and frankly just a waste of molecules that would probably be better used in the construction of school buildings.

Hmm, I may have tangentially asided from the point there. Suffice it to say the rest of the evening ended in abject randomness. I may tell you about it one day.

Art

Well howdy.

It's been a while. Comparatively speaking, in any case. I did start to hate this blog a bit. Like most things I do or create, it just serves to remind me of myself.

But I'm not doing this for me; it's so you all can see all the cool and crazy shit this nation has to offer.

For example: ART

As mentioned previously, ad nauseum in fact, I brought art the other week. And I present it to you now for your delectation.

So also as mentioned, the images were composed of ornately carved black card on white, creating a really striking, contrasting sillhouette effect. I was lucky enough to go to the exhibition with Maki, so she was able to talk to the artist. I would have been fucking stupefied if that hadn't been the case.

So out of I guess no more than thirty pieces, ranging from a few thousand en to a few tens of thousands of en, this one grabbed me the most:

Its title is 明日は明日の風が吹く. Which is pronounced 'ashita wa ashita no kaze ga fuku'.


My sister tells me that a transliteration is something like 'let the morn come and the meat with it...'

Sigh...... heavy weary sigh...... I did not know this at the time of viewing or buying... I literally just learnt that now. Literally about 10 mins ago. Let the morn come and the meat with it...

John 11:35

Unfuckingbelievable. You can't make this shit up. Unbelievable...

Whatever I fucking say now will pale in comparison to that fucking meaning, but a lot of the below was already written, so I guess I'll have to include it anyway... Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer...


When I spoke of my own personal interpretation, Maki had to go and tell the artist, deshou. But he seemed reasonably impressed with it. And that's all art is really...   It's how that fucking Kentish repugnant vile evil dirty Tory skankwhore Emin can claim to be an artist, I guess. Yes, I too can crap myself in a bed under some supposedly smack-induced feacal delugional exodus and call it art. It only makes it thus if some poncey idiot twat goes and agrees. Anyway, I digress. Sort of. I did have a point somewhere...

Ah yes, I saw it as being in the face of great tumult, and other cloud-based tempests, the cat and dog are feeling it, but the guy remains unmovable. Strong, firm. Like mountain.

And it would've been churlish of me, not to have left that place with the image containing the mountains and such a powerful message.

The process was pretty funny. I knew Ashley had been in a few days previously and came back with one. I understood why as I was walking round. I went from not even entertaining such a wacky notion as buying art, to kind of wanting one of them, to returning to that picture several times. Just as we were about to leave, I knew I wasn't leaving without it. Bizzarre feeling man.

Now it's one of my favourite things I've brought since being here. Number two. Or possibly equal first with my fluorescent yellow lighter. This is all until I've got my first 刀 of course.

So that sentence (meat notwithstanding) can be translated as that even on a cloudy, windy day, stay firm in the face of it, as there is always tomorrow. The sort of thing that a misanthropic nihilist and doom-monger such as myself should pay the fuck attention to.

Don't worry about daily ups and downs as the flow of life is long. Worrying about the bad things constantly, you may find one day that you're a bitter, resentful old fuck and have wasted your life worrying about petty bullshit that you had little fucking control over in the first fucking place.



Oh and I'm well aware that 'delugional' isn't a word. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it fucking is now.