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.