Today I have the opprotunity to do a small interview wit one of te well known stars of the beauty world in Japan. She goes by the nickname Momma-San and is presently a semi-retired house-wife. Not that she is retired from being a house wife, but she is retired from being one of the top rankers at Sheseidou, a very well known beauty treatment and accessory center. These days though, she is living a little bit more of a relaxed life in the cit of Ceter Kita, one of the ‘suburbs’ of Yokohama.

Quite a few years ago, a child was born to the Kawahara family. The child was a happy and healthy baby girl. As she grew up, she experienced quite a few life changing events such as Japans time in the economic bubble, the recession that followed, the tensions between North Korea & Japan, even the the lart little big of the second world war. These days though, everything seems to be going a little slower for her. She’s no longer worried abot the next big business meeting, no longer interested in who’s modeling for the company next and realy doesn’t care all that much about the latest calcium body spread. Life is just more relaxing.

She is married to a very sucessful business man, lives in a nice home and her days consist of cooking, doing the house-hold chores and on occasion driving to and from the one of the local universities to pick up her, now 21 year old daughter. “What was your most pivotal life experience” I asked her, to which she replied “the birth of my child changed me in ways I never thought I could”. Her daughter, now studying at the Agriculture University of Tokyo, is also a wild yet soft-spoken young woman, every bit as beautiful as her mother surely was when she was the same age.

Anyhow, the only reason I was writing that was for some soft of filler for the website but since I’ve really just lost my initiative I figure I will write about what I did today. Oh, I must also mention that I am wriging this paragraph about 8 hours after I wrote the prior paragraphs. So what did I do today? I drove home. Well, more correctly is that I sat in the back seat of a car for close to the entire day. I woke up around 8, had breakfast which was composed of a Japanese doughnut, and then sat around the cabin for a couple hours while I waited for something to happen. Then we went for a walk…

The walk was quite peacefull though, it was quite nice. I thought we were all packing to get going but turns out that we were actually going for a long walk to the top of the mountains. Now, when I say mountains, I mean a large LARGE rock-face that takes quite a bit of gumption to scale. I went through bushes, I went through bamboo thickets, I even went (and got hung up) in a big bush made up mostly of wirey spiney vines. That wasn’t really very much fun. Actually, that much is an understatement, it sucked. It was TeH Suxorz. When we eventually got to the top, I was greeted with a view that you would only see on a post card (or in The Last Samurai), it was truly beautiful. To one side were rolling hills and mountains in the background while to the other side was a gorgeous view of the ocean out in the distance. All was well… but then we had to get back down. It’s one thing to climb a small mountain with various obstacles, but it’s another entirely to get back down. I don’t think I could say that I walked down as much as I tumbled, but I tumbled quite well!

After I managed to pick myself up from the bottom of the hill, I introduced my companions to a great Canadian (err.. American in general?) camping food. Smores. Beleive ir or not but they have never had them out here, I was astounded! After lighting the gas burners, we cooked some marshmallows and used some sort of Japanese chocolate called DARS. To top it off, we didn’t have (or could find) graham crackers so we reluctantly used split-open Oreos. Oh well, beggers can’t be choosers especially in the middle of the Japanese mountains.

After a quick who’s preface was dessert, we all decided it was time to head back to Yokohama. We packed the car and took off! “How long does it take to get back home?” “On a good day, it will only take two and a half hours. On a bad day… who knows. Let explain it another way… we left Izu at 1:15pm…. it’s currently 9:24pm. I think we got hit with one of those ‘bad days’. But just what the hell is taking so long? A 7-car pile-up somewhere on the Yokohama highway which has caused the road to be backed up for over 75km!!!! Tonites dinner has been made up of 4 inch-long sticks of beef jerky and a small bottle of milk tea. Yum.

Wish me luck on getting home!

So I did it again. I had another bath with even more strange men, about 20 this time AND there were a few little boys. What’s wrong with me??? Am I a sick bastard? Nope. Do I enjoy the company of other men? Nope. Do I like relaxing in a bath-tub? Well, I enjoy relaxing and in Japan, to relax is to bath. And to bath usually means to go to the public bath. Today as you may have guessed, I went to yet another onsen. I think I’m going to go more often because they are just so darn relaxing!

I should back-track though, and let you readers hear about the rest of my day. Well, I woke up this morning, on the cold hard floor of Kawahara-san & Riori-San’s log cabin. Not only was it a rough sleep, but it doesn’t help when there are wild monkeys shrieking in the not-so far off woods AND little spiders constantly crawling across your sleeping bag. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep very well. After I woke up, I was treated to a nice Canadian breakfast composed of Honey Nut Cheerios, toast with Nutella spread and the foul stench of scrambled eggs mixed with ketchup. That is one of the few foods that can make me gag like nothing else.

Later on that day we decided to take a nice trip down to a local park and get some excersize. We played slow-pitch with a bouncey-ball (god that was fun), did some running around and even played quite a bit of badminton, which was slightly difficult due to the wind but at least I got to run around quite a bit more! That’s one of the nice things in Japan, no matter what, you WILL lose weight in your first year here. I went from 105kg down to 82kg… definatly not too bad if you ask me! Back to the part…. after about 20 minutes of hanging around in the nice Japan sun a group of 4 young girls walked by. Well, in hindsight, they shuffled since they were actualy wearing roller blades. Now, I don’t know how many of you actually have roller-bladed before, but it’s slightly difficult when you are on grass. Things just don’t want to roll!

The girls shuffled on by and each took turns saying hello to the token gaikoku-jin in our group. I did my best to say hello in Japanese and this intrigued them more than scare them off. To make a long story short, after an hour of having these girls hang around and play with myself and my two co-horts, we finally bid them adieu as we couldn’t keep up with their energy, children just have WAY too much! Our ride finally re-appeared and we all went home for dinner. After a few days of nothing but fish, I think we all were getting a little sick of it so tonite we decided to bbq yakiniku, basically roast ANYTHING with a special sauce.

Enough for now. Good night.

I have sucessfully bathed with other men, nibbled on the fresh roe of salmon and throughouly enjoyed myself. Im now sitting in Reina’s uncles log cabin somewhere out in the Izu mountains. Since we left the hotel this morning, I have seen monkeys rip the food right out of my hand, steal candy from babies and many other things. This morning we stopped by a section of Izu where wild monkeys are kept, a place called Saru Hackatchi Zaki. Imagine it as a monkey conservation area. Although they look so cute and sometimes very interesting in the pictures, the little devils are filthy and stink something fierce!!!

After leaving the monkey ‘farm’, we drove the rest of the way up and along the mountains to the uncles place. It was a nice drive however it was sometimes a little scary to go through. The road occasionally became as wide as an anorexic’s arm. Needless to say, it was quite a white-knuckle trip but the upside to the experience is that I’m still alive and able to write this update!

Shortly after the monkeys we made another stop at a beautiful look-out point. I opted to try a local delicacy… Mountain Peach Ice Cream. If heaven made ie-cream, this stuff would be it’s number one seller. After indulging myself, we made our way to Reina’s uncle’s place where we visited for a short time then went out for some ‘excersize’. We traveled to a couple beaches and wandered around, then went to one of the very large local parts where we played slow-pitch baseball, played catch and played some badminton (which was rather difficult as it was a little windy). About half an hour in, some young kids walked along and noticed me, a foreigner… they all took turns saying konichiwa to the strange guy and then I introduced myself in Japanese… they were astonished.

When we decided to venture back home, we made another couple sight-seeing stops along the way and came back to the log cabin for some dinner. I figure that this is enough of an update for now because I’m a little drunk, a little tired and a little sore. Goodnight!

Since I came to Japan, some people have been asking me just what new and interesting things I have seen and experienced. Well truth be told, I haven’t had many opprotunities to do alot with my off-time. I have been working so much that I usually just relax around the house or take a quick jaunt out to Shibuya or Sakuragicho. Recently though I have had the chance do so some more exploring as I have taken a couple of trips. The latest has been to the place I’m currently writing from, Izu, in the South-Central section of the main island.

I have been here only one full day (and one full night), however I have already seen the most gorgeous sunset in the Pacific Ocean, I have dressed in a yukatta (informal Kimono), I have eated fresh salmon roe which popped in my mouth (let me tell you, I won’t do that again), and have bathed with three other men in the same tub and throughly enjoyed it. Well, I guess I should explain that last one just a little more in depth…

In Japan, it is custom right now, and has been for many years, to use public bath houses and bask in the heat of an Onsen (natural hot-spring) Today and for the next few days after writing this update, I will be enjoying myself while surrounded by other sweaty naked men. If you are a homophobe or not secure with your sexuality, then I strongly suggest you never go to Japan or partake in a public bath-house since you WILL be in the company of other men. So last night I went TWICE to the private onsen at my hotel. Why twice? The first time was to wash and bask. The second time was to bask and bask I did!

Imagine immersing yourself in a very hot bath that’s bubbling from under you. Well you could do that at home, but not with natrual spring water that’s being filtered in diretly from the earth. It is definatly quite an experience, plus your skin feels quite a bit different than if you were to have bathed at home, to put it in simple terms… it just feels cleaner.

That’s enough of an update for now, I’ll add something else a little later on.

Recently I went for dinner with a friend. The restarauunt was a nice little hole-in-the-wall type of place close to my station called ‘Omatchi’ or ‘Ohatchi’, I can’t quite recall, either way the food was good. We ordered our food downstaris and then went to the upppere seating level to wait for everything to be served to us. No more than five minutes later, our food was on the table and trust me, after a long day of working I was quite ready for a nice meal!

Itadakimasu!!! *claps hands together* <– the common thing to say/do just before you start eating your breakfast, lunch or dinner. The phrase is thanking the spirits above and the cook of the meal for the food you are about to consume. Think of it as the Japanese equivalent of grace. We break apart our chopsticks (yes, even in nice restaurants, disposable chopsticks are used) and dig in. Tonights meal not only looks oiishi (delicious) smells wonderful too! I try my tonkatsu (friend and battered pork) and it, quite simply, is amazing…. maybe just a bit too salty, but otherwise incredible! To balance out the saltiness, I took a nice big mouthfull off rice. After a nice converation with Reina, I decided it was time for more rice, but that is when things went awry.

I lifted the bottle of shoyu (soy sauce) and began to sprinkle a little big overtop of my rice, paying only enough attention to Reina to hear her gasp… Uh-oh.

I looked up and saw her starring at me with mouth and eyes wide open. “What are you doing?!?” she quietly asked. “I’m eating…. uhh.. why?” To which she replied “You don’t put shohyu on your rice! Baka! You dip your rice IN it!” I found out that night that it’s a big social taboo to do such a thhing, go figure. I tried to explain that we dump soy sauce on our rice back in Canada but she just said the equivalent of “… Gah, stupid Gaijins” Go figure.

Sorry for the semi-lame update here, but I’m seriously running out of ideas.