yes, we can...maybe

ok so it has been a while had some work...yes work to do ( occasionally I do work for the money) so that some day I too will pay all the people that I owe money back!! so yes I had a job translating something I had no business doing!! in other words it was way over my head but got through it!! yeah!! and got paid more yeah!! How about that! so where were we before... lob shop, then...crap I can't remember and can't be asked to look so here is this weeks...or times lesson on how to make a fool of yourself in Japan. I'msure none of you have done this ever in your travels through out Japan, never didn't understand what someone was saying and answered completely unrelated and embarrassing answer!! I know . Never been publically intoxicated and slept in the street or in front of someones dorr not yours eh! well here it is time to reveal under a secret name WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO EMBARRASS YOUR FAMILY NAME!! but in Japan so IT DOESN'T MATTER!! yeah right!! Ever been the only one laughing in the movie theatre... or stepped into someones house ...with your shoes on by accident, How about passing food from stick to stick...yup been there done that! These things I like to call "stupid gaijin tricks",and some of them are side splitters, you the type, there's always "that gaijin" you know the annoying one,actually there are about five different types, let's name them ... all. First and foremost there is "fresh meat" hehe you know... just came from a different country and doesn't know smack, like a sponge you can feed them anything, lately these kids are a little more knowledgeable about Japan (not) but that doesn't say much. "here have some raw horse meat" is my favorite cuz most people can't stomach horse let alone raw, and no one believes you anyway. Also teaching these people Japanese is great too. so much fun!! Where "can I have some bread" becomes "hey old toothless bitty get me my bread now!" and so on. Then there is the Japannawanna these guys are the hard ones to deal withcuz they have lost touch with reality and have tried to become Japanese!!! (which by the way is close to imposible, like Japanese whiskey you can become close but no cigar baby no matter how good you get!). you know the type "Hey Bob howz it hangin'", reply "konnichiwa aruba-tosann, genkidesu ka?"pleeeease!! To speak well in Japanese is a credit to you and a compliment to the Japanese people... to try to be one of them (no matter how much you think there world is better than your own) is an insult to Japanese and a joke to to yourself!!! I have lived in this country for over 20 years and I love it just like the next Japannawanna but never have I thought of myself as being Japanese, Don't get me wrong I do not believe for a moment that you connot live among the Japanese as some people would have you think but to think " I'm Japanese is ludacris!! ok enough about that. Next guy (person) is me, the LIFER the guy who came here by whatever means that got him here, and has or will be her forever!!! yes admit it! you are not going home!!! for whtever god foresaken reason you're here! For the first years it was always "yeah I think I'm going home next year.... for 10 yearsthen it's "well maybe when my kids hit grade school" and then lately it's "yup ain't going home man shit...." yes we know who we are! so get to like it! ok who's next....? AAAHHHH yes, how could we forget the "what the F#$%"%K are you doing here!!!" guy, to this eternal complainer I say "GO HOME BIYOOOOOTCH" you make everyones life miserable just because you dissatisfied with how everything isn't like it is at home!! This is Japan not your home town! Civil rights HAHAHA stop asking why they don't have it here? they don't get over it!! Yesw there are some things that might go better if you were President or Prime Minister but...your not! but there are a lot of things that work here that wouldn't even begin to to be comprehended in other countries (public intoxication) non PC, lots of stuff, I can't understand why these people stay or even came for that mater. ok I could go on for years about these types so next. Next the entrapaneur ( hope I spelled it right , if not sorry), now this guy is usually pig headed, big headed, and some times actually know what he's talking about, except for the fact that all they want to talk about is ...money! everything is how you can make money doing this or that. Wish I had a dime (10yen coin) for every guy who said " yo bro pizza would go awesome here"still haven't met anybody that got rich of this money maker!! many are dooing it but only a few... I mean 1 or 2 have had real success ( but they all know about sales maneging, marketeering, and they definately know that Japanese people looooove pizza"! WHaaaaatteva! ( I know that I don't know everybody either). Now I've come to the guy that I think everyone can identify with, whether you are this guy or not you definately know one or more!!this person is genderless because it goes both ways, (although I've come across more male than female) they are the.... Super-model, hiilarious joke telling, way cool, never wrong every girl (or guy) wants me...couldn't get a date to save your life in your own country, could scare flies off of doggies doodoos( I could be more graphic but I do realize that some day my mother would read this and find out 1st where I am, and then what my language is like when I'm not at home, so bare wiht me please)...nerd. Yes the guy (or girl) who has come from the world of "talk to the hand" and "sorry I have to wash my dogs hair tonight", but here in Japan gets dates and comments like "you look like Brad Pitt, or Tom Cruise" yeah right. Don't get me wrong it is a total ego booster... but for many it's more of a Ego on steroids and viagra with a shot of Cuban Coffee!! Because you can't stop these people. they get maniacal, I mean it, I would be the last person to say "duuuude you are waaaay out of you class" but guess what...STOP IT!!! PLEASE!! In oone sense you feel for these types, but when they say "she (or he) is in to me", the game is over! Do you not realize when Japanese poeple say "ooooh your Japanses is soo good( nihongo ga ojouzu desu ne) it really means " If I tell you your Japanese is good will you stop talking to me so we can continue to have this blisfull relationship" you wanna know when your Japanese is good? when they start getting annoyed by the mistakes you shouldn't be making and tell you politely of course," excuse me but we don't say it like that , it is..."and then precede to belittle you to the ground so politely you don't realize that 1 your japanese sucks, 2 your happy about it! then you know I must be doing something right ! So you can realize what this does to the nerd turned super-model type. I think this is going to be a two part series cuz I'm having fun but it is 6:15 in the moorning and I forgot to mail my ugly rotten one tooth fat pizza face Girlfriend...yes this is Japan, so you know what, yup My GF is F&#$&%$in' HOT!! gotta go! next time we're gona have fun with Americans and accents!! l8r

Gettin' votes

So here we are again, and I'm still broke and still not working!! But does that stop the campaign!! hell no! and I'm gettin ready to go to another prefecture to work...maybe! so what is it gonna be this time for a story, as I wondered of the deep end last blog. Who knows, I got it drinking nights and counseling!!
Ever notice how much wisdom we have when we're drunk... how ironic is that statement! Yeah anyway, seems to the thing that people enjoy the most. I was a bartender for the better part of 12 years and the one thing I figured out, is what my good friend Bills " Uncle Willy" would always say, "We're all pink on the inside" (more quotes from Uncle Willy later gotta get permission first). Though I truly believe it is true, we are all the same, what separates us is gender only! then you know how it is. Yes I truly believe "Men are from Mars, and Women are from Venus"(book). Ok so back to the pink thing, I live in Japan and have been for the better part of 23 years, and for 12 of these wonderful years I was a bartender and owner for 7, some things I learned while watching you all get "wammered" are things like " SOMEBODY BY ME A DRINK!"... willl never work, and if you buy a girl a drink, you're nice but a little dumb, if you think that buying all her drinks is gonna get you laid... HAHAHAHAHAAAaaa----!!! STUPID! Now having said that whether or not you are from Japan or th U.S. or Canada, or China, or Germany, or Russia, good looking is important to people, but that look is different to everybody, what looks good to you may not be so good to me, and vice versa. so when your buddy says " yo dawg she(or he) is fine " and you go "Whaaaat the fu.....!" remember to each his own! Anyway everybody wants to be accepted, not neccessarily poular but accepted. We dress to look good or feel comfortable, again to each his own, but that is it we all want to look good in our own way, UNIVERSAL!, the first time I heard it was in a movie ( Hitch; Will Smith) " there isn't a woman out there who when she gets up in the morning that doesn't want to be swept off her feet that day", definately, to add to that I don't think there's a man out there that wouldn't want to be able to do that. So all in all we all want to look good and feel good. Another point would be would be what I call Self-rating, what you rate yourself on a scale from 1　- 10, what are you? people generally think of themselves as a higher self-rate! Me of course am a 22!!!So there it is nothing new but still sometimes forgotten, all about looking and feeling good on the inside.

Now about the bar thing, no the men and women thing! Can't we all just get along!? ( some famous guy after getting pummeled on the street!) yeah can't we? the answer is... (drum roll) no. It just can't happen, I'm tellin ya it can't, won't, don't even try! and then out of nowhere, it does, damn it ! waddayado! Guys think women are so selfish and non-caring, women know that guys are unable to understand their feelings and or just think we don't ever grow up. So what is the solution...of course more alcohol! Ok I'm fallin asleep I shall return later...

the LOB shop

Yahoooo!! ok so you know how it goes, was out drinking with my good friends and one of them is named Rob... thus Lob.. cuz I live in Japan hehehe, for those of you who do not understand, Japanese people have a hard time with the pronunciaton of their "R" and "L" so Rob becomes Lob. But... more than that our buddy Rob gets totally schwammied!! ( meaning blitzed!) and becomes Lob by himself no extra outside coersion, it is a fun day. So now with the previous "Joe story" we also have the "Lob Story" to go with it! Now "Lob stories" are when you get totally f%&#&%%$ed up and can't remember anything so basically .. it didn't happen! You know if a tree falls in the middle of a forrest, and there is no one to hear it, did it make a noise!? Who really cares!! but that's it! did you really do it? Till your friend shows up with the cell phone pics of you in ( the fetal position under a bar stool, little insider there) raunchy and compromising positions and with wierd people of doing messed up stuffs! Thus "The Lob story".
To get the party started my very own "Lob story"... usually start out like this... Duuude!! what the f&%$#$ck did I do last night?!! Then your friends all roll thier eyes and say, ... "Yoo Daaawg! you were messed up", (self) noo way man, really? cuz I was totally SCHWAMMIED last night! (Friends) We know!!!
So my "Lob story", here we are it is my first bar on the third floor, but before that we go to a Japanese style pub (izakaya) for a friends going away party, start drinking and eating and having fun, and drinking, and drinking, and more... drinking, then 2 hrs pass by and our all u can drink time is up ( but we have actually been there about 3 hrs), so totally pissed off our rockers ( but not Schwammiied yet), we head off to my bar, I think, anyway we head in the direction of my bar that btw is on the third floor of an elevatorless building!! on the way we see various people we know and trust and respect, and subsequently lose their respect, although there really is not a strong punishment for public intoxication here!! (lucky us here in Japan). I think we made it to my bar, or should I say the rest of the party made it to my bar...and I made it to the stairs at the bottom... and decided that I was waay to drunk (mind you not Schwammied yet) to climb the stairs and subsequenly preceded to the building across the street ( which is only about 10 metres across) and ride the elevator to my store. Needless to say that elevator did not take me to my store but, to a good friend of mines Snack bar ( in Japan that is a full service hostess bar, mind you no sex...solicited). In this state I am sure I was a complete butthole, yet fun butthole! nevertheless 10 mins later I was escorted ( by my friend) out of the bar and again down to the ground floor. now during all this my party who has since forgotten about my but , is partying generously at my bar acroos the street. So on goes the party w/o me, no shock my young under age bartender is in control, now the conquest of me getting to the party, or just back to this party. Once again the stairs are a formiddable foe that will not be conquered today... or tonight as the time would be ( the time being by now about 12 or 1 O:clock). Now being as drunk as I am, finding out the next day ( like I said you only find out after the fact) that I had drank about 50 bucks worth of beer at the Snack bar, So now I am SCHWAMMIED baby!! still could not do the stair thing, found it easier to go down the small Japanese drinking street ( Japanese make things better... like putting all the bars in your town in one single close within walking distance area, for tards like myself and too drunk Japanese business men who can not for life of them find a toilet) and find another friends bar. This time on my way, in front of the cigarette machine there just happened to be a fight starting and getting rough.... Naturally in my peace oriented state of mind, I decided that I should help to stop the action. What did I do? I went to my friends bar got 6bottles of beer ( big ones, there are 3 sizes in Japan, sm, med, and lg) went back to the fight which had begun to escalate, passed out the beer and had a giant no fight toast to these gentlemen who were about to murderize another youg man, funny thing is I actually do remember this part. By the time the Police arrived we were all more inebriated and in a jolly old mood, myself in a completely flippant towards authority mood was saluting and "yes sir" ing the police ( I really believe the police woud have like to either brutally beat me down or at least arrested me). The gentlemen who had been fighting, saved my butt from the police and sent me on my way. Btw I did pay for the beers. Now being SCHWAMMIED I preceded to the local 7-11 which was about 100 metres away and bought a chocolate covered ice cream bar and sat on the stairs next to 7-11 next to a young lady that I barely new and forced her to eat some of it, when her taxi came she left and I was left there on the stairs SCHWAMMIED out of my mind and now passed out. woke up at about 8:30 the next morning with a chocolate shell of an ice cream, the ice crean had melted onto my shoe leaving the shell only ( proud that I was still holding the shell on the stick). stilll drunk like a Friday night bachelour party but ready to go to my party (which ended hours before).
All in all I figured out that the party was over went home and basically tried to fill the great white god seat with my joy and fulfilment from the nights events, cursed the day I decided that Idrinking was fun and slept for about 8 solid hrs ( mind you that I only sleep about 4 hrs a day). Got up and went back to work the next day!!! ( many thanks to my bartender brutha in crime Mike, cuz my bar was clean and ready to go the next time I set foot in it).
A little note... all the while the party went on and only a few people asked " hey! where's Al".
Most of this story was recorded by friends and various bars that saw me around and on the way. I thank God for not letting me do anything super stupid (hehehe) and my friends who are still my friends today for sharing the experience with me after the fact, knowing full well that I may have exaggerated things and they may have to. but what I'm really hoping is that they too were too drunk to remember everything clearly as it went!!

What's your Joe Story

So what is your Joe story? Gags, jokes, and whatever you call it, I call it a Joe story. You know it every has had it done to them once in a life time ( I should think). I call it a Joe story because of the television series "Grey's Anatomy" where Joe the Bartender (me, one time bartender) gets sick and has to have surgery (again me), during the surgery one surgeon(?) says "tell me your Joe story" to the other surgeon, so he precedes to tell him one of his most embarrassing slightly sexual stories, everybody laughs and the doctor who just revealed his slightly risque, and slightly, personal story, proceeds to ask the other doctor to reciprocate (big word) the story telling, only to have the doctor tell him " I don't have one I just wanted to hear yours"! Thus I call them "Joe stories" or "The joe story". So what is your "Joe story" I ask, yes your most embarrassing or corny story? Of course this is a "you tell me yours and I'll tell you mine...." Cause I know mine can out do your any day of the year!!
I live in Japan, Nagasaki City to be excact, thus my stories are of course having and dealing with my mishaps and screwup in a foriegn country.
Ah! Japan, land of mistique, beauty, wonderment(word?), a land where you think you know what is going on when you really have no clue, you can guess and you may be right some of the time but never let that lead you into a false sense of " I know Japan", then you become that "GAIJIN" guy or girl who is very friendly yet no one wants to be around very much! So back to the Joe story stuff, as you can see I have ADD and can't concentr at a e ,,, ..... do you .... know ......hahha .....bunny! Anyway yes I tend stray from the point. My story, ( or one of them anyway), here I am in my bar, it's been a long long night, and am having a good time with about 7 little hostess girls who wanted to have a small party just between themselves, ranging between the ages of 18 - 28, so I close the bar and they come in and start to drink and joke around with each other, every thing is cool and one little girl is quite interesting to me and isn't hard to look at ( right now as I do have my beer goggles on quite securely), somehow the subject of parents got on and it was fun to jole around with them about it, till the young girl next to me ( whom by now is very friendly with me...(hubba hubba), sparks up and says "yeah well my dad is 39 years old..." everybody " wooow! your dad is young! me...in my mind (HOLY SHIIT!... your dad is 2 years yonger than me), yes your dad is young ( what I said). needless to say yes the friendly went to casual bartender, customer relationship in microseconds!!! Yes one of my lighter side "Joe stories". I do realize not so funny but kind of hair raising....OH! did I forget to tell you, I was 40 at the time of the incident! (ADD).

IN THE BEGGINING

AAaaaahhh!!! in the beginning there was the earth, and the sky (actually there was the light), but anyway, I have been groomed to be the President of the U.S.A....HAHAHAHAHA yeah right, so here I am in Japan, living alone with my fat bulldog LuLu, a Victorian style English bulldog. The fact that my high school mascot was the bulldog (GO Provo Bulldogs), has absolutly nothing to do with my owning a bulldog. On this trip we're going to go backwards instead of chronologically from the time I entered The Great Nippon Tei Koku, back in 1987 February, a long long time ago. So now, here I sit at my desk typing on a PC that was a gift that my Faithfull customers from the days of working at night in my bar that I ran for 7 years ( actually 2 separate stores) gave to me because they were sick of me being such a caveman recluse, thus forcing me into the electronic age (yes I know " a little late") (2007 B-day). Now the question, who am I? I am Albert...bfd (expletive) right, well it is to me and the family that claim me ( thank u). I was born on February 5, 1967 all those years ago (Beatles song), in Marin County Califronia. So... yeah well after living in Japan for the better part of 22 years, I think I might have some insight to your problems that you or your friends may incur on your endeavors here in Japan, maybe. Of course maybe not, but as I remember any amount of insight from anybody seemed to be a big help. Of course my being groomed to become Pres. (noooot) can also help. I now reside in Nagasaki City on the western side of the island of Kyuushu, the lower Island (number three) of the isles of Japan. Ngasaki as we have studied is 1 of 2 places on the earth that has had the horror of being obliterated by atomic weapons, thus the obligation of the people here to remind the world of the utterely destructive power of atomic weaponry (and they do but not with the ferocity of the western thinking, but the gentle yet ever present urging and constant diligence of oriental passive aggressiveness). A kind of ironic coincidence is that I live in between the now Peace Park and the Atomic bomb Museum... right next to a love hotel... righteous eh! I love my house.. or I mean my large for Japanese standards normal size, condominium style apartment, with my dog LuLu. well since I don't know what I'm doing this is my first entry andhope to have many more... 'cause I got story baby lotsa story!