Nothing like living in Japan to make you hyper sensitive about your gut. Don’t get me started on public baths . . . Actually, do.  Just wait until next week.

Hmm, topics elude me.

Is this a sign of inner peace?  The culmination of living in a land of Buddhism and Shinto beliefs?  I’d like to think so.  I have been visiting a lot of temples lately.  Right now I’m caught somewhere between each temple’s individual carved beauty and severe cookie-cutter syndrome.  But, dear reader, I will continue to shear the countryside and bring back the fruits of my exploration.

I did discover a children’s castle yesterday, which stood atop a hill, unvisited for years.  It was wrapped with vines and inhabited with geckos, spiders, and ravens.  I expected to find a dead body, or a portal, or maybe a white rabbit with a watch and a special message just for yours truly.  Instead, I found myself in a courtyard walled with four yellow plastic walls and a chalk streaked sky overhead.  But that, strangely, was enough.

I’d like to push the T-virus idea (that foreign visitors to Japan are plagued with the innate drive to consume Manga and Anime as if it were vital to their life blood) a bit further.  I’ve made an agreement with Mark to keep my posts at least relatively clean, but some of the Gaijins in Japan are pushing the envelope into “rhymes with Kooshbag” territory.

Yesterday I had to sandwich myself between a kid from New Zealand (war chant: “tequila, tequila, tequila”) and a dear friend of mine, Sayuri, who feared for her personal safety.  A lot of foreigners ride in on their glorified silver birds and believe the country is at their fingertips.  I mean, they speak English.  They can do whatever they want, right? I might not be writing about this right now (a stray boastful foreigner is nothing to get excited about) but this has happened on six different occassions, different dudes each time.  I almost want to start one of those websites that tells you where registered sex offenders live.  Does anyone know if d*****bags.com is taken?  I don’t actually want to look myself.  I’m hoping someone will investigate this for me.  Good luck, brave surfer.

Anyway, ego thwarted and with Sayuri safe in her car, I swore an oath to my town of Marugame that I would defend its overly-polite inhabitants from the fiery wills of presumptive Gaijin everywhere.  I would not lay my head if I heard so much as a “Well hello, I’m from America” within the city limits . . .

Did I mention I saw The Dark Knight twice this week?  I’d like to think my oath was unrelated.

In the most beautiful of places you battle the fiercest demons.

-Christian

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under All Comics, Incompletes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.