#32 The one where I go to a Japanese Buddhist ceremony
All transcripts are machine generated.
Transcript
Oh geez, literally a second before I started talking, the lights came on. So let's see, what time?
I'm in Chiba Park. Chiba Central Park that has a pond. 421. Pretty nice park, got a nice pond in the middle. And at 421 in the evening, in the fall, they turn on the lights. It's still light out, but it doesn't want to be for long. The crazy wind from the last two or three days has passed, so now it's just like 17 degrees today. Although it's getting a little chill now, it does get a lot colder in the evening, but still this weather remains unbelievably good.
And man, at this park, I just love every time I find a machine that's just a new one, just a different thing. So this was a coffee machine that instead of giving you a can, it's probably worse, but it gives you the little cup.
Yikes. I don't know how much that even exists anymore. To me, that feels like an old 70s thing or an 80s thing.
I always think of the kind of nondescript engineering building on a college campus or something, and you get the machine that just pops out the little cup. And then you know the coffee pours in, and it tastes like shit, but it's just neat. I just love stuff like that. I love those little machines. They're so cool. So this one, it was do-tool or coffee, and I put in the money, and I was about to pick a thing. It's like the do-tool or cafe au lait. And I was like, oh wait, there's two buttons. So times of the essence, because if you wait too long, you know, it cancels your thing, it just gives you back your money. I pulled out my translator app, and it's like, quick, what are these buttons? What am I pressing? And I was delighted to see, because of my constant desire to find coffee in Japan that has milk, but not sugar, is you could choose with or without sugar. It was like, wait, no sugar, please. So I mean, it wasn't great, but it was just neat. I love that. The little cup was so hot too, I had to put on my little stretchy winter gloves just to hold this fucking coffee. It was blazing. I sadly missed a lot of the daylight today, because I'm heading off to Fukuoka in a couple of days. I just wanted to get a podcast edited before I, you know, didn't want to arrive in Fukuoka and immediately just sit down and edit a podcast. It's one thing with doing these outdoor podcasts. It's kind of cool, but man, they're in nightmare to edit. Like for all the sounds that might be distracting or weird or not necessarily adding to the experience, it could be so much worse. Dude, if I did not edit these things, holy shit, they're a noise fucking factory.
But I noticed last night, as I was coming back from wandering in the middle of nowhere, that the area around Chiba Station is just really cool. Maybe I'll head back there once the sun goes down, because once it's nighttime, it's just like cool vibe, cool people walking around doing cool stuff. Someone practicing music in the park. That must be tough in Japan. I guess it's tough anytime you're a musician to find places to practice without driving everyone nuts, but it must be extra tough when you're so packed in with people.
But I noticed last night, as I was walking, just a Starbucks and two Tullies. I'm like, ah, great, they're everywhere.
So today, I was like, I'll just wander over there and go to one of those places and do some editing. And then I just couldn't for the life of me find any coffee shops. And I started trying to use the map, and it was like not helping much, and it was also confusing. It reminded me a bit of the first time I went down into the shops that are connected to Chibuya Station. And that was worse, because I couldn't get out, like not in some kind of desperate way. I wasn't in a hurry to get out. But when I hit the point where I'm like, you know, I think it's time to get out. It took some time. It's quite a weird feeling when you're in a complex, so complicated, that you can't even easily exit.
This is not like that, because this was all interconnected buildings. So I was in and out of buildings and in and out of mall areas all the time, and streets and crafts and whatever. But it was very confusing. I didn't know for the life of me where the fuck anything was, or what direction I was pointing, or what.
But then I found a Tullies, which is Tullies is like a Japanese equivalent of Starbucks, that was super perfect. Where it had a bunch of seating inside, and then a bunch of seating outside, a very unusual amount of seating for even these places that are designed to have seating. And Tullies has a matcha latte that I like a lot. Very tasty. Matcha is one of those things that's a bit of a fine line that I do prefer also when it's not too sweet, but I'll take too sweet over not sweet enough because raw, straight up matcha, that's pretty tough. But with some sugar and some frothy milk, real fucking good. And yeah, since it was warm out, I could sit at the outside part of this Tullies. It wasn't like outside to the sun. It was outside under the station. But I was a little surprised. I'm like, it's really not that busy. It got busier as I sat there, but it's still like never filled all the way up. But then I kind of realized why, as I sat there for a couple hours, is then the train would go by. And man, the trains, they're just really long. The subway trains. They're really long in Japan, because the rumble would happen.
I guess I'm thinking of, you know, I had all the problems with the train in Akiruno going next to my Airbnb, but those are very short trains. And they go by really fast. These ones on the Chiba Line, whatever the actual line is called, that go through Chiba Station. Man, they rumble for a long time. And at first I was like, hey, that's fine. I'm not trying to sleep in this case. I'm just working on my laptop. I don't care. Rumble away. Rumble away, my friend. But I don't know, probably by the 16th time the train went by. It just starts to rumble your soul after a while. You know, it still wasn't like bad or whatever, but I was just noticing it more and more. And I was like, oh, I mean, I guess that explains it a bit. This is still a pretty prime area if you just need somewhere to hold up with your laptop and do a bunch of work.
But maybe that's why it's not the most popular coffee spot in all of Chiba. It's just man. It's a hell of a rumble. So I think I'm just going to wander at random. I still haven't really eaten properly today. Go hit up a nice convenience store. But I found out. So anyone, if you listen to last episode, I went to this thing in Chiba just because I was on the monorail and I was just exploring and I was like, let's just stop at whatever is the most interesting thing. So I saw the Shell Mount Museum. And I had no idea what that was. I was like, all right, let's go. And then I went there and I still had no idea what it was. But it was a literal Shell Mount. It was a mound of shells that they had excavated. And you could go walk through the middle of the mound and they had this little building with glass walls. You could see the different layers of all the shells. And I just, for the life of me, couldn't figure out what was going on on my own. The most I could get was the Jomon Period, which it turns out that is just the term for ancient Japan. It stretches all the way from 10,000 years ago to 300 years before BCE, before the common era. So pretty much everything, everything old. Everything before your friend and mine, Jesus, is the Jomon Period. But beyond that, I was like, because I just presumed it was a natural phenomenon of some kind. It was re-creeping me out. It's just like, I don't know what's happening. How did this occur? Why is there a gigantic mound taller than me of shells, of like clam shells and different animal shells, snail shells, all this stuff? What the hell happened? I looked it up and I read on from here, I did do a little further research, but pretty much it got cleared up virtually immediately as soon as I googled this thing and found a wiki page. Because they referred to it as a shell midden pile. And weirdly, the antiquated obscure word midden, I actually know, I learned it in 10th grade ancient medieval history class. I just had this very charismatic teacher, Mr. McTavish, I liked him, he was cool, he's my friend Tim's uncle. And he told us about midden piles, which is just garbage piles.
And they're just good places to learn about the past, because people pile up all their shit there. And you can research it. So literally the second I saw the word midden, I was like, oh, I can't believe I never thought of that. It's like one of those cases where the most obvious answer. It's so obvious that I couldn't think of it. I was coming up with weird like, where all the shells hypnotized by some fucking crustacean-pied paper. Did some horrifying natural event happen where the magnetic poles of the earth caused, I mean I just had no idea, but it's just a garbage dump. And that makes way more sense. So it was a natural phenomenon, but the natural phenomenon was man, was the human race. But as I looked into it more, these things are all over the world, but there's a lot of them in Japan. And this one I saw in particular was possibly the biggest one that's been found in the world. And it hasn't even been fully excavated. But what makes shell piles, shell midden piles, so especially good, is because the shells are alkaline. They neutralize the acidity of the soil. So if you dump any other stuff in there with your shell garbage, which could be tools or fish hooks made of bone or people or dogs or pottery, they find a lot of pottery.
Jomon era pottery from Japan. It's like pottery that has this distinct pattern on it where they used ropes. They just, you know, used ropes around the edges of the pottery to give it texture. But all that stuff is preserved way better because the shells don't allow everything to decompose as they normally would. It balances out the horrible acidity of the ground. So I mean, yeah, that's, I can see why they didn't use the word midden because it is this ancient word that I think is only currently in use in Scotland. It's just though I happened to know it. If they had used the word midden, I would have figured it out. Shell mound. I just couldn't get it. I couldn't, couldn't connect the dots. But that's pretty dang interesting.
And in a way, it's kind of like this sign of like, man, we sure are ruined in the earth currently. But then you're like, yeah, but we kind of always were, right? You know, you see this big garbage pile, like people just made that. The horrifying clam mega grave was just because of us eating them and tossing the shells. But even though this thing is an eight-foot tall pile of shells, apparently there's two different piles there. I think I only saw the one. But they theorized this from four or five thousand years ago and that each one took about a thousand years to develop. So for a thousand years, that's actually not that much stuff. That's not that bad.
And this is cool. I'm at the other end of this park now. And there's like a big locomotive. There's some kids playing on it. So maybe I'll not go over there. I think you can actually go in though. Yeah, I think it is much more kid-sized. But I have to duck down to go in. That would be silly, but it's kind of neat. It's a pretty good park. I like this park.
But yeah, I guess that's the basics. That's the basics of the shell mound. That's what it was. Ancient medieval garbage pile, especially good for finding ancient stuff. And if anybody did not listen to last episode, if you go to Chiba, I think it's worth checking out not only for the creepy shell pile, but the recreation of the ancient Jomon pit houses is just really neat. You know, it's a lot easier to envision that life of like you're living in these places when you're actually in one of the places. You know, you can go in one of the old houses and just be like, fuck, this would be it. Man, this would be my whole life.
Presumably, I would go out of my way not to be in here as much as possible. It's good excuse to go out and go hunting. Go gather up some clams to add them to the fucking shell mound because it's cozy in a way these houses. I mean, this is anything I said yesterday. I was like, I'm being a real dick about it because it's like, oh jeez. Where's the air conditioner in the Nintendo switch, but compared to horrible weather outside, I bet it's goddamn delightful, I bet it's super nice. They have the cassori shell mound or cassori shell middens as Wikipedia calls it. Very neat worth checking out.
I just saw a book off, so I thought I'd stop in and see if they play that horrifying jingle that they play at the hard-off and at the house. Off-house, I think the other one was called. And they weren't. They were playing a delightful piano rendition of Old Lang sign, which was pretty weird. But then I realized it was also 9 o'clock, and they were closing up. So maybe Old Lang sign is the song they play at the end of the day to signify that the store is closing, which is kind of funny in and of itself. I mean, it is a really good closing up the store song, but that leaves things a little inconclusive. That doesn't mean that they don't play the hard-off jingle the rest of the day, so studies need to continue. So that's the kind of nonsensical pointless crap that I strive to make this podcast be about. I've worked very hard to make sure this podcast is about nothing, and it never breaches any topic of value whatsoever. Breaches or broaches. Whenever something more substantial or substantive, why can't I fucking? It's been a weird day. I can't think of words. Whenever something more interesting happens, it's purely by accident. I didn't mean for it to happen. And I mean, this is kind of an interesting experience. It's kind of a neat day. But unfortunately, I think the end result is, you know, usually if I'm in a big city and someone tries to talk to me, I just ignore them. New York is the perfect example. If someone talks to you, there's a very good chance they're trying to hustle you to go see them at the comedy club or some crap doing something that you don't care about. It makes me feel a little bad whenever somebody was legitimately asking for directions or something or had an innocent question that I could answer. It would only be when I'd be walking around with a friend who would listen to people who approached him.
Let this plane go by.
Very beautiful night, by the way. Crescent moon in the sky. Still like 14 or 15 degrees out. Pretty choice. Pretty choice night in Chiba. Yeah, it'd only be when I'd be walking around with a friend to it, listen to people who stop you on the street that, you know, then I'd realize sometimes I'd be like, oh, that was just someone who had a question. I would have just blown right by it. I could help that person. But sometimes it would be, hey, if you go to this club, given this ticket, you can get two full of it. It's like, fuck off. So I just got trained in New York. Don't stop for anybody. Just keep walking. And I don't know. I guess I was like because of going to the, ease the kayak the other day and how great of an experience that was except for the drinking, you know, except for the part that I ruined. I was like, yeah, you know, I should be a little more open maybe. I should just go with the flow. Let things happen as they happen. Surely the universe is unfolding as it should, as Evan Dando once said.
But yeah, I think I learned today. You know, again, it's not bad that I did it once that I went through the whole rigmarole, but someone stops you randomly in Japan. Eh, probably in for a long night. But no, I mean, overall, it was fine. It was kind of an interesting experience. It was all right. I'll just cut to the chase though. When I was talking about Shinto and Buddhism yesterday and how I didn't really know how to untangle the two and I didn't really know anything about the two anyway, it's hard to believe that was just yesterday. It's funny that like a month could go by in my hometown and I hardly have anything to remember about it in Japan literally every day, something that I'm going to remember. But I went on an extended rant about not even Eastern religions because I honestly don't know anything about them. It was really just, uh, let me get on a soapbox for a minute and rant about Western religion and why I'm not religious. And it was, you know, it was the trifecta. It was inappropriate to this podcast. It was extremely obvious shit that everybody already knows. Like, oh man, religion makes people do wild shit that they can't necessarily justify through rational explanation. And third, it was just annoying.
It was hungry and I got on a little rant. So I edited a lot of it out. That could have gone on and on and on. But now I feel it's like karma is like the very next day is like, oh, oh, you want a rant about religion? A? A? Well, prepare to sit through an excruciatingly long Buddhist ceremony while you have to piss your brains out. Prepare for that.
Sunny. So I was walking around Chiba Park, as I said in the last segment, nice park with a nice pond in the middle. And as I was walking around, just about to exit, kind of thinking like, where should I go? Maybe I should go grab something to eat. Some guy stopped me and he was wearing a mask. So I sought for a second. Hey, is that Sataru? He's literally the only person I know in this neighborhood who's who's that age. And with the mask on just for a second, I was like, oh, maybe. And the sun was going down. It's kind of dusk time. So I was like, oh, hey, but then I quickly realized it wasn't him. So I just, I don't quite remember how the conversation went exactly. I just started saying, oh, I thought you were, I thought you were someone that I knew, but it's not like I was the one who stopped him. He stopped me. And we just started yammering. And yeah, again, like I said, I guess just to jump to the end of the mystery, it eventually revealed itself that he wanted to bring me to a religious ceremony, which once that all fell into place, it's like, oh, yeah, of course. That's pretty obvious. And why didn't, why didn't I think of that? Why didn't that occur to me? Because I mean, I think Chris Broad is generally the main source for Western or in Japan information to a lot of people on the internet, certainly to me. And he had those stories, quite a few of those stories, especially because he used to live up in the north and away from some of the more heavily traveled areas. So I think they were pretty excited to see a foreign guy. And they're like, hey, let me rope you into my religion. But I'd forgotten all about that. Instead, I guess what I had in mind were probably more antiquated stories, because I haven't actually heard this anecdote in a long time. But you used to hear about people getting stopped just so somebody could talk with them, you know, like they wanted to practice their English. And I remember hearing that complaint before, just like, ah, yeah, it's so tiring. People who want, I like, take you out for a drinker, take you out to eat just so they can practice their English on you. And I'm sure if you live here a long term and it happens all the time, yeah, I guess I could see how you would not find that charming. But it's never happened to me. So I was like, I just presumed, oh, maybe that's what's happening. There must be a reason why this guy stopped to me to try to talk to me. Maybe he just wants to try his English, because his English was okay, but it sure wasn't great. I'm just trying to get across this street, because there's a park on the other side. So I think if I go up into this subway station, I hope I can just cross right across. But yeah, no, I guess I'd say this guy's English was, ah, I don't know, say a three out of 10. I mean, it was bad, but a hell of a lot better than my Japanese. And it's surprising how well you can do with that. You don't need a ton of like full sentence structures and shit. You got to just, you just got some words, throw some words at each other. It works okay. So I don't exactly remember how it happened. We just started talking to each other. He mentioned he was 41 to blew my fucking mind, because this guy looks so young. And I was like, oh, hey, I'm 43. We're like the same age.
Sweet, I navigated across the giant street. I'm not quite sure where I am, because I just got spit out of his church. Insisted, I walk home. I think he said it's like 20-minute walk to Chivestation. So I'm mozzy in that general direction. But yeah, I guess the first thing he said that seemed super weird, I guess. Well, no, this wasn't right away, because yeah, we just started de-amoring a bit and he, you know, just asked if I, what kind of Japanese food I like, if I had anything to eat lately. And there's a restaurant. Oh, I brought up a, I love, I love, convenience and I love Coco Ichiban. And he's like, oh, you know, there's this other restaurant. It's not Coco Ichiban, but it's called Coco's. There's like a family restaurant like Denny's, or they have one called Jonathan's as well. He's like, yeah, it's like this family restaurant. It's called Coco's. They do have curry. I'm heading there right now. Look, what are you up to, you know? And I was thinking, like, not only, hey, whatever, this guy seems kind of cool. He seems all right to hang out with. If he just wants to try talking to somebody. And again, this is that valuable, I mean, yeah, honestly, that is to me. Again, with my shallowness, nothing to do with the religious experience is legitimately going to stick with me. The important part was infiltrating a restaurant with somebody and learning how it works. So like, I don't think I would go to one of these Coco's places by myself because that's weird even in North America. You know, I've done it, but it's never super comfortable to go into a place all by yourself. It's way easier if you got somebody with you. But I feel pretty confident I could do it, you know? It's like they got the menu. They have a little iPad screen that you order stuff with, which you can set to English. Now that I've been through the process, like I said, it seems like not the kind of place you generally would go by yourself. But it's like, oh, yeah, I could do this. Nice, valuable intel, valuable information.
I'm afraid I don't recall this guy's name. He sent it to me on Instagram, but since I need Wi-Fi for that, I can't tell you right now. So I don't know. Because that okay, so let me just tell the story in order, I guess. So I was like, yeah, let's go. And then he said, yeah, if you want to come, I mean, I'll buy you something. I'll treat you, which again, I would be more than happy to pay for my own stuff, but I just don't know how to. I don't know how to get away from just having my stuff paid for in these situations. So I at least I didn't order much. I kept my order small. But yeah, he's like, yeah, my car's right over here. Let's go to cocos. And then as we were going to the car, I guess the first thing that is a little weird. Well, first he mentioned that I'm tall because I was a lot taller than him, like a foot taller. And then he said, I was handsome. And I was like, quite sure. Like, I just got to read off this guy. And he had like a kid on his phone. Turns out, if I know later, he has five kids. He works as a forklift operator. It's some kind of steel works. Round here. I really didn't get any menace from this guy at all. But when he said your handsome, that is when, you know, you can't help but run the potential scenarios of, is this a gay hookup? I mean, I really didn't think so because I haven't really heard that that's the kind of thing that is a very visible thing in Japan. Obviously, there's gay people. But it did not seem likely that it would be something that would happen so brazenly. It's just a random fucking guy you see at the park. And then the other thing that kind of crossed my mind is that, you know, advice they give to, you know, don't follow somebody to a second location. Which again, I believe is more intended for women who are, you know, at bars or out clubbing or whatever. Make sure somebody knows where you are. Stay where your friends are. Don't go to the second location. Really not necessarily very applicable to me. But it's still, you know, crossed my mind. But I was still just kind of thinking like, well, I don't know if this guy tries to touch my dick or if he cuts me up and takes my kidney, whatever. I'm just in the mood for fucking what things happen. Just see what happens. And yeah, I've been on the receiving end of a number of attempted gay hookups in fucking Canada, where I'm just oblivious, where I just think somebody's trying to be my friend. I mean, I guess, yeah, when you hear, when you hear like women say that, like, like, I thought we were just friends. I don't know. I didn't know I was friends owning you. I didn't know all this stuff. I can understand where they're coming from. Because when it happens to me, it's not like it happens all the time, but it's happened a few times. And yeah, I never see it coming. I'm like, really? That's what this was about. All right. And it's not like I'm the handsomeest guy in the world. I'm a very average. So that's the other thing, I guess. When this guy said I was handsome, it's like, first off, I mean, I think I know what he, he was just meaning in the same way as your tall. That's all. Or the same way I told him, he looked young. You know, I know he didn't mean it like your handsome. He was just trying to all purpose give me a compliment. I think he thought it was lighter than it was, but it felt weird to me. But again, I was like, whatever, whatever. Let's just see what happens.
I'm walking away from Chiba Station now because it's quieter. I have no idea where I'm going. Who even gives a shit? Let's just walk. I'll figure out where I am after I'm done rambling out this story. Although these streets are quiet, but why are there so many planes flying by overhead? What's up with that? I guess we are the whole point of Chiba from a traveling perspective, is that it's close to Narita.
But yeah, we went to this dude's car and it was nearby because, yeah, I mean, again, just to skip to the end. It seemed like this was just his mission for the day. He was just going to go walk around the park. And if he could find somebody that he could rope into bringing to church, he would attempt to do so. So when he saw me, because just to look on his face, he really seemed like he knew me. Like, oh, you! But I think he knew my type. He's just like, oh, foreign guy. Foreign guy walking around by himself. I don't know.
You know, take a swing. Take your shot. See what happens. He's like a Pua. He's like a pick-up artist of Japanese original Buddhism. So we got in his car. And even that was just kind of neat because I've never been in a car in Japan. It reminds me of the first time I was ever in someone's car in Vancouver because I lived there for quite a long time before I got in a car. And it was the same sort of feeling of, like, geez, I really am. I'm under a flight pass. But instead of following the prescribed lines of the bus route toward the Monorail or the Subway, you can just go wherever on all the roads. And he had a hybrid car, which I've never been in before. And it's just so quiet. It just starts driving. It's just like, no, from your own engine noise. And it's like, whoa. And it had a cool GPS map. And when he was backing up, it had the... The fucking video. So you can see where you're parking. You know, again, all this stuff that is not exactly new tech. But as has come up many times on this podcast, tech from five to 10 years ago was all still pretty cool to me because I have not experienced so much of this stuff. This is like, this is cool. But also his car had the distinct smell of... I mean, when I found out later he has five kids of all kinds of ages. And I was like, maybe it's like baby pea, but you know, it wasn't. It's capy. Is that unmistakable smell of capy? And it wasn't extremely strong. But you could definitely smell it. And just like, what the hell is the story there? I mean, I guess the story is just that he has an unfixed cat. But he shouldn't seem to notice it. It's like, just adds an extra layer of weirdness to the scenario.
So reality to the weird little situation that's happening. And this is great, by the way, except for these planes going by.
But I'm just in some quiet little street. Really old buildings on this street. It's really dark because it's not a fucking soul around.
Ah, walking around by myself. Doubling down on that shit. This has made me realize this is the true Japan to me. This is what I want.
But he asked if a dude from his company could come by a younger guy with like 26 or whatever. Maybe 29? No, I think it was 26. He's pretty young. And I figured, yeah, okay, that's cool. Maybe also he just wants to practice English. It seemed like that increased the likelihood they would try to kill me, but probably decreased the likelihood they were trying to bang me. Is how I felt about it. So we grabbed that dude and his English was like quite bad. You know, he was just very much like, you know, the person who took one semester of a high school Spanish type of level, you know, just he knew a little bit of stuff. But once we got to the Koko restaurant, everybody whipped out their phones and there's a lot of Google Trans like going on, which did help a lot. But at Koko's, so standard family restaurant, you know, I had been to one before because me and my friend Brad went to the Denys in Akihabra. I might have brought this up before, but we kind of, we did it half as a joke, you know, like it's kind of funny to travel all the way to Japan just to go to Denys. It's like me and my friend Matt used to have this like perverse tradition where no matter where we traveled, we'd make sure we just go see a movie. Until we went to Amsterdam and it's just nothing we wanted to see and we broke the tradition. And then when I came here the first time to Japan, it was when Avengers Endgame was playing. But again, I was just too intimidated to go buy a ticket by myself. Just in case something, you know, went wrong or whatever, I didn't know. Accidentally got a dubbed screening if there were even such a thing. I just didn't bother. But going to Denys with Brad, it turns out it was like, it was worth it. It was interesting to see that Denys in Japan is very different from Denys in North America. A lot more noodle dishes, way more. But in a lot of ways it was similar to this place where Denys in Japan has like an all you can drink, self-serve drink bar. This place does too, so I'm just presuming probably most of these family restaurants is just how they work.
But we went in, sat down, got the fucking menus, I got curry, I got old curry, very delicious, beef curry. And they got like hamburger, but instead of hamburgers like in a bun, it was like a hamburger platter type of deal with a side of rice and corn and veggies and shit. But then a server brought the first two items. After Denys is cool, he can order them on the little iPad, very nifty and handy and cool. Then for the third thing, a fucking robot came. You know, like I guess it's technically just sort of like Roomba. Well, I guess it's better than Roomba technology because Roombas they just kind of amble all around, right? Like this thing distinctly knew the layout of the restaurant and I saw it all night, it was bringing people stuff. I felt like I was in fucking Rocky IV, just this, I guess like the base of it was like a Roomba. And then it was about the size of a Dalek and you know, just had trays in its inner body with items in it. And it would come over and had a little screen that would say here's your thing.
And you take it out and then the little robot greets you and says thank you and goes back and I just got used to as I was going to the washroom or getting a drink refill, which yeah, those drink refills are the reason why I later had to pee so bad. But you just got used to stepping around the robot and just presuming that the robot could navigate around you and didn't mind that you're in its vicinity. And I was like this is really, this is awesome, the fuck is this? Why is there a goddamn robot?
And we were just talking about, I guess see this is where, I mean it was a pretty cool evening, it was still, it was very fun. Overall, it was a neat enough thing to do. I guess it's just a little disappointing to realize it was just for religious head hunting purposes. Because again, just to jump to the end a bit after we went through this ceremony, the guy who brought me, he got like this whole big fancy certificate. And like it was definitely about me, I was seated in the front, it's lady read a big long thing, kept making eye contact with me, then gave him this certificate that he put it in his book bag.
Yeah, I am most assured they walk in the wrong way. It's too bad because it's so nice out here, I like this. Usually I kind of go by feel when I'm in an intersection, which one feels coolest, and the two directions that are very much going the wrong way feel the coolest. God, but I am definitely under a flight path, it's just flights are non-stop. Yeah, it reminded me of when I was a kid, my friend Matt, different Matt, he uh, I don't know what religion he was, because I didn't even know what religion I was. I was Catholic, but I didn't know the distinction between Catholic and all-purpose Christian, till I saw the episode of The Simpsons where they become Catholic. And I was like, oh, I recognize all this shit. Catholic, like I knew it was one of the other, but I just cared so little, even as a kid. Like I just have no, no mind for religiosity, my brain just doesn't function with it at all. That I just couldn't even commit it to memory, I just couldn't remember, I just didn't care. But Matt brought me to a church service, not just me, but like a bunch of people, he gathered up a bunch of friends. And I also couldn't help but notice literally every time I went to someone else's church as a kid, it was always better than my church. They would like sing fun songs and do shit that seemed interesting, where my Catholic church was just the most dower fucking, but I mean I think that trained me a bit for today. Even when I went to smaller Catholic churches, if you go to a small church, at least there's some personableness about it. A medium sized Catholic church is the fucking most boring thing in the world.
Wow, I just, can you please stop at airplanes? They just won't stop, I swear to God, it's just a constant line of airplanes flying directly over my head to hell.
And there's an old man doing calisthenics all alone in a park, eerily lit by a single street light. Who needs video, right? It was fucking evocative images like that.
But yeah, Matt brought us all to his church because they were given away these fat pencils. I don't know if you remember these from the 80s, but for a while it was cool. First off, we needed to use pencils because it was the past. But these big fat pencils, and you had to have a special pencil sharpener. You remember that device to fit your fat pencil in?
And I didn't mind so much because I got to play Atari at his house. Even though at this point in Nintendo and the Sega were out, I never owned an Atari 2600. And there's some bangers, man. I played River Raid for a while at his house. River Raid, Pitfall. There's some good games. Maybe those are the only two.
So yeah, just the idea that this was pretty much the same thing. I don't know the specifics of it, but definitely that certificate was not for me. My indoctrination into this particular religious sect was purely... I mean, I shouldn't complain. That's actually a good thing. You know, once they were done with me, they were happy to let me go. It wasn't like I was gonna... Hey, please come back. Let me try to become a part of your life now. None of that. Which in the long term is clearly better.
But I guess it just makes everything we talked about seem a lot less relevant, you know? Because even as we were talking, I was kind of thinking like, oh, you know, on the podcast, I should try to impart some of this stuff. But I thought it was important. I mean, at first, at first it was just the dumb stuff of like, uh, tell me about Canada, and I talked to them about Canada, and they tell me about Japan, and I know we compare and contrast, and this and that, and as the surface level stuff was pretty interesting. And the dude, he was making some jokes that were kind of funny. He was like fucking... With like body parts, he's like the word for I as this, and knows as this, and mouth as this, and then he starts pointing down to his crotch, and I was like, oh, I know that one, chin chin. And he's like, yeah, you already know that one. It was kind of like back in Vancouver, I surprised my friend, Kazoo, but when he found out that I knew that OPI was the word for big breasts, he's like, how do you know that? I was like, you didn't porn on the internet, my friend.
I guess the non-stop airplanes are kind of cool. I guess it gives this kind of a weird apocalyptic vibe to this particular talk. It's just like this has never happened before, these endless airplanes. What the heck? Why is this happening right now? Man, I must be weird if you live around here. I lived under the flight path of La Guardia when I lived in Flushing Queens. But it wasn't like this. This is literally continuous. Every time an airplane fades away, there's another one fading in. But I suppose you just get used to it.
But with the chin chin thing, he was saying he had an Australian friend who they were at a restaurant and the Australian guy's stomach hurt a bit from eating at the restaurant. And he asked how to say it and they told them that the word for stomach was chin chin. So basically this Australian guy told some other Japanese people that his dick was hurting after they went to the restaurant. This is just funny. This is a great technique, by the way. If you do want to be a just hooking people into come to your religious ceremony, I don't know about the initial approach. I don't have any advice there because again, I'm not quite sure what happened. It's just because I was feeling open to such a thing. The guy certainly had no game. If anything, I kind of moved it along because I just presumed like, maybe it's just a guy who wants to speak English and because I had so much fun with the Japanese folk the other day, you know, let's just see. Let's try to make this happen. So I kind of made it happen a little bit. But once it was going, he was extremely good at just being funny, just being a weirdo.
Yeah, he was showing me that before his forklift job, he did another sort of hard labor type of job where you wear the little helmets. And I was like, oh, you know, this enemy from Rockman, from Mega Man, he's little guys with the helmets. Because that of course came up too. Why are you in Japan or whatever? And I was like, hey, you know, as a kid, video games, cartoons, half of my childhood, you know, especially because we're the same age. A lot of the things I remember as a kid, you probably remember too. Good old Rockman, you know, it's what they call Mega Man. You remember this thing? And then after I showed him the picture of the guy with the little helmet, he's like, yeah, you know, if I'm being honest, those guys always made me think of chin chin also. But anyway, after this revelry and eating food and I got a melon soda and then too much alates from the all you can drink, drink buffet. And again, this guy insisted on paying. But it was like 10 bucks, it's not that bad. And it was very delicious. And culturally, culturally valuable to me that I know how a family restaurant chain operates. In case I should ever be in one in the future.
But yeah, things got very serious, kind of suddenly. And the other guy, his friend, was clearly along for the ride, you know, of the seriousness. He was, all right, you know, he's also very serious.
But this is where it was also, yeah, like again, kind of similar, I guess, to the mitten mound where the obvious explanation just alludes me. The obvious reason this is going on didn't even occur to me. It's also a little bit of a bummer that this was just to go get a gold star from his church because I was trying to figure out what the purpose of this conversation was. And every thought that I had was not, I want you to come to my church. It was, you know, because of the language difficulties and a lot of Google translate. Also, I was just, as this guy was talking, I was like, wow, this is the Japanese guy, all right. Because whenever I, on my writing podcast, I've had times criticized Japanese writing. Because I mean, I only know Japanese storytelling through translation. So I'm not getting the full Monty, you know, I'm not getting the full proper context for everything.
Oh, man, I just walked by the church again. I just saw the guy at the door, man, at the church. If I just say I wonder if he recognized me, of course he fucking recognized me. Tall fucking white guy was just there an hour ago. So I guess I wandered around in a big circle.
Alright, this time I'll just keep walking. This place, though, by the way, because I'm gonna do some research later and figure out what the heck it was. Paris Beauty College is across the street, and I think he mentioned that the head office for the Chiba Police was right here on this block. If I zoom way in, Buddhist temple, alright, but it doesn't have a specific name or anything. Yeah, and it's just southeast down the street from the Chiba Prefectural Police Headquarters. But yeah, he started talking about, you know, the defenselessness of Japan, which, you know, after World War II, it's a whole thing that, again, I only vaguely know the details of, but basically there's no standing army. I don't know how serious it is anymore, but it wasn't allowed for a while. Maybe it still isn't. I don't know. So he was talking about, like, what if China attacked Taiwan, and he had all of his evidence for why that could totally happen. And then he just showed how close Taiwan is to Okinawa.
Going up through the station again to get across the street. But yeah, and then he was talking about the supply line that passes through, and basically just, you know, how it's just a hop-skipping a jump from China to Taiwan to Okinawa to Japan. And if that happens, what would Japan do? Because of course America shouldn't have to be the world police, and it might be better if they weren't the world police, but on the other hand, who the fuck else is going to help them, and it's just a very disturbing situation. And I was like, yeah, this guy's pretty fucking heavy, all of a sudden. But it's an interesting conversation, and I tried to commit right in a bit where I was like, yeah, Canada is certainly not the same situation, but our situation is we get to pretend we're very pacifist, and we're not all war-monger-y, we're not all military. But only because we live next to America, we're just able to absorb. America takes all the heat, you know? America takes all the criticism for being the world police, where we get all the benefits and get to pretend that we're the nice guys, and it is kind of some bullshit. And on the plus side, because we're so close to America, we're very safe. If anybody tries to invade us, America's going to stop them. Unless America tries to invade us, and then we're completely fucked. Like, then what are we going to do? Not a likely scenario, but, you know, still, it was an interesting conversation. And he was saying how he felt like a lot of Japanese people really were not mindful of these types of situations, and not at all worried about what could happen in the future.
Which is, you know, classic sort of right wing sort of stuff. But it is important to have both. Like, I always thought it was so interesting in ancient tribes when they would have two leaders, the peace time leader and the wartime leader, because you really do need both, you know? If you're fully, just to use the left and the right in the American terms. If you're fully on either side, it does seem like you're not really interested in, in the situation, or trying to figure out a real answer to anything. You're just picking aside so you can argue. Like, I always like that horseshoe metaphor that the far left and the far right loop around the horseshoe and they're closer to each other than they are to anyone else. Because both philosophies are very valid. You should be open to other cultures and intermingling and trade and freedom and brotherhood and friendship, but on the other hand, you should also protect who you are and what you are and what you got because people will take it. You know, if people can't exploit you, they will. You got to find a balance between the two. So I think all this is very interesting. And when he mentions this sort of complacency of Japanese people, we couldn't have been in a more perfect environment to illustrate it. Because all around me, it's funny because generally walking around the streets of Japan, I'm like, man, everyone's so rail thin, it's quite amazing since everything is sugarated. Where at this fucking family restaurant, this cocoa restaurant, it was much more the Japanese version of Rosanne. Everybody was just kind of shlubby and dressed in whatever. And I've never seen people less delighted to be served by a robot. When the fucking robot showed up, my eyes lit up like I was a goddamn Disneyland. I didn't expect that in a million years where I noticed because the robot kept coming and every time I was like, let me watch this robot. Let me see this thing in action. Nobody ever looked remotely interested in the robot. Instead, it would be like, you know, just show up with like a delicious look in Sunday. And you could tell it was like a wife asking her, she'll have a husband like, ah, did you fucking order this fucking thing? Nobody was having fun at this restaurant except the kids. The grownups were very much just like, ah. So yeah, it's safe to say they're not too concerned about the state of the future military issues confronting Japan. So that's where I was starting to think like, maybe this guy, beyond just wanting to try English out, maybe he is just a guy with five kids who works at the forklift part of the fucking whatever factory. I don't know what they did. The iron works or whatever. And maybe he just has all these thoughts that nobody around him is remotely interested in. And he just wants to get him out. He just wants to send a message in a bottle. And maybe I'm the guy who's willing to sit there and listen. And I was thinking like, you know, I can do that. Like it won't be for a while. It won't be for months till this pod, I didn't tell him I do a podcast. But I was like, you know, I can tell your story on a podcast my friend months from now to a boutique listenership. I can spread these ideas. I can help you with that. I'm not going to tell you that I'm going to do that. You're not, you'll never know that I can do that. But I can do that. And that's what was on my mind. I was like, this is what a cool night.
What a neat evening. I'll spread your right wing rhetoric. My Japanese friend more than happy too. Because that reminds me too, the China thing. This was funny because when we were at the Izakaya, how Satoru is, you know, for all intents and purposes, American. Despite being a Japanese citizen, so it felt okay to bring this up. It's not like we were just kicking America behind its back. We were, you know, making jokes to an American guy. We were saying the idea of like, you know, American people are great. Never met an American I don't like. But America, you know, that's different. And the older guy who runs the Airbnb, he said, oh, yeah, that's exactly how I feel about China. Chinese people are great. China. You know, it's a different story. These are my fucking Japanese right wing adventures. But yeah, then the next stage of his, his TED Talk was significantly harder to follow. This is where I really started feeling like I was reading a weird manga or watching some weird anime where just the style of storytelling in Japanese fiction, so what I started to say earlier is the same way this guy told the story. And partially, it was just translation problems, but it was just very light and airy and not with a distinct point. But a lot of talk of destiny and changing your destiny. And basically, it was the same, you know, I think our version of the adage would be, you need hard work, but you also need luck. You know, your hard work puts you in the position so that should good luck happen. You're ready for it. You know, I think that's the North American take on it. Is that hard work won't get you everywhere. But without hard work, you can have all the luck in the world and it won't matter. You need both to intersect. Work hard and hope for the best. So his version of that was destiny. He drew a diagram like a house. Destiny is the bottom of the house than the pillars are. Fuck what were the pillars? I don't know, probably hard work again. Anyway, and he was talking about university, you know, that your hard work's not enough, especially in Japan. It doesn't necessarily mean you'll get to go down that route and to give him the fact that he works with a forklift and has five kids, I guess, probably he wanted to go to university and didn't get to go in, but I didn't ask him, you know, it seemed, it seemed safe to infer that and I kind of got the feeling that's probably more appropriate, right, to talking in Japan about stuff is you don't want to just need to need a little ask, ask, ask, ask. If you can reasonably infer something, just infer it and just assume that's what he's talking about. But then it did get on to quite an amazing story where he showed me, speaking of university, his student ID card from 20 years ago from 2001 and how he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer and his doctor gave him the classic, I think he actually said two months to live rather than six months to live. But miraculously, they did surgery and they were in fact able to get rid of the cancer and even though it could always come back at any time, it's over 20 years later and he's still cancer-free. So destiny isn't set in stone, destiny can change. His destiny was to die, but he didn't die and then he's showing me all the pictures of his kids and it's like, and now all of this has come of that, all of these people shouldn't be here, you know.
Now that I'm telling the story, it is pretty cool, you know, yeah, I mean, I guess I was a little rattled when I started recording this because I just got spit out of a weird Buddhist temple. But yeah, overall, this night was still very cool. You know, I take back the thing I said about just keep walking, don't talk to people because this was definitely worth it overall. Though the story of, his story was getting abstract at this point. It's a lot easier to pinpoint worries about, you know, future political conflicts than it is, cancer and destinies and, you know, that's where it's much more abstract. But it's an interesting life story, if nothing else. But then it jumped tracks, not jump, I mean, I can see the connection, but it's a pretty tenuous connection where I, you know, I was asking about like destiny, how can your destiny change? He was talking about changing your destiny and I was saying, yeah, but but it's that's the point, right? That's destiny. That's fate. How do you change that? And then he told me about the cancer stuff and then he jumped over to the original Buddha. So I can't tell you anything specific about this. I got, I got a pamphlet. I got some prayer beads in my inner pocket. But none of it is in English. But the gist of it is, hey, you know, Buddha, yeah, Buddha is okay, but he's not the original Buddha. There's a real Buddha that came before that Buddha who's the real Buddha. And let me tell you about this Buddha. And at that point, I guess just everything became, yeah, it can only say disappointingly religious because it's all just the same old song and dance.
I swear to God, these planes are making me believe in religion more than anything. I swear to God, it's flying exactly over top of me. What is happening? Are all the airplanes converging on me? It feels like at the end of Ghostbusters, the ghost is going to be summoned or something. It's very eerie. But it's the same old song and dance you've heard from every religion ever. It's like, hey, this guy died, but Rig or mortis never said in miraculous healings. Extremely Jesus-like. I don't know much about Buddhism, but I was surprised how similar it was to the Jesus story. And basically, just asked, you want to go to my church? And I was like, well, you know, I can't say no at this point. I've agreed to go along with this guy every step of the way. It's actually been a pretty good time so far. Sure, sure, why not? He told me it would only take like 20 minutes. It was longer than that. But yeah, he took me to this place that was over by the police station. Left me in the p-car while he went in to set something up, where again, I think he was just preparing them. Like, hey, I'm bringing a guy. I got a guy. I'm bringing him in. We can do this thing. So he left me in the car with his friend. And his friend tried to walk me through it, but his English he enters very bad. But it basically boiled down to hold these prayer beads in your hands in this specific way around these specific fingers. As you do a prayer motion, you just have to bow at the right times. You won't be able to understand what anyone's saying, but will help you follow along in this prayer book. Even if you don't know what it means, that's okay. It doesn't matter if you don't know. But there was a holy word. There was one word that was the important word to say.
Holy crap, I know where I am. This is fucking cool. I was just randomly walking around and like all those stairs look nice. I go up those stairs, but it's all at night time now, so it looks very different. But I just turned a corner and I'm at the museum. The, you know, Hana Castle Ruins. The ones I went to when I first got to Chiba with the cool exhibits of the Chiba clan. Sweet. I was starting to wonder what this park is. Like, this is a pretty beautiful place. What the heck is this? Let's do an offerings check. What offerings we have here. Chestnuts, tangerines, sorted change, a bottle of water, some kind of small gourd. So at least these ones are like mainly food. They're not candy. What do we got over here? Bottle of water. I believe this is, yeah, one cup of zeki sake, but the tops off this one. So I don't know if that's actually sake in there. Maybe it is though. It has the bottle of water and a thing of sake in all of these. So somebody very deliberately left these. Again, like I was saying, I think that was last episode. I'm a little confused about the offerings. Like, this is very deliberate. It's the exact same offering left at all three of these, these gravesites. Bottle of water and a little thing of sake.
But it still feels much more akin to littering to me than anything else. Like, what's going to happen with these things? I just don't understand the process. But then these religions go back so far that of course there's going to be just stuff, just stuff that they still do because they've always done it. So yeah, there was one phrase that was the phrase. And I heard it so many times and the guy had me repeated a few times that at the time I could almost sort of say it, but not really. I was still mostly just mousing it and hoping that I was saying something close enough that it would seem like I was doing it. But it's just really hard to commit to memory a word that just is so word you've never heard before. That's just like five syllables, you know? So it's only been an hour, but I do not remember the word. But we went into this place that if you're ever curious what to the inside of a random Buddhist temple in Japan feels like, it felt like a rec center. You go in, there's like three floors. So I don't know what was going on on the first floor, but we went up to the second floor, we left our shoes. It's a little gang-con. This is making the airplanes seem double creepy now, because I've absolutely been here before and there were not airplanes like this. So it's not like I just went to some new neighborhood where planes are always flying. It's just that right now planes are flying like mad. Then we went up to the third floor. It was mostly women. A lot of people just milling around. It seemed like it was kind of like just a continuous rolling ceremony. It's not like you got a show up for a mass at a certain time. A lot of people just milling around, mostly women. Some older, but actually just a lot of sort of people in their 20s and 30s.
Some guys too. But it seemed like it was very much okay to just casually hang out there, which did make me kind of think like I wonder if a big part of like it'll become clear, I guess, that the guy I came with, he was very, very into this religion. I did not get the sense from really anybody else that they were that into it. It seemed more like just a sort of comfortable place to come hang out, which I guess would mix with what Satoru's girlfriend told me at the Ezekiah that, and just what I've heard in general, that even though a lot of Japanese people technically consider themselves to be of a certain religion or a both Shinto and Buddhist, but they don't really practice it heavily. So it seems like even the people who go to the temple perhaps take it in a quite a casual way. But yeah, we went up to the third floor and it was just a room, you know, really just, I guess I'm so used to the grandeur of North American Catholicism.
You know, I was obviously at the St. Joseph's Memorial when I was in Montreal, but even in my hometown, you know, my church was not a big church, but it was a grand church, you know, you went in there and you felt like you were in fucking church, bowed down to the Lord because you were in church. This did not feel like that at all. It just felt like a room in a rec center, kind of a low ceiling, carpeted room, a bunch of little thin kind of cushion things set up spaced out, and people were just kneeling on them, and they were there before we got there, and they stayed there after we left.
It seemed like you could just, geez, come on, airplanes. I just don't fucking understand what's happening. Just stop. How can they be to stop? It's just, I know it doesn't matter, but it's just annoying to listen back to. This would be such a beautiful quiet night to tell a tale, but these fucking airplanes will not fuck off. Fuck you, you fucks. Jesus, fucking Christ. That's like, I don't know, what is that? 30 goddamn airplanes? Why does, come on, come on. Old man yells at cloud. It's a good thing they weren't legitimately trying to recruit me because I'm clearly not, clearly not, of the disposition to be Buddhist in specific, I think. No religions are really going to get through to my boiled little brain, but especially not Buddhism, I don't think.
Give me some fire and brimstone, I could get behind that. Tell me to calm down, tell you to calm down, fuck you. So yeah, there were people in there just for the all day experience, I guess, and it was just, I don't know, there was something like playing over a PA, or I think that was like the lesser version of the main ceremony that was just kind of playing if you wanted to passively absorb the less powerful version. But we went in, we kneeled down. I was right in the front center because again, I mean, it's just such a, it was such a trophy thing, you know. It was so clear that it's like, hey, a nabbed one, a brought one, checking out everybody, which very much, I guess that's the weird thing. It did, I don't, again, I don't know anything about Buddhism, but I would presume that head hunting would not appeal to them that much of like getting a certificate because you brought somebody in to do the ceremony. Why would you care about that?
And these airplanes are really low too, like you can really see the detail on the underside as they fly by.
So we went in, we kneeled down. I was in the front, had to, you know, he had to help me put my prayer beads on my fingers properly. I found all this like very easy to do because again, I was just very trained by Catholic Church, just stand up at the right times, sit down at the right time, say the thing at the certain time. I did that for fucking years and years and years. This didn't feel too weird to me throughout a place. It's really just the fact that my mounting need to pee was the only real problem. But at 8 o'clock, the official ceremony started and it was kind of neat because so in the front of the room, the dude who brought me, he did make a point, particularly after as we were leaving, to point out this wall scroll at the front of the room. And that was the one part of the room that was kind of impressive. It was like this scroll in a really cool frame, all well lit and stuff. And now this was the the scroll of power. This was the important thing. This was the one that there's no other like it, anything else you see anywhere else is a fake. This is the one. This is the one that has the power. If you say the magic words that I've forgotten, it doesn't matter about distance. You can say them when you're in Canada. The power will go through you, sorry, I know, disrespectful. But at 8 o'clock, this lady came in and she was just kind of wearing business, business suit with skirt, business cash. And one thing that was kind of neat that was different is it wasn't like a priest type thing where a priest comes in and orates to you. She was sat with her back to us because she was just one of the worshipers along with everyone else. So she kneeled down and she had a microphone but it wasn't super loud. But even her, she was taking it real casually because she had a cold or something and she was sniffling the whole time. She was reciting this thing. I think you're supposed to recite it with a certain deadness because it's just a chant. But not only was it a sort of monotone, a Buddhist thing, but she kept sniffing just all the way through this whole fucking thing.
I really can't get over this. I got to just stop bringing it up but airplane after airplane after airplane. It's wild. It's like 30 seconds between airplanes. And they're all flying directly over my head. Like if I was a paranoid schizophrenic, I'd be freaking the fuck out right now.
Surely to fuck if this was a common occurrence in Chiba, I wouldn't notice by now. I've been here like all week. What the hell? All right, just stop bringing it up, Keith. It's boring.
Your podcast is boring enough already. You don't need to keep our banana about the fucking airplanes. So she recited this thing and that's where the guy I was with, he recited along with her louder than her. But he was the only one who did. There was probably 20 other people in this room. It wasn't like packed. Not every single little spot that someone could be at had someone, but it was quite a few. Maybe 15. I don't know. I didn't want to look around because I would seem unpious. But he was reciting along with her the whole thing and that's where I was like, oh, I think I get it. This guy is like, he's a go-getter. He's the religious guy who's more religious than everyone else. Like, you know, my church had that had that guy just way more into it than everyone else. Way more serious about everything than everyone else. And I was like, I was thinking, I wonder if it's the same as it was in my church. Where everyone's a little annoyed by this guy. Because yeah, okay, we're all Catholics and we're coming to Catholics, fucking church. But also, we tacitly understand that this is just where we come to meet up every week and chat about what's going on and keep in touch with everybody. You know, it's not just about being religious, taking everything so serious.
But this guy too, I mean, he really was a nice guy. You know, like we did have a lot of fun hanging out at the cocos. And even during this, you know, mildly uncomfortable, but mostly just boring ceremony. You know, he did have to make sure that I held my hands the right way and did the right bows and said the words. But then when we were going through this thing, again, I don't know, I'm interpreting this as nice. Maybe it's not. But he would make sure I was on the right page and just go along each syllable with his finger through the whole thing, even though I couldn't understand what was going on. And I don't know, I thought that was nice. You know, it's kind of neat. And he, you know, when he had to correct my posture or something, he was very nice about it. And he seemed, he did seem genuinely thankful that I was doing this. But that's where too, I just don't know anything about Buddhism. Because obviously the, I mean, it reminded me because I couldn't understand anything of when my mom describes Catholic church, how it was even more boring for her because they used to do it in Latin. So it made me think of that a lot where, you know, he was very clear not to worry that I didn't know what was happening or what anyone was saying because that's not the part that was important. And that reminded me of old school Catholicism. I mean, they deliberately didn't need you knowing what was going on. They didn't at all want you to know. They just wanted you to be there and take part and tie or whatever. This place never asked me for any money. I should point out this was all free.
But it also made me think of the idea of bringing Christianity to the heathens or whatever, of like, yeah, we got to save the souls of these, these folks whether or not they understand what we're doing or what we're saying. Their souls will still be saved.
But again, my understanding of Buddhism is really nothing. It's more from Lisa Simpson than it is anything else, or Adam Yalk of the Beastie Boys became Buddhist in his later life. But you know, that's all I know, which is essentially nothing. But I didn't think they were about saving souls and keeping people from going to hell and stuff, so I don't think that that's what it was of like... Even if he doesn't get that we're helping him, doing this will help his soul, will help save him, will help whatever. I just didn't think they did that kind of thing. But then on the other hand, if he's doing it like my friend Matt, who just wanted the fat pencils, if he's just doing it for the scalp, you know, for the certificate, like the human sacrifice from a fight club, you know, where they keep the... they keep the license of all the people whose lives they've...
If they're doing it for that, that also, to me, feels like... Is that what a Buddhist person would do? But he also told me at this one specific point in the ceremony, which he's like, I'll let you know when it happens, don't worry. But that's the point when you focus on the scroll, and that's where you make your wishes. You make your wishes for everything that you would like. Be it the health of your family, which is like, yeah, that's pretty noble. Unfortunately, my dad's already dead, so... I didn't have anything to wish for. Who knows, maybe if he caught me three years ago, I would have been in a more receptive headspace, and I would have prayed for my dad, but I didn't, I didn't pray for anything. But not only, you know, noble stuff like that, but he's like, oh, you could pray for wealth, pray for money. He used Google Translate to make sure he said this right, to make sure it was clear that he had a friend who owed 1.7 billion yen and paid it back in seven years through the power of the church.
I mean, I legitimately didn't, which I could just speak to the original Buddha and be like, I don't need your fucking wishes. You don't have anything I want. You know, fuck off. I'll do the ceremony for the sake of an experience, or for the sake of just not wanting to embarrass this guy I just met who has been nice to me all night, you know, just willing to go along with, you know, what he's interested in, you know, just Canadian politeness, call it whatever, or even as, as, you know, caustic and blasphemous as I am, like I'm just, I am interested in some, to some degree about religions, but I don't actually want your shit. I don't want your wish. Fuck off with your wish. But then I thought, I don't know. I mean, again, I don't know how this could ever work, because who the heck am I? Just some guy who I made it clear I was leaving in a couple of days, and I can't speak Japanese at all. But just on a base level, I mean, I guess like, really, religion, it's like a meme, not in the, like, a funny joke way, but in the idea of it being like a philosophy. Here's another airplane flying straight over my head. But it's like a, a philosophical disease, like a germ. Disease doesn't mean way to put it, but it is. I mean, you know, it's an idea that has to spread to survive. In the same way that it, that germs need to spread to survive. That's not trying to insult it. That's just what it is. Your religion can't last if you don't spread it. It's like in the sandman when there's all the gods, you know, the old Egyptian gods and stuff. We don't have any power anymore because nobody worships them. You got to keep this thing going. So what better way than to try to get people to come to your church and introduce them to the thing? And, and you know, like, maybe it'll work on somebody. You just got to keep trying until it spreads to somebody. And it's worth trying a thousand times, even if it only works once, because if you get somebody for life, you know, that's invaluable. That one person could spread things to so many more people and who knows what benefits could come of that for your church. You got to try. And yeah, maybe some people are just in a worse place than they, they are, are just asking for something. And they would take the wish and they would want the wish. So again, it's all the same as in North America. It's exactly the same. But the difference is in North America, in fact, right before I left town, it was raining really hard one day. And I got a drive to my mom's place from some guy in my hometown in Frederickton. And he was a Buddhist. And there is a local Buddhist group that meets in my hometown that I had no idea about. So at least in that case, you know, he told me about them. He was very nice. He told me where they met. And he was Harry Krishna. That's right. Which what the hell does that mean? I don't know. Is that Buddhist? I don't know. I don't know anything. But again, I mean, these, these roots are not going to, they're not going to take hold in my bitter soul. But it's worth a try, right? That's going to work eventually. And at the very least, you just be in a nice guy. It's a little bit disappointing that all these nice people have ulterior motives, you know. But they're still nice.
And they got to do what they got to do to spread the thing that they're into. But in this case, it could never work. Like what's the point? It's not going to not work on me just because I'm a dickhead. It can't work on me because I didn't understand a single goddamn thing that was happening. So I just, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what the point was except that he got a certificate.
That I don't know why he would want. But anyway, at the end of the day, it wasn't that long, I guess. Oh, then at the end, yeah. The head lady did turn around and she read a whole big long page and kept looking at me. And I was just glancing around them like at every little detail and stuff. But every time she looked straight at me, it's like, oh shit, I supposed to be looking at her. I don't even know what I was looking at. I mean, it was uncomfortable, obviously.
Just looking at stuff. But then because she kept glancing at my eyes as she was talking. So it's like, okay, I guess I should just keep looking at her eyes. But then I feel like some kind of Steve Jobs fucking lunatic just make an eye contact. Yeah, you want to make eye contact, lady? I can make eye contact. And it's like, I'm not even into this enough to care to make the eye contact. Can we just wrap this up, please? But anyway, with all of my fucking sarcasm and bullshit. It was still an interesting night. Certainly an odd thing to happen to me. And he was just such a nice guy. He's got five kids. He tells dick jokes. He's, you know, I was glad I could help him do his thing that he tries to do. I got to assume it's probably relatively rare that he gets somebody to go through all of this with him. And it really was even if I just wanted to look at it as a trade off. The experience of learning about a family restaurant and how you order with an iPad and how they have a fucking robot. It's not a rare, like, just comes out for your birthday. That thing was working all night.
To have that experience and learn that stuff was easily worth it if I just wanted to talk about it that way. It checks and balances way for the other end of the night of having to go through the rigour roll of all the stuff so he could get his thing that he was trying to get. Be it a gold star or be it the salvation and cleansing of a random foreign guy soul. You know who knows? Maybe he really thought he was helping me. I don't know. I just don't know. But I wish I could say that that second half was more interesting than it was. But all it felt like was an echo of my Catholic childhood. It was just the same stuff. It was just like just do the routine. Just do the boring routine. Just get through the boring routine. Just do what everyone else is doing and eventually it'll be over. And it was that was it was disappointing. It was about as spiritual as I don't know fucking it just wasn't it wasn't spiritual at all.
But I guess that's another thing. I mean I don't know. I do just feel like I hope this podcast is useful in some way or interesting in some way. But I'm also well aware that it's boring. But I think I think it's like supposed to be boring. I think the reality is that most things are boring. You know it's hard to feel any particular kind of way about it at all. No matter how unusual of a situation it is. No matter how unlikely it is for it to have happened to me or likely. You know again maybe I could have just been picked up by a ton of different random religious people if I had been paying more attention. But it's certainly unusual. It's not like any of the other days I've been here and it won't be like any of the ones coming up. But that doesn't mean it's like meaningful. It doesn't mean it was particularly impactful. It was a fun night at a restaurant and a kind of fun conversation that then turned kind of conceptual and bizarre and then turned really fucking boring. That's what it was. But I don't know. I hope you found that interesting. I hope if you're a religious minded person it wasn't too offensive.
But I would understand if it is and they feel free to feel that way. I'm just not on your side and they never will be. If we ever have a war I'm on the other side. That's the side I'm on.
What a terrible way to end is a podcast. What a terrible note to end on.
It's goddamn true though. I mean it doesn't matter what religion. It doesn't matter. I'm against all of them. Every single one.
So on that note let's just continue to ignore the extremely bizarre happening of these airplanes that won't stop flying directly over my head.
Because I'm a man who believes. I believe in coincidence. That's what I believe in. Nothing means anything. It's all just weird shit happening. But who knows. Maybe I'll burst into flames. Maybe a plane will crash into me. Maybe it'll be like that dumb shit that happened in Breaking Bad where the two airplanes crashed over the fucking dude's house. That's when that show jumped a shark by the way. Everybody's like oh Breaking Bad. Greatest show of all time. Season one was a great show. When he's in the basement with that kid who is the kid of the guy that owns the sports store. He has to choke the fucking dude to death. That's when that was a great show. As soon as airplanes are crashing over someone's house. That's fucking bullshit. That's it. You know. There's still things to glean from Breaking Bad. It's still a good show. But it's not a great show and stupid shit like that starts happening. That's as bad as any religion. That's just nonsense. What am I talking about at this point? All I can do is dig this whole deeper. I'm gonna call this a day. I'll see you next episode. Hopefully. Thank you for listening.