#44 Exploring the end of the subway in Japan

Transcript

Alright, today is the worst day yet for weather. It is December 1st, though, as I record this. So it seems appropriate. And I mean, it's still not really bad. By Canadian standards, this is not bad at all. But I think it's like 10 degrees, but it's kind of windy. It's very overcast. It's been intermittently raining on me. And I found a weather website that I like. That has, you know, how does it feel? Yeah, this is how cold it is, but how does it feel? And it claimed it felt like it was 5 degrees. And I can feel that for sure. This is all incelsius, of course.

Because I'm wearing more layers than I've ever worn. I've got a T-shirt, a thermal shirt, my bigger jacket, and my rain-resistant jacket. See, the big jacket I was seriously considering tossing it in a donation box or something somewhere. And now I'm glad I didn't. And now my Canadian preparedness has really come through. Because basically, the trick with Canada is it is really cold in the winter. It's horrifying. But as long as you're prepared, it's the coolest time of year. No pun intended. You know, it could be minus 23 degrees. And it's like you're walking through a fucking snow globe. But as long as you got a great big coat on and huge mitts and a big hat, maybe even a face mask, just everything that you need, then it's delightful.

It's like the most interesting, coolest time of the year. But if you're not prepared, it's horror fucking fine. Which I always think back to like school. God damn. It's just like, it's just not, it's not cool to wear gloves. It's not cool to wear a hat. It's not cool. It's like, yeah, good, good. Now every second that I'm outside is like a literal danger to my life. This is definitely worth it. It's nice to be an adult. No one gives a sweet fuck. It is funny, the amount of just eyes on you in school when you're a kid is like weird. Once you grow up, nobody gives sweet fuck all about what you're doing. And it's very nice.

But yeah, when it was 22 degrees when I first got here in late October. And I'm just like sweating the death that I'm looking at all these coats that I was dragging between Airbnb's. And it's like, man, if I put those on, they would actively start killing me. There's no way I need all these. But now I'm glad I got them.

Because yeah, this makes the difference between can't really go outside today to like, yes, it's fine. If anything, I mean, I've got my little pair of stretchy gloves. I'm starting to question if that's enough. Am I going to need heavier gloves? I might. I just might. But yeah, it's all relative. This is the worst day by Japan standards, especially here at Fukuoka. But by Canadian standards, no biggie. Because this is what I expected from day one. Because when I left Montreal, the weather was getting pretty dicey. And I flew through Calgary, which was a serious nightmare. It was minus 12 degrees. There was fucking snow everywhere. It did deice the plane. It's like, dude, it's still October. What in the sweet fuck? And I know there's snow in my home province of New Brunswick right now.

So yeah, relatively speaking, this is fine. And this is what I sought I signed up for. I thought coming to Japan in the fall. I would get there. It would be very chilly. It would be overcast and drizzly. But that was fine because I thought, you know, I could go to a slightly less touristy time. I was just excited to go back to Japan in general after four years stuck at home. I didn't want to spend another winter in Canada. Because as much as I was just saying how much I like the deep winter, it actually takes a surprisingly long time for it to get that crazy. I mean, it's still not like that in Canada. I want it to be like deep freeze. That's when winter is fun. Till then, it's just kind of annoying. And I just needed to get the heck out of there. And yeah, I feel like all that summertime weather I got up to this point is just a sweet bonus. If this is what we got from here on in, it's not a big problem because yeah, it's really not that bad. And I might still, you know, I left the house not entirely sure what I was going to do for my last day in this neighborhood. Because I'm moving to a different Airbnb tomorrow. But as I was walking and I see those big mountains. And I'm walking parallel to them and they're just always there and I start to feel that tug in my chest. 5:00 And it's like, all right, I only got about four hours of daylight today. But that'd be more than enough time to hike up the mountain and then hike back down the other side to the Aburiyama Canon Temple.

I could make that run easy. Because yeah, the only thing I didn't officially do on Mount Aburiyama that I wanted to do is the brand new observation deck that I found, the one above Aburiyama Kitai observation deck when you go up even higher on foot, is I was going to just continue along on foot along that route.

But on my other explorations up the mountain, I realized that it really takes a very long time to go deeper into the mountain. I just don't think there's enough time at this time of year. I would have had to get up at like 8 a.m., you know, and really start early. And I'm not particularly capable of that. That's really a summertime thing. If you just want to go up in that mountain and walk and walk and walk. It's a fine thing to do. It's a fine plan English. But not when it gets dark at 5.30 at night. That's not a good plan at all.

But I can still just go, you know, just the instead of going along the ridge of the mountain. Just going up a peak and down, up and down takes at most three hours, two and a half probably. I could totally do that.

That was the tug I felt in my chest. So I might do that. We'll see. Because that isn't the original plan for today. It was just seeing those mountains feeling them tug at me.

And I might still, I might still have time to do that. Because from Umabiyashi station, it's just a hopskip and a jump to the start of the mountain. If I've got a solid two and a half hours in front of me, I could totally pull that off. I've been up the mountain a few times now since I've been back. I'm very familiar with that route.

But the other thing I want to do, the other tug that I'm feeling is on this subway line. So Umabiyashi is about the farthest I ever went. I think I walked to Noke station once, the next station over. And it really is like the definition of a nothing neighborhood. I like it because it's so close to the mountains, but there's nothing there. There's not a coffee shop even. There is just nothing. It's just houses and agriculture stuff and convenience stores.

So I never went to the end of that line, but there's three more stops. It goes all the way to Hashimoto station seems to be the last one. And there's some kind of mall there, which even if that's all that's there, that's not so bad. But that's the other thing tugging at me is that need to explore, that need to know. I can't leave Fukuoka. I mean, I'm going to be here still for a little while. But I can't leave Fukuoka without seeing what's at that station because what I've learned is that that idea that like, oh, you know, I'm almost at the end of the line and there's nothing here. So surely if I keep going, there's just nothing and then there's nothing and then there's nothing. I learned the error of my ways there a little bit in Toronto. What's that line called? It's not a very big subway system in Toronto. I just remember if you go up to the northern tip, near the northern tip of the Toronto subway, and then there's a little subway line that goes off to the east. And those stations are just nothing. The least used station in the entire system is there. And you know, if you got off at any of those stations, you'll like, yep, there's fucking nothing here, just some buildings in a street. But when you get to the end of that line, there's a great big mall, and there's all kinds of bus connections and stuff, and there's, you know, things happening. And then I realized that especially here in Japan at Musashi Itsukashi stop, I went literally one stop from the end of that station. And I was like, okay, there's nothing, there's nothing around here. I mean, in a beautiful way, I love that neighborhood, but there's nothing there. And then I realized you go that one extra stop. You're in a whole different community. You go past some beautiful mountains. There's all kinds of connections to buses and stuff once again. And it's a whole new world, and that's where I found all the hiking stuff to the Congo Falls and all this shit. So yeah, what I slowly and painfully learned is that, yeah, of course, there's nothing on the way to the terminus because everyone's going to the terminus because that's where all the connections are, and that's where, if there's going to be anything happening around there, that's where it happens. 10:00 So I got to go to that stop. I got to know what's there, even if it's just a mall, a mall in that neighborhood would be fucking mind-blowingly revolutionary. There's nothing even resembling a mall anywhere near there. So even if all that's there is a mall, I'll consider that a win. But I got to go. So right now, I am walking toward, I'm almost there. I'm walking toward Nanakuma Station.

Because if this was my only plan for today, I could just walk. I could walk all the way to the end of this subway line. GZN, it's already 2 o'clock. I don't know if I'm going to make it up the mountain. I don't think so. That seems unlikely.

But anyway, hop on at Nanakuma. Go five, six stops to Hashimoto. See what's there. Then theoretically, especially if there's nothing there, I could just hop back to Uma Bayashi and go up the mountain. But I don't know. I don't know. That is cutting it a little, a little close, maybe.

Then again, it is really not a tough hike. So I don't know. We'll see. Just time gets away from a person so quickly.

But that's my plan for today.

Alright, exiting this station. Let's see what we got. We definitely got gray skies out there. More gray than ever. Ah, there's the mountains though. God damn, the mountains are so pretty. I don't think I'm going to make it up the mountain today. That was just a wild flight of fancy that I felt as I walked by. The beautiful low. The dangerous tug. But it's really not fun. Holy fuck, those mountains look nice. Holy shit. It's just like a slightly different angle. A slightly different view I've never seen before. Fuck, that's beautiful. There's like some mount doom shit, especially with the gray fucking skies in the background. I can't really take a picture though because there's a power line right in the way to see if I can walk under the power line and get a... No, because then if I walk that close, then there's buildings in the way. Power lines everywhere.

So that's nice. What else we got around here? Gas station. 7-11. Construction. I guess this is the mall. Well, I guess let's go check out the mall. This isn't seeming extremely great so far. But yeah, it's a little too stressful to start the day out knowing. You know, start a hike with like, okay, I got two hours before this goes fucking pear-shaped. And I think because my plan was to take the routes I've been taking recently that I'm very familiar with. If I had to walk them in the dark, I could. But especially those crazy long steps down to Aburayama Canon Temple. I would not want to do that in the night. Even in the day, it's like I've probably not the best for my knees to do that anyway. So yeah, that was an ill-conceived plan. Not gonna do that. I might though, from here, if there's really nothing going on in this neighborhood, as it appears there's not, the way this neighborhood kind of curves a little south, I think I'm not crazy far from Fukuoka Tower. I could head back down that way, not that I necessarily want to see the tower again. I already did my tower trip, but.

Just as an excuse to cut across a part of Fukuoka, I've never cut across before. Alright, we got an overhead thing, unfortunately this construction, but I got to take this little passageway over to the mall. But yeah, one thing I wanted to mention is, man, especially so at Nanakuma, it's, you know, not an especially busy stop, and all the stops on this line, you know, they get busy when a train arrives and then it's a ghost town, no middle ground. So I got there in between arrivals mid-afternoon. What does it say? I guess it's Friday, but nobody was there, so it's like, I'm gonna hop in the washroom.

And this was a similar experience to what I used to have at Hajima Station, where I'd get there and be like, man, the washrooms here are better than the washrooms in my little Airbnb apartment.

But that is extremely so the case here, where it's like, yeah, no one's around and I go in and it's all perfect because it's also Hajima sometimes that washroom's a little messed up because it gets a lot of traffic. Here, just perfect, perfectly, beautifully maintained, spotless washroom with no one else in it, two different toilets, just zero stress that you're getting in anyone's way or like that you're taking up someone's time. 15:00 And it's the heated toilet seat and the bidet functions and it is just like, holy shit, this is the best. It's an actual holy shit. It's the church of shitting, it is just the best, it's so perfect. But the reason it stands out so much is that's one thing I didn't bring up about this little creepy apartment that I'm in that I don't especially like. Because that's one of the problems where in Japan, Japan is the land of amazing toilets. I mean granted squat toilets, but I guess that's the thing there's no middle ground. It's all or nothing, either it's a terrible toilet or it's the best toilet you've ever seen in your life. But this place I met, it is the worst toilet. It's fucking terrible. It's the closest to a Dutch toilet I've experienced since the Netherlands. It's awful. It doesn't have the little sink feature on the top where as it's filling, there's water you can use to wash your hands. But you know, that's just a bonus. It doesn't have the heated toilet seat, but again that's just a bonus. It doesn't have the bidet, which is unfortunate, but that's the one that it starts to hurt. It's like, man, come on. You're the land of bidets. Why isn't there a bidet on this fucking thing? Bidets are so awesome. I assume it's because oftentimes the toilet is in a separate room from the shower, which I do enjoy. That's not the case here. It's all crammed together. So I think they just can't have the electronics for stuff like heated toilet seats and bidets because there could be shower water spraying all over. So it's like, yeah, that's okay. All right. I accept that. That's fine. What there's no reason for, which I do not accept and which is awful, is it's a shelf toilet. It's got a little bit of water way at the back that is not very deep and is like a tiny little hole that's hard to even fucking hit when you're dropping bombs. But then the majority of it is just flat and dry. So if poop gets on there, which it always does, it just smells awful. It just leaves a big, gross smear. I have to use a scrub brush and scrub shit off this toilet every fucking time I use it. And if you try to stand up to pee, which I'm a great advocate for sitting down, I do think generally you should just sit down to pee because pee splashes around a lot. But it doesn't splash that much in a normal toilet. But this thing, just because it's just flat, dry ceramic and a little teeny weeny fucking bit of water, it just splashes piss everywhere when you stand up. And the only reason I stand up is because just the way my bladder doesn't drain properly. That's why I'm always talking about peeing in this fucking podcast. If I sit down to pee, I don't pee all the way. I just don't really have an option. We're already making fun of the dutch for their terrible toilets. Germany got so shamed about it that they barely do it anymore. You're next. You're next up. Fucking quit it. I fucking hate that toilet. Oh, I hate it. It's making me mad just talking about it. I'm legitimately angry. Just thinking about this horrible toilet. But anyway, it is funny and ironic that then my salvation from my awful toilet is at the subway station. I mean that's the beautiful duality of Japan. Not just weird as heck.

There's no other country where you'd go to the subway to finally have a nice poop. Anyway, there's a nice little Christmas thing set up here for kids. I'm going to go mosey through that and then go into the mall and calm myself because I'm actually, I guess I'll just don't need to go down to the Christmas thing. I can just look at it. I'm on the second floor still. Is that walked by? I'm so kidding. I'm so kidding. The Christmas vibes.

I guess I haven't really eaten much today either. So while I'm at the mall, who knows? Maybe I'll... I haven't gone to a food court yet. That's like a middle ground, right? That's still like trying to maneuver my way through a slightly uncomfortable situation without like going into a restaurant. Maybe I'll do that. I don't know. Let's just walk through the mall and see what's here. It's only one more day, although maybe my subconscious, I think why I'm maybe a little annoyed about this toilet is the Airbnb I'm going to tomorrow. It's a different owner listed on Airbnb, but the listing itself was so identical to the one I met and then the directions they sent me were the same exact method of directions. The other guy said me, which is nice. It's like photos and everything. It's very comprehensive, but it even has the same kind of door code, the same mechanism to lock the door. I think it's all run by the same big company that must just rent out a bunch of rooms. 20:00 So I fear that I have another one. Another version of this same awful toilet is probably in my future, but we'll see. Just sucks so bad. All you had to do was design the bowl different. It's not that hard to do. You're ruining everyone's life for no reason. I hate it. I hate it so much. Netherlands, Japan, Germany, doesn't matter who it is. Shelf toilets are made by the devil and you fall in under the devil's thrall. Save yourself. Save yourself, save us all. Okay, I'm going into the mall now.

So walking around the mall, there's this bookstore called Books Miyawaki. Just a little bookstore chain I've never seen before, but I mean they're all pretty interchangeable. Just a bookstore, although this one has a window with a view of the insane mountains, which is a bonus. But it's so cool to walk around the Japanese bookstore or when I was at a book off the other day, it's especially neat when they sell these big bricks of old manga series like you can get all 18 volumes or whatever for a reduced price, a big whack of stuff.

And I mean in my shallow way, that is still, I guess besides maybe ordering food, just reading manga. It'd be like that would be the coolest thing if I could read Japanese. And the one time I tried to learn a bit way back when I was in high school, that was why I just wanted to read obscure romance comics and stuff, but I didn't get very far. Nowadays a lot of that stuff to be honest, I mean you can find fan translations and stuff, I just don't have time. I wouldn't read them anyway even if I had time. But what I was thinking, what's kind of cool, because I was never understood like why is it that I have this big rich vein of Japanese culture in my past, you know, as I was growing up, why is it all American and Japanese? And in the case of American, it's not at all unusual, they're the bigger country, we speak the same language, it only makes sense, everybody I think has a nice big thick vein of America. But if there's someone who has less than usual, it's got to be Japan. There's some American stuff, but in that bookstore for instance I went in nothing. There are no Japanese translations of American books. There was no American comics for fuck sure, not, you know. We have good comics in North America, but unfortunately the famous ones are superheroes, which I just think are better off as movies. Superheroes came into their own as movies, but I've never thought superheroes comics were a particularly good use of the medium. It kind of tires them, and for some reason that's what we do, we just love them superheroes. But there's none of that. And yeah, even for in my case, I mean I went to French school, I have some amount of French stuff, French comics that I knew, French comics that I read.

But still just not that many. It barely penetrated even though I was immersed in French. Basically no culture had a shot, not even, there's just no chance except for some reason Japan. And then Japan was everywhere and was the coolest stuff.

But it seems that the reason, just to try to boil it down into a digestible idea, is that for whatever reason I'm not totally sure how Japan became this way, but Japan is super duper insulated as far as their media goes. Some of it is just natural because of language barrier stuff, like I said with American stuff. Of course it permeated totally into Canada because it's just very extremely easy. There's really no difference between Canada and America in that sense. So it'd be harder for English stuff to penetrate into Japan. It's easier for them to just read their own stuff in their own language. But there's plenty of countries that could be said for. And they still don't go out of their way to really just make their own stuff. Their fubu stuff for us by us, like Japan does. You know in recent years like South Korean media has become more prevalent.

There's always like Hong Kong action films. There's always French new waves cinema. There's stuff. 25:00 But I'd be interested to see the numbers because as far as countries that just absorb media made by their own country. Besides Japan, I mean I think America would have to be the other one. And then it feels like the rest of the world, frankly, including Canada, is just watching American stuff.

But not Japan. You go to the movie theater and there's all kinds of movies you've never heard of before. And one or two American movies. The superhero movie and maybe one other thing.

You go to the bookstore, not a damn thing. Everything's Japanese. Just a lot of it. Just tons of like there's this series of novels in there that I wish I could figure out what the heck it was all about. Because it still has kind of an anime type drawing on the front. But more of the like show show girls comics, watercolor style. You know kind of a little more European-y, a little more subdued than stereotypical anime and manga.

But inside it's a novel. But it's a series of novels and it's this girl who's just crying. She's crying on the front of every book. And it's like, what is this? What is this about? In fact, I should go back and do a quick Google translate on the phone just to see if I can figure out on any level. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's just so many books and so much comics and so many TV shows and so much anime that is all just Japanese. So maybe that's how Japanese media manage to infiltrate North America when no one else is culture-did.

Maybe it's just the sheer amount of it. Maybe just no one else has this on offer the way Japan does. Maybe there just isn't. Well, I mean, there isn't. There isn't Finnish shows or Brazilian shows or African shows. I know Africa's a continent or not a country, but it's a little hard to pinpoint the African country. If I had to pick one, what would I pick? What would be the country? Well, who cares? What am I talking about?

Yeah, I mean, I really don't know if this is what went down. But could it be that just beyond the fact that Japanese stuff in general, it's just, it's very interesting to us because it's a different set of cultural cliche and different set of cultural assumptions. You know, once you learn them, some of the pizzazz goes away, but initially it's like, man, all this stuff is so interesting and so different, so cool and so unique. And there's just tons of it. There's just a mountain of it. Could it be that easy? Could it just be that like, all right, we got to fill the airwaves in the 1980s and we just don't have enough stuff. But man, Japan's got all these giant robot shows. Let's go. And then later on in the late 90s and the 2000s, like, geez, I don't know, freaking tsunami and adult swim and cartoon network. Like, we got to fill these airwaves. Boys, we just didn't get enough stuff. Well, Japan sure does. Japan is pumping out this stuff like crazy. Let's do it. Like, maybe they just literally flooded us.

But hey, glad they did, man. Glad I got a different perspective on stuff. Glad I got some stuff from somewhere else. And particularly, I'm glad that there's a country that still gives a shit about cartoons. That's very nice. All right, let's see. I went back up the stairs. Let's see what we can do. So it is a novel. There's three different volumes here with three different covers. And it's a girl with blunt bangs and long hair. And she's crying on every cover. Then there's one over here that I think is the same series. But the art style is a little different. She's wearing a COVID mask, but she's not crying.

Okay. Of love for 30 seconds.

There's something about TikTok. Could it be a TikTok-based romance story? Hanabi Mitai Nakhoi Data by Kozakura Nana. All right, good. At least I got. I can look that up later.

So no need to desperately try to translate with my phone because they didn't going to work anyway.

But again, yeah, that author is Kozakura Nana. And the story is Hanabi Mitai Nakhoi Data.

Oh, and on the back of this one says 140 words love story. So maybe that's a Twitter love story. 140 words love goodbye story.

And these things are about 14 bucks a piece for these little novels. I was looking at some, at some again, because I just like girls' romance, domestic romance comics, and they're surprisingly rare genre. So I found one that it looked especially for younger readers. It kind of looked like Marmalade Boy, but aged down even more. So it's like geez, I probably would not enjoy this. But it was like a fairly small little graphic novel. It was a comic book. But those ones were only 450. It's like, yeah, not a bad deal for a nice little chunk of comics.

And over here are a ton of little novels with photo covers. These are like little wee novels that are just the right size to read on the train.

For about $6.50 or $7. My rough translations of the price, by the way, are into Canadian.

They would be a little less in America. Yeah, man, it's just fucking neat, dude. I mean, I haven't done a ton of world traveling to say for sure. But for instance, in the Netherlands, after you've had a terrible experience with their toilets, if you go into a bookstore in the Netherlands, there's certainly Dutch books. But not like this, you know, they're just everywhere. Or I mean, let's just take my homeland of Canada is where in a situation that I suspect a lot of cultures are probably in, where we're just desperately trying to force people to care about Canadian stuff. And it's very, it's kind of like pathetic. We have this thing called the Canadian content laws, whereby law, something like it used to be 30%, but it might be even higher now. On the radio, on TV, X percentage of stuff needs to be from Canada. And it's so fucking obvious. It's like, Jesus, look at this low fucking budget trash government funded awful fucking crap that they're just forcing on that would never get made otherwise. And every once in a while it pays off. There are a lot of good Canadian bands that I only know because it was like government mandated that I was forced to hear them. And it was kind of like last episode when I was saying it was cool to have a little Sega knowledge, as well as Nintendo knowledge. So it's kind of like that, too, where I know all these Canadian bands, but I still know all the American ones. So that's a rare case with music, where I did find out about a lot of stuff I like. And music is a lot easier to digest. Music can just play in the background. It's no biggie. But when you're forcing TV shows and you're forcing, they're trying to force internet shit now. And it's like, dude, if Canada was any fucking good and anyone gave a fuck, then it would be good and people would give a fuck. So I like that in Japan, they're not having to force anybody to care about Japanese stuff. Japanese people want to care about Japanese stuff because Japanese stuff is fucking cool. You know, and again, the language barrier obviously informs this as well. But yeah, having to force your own culture into people's faces is just sad. I can't get behind that at all, and that's what we do in Canada. So it's really cool to come somewhere where it's not that way. And I'm just going through the food court. It's a food court. I don't think I'm going to, I don't think I need to partake in the fantastic mall food court. That's not, you know, it may not be very culturally relevant to go to a convenience store, but it probably more than this. Because yeah, my latest experiment at the convenience store is I got vinegared kelp. And it was just little, little squares of kelp that were vinegared with some kind of like powdery vinegar powder. And it was pretty fucking good. Anyway, there's a nice little culture rant at the mall. Now I think I'm going to get the heck out of here. It's not a bad mall, but it is just a mall. And yeah, I got a little daylight left. Mayap from here.

Yeah, I'm certainly not close for say to Fukuoka Tower. But it's, you know, whatever an hour and a half walk maybe from here. That's close enough. And again, just an excuse to go walk through some part of Fukuoka. 35:00 I've never walked through before. I have watched from Umabiyashi to Fukuoka Tower. And you know, there was like quote unquote nothing there. It was just little neighborhoods. But that's nice. I like that. So if that's all I get this time, that's fine as well.

Man, I love standing outside 7-11's or convenience stores in general and just watching the world go by for a few minutes while you eat your stuff. I remember the first day I was back in Japan. I was all confuzzled. I was like, where do I go to sit? Where do I go to eat? What am I going to do? Then what do I do with all my garbage? Oh my god, do I need to get a garbage satchel all this stuff? Because I was just forgetting the basic rhythm. You buy some stuff. You eat it while you stand outside. And hopefully there's not people smoking, which today there's not. You throw away your garbage while you're here and you just you don't get so much stuff that you got to carry it around. Because there's going to be another 7-11 just beyond the horizon. I can't see another convenience store from here, but I guarantee there is one. But I'm only a little bit out of the mall. The weather's gotten a bit warmer. It hasn't rained on me and I took off my thermal shirt even. And I'm just like an intersection going across a little river.

And yeah, just stopped in and got something to eat and I'm just standing here and it's just nice man. I can see the mountains in the distance. Fuck those mountains, dude. They're just the best there. If you live in a city or a town that has mountains, I mean they just, they're the gift that keeps giving. They make every view beautiful.

But yeah, it just got a little pork cutlet sandwich today because I just haven't seen it lately. It's been all these chicken cutlet ones. I'm like, I'll get the old pork. And they've got Christmas themed drinks. Starbucks had some, but I got the Mount Rainier Christmas Cafe latte. I'm not sure if it's actually a Christmas flavor of any kind or if sugar is just generically holiday-ish. It still looks like maybe there's some white chocolate on the labeling. So yeah, it could be that because it did have a certain deliciousness that I couldn't quite put my finger on. But I'm not sure if these are like, did they just appear because it's December 1st? Probably not. These have probably been here, but in my brain. My brain is like, it's not Christmas yet. Ignore all Christmas. Christmas seems crass on November 30th. Soon as it's December 1st, though, fuck it. Hook me up. Let's do it. Let's do some Christmas stuff. I don't know if I said it at any point, but that was my actual plan with this journey. As I knew, I didn't want to stay in my hometown for another winter. And I would have to wait till spring for WestJet to offer semi-affordable flights again. They were shutting down for the winter, so I had to come now. But also, I've had some times traveling during Christmas, and they're never a great time. Because Christmas is no big deal back in my hometown. You know, just go see my mom. It's usually just my mom, my brother, my cousin, me, and maybe my aunt. You know, there might be one other person, I don't know. It's just a bit of us, and we just have dinner. That's all. It's not a big deal necessarily to miss Christmas. It's just having Christmas happen when you're just all by yourself somewhere. Where normally it would just be like today. It's like, hey, whatever man, just another day on the earth, just walking around. I love walking around by myself. No problem. But then Christmas, you just feel like I'm sure that's why there's seasonal holiday depression and stuff. It's just like, you're supposed to do a Christmas thing. If you somehow don't have a Christmas to do, you're not doing your life right. You know, you just feel that way, and it's just a bit of a bummer.

So my only plan, where initially I thought I would spend more time in Canada before I came to Japan, and then I just came straight to Japan because the Airbnb prices were so bad. But either way, my plan was I want to be in Tokyo for Christmas. Hopefully it'll snow a little bit. That'd be amazing, but it doesn't matter if it doesn't. I just knew walking around Tokyo on Christmas, I will feel fine. I will feel accomplished in my life. I'll be like, fuck yeah, this is a cool Christmas. I'm going to remember this Christmas. That was my fucking Tokyo Christmas right on. You know, next best thing to being home for Christmas, what could be better than Tokyo, man? So that's the plan, and it's all going to work to plan. It's all working out. And yeah, they do quite a bit of Christmassy stuff here, but it is just on the surface as is ours. I mean, let's not kid ourselves. Our Christmas is not at all about Christ in any way, North America. But yeah, here, it's definitely not. They like all the Christmas decorations and stuff, but the famous thing is that since Colonel Sanders kind of looks like Santa Claus is that they traditionally eat KFC on Christmas, which to us is like, are you kidding? 40:00 What the heck? But apparently it's really hard to get KFC on Christmas. You got to order it in advance. It's like their biggest sales day. So I mean, that's just kind of funny, because I mean, they're not wrong, you know? I mean, Santa Claus wasn't he just like a fucking Coke icon or logo or something anyway? So why not KFC? What's the difference, you know?

Yeah, and then I also got just this little cheesecake thing that is not branded from any particular convenience store. It's Fujiya brand. Rare cheese tart, and I've seen it at a few of the different chains, and it's just so good. It's just a tiny little cheesecake tart for $1.50. Man, it's so fucking good. Today, I was like, I'm not in the mood to experiment right now. Just give me all the stuff that's just good.

But yeah, the other thing I noticed while I was in there is this isn't something I noticed very often, but the lady working there, she had, you know, they almost always have masks on at convenience stores. And I didn't notice until just as I was finishing up paying with my little sweet card, and I just glanced at her and said, thank you.

But I was just struck with like, whoa, that is a good looking person. That is a good looking human just to like striking eyes. And it just seems extra weird when someone's wearing a mask. When you can only see half of their face, but that half of their face is like, holy jeez, I'm like stunned for a moment, you know. So that's ridiculous how good looking you are. But that reminded me of when I first came to Japan in 2019, and there was a lot of people wearing masks just in day to day. And I started having that thought. I'm like, yeah, it's, you know, very uncommon to see masks in North America at that point, virtually 0%.

And I was thinking like, am I seeing enough attractive people of either gender on a day to day basis wearing masks that I'm going to develop some kind of weird mask fetish? Am I going to get back to North America and be like, yeah, you know, I don't want to just see pretty people. They got to be wearing a mask. That's the thing. But then COVID happened and that took care of that. That's for sure. Any weird peculiar associations, I was afraid I would develop based on beautiful people wearing masks. Takes a little fucking wind out of those sails when the entire world shuts down for years and people are dying all masks and everything is terrifying and awful. So, yeah, so that didn't happen to me. That fetish did not develop. I'm sure it did for somebody, but I'm not that far gone yet.

Now, I'm going to eat my cheese tart and finish my white chocolate fucking mocha thing, which again, let me reiterate for the millions time, I'm at a convenience store. Can you even imagine being at a 7-Eleven in North America and having a delicious little cheesecake tart and a white chocolate mocha and a pretty respectable pork cutlet sandwich? And this was when I wasn't diving deep. This is like, yeah, I'm not going to get anything weird today. I'm just going to get easy shit. God damn, it's just a miracle. These convenience stores. I love them so much.

Oh, well, I was saying how the weather was better. And it is as long as I'm surrounded by buildings. Right now I've got nice buildings all around me. It's not bad at all. But the route down to Fukuoka Tower was along the bank of a little river, which seemed pretty nice, pretty nice little path. It's like a jogging path, but the wind started hitting me. And I was like, oh, I regret this. I regret taking off the thermal shirt. And as it became clear that just that little chill in the bones was not going to abate, I started imagining being down by the waterfront, by the tower. And it's not bad to just go with your gut when you're walking around randomly. You know, just go where you feel the tug. I felt the tug at the mountains, but it's like, no, we don't have time. But I felt the tug to the end of the subway stop. And I'm glad I went there, because yeah, again, it's only a mall, but that's been, but that's been negging at my brain for years, for four years now. I'm like, I just never did go to the end of that. What is over there? And now I know. And I mean, it's just a mall, but it's a pretty good mall. Had a Starbucks in it, but it's a perfect place to just, because it's again, it's kind of out of the way. There were lots of empty seats. If I had brought my laptop, it would have been a perfect place to just sit down and chillax and do a little work. 45:00 So very nice. And then just this little walk, basically, I just recalibrated my walk. It's like, if I do walk down to the waterfront, I'm not going to hang around, because it's going to be fucking cold and windy, miserable. So instead, I was like, you know, if I just aim myself instead of going north, south, just aim myself West East. And I get a similar walk a bit longer, but it'll actually get me back home, because also once I get to the tower, then what? Take some trains that won't quite get me where I'm trying to go.

So I'd call this day this little mini teeny adventure enough of a success. And I'm bailing out. And then there's another nice little river. There's some stone steps here that go down to the bank, but there ain't nothing down there. So I shan't to go, but this is very pretty, whatever this is. And I was watching a video the other day comparing a Japanese guy traveling the world who was comparing Japan to other countries like the Netherlands, for example, with all their canals. And their boat culture, houseboats and stuff. And he brought up something I had not thought of. But there's apparently not a huge history of boats in Japan because their rivers are so crazy. The same way everything around here, there's always mountains, ups and downs, hills, twisty turns. Everything is just so not structured. And that goes all the way to the water. You could not reliably get around with boats in the history of Japan because the river was waiting to turn into a waterfall and to dash you upon the rocks at any moment. And it's like, yeah, you know, I didn't know enough about overall Japan to make that connection myself. But from what I have seen, I certainly wouldn't argue with it. That sounds pretty goddamn true.