#53 Exploring a local fair in Japan

Transcript

Holy geez, it's 21 degrees outside. According to the internet, that's fucking nuts. I haven't been outside today. I did not know.

Let's get my favorite thing to do in this apartment. I'm only in this Airbnb for a couple more days, so let's get to leaving the apartment ASMR.

Made a loop. So just heading out to do my daily routine. Oh, I can hear planking.

Because I got cans. I got two cans. I got a coffee can and a beer can. I bought one beer yesterday just to Sephora. And yeah, even though I swore off drinking after my terrible time in Chiba, just one little beer, that was all right. That wasn't so bad.

Let me fucking split these up so they stop clinking against each other.

All right, out the door. What terrible timing. That motorcycle ruined my beautiful exit from the apartment. I really can't believe how loud motorcycles are. It's fucking wild.

But yeah, first thing I got to do, find a drink machine that has somewhere to deposit cans and get rid of my cans. And then I've also got a 7-11 noodle cup, Chinese spicy sesame ramen, which is so fucking good. The spiciness is really good. And then I bought a hard boiled egg to put in it. And then there's various other things you can get. You can just go with bean sprouts. But I went all out yesterday and got a chicken breast. And the spiciness is good with that type of stuff. It spices up whatever you put in. In fact, it's so good. I might buy another one.

Yeah, I'm pretty much just heading out to grab some food. It doesn't feel like 21 degrees out here, but maybe that was earlier in the day. I don't know what time is it, like 2.30? Jesus Christ, it's almost 4 o'clock. Unbelievable, man. There's just never enough time in the day. It's fucking crazy. And none of these drink machines have a deposit thing. So I guess I'll just deposit it all at 7-11. But it's the cycle of life. I bought this crap at 7-11 yesterday. I'm going to buy some more stuff. So I feel like it's totally fine to use their garbage. And then yeah, like the Airbnb guy, he sent me. Just it wouldn't end. It was like 18 messages with pictures and stuff of how the garbage works and how to sort it and all this stuff.

Because apparently it is a big problem if your garbage isn't sorted right. I think you can get fined and stuff.

I heard it's the reason why they sometimes don't like renting apartments to foreigners too. It's just having a deal with garbage stuff. So I just like to not have to deal with the garbage at all.

I leave them none of my garbage, so it's never a problem.

Alright, well I think it's an excuse to yammer. I'm actually going to go to a couple of 7-11's. So I'll buy something here because I use their garbage. It would be uncouth to come in and just use the garbage and not get anything. And then I'll mosey to the other 7-11.

Alright, it's got a custard cream and whipped cream suite. Creamy up daddy. What's this called again? It's that coffee that I found the other day that I like.

Oh wait, no, it's not. I got confused. There's two different specialty fancy pants coffees. There's the one I got last episode, but this one is precious coffee moments of Kobe established in 1933. Yeah, that's right. I remember I got this by Naka Itabashi, but I like this too. So whatever, fuck it.

There we go, awkwardly crammed that in my face. My favorite thing, I think it's a family mart that used to have it. I don't think they still do. I don't remember seeing it, but I used to get it all the time last time. It's one of these crepes with whipped cream type deals, but it has a banana in it. And it's just nice because you know it's like a little bit healthy. It's like you're eating a banana. But the 7-11 banana one always comes with chocolate. I'm just not a not a huge chocolate guy. I want banana and whipped cream and maybe some custard. I don't want chocolate in there and get out of here. 5:00 And this precious moments coffee, now it's coming back to me. It feels like a lifetime ago that I was in Itabashi. This brown label with the other coffee brand is the non-sweetened. Where for this, it's brown sugar.

Nevermind.

Man though, yeah the reason I stayed inside all day today is yesterday was ridiculous. It was over 12 hours that I was out and about before I finally got back. I'll ramble a little bit about my coming home adventures, but yeah today I was like I'm just going to stay in, do internet stuff, catch up on things, although I have fucking failed. There's just not enough time ever in the day. It's fucking insane. But man one thing with staying in the apartment all day, dude hitting your head on stuff, it is a unique kind of frustration when you smack your head on something. Because I don't know, I meet a lot of people who say they've never been in a fight. It's like well I sure have to just purely because of my brother. Me and my brother both prone to violent outbursts as we grew up. Lots of fights and not just when we grew up. I mean pretty recently I've been punched in the head. And if you've never been punched in the head, it's not that bad. There's a lot of give to getting punched. Where unless you get hit just right, it doesn't even really hurt that bad. Because it's, I don't know, I guess if your head was against a brick wall and then someone punched you, that might be different. But you know it's like a lot of, it's not just an object hitting another object. There's a lot of movement and momentum involved.

You can absorb a lot of it. When you just bang your head into a door frame, it is so much fucking worse. It is brutal. It is like getting hit. It's like a building fell on your head. It is like a concrete block just hitting you in the head. It hurts so fucking bad and it's just, oh it's the worst. Anyway, it's been happening to me a couple of times in this apartment.

It's also kind of weird just the way the showers are. The last place I was at I think because maybe because it had a toilet in the same room as the shower. It did have a shower curtain. This place, the shower and the toilet are in separate rooms and it doesn't have a shower curtain. And I don't really like that. I find that awkward. Like I know you can get the whole room wet. But why would you want to if you don't have to? You know, it's like then you got a wet floor and I'm sure in the dead of summer it probably evaporates pretty fast. But this time of year, not really. I guess I could towel it all up every time. But if I just had a shower curtain, I just keep all the wetness in the tub. It seems a little odd. It's nice to have the option. It is cool. I like how the whole room is like a shower. But that doesn't mean just don't use the shower curtain. I don't know. Tiny, tiny gripe, but just a little thing I've been noticing.

Oh yeah. There's like a tiny little fair sort of thing set up on this street.

Right outside the entrance of the JR train here. I wonder, let me see if I can find a way to tuck away my recorder so I don't look awkwardly like I'm talking into a recorder. And just see if I can ramble about what is here. It's still light out so it's not as cool looking last night when I walked back here. It was all lit up and stuff. But yeah, it's kind of like just like a little street fair thing, probably mostly for kids, but I guess kind of for everybody.

All right, what have we got here? Someone's selling fruit candy. I see that it is like actual candied fruit.

Sticks of something. I don't know what. Full corn cobs. These are just little yakitori things. So lots of food.

These look like burritos or enchiladas, but on the sign is octopus. So maybe it's like taco yaki. And like a yaki soba noodle looking deal. Dippin dots, official Dippin dots. Dippin dots brand. I've actually never had Dippin dots. I just see them in machines and movie theaters in North America. I don't really know what they are. Corn dogs. Oh, this guy's got full on squid on a stick.

Yeah, I guess it is mostly food. I thought it was more games and stuff. Maybe it's split in half. Maybe I'm in the food half.

And I guess I started yesterday and the games have. I don't know what that guy's selling, but it smells good.

And then chocolate bananas. Speak of the devil. More little skewers.

More little skewers.

Looks like chestnuts, french fries. Okay, now here's the actual games of some kind and get an inflatable thingy.

Oh, the thing with cabbage. Okay, no Miyaki. I think that's called. There was a character in Ramna who made that. And for us, English speakers, they tried to explain it as like Japanese pizza.

Oh, cutie dolls. Good old cutie dolls. Yeah, and now, okay, yes. And this side is games. So that's why when I came in this way, the other day, I just my brain decided, oh, it's just games, but it's actually mostly food.

Potato popcorn. I don't know what that is. Oh, they got little guns, like old-timey BB guns shoot a target. Or maybe you just shoot the prize directly.

And you can win some frozen merch or some despicable me, little yellow, whatever those things are called. Yeah, that's kind of cool.

But yeah, it's Saturday, so they set that all up yesterday. So it's obviously weekend, weekend festival thing. Probably they don't do it every week. I don't remember seeing it last weekend, but I don't know. I would have noticed.

So miscellaneous December mini festival. Oh, is this even more? I think maybe. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, there is more to this that I didn't even realize. Yeah, it's mainly food that I'm having an increasingly hard time describing because I just don't really know what it is.

Oh, and there's an actual garbage can out here. That's a fucking rare sight in Japan. I've kind of never seen that just a metal mesh waste paper basket like big garbage can with a garbage bag in it. You can just throw out your stuff. Definitely temporary only only for this one event.

There's one thing that's almost like potato chips on a long skewer, but it's like thin sliced potatoes. And then they fry them on a big long stick. Oh, well, yeah, this goes on. Geez, yeah, this is a lot bigger than I thought it was. I thought it was just the one little bit by the station.

Yeah, these kind of fairs in general. They always just seem kind of weird to me because I almost never really did stuff like that as a kid. We had like the exhibition in my hometown, the Fredericton exhibition, but my parents never took me. My parents were a bit weird. They had money. They're real estate lawyers, you know? That's why I can do this type of shit now. Because basically my family's got money, but I had no idea that we had money as kids because they just like compulsively saved, which I guess, again, you don't make money by spending money. Or wait, or do you? You got to spend money to make money. You don't get rich by spending money? I don't know. I feel like there's some saying that it's probably not a fucking applicable. But we always had hand me down clothes from my relatives. If there was like a school trip, to New York, and I was like the only one who didn't go in my fancy pants English class, or even just like pizza day. It's like $2 for a piece of pizza. It's like, no, you don't need that. So I just had no idea. And then as I got older, I'm like, wait a minute. My parents were lawyers. They have money. They definitely have money. But that was one of the things. It's like this little local exhibition grounds thing. It's like, yeah, we don't need to go to that. Remember we took you kids at Disneyland when you were in second grade? And I was like, yeah, that was pretty cool. 15:00 And they're like, yeah, exactly compared to that. The local exhibition will suck. So let's not even go. It's just not bother. It's like, I'm all right. I mean, I do appreciate that we went to Disneyland. That was cool, but weird excuse. But our age sure. Anyway, all these decades later, my poor, poor fathers passed away. And I mean, I guess I guess I get to spend the money now. But as a kid, yeah, not so much. So the whole fair type of thing, the county fair type feel it's not really something I ever did. Some lady as I was walking through there was open mouths coughing. And it always makes me feel terrible when somebody's coughing, especially when they don't cover their mouth, and I haven't gotten sick yet. And maybe I won't. But maybe I will. There's this one guy watching YouTube who, uh, Kimberber, where he's traveling somewhere in South America, but he got like sick like three times back to back to back. I'm just amazed I haven't gotten sick at all. So I just got Suntory Deca Vita C. There's vitamin C drink. This is not the good tasting kind. This is the gross stuff. But I'm going to drink it like medicine. I'm just going to fucking shotgun this thing down because it always makes me feel better. Right after somebody coughs by me to just super dose myself with vitamin C. She, this one isn't even the same brand I was thinking of, but it's the same style of bottle. This like brown liquid in it. Because the lemon super concentrated lemon stuff. It's really sweet and sour. It's really good. Where these ones usually are sick. But let's see.

That's okay. The aftertaste is weird, but hey, I'm just doing it for the vitamin C. Let's do this.

I finished off the coffee too. Say I'm going to be a pea machine now, but get rid of both the bottles.

Man, I got one thing yesterday at the train station. It's a Yakult yogurt drink. The little teeny yogurt drinks that somebody had left a bunch of them at the Buddhist statues by the Nanzo in Temple. It was 110 yen, but because it's this little teeny tiny bottle, this just packed full of, you know, whatever. What's that called? The yogurt thing. Just like active bacteria or whatever, but in a good way. I feel like there's a name for that. Anyway, it came with two little tiny bottles for 110 yen. Little bottles filled with the cultures. That's it. The active cultures.

But yeah, to recap from yesterday or to finish up, speaking of lemon, I guess that's one thing. So the lemon that I got off the lemon tree. And I was like, hmm, this is weird. This is a bitter lemon. I'm like, what if it's not a lemon? You know, it's like surprising how often there's like some kind of fruit or vegetable that I've never heard of. Because it's just not a part of our cuisine normally. I'm just shocked how often that keeps happening. Because I just assumed, you know, you reach adulthood and you know all the fruit and all the vegetables. That seems pretty basic. But then you realize there's like a whole array of them that you've never even heard of before.

And I thought maybe it was just an unripe lemon, but it didn't seem unripe. It seemed pretty ripe, but it tasted like a grapefruit.

And it's even a weird thing to try to Google. Because it's like, what if I'm just talking out of my ass? What if none of this is even remotely correct? If I type, well, what I did type, which is just like, do unripe lemons taste like grapefruit? Which it'd be very possible for Google to just feed me back like just weird random results from that. Because what the heck is that? Like you really do need to at least be in the ballpark of something that someone else asked at some fucking point. And no, what it led me to is it turns out the thing it was called youzu. Why you zed you? Because it said, yeah, no unripe lemons do not taste like grapefruit, but there is another fruit that looks a lot like a lemon that is common in East Asian cuisine called youzu, that instead of being tart and sour and refreshing, whatever the fuck they describe lemons as, it's more bitter. But apparently it is more vitamin-filled and possibly better for you. And I was like, fucking cool, that was youzu. So it was exactly what I theorized it was, not the actual item, but the phenomenon is like just that feeling that I've been talking about this whole time on this podcast, 20:00 but how there's just experiences that you can't have back home and even just geography that you're not going to experience back home. I mean, it's fucking, what is it? December 9th today? And it was 20 degrees today. What the fuck? It is impossible back home. And it's just wild, it is just normal outside. There's some leaves on the ground, but not even that many leaves by North American standards. It doesn't feel like December 9th. Nothing in my brain clued in really that it's December.

And youzu, perfect example, maybe, I'm not saying I never heard of it ever, but I certainly don't remember. If I ever did hear of that, it was in extreme passing and without anything to anchor it to, you know? Like even if you do hear somewhere, yeah, there's a fruit, it looks like a lemon called youzu. And it's more bitter if you even know that much. But if you don't see it and you don't experience it and you don't use it for anything, say I heard that 15 years ago. You know, that's not going to stay in my brain. For all intents and purposes, I have never heard of this thing ever. And maybe I just never would. Maybe I'd go the rest of my fucking life and just never hear of youzu, not realize that's the thing.

Just going up one of these overpasses over the street. These things are always I like them, but they're always so, maybe kind of why I like them is because they're so rusty. They're always just really rusty and sort of forgotten about. Because they are kind of unnecessary. Everybody just crosses the street usually, normally. Wow, what the heck is this? That's my classic Japan refrain. I'm really close to my Airbnb. I'm like right around the corner.

And not only is there a little lake here, or I guess what usually Google Maps calls a pond around here. Takioka Park, T-A-K-E-OK-A Park. Yeah, it's a little pond. You know, it's like a block about the size of a block, but on the other side are a bunch of houses on stilts out over the water. What the fuck is this shit? How did I never notice this? I've never seen that in Japan before.

I guess it's because like the shoreline is usually pretty, pretty varied in Japan. It's not really easy to get right up next to the shore, but yeah, it's like not even that side. It's like all around. All the buildings around this particular little pond are on stilts. You could go right under them.

It's like I'm in fucking Amsterdam or something. This is weird.

I wonder what the story is here if there is a story. I know a lot of this podcast is just me wondering. Like, I wonder what this is. I wonder what that is. I wonder what's going on.

But there's just a lot of situations that I don't know. I don't know how to figure them out. I don't know if there is anything to even figure out, like even if I had an internet connection right now. What would I look for? But yeah, I've never seen that before. Even just the deliberateness of it that all the buildings around there are all on stilts out over the water. You don't even really see that kind of unified planning very often in Japan.

But yeah, that's just fucking weird that that's like this can't be more than like three blocks from Airbnb. And I never fucking noticed this ever.

Man, though, you can't get near the water. In fact, there's a rusted out old barbed wire fence over here. And there's a little cartoon of a kid drowning.

And the thing pulling them down, I think I've seen this before, you know, like a water spirit. It's got this weird flat patch on its head that looks kind of like a little bird's nest. But it kind of seems like it's like a turtle with webbed feet. Anyway, the sign says it's good not to play in this area. It's like, all right, fair enough. I think the barbed wire fence tipped me off. But yeah, from the front, none of these buildings look different. They just look normal.

And then in the back, they're all like, it's like a docks. But not docks to go anywhere unless you want to fucking hop in a canoe and go across the pond to your neighbor's house. Yeah, from this side, they just look like normal, normal buildings and apartments and stuff. Strange. Is that like a, I wonder if it's like a selling point. 25:00 It's unique. It's quite a surprising thing to see. But it is just kind of the view of a weird pond in the middle of the neighborhood, weird. So yeah, yesterday, man, you had a long ass walk. So where I left things off yesterday was I was in the dark field with no lights at all. Just in the dark, farming area, where you're definitely not supposed to walk. And the first bridge I tried to go to, I could not cross. Luckily, the second bridge, no problem. And it was actually delightful because some of the really high bridges freaked me out. This one had really wide sidewalk area for walking. And the bridge itself wasn't that high. It's pretty nice little stroll across. And then I was definitely back in a neighborhood where people are supposed to be. Right away, it's like, oh, there we go. Back to convenience stores and back to shops and things. And I found this one great big. It's like, kind of, I guess, mainly a manga store, but it also had gotcha machines. And UFO catchers and different toys and card game stuff.

And video games. It's just all the cool stuff. And a corner with fishing equipment. That was maybe a little odd. But I did notice one thing where the other day when I was wondering about renting manga. I said 700 yen for a bulk pack of manga volumes seemed pretty low. So maybe that was a rental price. But at this place, I mean, it really runs the gamut. Like these big collections of, you know, like they take the already collected comic books. And then they take, you know, whatever, six to twelve or however many, a big, big whack of those collections and put those all together. And it depends on how expensive it was in the first place, how old it is, how popular it is. So I mean, it could be $85. But there were a lot that were really cheap and it's just like, hey, super deal. Get this big giant whack of comics for like six bucks, seven bucks, eight bucks. Five dollars, maybe. I was surprised how many there were. And it is true that usually when I looked at them, I'm like, I don't even know what this is. What the hell is this? So maybe it's just so unpopular that even for six bucks, nobody's gonna buy it.

But I did go back to one of those hyper media center places too. And they definitely do rent manga. So it is a thing. It is a thing that they do rent stuff. Which the more I thought about it, it does make sense. Because yeah, who needs all these comics? Even when I used to work at a comic store back in the day, I would get like a initial D, I remember, was first being translated at that point. So yeah, I had, you know, they just would stack up eight, nine, ten volumes of initial D. And it's like, yeah, I mean, after I read these things, the hell am I supposed to do with these? They're just stacked up in the corner of my room. Then when I moved away, I don't know. I think my dad just bulk sold a bunch of my comics at like a, you know, some kind of swap meat type thing. Because I was like, I don't know what to do with these. I don't want them. Getting rid of stuff is deceptively hard.

Because yeah, even like the comics I still had kicking around, I looked into a bit like I could even just kind of bulk sell them through eBay or something at a massive discount because I just want to get rid of them. But even that, just having to box them all up and label them and ship them is like, geez, it's just a pain in the fucking ass. That's one thing that's nice about digital. That's a big thing that makes this little lifestyle of mine. Easier. It's like comics, you know, if I want to read comics, I can just read them digitally. Want to watch a movie? Digitally, and do all this stuff digitally, it's great. There's one thing, I mean, I guess everyone in Fukuoka is technically close to the airport, but I'm especially close, I guess. But I never really noticed it when I'm walking around with headphones in, I don't notice it in the apartment, I don't notice it at night. I think really planes flying by like that, it's probably only really an issue if you're trying to do a podcast. I think it's probably not that big of a problem otherwise, but man, these planes keep going by.

I'm sure they're still pretty audible in this podcast, but I keep just stopping and trying to let them go. But you just, it really takes a long time for a plane to go by. It's just like, oh, geez, but yeah, I walked through this, whatever. I don't even know what the fuck that neighborhood was called or anything. I guess I can figure out what station I went to. Because then there were several stations that I kind of passed by that just none of them were exactly easy to get to. And it's pretty tough.

I had to go, I was so far away that, yeah, even just to zoom out on the map, it's like, that where the heck was I? Yeah, there was a bunch of stations on the Nishi Tetsu line that were none of them were super easy to get to. So I just went to the one that was nearest where I was going, you know, just so I could skip some stations. So I went to Nishi Tetsu Karume in the neighborhood of Karume, or the city of Karume. I don't know how it's all split up. Probably it's its own city.

And conveniently, it was one of the major stations of the Nishi Tetsu Empire. And from there, I got a limited express that, man, just goes so fast. And it just like zipped me. If anything, I was worried it would just go straight to tangent and skip by me, because I'm like just one station before tangent. So it seemed extremely unlikely that it would stop there. So it only stopped once. And that was right where the split happens to go over to Desaifu. So from there, I hopped on the local two or three more stops. Couldn't believe how fast I got home. It was like 450. So as far as Spook Walker goes, I am officially a Nishi Tetsu boy. I'm a Nishi Tetsu man. J.R. is just weird and strange and hard to figure out transfers and different train types and odd ticket prices. Nishi Tetsu, simple, fast, cheap, amazing. I don't think I'm going to actually do my plan of just trying to go as far as I can to the end of the line and see what's there, because after walking just 10 kilometers through nothingness last night, it's like, I think I've seen what's there. I've seen what it's like when you get to the edge. It's nothing there. It's not only nothing there. It's dark. It's empty. It was kind of cool in its own way. I don't think I need to do that again, except even further. Like, what's the point? But if I was gonna, that was my choices. Do I take J.R. Or do I take Nishi Tetsu? And the choice is clear. It would be Nishi Tetsu. Probably wouldn't even be that expensive to get to the end of the line. But I only got two days left in Fukuoka. So I highly doubt I'm going to do that. Because the idea of that was more just to experiment with taking a more severe train ride and just going further. And I think I did that. You know, I could probably go double or even triple that far. But I think I got enough of a taste of going through a far-flung locale on the train. But yeah, it was, once I got to the train station, walking on foot, I mean walking on foot is deadly. It just takes forever. But once you get on a train, big bang boom, you're good.

So I don't know that I got much else to say. I guess if anything comes to mind, I'll pop back on. But I think I'm just going to go buy some groceries, head back home, get back to work, do some stuff. That was actually, especially because I think yesterday was my longest episode ever. It just kept going on and on and on and on and on. So this can be a nice little short episode. And that was still kind of neat. Just, yeah, just walking around again, just the power of Japan. Like I'll just stay in this neighborhood. Just wander around and talk about Yuzu and taking a train home and, you know, AKA nothing. But I found a little local fare. And then the local fare was three times bigger than I thought it was last night. And I found some weird block that all the buildings have a pier. You know, like PIER at the back of the building for no fucking apparent reason what I've never seen before.

It's like, man, literally any random place in Japan, if you just, like, walk around, you're going to see something cool. It's fucking ridiculous. It's just like, that's where like the 90 day visitor visa thing. It's not so bad. I mean, there is a part of me that wants to stay more. And they have very fuzzy rules. I guess I'll talk about that briefly. They do have fuzzy rules where apparently you can get the 90 day visa. And this is all quite documented. But then theoretically, you can come back for another 90 days within the same year if you leave Japan and come back.

And I heard that people used to game that system really hard. Like they would literally go to South Korea for one day. Or come back later that day. I don't know. Just to technically leave Japan and come back and get the next 90 days.

So I thought I might do that, you know, like since I already paid for this flight all the way here, stay for the three months. I wouldn't leave for one day. I would like, you know, go to South Korea, have a proper visit. Maybe go somewhere else. And then later in the spring or whatever, come back to Japan for the next 90 days. Not only to get the most out of my flight, but, you know, because of COVID and stuff. Make up for last time.

Make up for the visits I missed out on. But I couldn't really find any official information about that particular idea of coming back. Again, I asked on the, I think it's just called Ask Japan on Reddit or something like that. 35:00 But it's like a Reddit about asking people who foreigners who live in Japan who can answer your questions. I asked about that. Like I heard this was the thing. Is that a thing? And it turns out like that second 90 days is just not on the books. It's one of these things they would like to keep a bit fuzzy because they don't want people doing this leave for one day come back thing anymore, especially with COVID. It's like they saw an opportunity to tighten up that loophole. And they don't want people to live in Japan or work in Japan without the proper documentation. But what they were saying on there, what they do want is probably an idiot like me, Canadian, no criminal history, passport and good standing, willing to just come here and spend money. They said there's probably no reason why they wouldn't let me come back in. But it is a little weird setting things up without actually knowing if it'll all go well, you know. The flight I guess from Korea to Japan is no biggie, but setting up all the Airbnb's and stuff. And then if I don't get back in, I got to cancel everything. That would be a little weird. And it's just an uncomfortable idea in general.

But I don't know, it's like probably they wouldn't care. Now that I'm talking about it, I was gonna say, maybe it's fine not to do that. It does seem a little excessive. Like part of what makes Japan so fun is the rarity of it that I don't get to come here that often. And I don't get to stay all that long. I mean 90 days is a long time. I've been here a long fucking time and I still got a long ways to go. But in the grand scheme 90 days isn't that much.

So I was gonna say like, yeah, you know, that's all good. Go to Korea, see what's happening from there. But you know, maybe just go back to Canada, visit my Toronto friends, go back home, see my home people, see my home peeps.

But I guess now that I'm saying it out loud.

I don't know. I mean, I guess I'll just leave it up in the air. I guess we'll just see.

Because it is true that the flight is so expensive. It's so expensive to fly to Japan. But once you get that done, the rest is just not that bad, you know. It's like, it's certainly ain't free, but I would be spending this money back home also. Can't live for free just because you're in your own country. I'd just be paying rent and buying groceries and shit in Canada. It would be more expensive and way less interesting. I do like hanging out here.

But anyway, I guess regardless of whether I do try to come back for a second 90 days or I go back home and let the longing build up again. I think it is true either way that I can easily see how people who live in Japan. Like, you know, the luster goes away. You don't enjoy going to the convenience anymore. Even to me, like I was already starting to feel the other day, like, why are there so many Buddhist statues? That's been subaciously forming in my mind that is like, this actually creeps me out. I don't really like this. There's too many Buddhist statues. I don't understand what this means, but it can't mean anything good. Over exposure to Japan, I think, would definitely. But I guess I'm just trying to say I can see how that could tip. You know, where you could start to take it for granted. And instead of just walking around and thinking everything is so cool, you'd just walk around and think like, ah, this place is kind of sucks. Like, I can easily see how you get there.

And I don't want to get there. I want it to just stay where every little place I go and every little thing I do is just fun. It makes my day feel exciting and cool. But I think the only way to maintain that is to, ah, either just be a huge Japanophile, which I'm clearly not because I'm not trying to become part of the culture and I'm not studying Japanese and I'm not doing any of that. Or to just small doses, you know. But I am still shocked. I'm fucking shocked that this podcast, you know, you could argue that this podcast is probably pretty, ah, pretty fucking low key and possibly boring. But it has not hit the point yet. I haven't hit my own personal level yet of thinking like, well, that did nothing happen today that I want to talk about.

And it's been a long fucking time that I've been here. This is a lot of episodes. And I still feel like I can just go walk around a random neighborhood and it's worth it if you're in the market for this type of thing. If you're in the market for just someone randomly rambling about whatever they see in Japan, like it's got to happen, right? There's got to be a day that comes where I'm just like, well, literally nothing notable happened. But what if I make it the whole 90 days and I record a podcast every fucking day? You know, it might happen. But if I was a lifer, if I lived in Japan, if I'd been here for a decade, that's not going to fucking happen. 40:00 You know, you just feel like, I don't know, I got up and I went to work and was like, what the, get out of my fucking face. I don't want to talk about this.

So yeah, not being able to stay forever, getting booted out, and possibly not coming back again until, you know, like, give it a couple years. If that is what happens, then ain't the worst thing. There's a lot of upside to that. Keep it exciting. Keep it unique. I mean, just even yesterday, like, coming down off that freaking mountain and having a 10 kilometer walk ahead of me and not being, like, demoralized. Still being like, this is cool though. Pretty awesome. And by the time I get to the train, just riding the train felt cool. I've never taken an express train that has gone that many stops at that speed before. I bet a bullet train's wild, man. I got to do it sometime. They're not that cheap. But I got to try it.

Oh yeah, okay, the one last thing. I thought maybe I could be a good Samaritan since the waterfall I went to last episode. There was a landslide and you can't get to the waterfall proper. I was like, oh, I could go on Google Maps and I could just leave a review that says that. But other good Samaritans have already done that. As recently as two days ago. Three days ago now, I guess, because I checked last night. But it looks like, based on those Google reviews, five months ago is when the landslide happened. And it is a proper landslide. It is fucked as I was a good thing I didn't try to go. But through people more than five months ago, I got to see pictures and video of the waterfall. Hey, you know, it was fine. I'm still going to stick with my general. I'm in a movie in that direction of I liked my fuck waterfalls policy. I think that's a good take because you're going not to try and find these fucking waterfalls. It's surprisingly hard. And you know, it's not that cool. But then if you do happen to see a waterfall, of course it's great. Of course it's cool. But on the books for the record, fuck waterfalls. And then of course if I do get to a waterfall, it's fucking amazing. Alright, there's my little local neighborhood episode. Yeah, I don't know if this neighborhood has a name necessarily. It's just part of Fukuoka.

I'm sure it does, but it doesn't have a name that is evident on Google Maps. Northeastern Fukuoka. Maybe Kasuga. Kasuga Park. Kasuga Baru Station. And Kusaga Station. Oh yeah, there it is. Did I just say Kusagu? It's Kasuga.

It's surprising how easy it is to jumble up the vowels in Japanese words. But I was thinking that I think it's because, you know, we're just reading them in English. Us ignorant illiterates. It's probably a lot easier to keep it straight when it's the symbol, when it's the actual Japanese spelling. It does all blend together a little.

I mean like Fukuoka. I couldn't remember that name at first. Fukuoku. That's a good note to end on. Just pure idiocy. How about that? Can't beat that. Alright, I gotta go to a convenience store now. And I gotta buy some food. Thank you for joining me once again. Tomorrow I'll get back to doing a proper adventure. Today I had to rest up. So join me next episode. And I'll elaborate on the plan, idiocy.