#62 Laundry philosophy in Japan

Transcript

Alright, leave in the restaurant ASMR. I remember the first day I did this. I was like, I'm not going to do this anymore. Why would I? Why would I record myself just walking through the little closed restaurant? It's on the bottom floor of my Airbnb. But then I've come to love it. Oh, delightful. Again, the joy of the weather looks good out there.

Clear skies. I was a little curious because we got a definite cold snap last night. Where in the middle of the night I didn't want to figure out how to turn on the heat in this little room. But I had to fumble around in the darkness and get my jeans and put on a hoodie. So tonight I might actually have to fiddle with the heat machine. Man, no. Yeah, my continued week of... Just weird sleeping, sure hasn't ended. I mean, I thought it did yesterday. I was up not as late and I slept in a little more. And I thought it was all good, but not that I think about it. I was really just like on the way to the Gundam. Where I was like, God, this place sucks. This touristy shit, this sucks. It did sort of suck. But then when I got to the Gundam and the big view, it was amazing. I'm like, God, I'm really glad I did that. Actually, that's really cool. So I'm like, maybe I was still tuckered out yesterday. I haven't quite gotten my shoes. I got to back together. And then last night I definitely didn't. But it's not like proper insomnia. It's just like staying up, you know. And you're just like, oh, just watch one more show. I'll just browse one more Wikipedia page. I'll just look at boobs, whatever you do to just stay up all night. And I mean, I just wasn't doing this before. Even though I kind of, like I'm getting more comfortable in this Airbnb and it's not so bad. I wonder if part of it is just being in a communal place. This might sub-conscious, just like, you know, just don't go to bed. Just like stay away. I don't know. Maybe it's not even anything that deep. Maybe I'm just fucking up. But then I wake up and I always feel like, yeah, beautiful day in Japan. Traveling in Japan after all those years of COVID, that has not remotely worn off yet. I think I could stay here for like a year before that started to wear off. So I get up an item and it's all good. But yeah, I was thinking like, maybe I shouldn't go off on a far-flung adventure.

But it's so hard not to. Yesterday I tried not to. I was like, I'm just going to hang out in the neighborhood. I'll just go to hang up by the river. And then I was like, oh, I'll just go over to that little island. That's no biggie. I've been there before. Not that far. I'll just go to the next island and the next island and the next island. And then walk all the way down that island. And next thing you know, I met a giant robot and I've had an adventure. How does this keep happening? So today it was literally really thinking that it's like, I'm going to run it back. Run back to routine. I'm going to go get brown sugar latte from the star-vending machine. I don't know if there's black coffee in that machine. But I think I'm going to get some if there is and make the mix. Make the part brown sugar latte part black coffee mix. Because I could use the extra caffeine. That's for sure. And then I'm just going to, yeah, mosey down toward the the daily Yamazaki. Because then it's like that trade up of do I. Do I get the ginger mackerel from 7-11 or do I get the curry bread? I'm leaning toward curry bread because I did get one of those mackerel delis. When I got off the train after seeing the the Gundam robot, it was just a nice little 200 yen ride. Really cheap. So it's really easy to get there. Should you want to see the robot and the cool view without all the walking that I did. And then it spit me out right by Ginza. And I found a little 7-11 there. It's just weird. Because I've been mostly at the station. These like, you know, more slower neighborhood 7-11's. Stand in our side eating my mackerel. But this was like super duper next to a big fancy train station. All busy and crazy and stuff going on and people hanging out. And I'm just sitting there. Stand in our side the 7-11 eating my mackerel. Watch in the world go by. But it was a little more exciting than the usual watching the world go by. All right, star-vending does have UCC black. That'll do. Get one of those. Clunk. Get a brown sugar latte. And let's move away because there was an idling truck next to the machine. These are really hot. Yes, a little afraid it was going to be like cold out today. I was going to put on my one bigger layer, the one that I absolutely don't need. But no, it's fucking very nice out. It's not the little weather thing you told me it was 9 degrees, but it feels warmer than that. 5:00 I got to wait. I got to wait for these things to cool down in my hands. I can't even hold them. Unfortunately, since it's just two cans, I can't really mix these together so much. I'll have to mix them in my mouth. Or I guess maybe I should just guzzle some of the brown sugar latte just to make room. Get that little sugar blast. Then pour the black coffee into that can. And drink, drink, drink until it's all together. And one beautiful mixture that then goes into my body and then becomes beautiful mixture. Then I then pee out and then cycle of life is complete. Basically, I was all set to go and I was like, how can I stop myself from having an adventure today? Just don't do it, man. Just don't. You're like really exhausted. I think this was the latest I stayed up. I stayed up till like 6 a.m. And I still woke up at like 10.30, whatever. I just always wake up around that time. But I did on the way home. I did buy a pair of socks. I was like, you know, if I just had one more pair of socks, I still have an extra pair of underwear and an extra shirt. I could go an extra day without doing laundry. And I went into 7.11 and they only had fancy pants socks that were like $750, $7.00. I was like, I don't need socks that bad. But then I went into a Lawson's and they had a nice little pair of socks. And we're in them right now. It's like $3.00. But it occurred to me just before I left. I'm like, what the fuck am I doing? Why am I trying deliberately to ground myself today? Like don't go flying off on some big quest. Don't pick a point on the map that looks close because it's not. It's going to take you all day to walk there. And you're just, you cannot do that today. You're silly, silly, man. You stayed up all night. This is what you get. And then tomorrow you can do laundry. And then all of a sudden I was like, wait a fucking minute, you stupid dick. Do laundry today. Do laundry today. Today is a laundry day. You want to stay in the neighborhood? The neighborhood you proclaimed to love so much. Do laundry today. So I'm gunna. And that's my plan. And I also realized too, they gave me a couple towels here, which is how nice of them. Not one of these places that tries to charge you $2 for a towel. So I've just been swapping each day between towels. But I was like, oh yeah, I should just do. And we'd also wash my towels. I mean, they're not too bad. They seem fine, but never hurts to have clean towels. And yeah, I just, I like laundry days. I even like these laundry day episodes. I don't know. The most boring ones. But I just like them. Just thinking of that laundry mat that I found in Akigawa. I went to a hard off. I just, I'll just say that name in a serious way. Well, whatever. I'm not going to talk about previous laundry that I did. Christ, this is already boring enough already doing laundry. So yeah, I'll just wander around. I've seen many a laundromat in this neighborhood. So I don't have anyone in particular. I'll just grab one. And I don't have soap this time last time I bought soap. Oh yeah, that nice little laundromat. That was nice too. The one in Itabashi. That was my first laundry in Japan. My first time doing laundry with a Japanese laundry machine. That's where the Google translate for all the shit that I give it for its inability to comprehend what's going on around me like I'm wanting to criticize.

It's really good for laundry machines. But yeah, it turns out there's tons of these laundry machines that include soap in the price. They just dispense soap on their own. Because it was actually a pain to find a place that didn't do that. So now I'm free of my soap. I used up as much of the soap as I could. And I'm soap free. So I can just go wherever. I'll just wander around till I find a laundromat that seems cool. And I'll do some laundry. All right, these things are cold enough to comfortably hold. Let's do this thing. This is the dumbest podcast because I was like, right? I'm gonna yammer a bit more about my plans about going to Korea and stuff. But I can do that later. It's like I should just turn off the recorder. But then I was like, wait, I can't turn off the recorder before I open my two coffees and mix them in my mouth and report I want a taste of like, that's very important. Let's do that.

Oh, also as I was leaving the restaurant today, another guy about my age actually. A lot of travelers are younger than I am. But this guy was about my age. Also a pale skinned foreigner. And as he walked by, he walked by just as I was, he walked by just as I was leaving the little restaurant. And he looked right at my little recorder. And I was like, yeah, I could explain, I guess. But I don't want to. I just want to keep walking and act like nothing's happening. That's something that's neat about audio recording. 10:00 It's so much less obtrusive than video. No one really knows what it is. And even if they're kind of clocked in a bit like that seems like that's a recorder. But it's just such a strange thing for someone to be doing that. Like, why am I holding this little stick with the troll hair? And then there are like guys probably nothing. And that's it in the moment passes.

All right, first guzzles and brown sugar latte. Oh, that's good. Oh, yeah, but I bring him up to say he was going into the door next to my place. And it's also a hotel or a hostel or a place to stay of some kind. So that's cool to know. This neighborhood, man. I keep calling it this neighborhood. I guess I could tell you. Yeah, it appears it's not too hard to stay here. And I did definitely see other Airbnb's. Not quite exactly here, but near here before. Skytree adjacent. Well, I guess based on the museum of contemporary Tokyo art. That's the neighborhood museum. Miochi in Koto City, Tokyo.

M-I-Y-O-S-H-I appears to be where I am. Miochi. Delightful. All right, I've added some black coffee to the brown sugar latte.

Mmm, mmm, mmm. God, that's good. Trouble is I have more black coffee. So as I add more black, the balance is going to shift. You know what I'm going to do? So there, the can, the brown sugar latte can's full. The black's not quite done. I'm going to guzzle down the little bit remaining of this black coffee just to get a blast of black like cleansing the palate, like eating ginger.

Oh, black coffee is an unpleasant fucking endeavor. I love coffee so much. But man, black coffee's rough, but now when I taste the brown sugar latte, if I had black coffee after that, boohoo, it's like my savior. So good.

Oh, it's so good. It's fucking suck stewed. It's so dumb.

All right, I'm going to go get some curry bread.

How many yammer a bit about laundry before I turn on this laundry machine? Because then it'll get real loud in here where right now it's nice and empty. No one's here, but to me, and the camera's staring at me, but hey, whatever they don't need to know why I'm talking to myself again. It's so weirdly innocuous having the audio recorder. If I had a selfie stick and I was fucking doing a YouTube video, again, maybe no one would care, but it's just a lot more obvious that I'm doing something weird. But I just stopped in one laundry place. There's like a lot of laundry in this neighborhood, a weird amount. I kind of had to, like there was quite a bit of laundry in Itabashi, Northern Itabashi, for example. But I had to, I had to Google Maps that I wasn't just going to necessarily stumble across a laundromat. Well, except the one that was around the corner from Airbnb, so that's not true. I would have stumbled onto one, but I ended up using a different one. But anyway, when I was looking up laundromats in that area, I never have, I just haven't, I mean, I guess I guess they do laundry sometimes in Canada, but not, that's not real often that I use public places. And everything in Canada, I feel like is pretty spik and span. I've never really been to a bad laundromat. I'm sure they exist, but I've never been to one. Where when I was reading these reviews, and I guess the same thing happened in Akigawa, there's a very distinct difference between new and old laundromats. This one I'm in now, it's all these brand new machines, and they're the same machines as I've seen before that are, you know, they do it all. Not only do they have the soap, but they also dry in the same machine, although they do have separate dryers if you want to do that. But there's this design that I see all over the place that's clearly new, sweet, awesome machines.

Ah, yappy dogs. You know what? If you are out there are about to get yourself a yappy dog. Just think about it. You know, don't just do it. Because then you got the dog, and now you're in a yappy dog nightmare hell. You know, think about it. Think a bit about what you're doing. That's all. I'm not going to judge. I'm just saying, you know, give it a little thought. The same goes for large barky dogs, in fact. I don't dislike animals. I grew up with a lot of animals, but they're fucking loud as all I'm saying. Okay, don't start slipping into being a cranky sleepy boy. Come on. It's just a dog fucking relax. So yeah, these Google reviews would say, this is a fucking old, fucking laundromat. Some of the drums smell bad. They smell musty. My clothes came out of the fucking thing smelling like cigarettes and stuff. This place sucks. So I was like, I'll take your word for it. I won't go to that one. 15:00 And that came back to me this first laundromat. I just stopped in it because I just noticed around the edges of the door where the seal is, where the rubber seal is, the rubber was black, but there was like brown crust on it. And these were obviously old machines too. I've never really seen that before. It's like, wow, that must have taken a while for that to build up. So I thought back to the Google review and I'm like, hmm, let me just put my little sniffer in here. No one else is around. Let me take a little whiff of these. And it didn't smell bad, but it didn't smell good. And then the one next to it also is fairly neutral, but different. I'm like, hmm, I'd rather that my laundry machines are all just very, you know, just a nice base. I don't need them to be different. And then the third one did smell weird. It's like, okay, this is what they mean. This is what they're talking about. There's laundromats everywhere around here. Let's just not. What's the hurry? So then just a little further, just a block past the, not even a block. Half a block beyond the museum, which is a great landmark, by the way. Even though I will never go to the museum and see all the modern art that is meaningless, shite. Don't do it. Don't slip. It's very good for navigating around the neighborhood. This one had a giant American flag outside. And I'm like, you know what? Sign me up. Good enough. Today I'm American. I'm close enough. As far as the rest of the world knows or cares, I am American. So let's, let's go.

I love being invited to something in Japan. It's not exactly common. It doesn't happen all that much. However, I have no idea what the fuck the American flag was for. Just don't worry. We won't, we have nothing against you, maybe. We will not distinctly discriminate against you, GI Joe, because in here there's no English. I thought for sure the big American flag would mean, hey, tourist, come on, come on in. We got everything labeled for you. Nothing is fucking labeled. Everything is in Japanese. Luckily, Google Translate is awesome on laundry machines. But it really makes all the difference. Like it's all a fairly simple process when you can translate it. But I remember back when I first visited Japan in 2019 and my phone couldn't do Google Translate. Even now, of the two phones I've got, I got the Google Pixel. It can do it. But I've got like a cheap blade. I think it's called that I bought just to listen to MP3s. It was like brand new. It was like $100 Canadian. So that's like $6 American. It can't even do the Google Translate. So yeah, I didn't have it in 2019. Need some kind of update, some kind of extra thing that it can't download. It can't use full strength apps. I don't know, whatever. The beauty of having two phones. And yeah, I couldn't do laundry. I literally couldn't do laundry. I was at a place just like this and I tried and I gave up. Because like it's not complicated. But if you don't press the right button, even at the other, at the laundromat I didn't use before I bailed out, I did use their coin machine to get coins. Someone coming in to do laundry, I might have to stop talking to myself.

I just came in to move some laundry into a dryer. And now that everything's running, it's actually not that loud in here. But that's fine. Let's get that loud in here. I got 55 minutes. I got this thing going now. What time even is it? 210. So come back around three and see how this is going.

Outside plus I haven't even got my curry bread yet. Let's go do that. But yeah, I literally couldn't figure out the laundry machine. Oh, that's what I was saying. But yeah, this other place, just to Jesus, the only problem is I put all my jackets. I wasn't going to wash my main jacket, but there was a lot of room left in the machine. And I'm like, well, fuck it. And now I'm wearing a t-shirt. It's not quite t-shirt weather anymore. I'll be fine. I'll warm up with curry bread. Yeah, just to use the coin machine that turns your 1000 yen bill into 10 coins took more than one try. You know, I tried to translate it and it wasn't quite translating, right? And I pressed one thing and it didn't work. 20:00 And then I pressed another thing and it just ejected the money. Then the third thing worked. That's just the coin machine. So yeah, in 2019, I gave up. I tried to use the laundry, but I also wasn't aware at the time of these things about the automatic dispensing of liquid soap because I've never seen that in Canada. Maybe we got it, but I ain't ever seen it. Or these double machines that wash and dry and do the whole thing. So I mean, just even just, I didn't even know the process that I was trying to fumble my way through. You know, maybe I would have been able to. It just wasn't working. So I couldn't do laundry. I just gave up. And what I started doing is, because I saw this somewhere as like a travel hack, but it doesn't fucking work is. I was at a communal hostel, but a lot of the times I was there by myself. So when nobody else was around, I just ran crazy hot water. Like the water out of the taps could get so insanely hot. And I would just kind of hand wash my clothes in the sink. And then the travel hack I heard was when you're in the shower, stomp your clothes like your stomping grapes. And that's how you can like really give them a good, a good final clean and then just hang them up. But it was the middle of summer. It was super hot. I was sweating all the time. And my clothes just always smelled a little sweaty, just a little, just never fucking worked. So that was gross. And I'm very glad that I now have the ability to do laundry. It's amazing. But yeah, the place with the old machines, it was 400 yen, about $4 Canadian to do laundry. There is a laundry machine at my Airbnb that's 200 yen. But the cleaning people are always using it and stuff. And it's just kind of, I don't know, I don't want to hang out there all day. Rather spend a little more just to hang out somewhere else, just go hang out outside, hang out at a different laundromat place.

So this one, it's this big step up because Super America wash has got these brand new machines. So it's either $8 to wash without drying or $10 to just do the whole thing. You just throw your clothes in there. It spits out a bunch of soap automatically, it washes them, it dries them. We'll see if it dries them all the way. If not, I might have to switch it over to the dryer for a bit. But I figured it's probably about the same because $4 for the wash at the main place, then I think 100 yen gets you like 10 minutes of drying. So I mean, it was going to add up. Maybe not to $10. But it's not like I do laundry too often anyway. I feel like $10 is a pretty good deal to just, here's my $10. Now I can just walk away for an hour, go to Daily Yamazaki, get my curry bread on. But yeah, it feels really good. I just really like achieving small things. Just the little, the little active, I go, exploring around, finding a couple laundromats. So I'll pick this one. There we go. I got everything all sorted out. I'd got my money changed. I put the money in.

Like it's all the easiest shit in the world. But I just felt a little like, a little buoyant. Is that the right word? For a moment, I felt like I just like, I was lifted up briefly. I was like, you did it. You did a thing. It really doesn't take much. Just achieving small things feels very, just feels good. One thing I just, I like about traveling. I like just the puzzle of only having one bag. And if sorting out your stuff or being in this little cramped bunk that I'm in now, just sorting out the space. I really do have to get a capsule one of these days. Just Korea do capsules? I think I could do that. Because like the space is no problem. I could totally do that.

And just yeah, learning how to arrange things and sort things. And like, okay, I get that all sorted out and figured out. It feels very nice. I didn't get ties in a little bit to when things are a little too big and too overwhelming. It messes up my brain. Well, gamer about that. After I eat some curry bread.

Two more minutes to go on the machine, man. I am a flag and pretty bad. I was just going to keep walking around with my laundry because I was like, oh big heavy book bag. That'll keep me anchored. That'll keep me from going too far. But I think I better just take this laundry back and maybe take a little nap. I can only burn the candle in both ends for so long.

I think that sign too, the big American flag has something to do with exchange rates. I guess if you pay with a card or something. 25:00 Yeah, I noticed on my way to daily, I'm exactly to get delicious curry bread. It's like, oh, I got this thermal shirt that is always hanging out of my back pocket that I forgot to put in the laundry.

But it's not actually dirty. I hardly ever wear it. It's just hanging out of the back of my pants. And then I realized like, oh, good. That's actually a good mistake because it is a little chilly out here. It's like sometimes you can get away with the t-shirt thing but then a cloud passes in front of the sun and suddenly not. So I just put on the thermal shirt and my god, that's nice. That's good. Man, it's nice too, just the little details of like I was standing outside daily. I'm Azaki watching the world go by eating the curry bread. And I noticed that on that corner, the little posts that are in the street, just I guess you know, to separate the sidewalk from the road. They had like a little brass bird on top of one of them and a little brass house, like ancient old school Japanese house on the next one. It's just cool. It's just a weird little detail that I wouldn't have noticed except I was literally just standing there for 10 minutes looking at what's around me. And I was thinking, I mean, not that there's much point in rambling about art. It's just, you feel it or you don't. But it seemed like kind of a good example as opposed to the big modern art museum that's by here that's like such a gigantic building. And you know, I haven't been in this one but I've been in, I've been to the MoMA, I've been to these places and abstract art, man, it really means nothing to me. Unless it's like an album cover, you know, if it's connected to something else, then it can take on a sort of meaning. But art is just so, I guess it's like, you know, go ahead and make your art and help somebody cares. But what I think is weird about museums is like so much money and resources are put towards saying, oh this, this thing, this weird sculpture, this painting, this one's important. And it's like, dude, no, it isn't. It is not though. It's exactly the same as everyone else's stuff. It's no better, it's no worse. It's just, that's the part that bothers me is the insinuation that you're supposed to care about this particular piece of nonsense. And it's like, that's no different than all the other nonsense. Not necessarily opposed to the nonsense, but don't try to tell me this one's important. It's fucking not. But I think in that, like a little street post like that with a cool little brass design in it. Like that's kind of the art that I like because it's still cool, it's still neat. It brings a little moment to your day that's like, oh cool, what is that? But it's also useful. It's in a public area and it's useful to people. That's the kind of art that I like. I like art that sort of flows and is part of the world.

Where I give life is a stream. I don't like the art that just like puts a big rock down. Here we are, here's my art. I'm just everyone's stop. Everyone's stop and pay attention to my art. This art is what you need to look at. It's like this means nothing, this is connected to nothing, this serves no purpose, this has no use. Fuck off. Fuck off with this. Go do something useful with your life artist. I don't like that shit.

But when something is integrated into your day-to-day, then it's delightful. Then it's like, oh, that's so much better than just a normal street post. That's what a clever, neat, cool thing to do. But in reality, I'm not talking about that no more. That's enough of that.

How we do in Laundry, but we're on cooldown. I suspect, I don't know, this machine says 10 kilogram and 17. I don't know what the difference is if it's actually 10 or if it's 17. But I think it's a good rule of thumb to just assume your stuff's not going to be dry all the way. And when I was in the big apartment in Fuqua, it's like, oh, that's fine. I'll just hang it up. That type of thing. But at this little place, I think I really want my clothes to just be all the way dry right now. So my assumption is that I'm going to have to throw this in the dryer now. But we will see. It's so exciting.

It looks like you can do washing and drying up to 10 kilograms. But if you just want to do washing, that's what the 17 is. You can go all the way up to 17. Man, talk about great. Being able to translate Laundry machines. Oh yeah, I noticed a little thing. Surely this has happened other places and I just never noticed. But I noticed this thing at the Daily Yamazakis. It's a good idea where they have like a sandwich board sign outside. And you know, those things are always getting knocked over and blown down and stuff. So the way this one was designed, it had the two 30:00 ebes of the sandwich board. And then it had in the middle a platform at the bottom and then a second platform with six holes in it. So you could take big two liter water bottles and there's holes for six of them. So you fill those with water. Maybe more than two liter. They're pretty big and put the six in there just to weigh down the side. So it won't get knocked over and it won't blow down. And that's such a good idea because I've seen those signs not so much in Japan. Maybe they're ready for the weather. But another place is I have a lot of memories of picking up signs from businesses. And if a sign has been blown down, I usually don't set it back up because it's just going to get blown down again. But I'll just pick it up and like lean it against the wall, you know, just so it's not just laying on the ground. But I was like, God, look at that. See, that's the kind of shit that impresses me, for sure. So utilitarian. So such a good use of, you know, we all just got water bottles kicking around. They're all over the place. You don't even need to waste water to do it. You could leave them out when it rains and fill them with rainwater. Those are your your weight bottles. Oh, here we go.

Again, yeah, that's probably nothing new, but it's new to me and I liked it. Oh, this shit seems pretty fucking dry. Holy crap. Well, let's test the jeans. Jeans are always the one if there's something that is not all the way dry. I'll do their dry. $10 well spent. All right, laundromat. You'll one me over. I'm going to have to do laundry surely one more time before I get out of here. This is where I'm coming for sure.

Oh, yeah, they've got. I've seen these at places too. The coin sneaker laundry. It is 200 yen to wash your shoes and then a hundred yen for 20 minutes in the shoe dryers. Like a special dryer that you just like put your shoes on these little sticking out pole thingies so they hang there and dry. I don't know. My shoes are actually surprisingly not dirty. Usually my shoes are just a fucking disaster because of all the like hiking around I do. I feel like in Canada my shoes are constantly covered in muddy filth but it's just not here because I almost just want to try the fucking coin washer but I just don't need to right now.

But surely eventually maybe if somehow if I get to the end of my Japan trip and my shoes still seem amazing maybe I'll try one of these just to try it and then I'll realize I was wrong when I see but real clean shoes look like I'll be like oh actually I guess my shoes were gross.

All right laundry mission complete. Now I'm going to take this stuff back to the Airbnb and maybe have a little lie down and maybe it'll take and maybe it won't. Maybe I'll head back out later maybe I won't I don't know but so tired so tired good time to do laundry easy task makes you feel good makes you feel accomplished. But I guess that's the last thing I want to yammer about is that I definitely just my personality type is I get pretty easily overwhelmed by big stuff. I really got to break it down into small stuff and when I say overwhelmed I mean it's all relative you know what I consider you know me being apprehensive and nervous about something might not seem that bad to somebody who has like real serious anxiety problems but to somebody who's Johnny action you know and probably it seems like quite a heightened level of anxiety that I have about stuff. I think I'm pretty solidly in the middle somewhere pretty average but yeah I found big stuff like my brain just shuts down and because all it takes it's just like a subtle thing it's just a slight thing like even if it doesn't seem on the surface or from the outside like it's you know I'm being affected by something it just has to bother me enough that I try to avoid it. Like if I'm teetering in the middle 50-50 on something like it doesn't have to be all the way to the like oh I don't want to do that it only has to be one little percent if it just tilts one little degree over if it's just 51 percent you know 51 percent I don't want to do it 49 percent it's no problem that little 1 percent is enough it just is enough to just be like well then I just won't I won't deal with that right now I won't think about it right now I don't want to 35:00 doesn't feel good so I won't you know it's like if you can put something off you don't have to want too very badly to do it is what I found it's easy for little things to sort of become a big issue because I'm just I'll just sort of slightly put that off and slightly put that off and slightly put that off forever and it's uh I've noticed it in many places in my life like with writing the whole way I kind of discovered how to be a very slow writer but at least to not stop is I realized eventually that I was becoming overwhelmed by the prospect of you know writing a novel it's just so big and so enormous you feel like you'll never get to the end but then the end is really just the starting line as far as now someone needs to read it now you got to hope someone will publish it and you got to hope someone will care then either no one will care and that's surprising or everyone will care and you'd become some horrible worldwide celebrity and your life will never be the same again like there's kind of there are so many pressures and so much stress involved you know that like it might seem silly to uh to be concerned about success but if all it takes is one little percentage point one little degree to make something seem stressful enough to the point that you don't want to do it you know it's a highly unlikely scenario oh no I'm too famous you know it's not likely but it's it just it makes it feel like there's no way out it's like jeez either I'm in a fail and I don't want that or I'm in a succeed and I don't want that and then you're like well why am I even doing this anyway and then sort of subconsciously you just stop doing it so in the case of writing I realized I just had to break it down to a very small thing just try to do a little bit each day just a tiny little bit just progress things in the smallest little bit each day and the downside to that is it takes many years to write a book it's gonna take you seven years eight years nine years ten years who knows but it has worked in the sense that I haven't stopped I wrote a whole book about the video game the last of us now I'm writing a fiction novel it goes slow because I only do a little bit each day but I would have given up so many times by now in my old method of just kind of winging it and just assuming that it would all work out and then just having these phantom stresses build up in my mind till I just stop even if I didn't decide deliberately to stop I just would realize at some point like shit what happened when did I stop why am I stopped if I just do a little nibble of work each day I just don't stop I just keep going it feels like it's like a weird force field like if you run at it full speed you bounce off the force field but if you walk through it slowly then it's like jello and you can just push your way through and you can slowly make your way through to the other side and to eventual success but if you try to just do it too fast do too much at once just force and force and force then the force field says no and you do not make it to the other side and what I found is that that kind of applies to all the stuff in life not just writing just anything that is a little bit stressful and I don't really want to do and my recent example was just having to add baggage to my ticket from Fuquaoka and having to go into the website figure that all out go through the credit card process have it be rejected figure out how to use Skype to call my bank and then get the charge to go through not a big deal but I kept putting it off because I just didn't want to deal with that stuff it was enough to make me just not want to do it so the next step is what I do after Japan you know I set all this stuff up and the process of setting up Airbnb's and flights to Japan was very similar but I got it all done and it's like all right I did it I did it and now I'm here I'm doing it but it ain't gonna last forever I've only got a few more weeks and then I gotta go somewhere else and I can't leave it till the last moment I've already left it too long you know as far as getting a flight getting Airbnb's they're only gonna get more expensive every day that I wait and beyond the normal stressors what's also making this stressful is that I just don't feel totally comfortable with what the next step should be this was the plan this was the step this was what I wanted to do was to come back to Japan I mean I feel like I'm doing the thing I don't want to stop this I would just say here for much longer if I could 40:00 maybe I can do the thing where I leave and come back but even that's a little stressful because one of those rules that's very fuzzy probably it would be fine but I just don't know so that's uncomfortable probably I mean South Korea just seems like the obvious thing but it's still weird that I'm only doing it because I have to I didn't grow up with South Korean comic books I didn't grow up with South Korean video games I didn't grow up with South Korean cartoons I don't know much about South Korea you know I haven't been steeped in media like I was just thinking actually speaking of Japan going to buy that curry bread there's this Sega Genesis game called Gunstar Heroes it's one of the one of the classic games of the Mega Drive era it really holds up well it's like more genius even than I realized it was the way it's like a side scrolling shooter and it has these different weapon combinations you can use so you can just use like a homing missiles and whatever homing guns and that's usually what I did when I was a kid but then I realized playing it as an adult that it's actually really brilliantly balanced because now I play every game on hard and on hard the homing gun just doesn't pack enough punch you know it makes it easier to aim it stuff but you're just going to be in these boss fights forever so you got to use the more finicky guns the little short range laser beam guns so it has this built-in way at the higher difficulties of making you play in a different way what a great game anyway it's also kind of a silly game and one of the bosses he takes on all these different weird forms these different fighting stances and one of them was called curry bread and one of them was called melon bread and I didn't know what any of that shipment when I was a kid and it's just weird now that I love curry bread and I love melon bread and I always think back to like Gunstar Heroes like I'm melon bread that's the first time I heard of that stuff didn't know what it meant back then because it wasn't even actual melon bread in the game it was just the name melon bread because again Sega stuff not very well localized their games are not very Americanized But that's a great example of why I like being in Japan, because even just some random thing, just going to buy curry bread, I can tie that back to a game I had when I was like 12 or 13 years old. You know, there's all these tendrils that go back through pop culture. Where with South Korea, I've only recently started getting into anything from there. South Korean comics are called Manwa, and they're starting to get a bit popular, and they're cool because they're fully digital. So instead of pages that you flip, it's just a non-stop vertical scroll, because you're just scrolling down your phone. You just scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll forever. And they also, I guess, apparently porn is not legal in South Korea, but porn comics are. So that's interesting too. I can tell you all about like how Japanese porn comics, the style is just so weird where what they do to like heighten the intensity of a scene is visual noise, like crazy lines everywhere, sound effects, sweat, and characters literally going off-model, like practically becoming distended. And I just don't like that style. Like I was saying last episode, I like girl comics in Japan. I like white space. I like calm scenes. I like clean artwork, clean in the sense of the style, not the subject matter. I don't mind it all porn comics. That's fine. But Korean comics, I don't know why this is or where exactly they originate from or what their history is. You can trace Japanese comics and anime pretty clearly back to Disney. It's not too hard to connect those dots and then suddenly you get big eyes and stuff like that. Korean comics are not like that. A little bit, they are. They have a bit of Asian influence. But mostly all the characters are normal human proportion. Most of the comics are contemporary. They're just about modern day life. Occasionally there's some fantasy comic or something. But even that is probably a guy in an internet cafe playing an MMO and then through the MMO. But even that's pretty rare. And there's all these common tropes about like guys coming back from the military. And I was like, oh yeah, of course they have all that stuff going on with North Korea. In Korea, mandatory military is required. They got the stupid mushroom haircut, which is I guess less in style now. But you can see a whole raft of comic books from Korea. Every guy has this one stupid haircut that was just popular at the time. And the women in these comics, I mean, to be honest, I've read more porn comics than normal comics from Korea. That's just how the fucking cookie crumbled. 45:00 But they have this movement called body con, body conscious of like spandex and, you know, form-fitting dresses and stuff, which is not at all how people dress here in Japan. So I wonder in Korea, are there really going to be people that are dressed like that? Because nobody's dressed like that here. How much am I learning from these comics? How much of this is the truth? How much of this is the reality? How much is just comics? I don't know. Because Japanese comics certainly don't teach you that much about Japan. It's all these weird like snob bubbles coming out of people's noses and nosebleeds and weird shit going on. Where South Korean comics are like very realistic. And I would say like almost European in style, there's no, no speed lines, you know? There's no visual noise. There's no busyness. It's just these like nice still drawings just kind of meant to emulate a real scene. And in the case of the porn comics, I mean, I think part of it is like if we can't have porn, this is the next best thing. So they're basically just like, I suspect they're just tracing porn. And sometimes, but it's like definitely leads to a style that's all their own. Like you're not going to mistake a South Korean man who offer any other country's comic books. It's not the same as European comics. It's not the same as North American comics. It's not the same as Japanese comics.