A Rising Sun and a Smelly Shipyard

Written January 25, 2010:

One hour by subway, six hours by train, and three by ferry found me and my comrades, Julie and Matt, in Fukuoka. A minor hiccup in immigration foreshadowed Matt's misfortune, and ours for sharing his company. Nevertheless, we ate a splendid dinner, made it to the hotel and crashed by midnight. Before I could drift off entirely, I was deeply disturbed to find that my roommate Matt had managed to swallow not one, not two, but an entire orchestra of chainsaws which he insisted he tune through the entirety of the night despite persistent requests to shut the hell up.

Somewhat delirious from a sleepless night, I trekked along in a daze to temples and gardens, all of which were relatively underwhelming, made even slightly annoying by the overzealous commentary from Matt, who turns out doesn't know when to shut the hell up regardless his level of consciousness. No detail too inane, no sight too obscure; our chubby chain-smoking bucktooth brainiac found something to say. Sometime during the day, while Matt was performing his civic duty of sharing a whole lotta who-gives-a-fuck, a comfortable silence set in as an enveloping ring began due to a brain aneurysm that caused my soul to seep from my ears.

After Julie and I pulled a Lord of the Flies on Piggy, we had a relaxing vacation full of voluntary mutism while visiting a much more whelming temple where we ate tofu at a 370-year-old restaurant. Following which we took a solemn trip to Hiroshima, which was da bomb (hyuk, hyuk!).

Returning from Japan, my boss calls to ask where I am. Apparently we were leaving a day earlier than I thought. I booked it to the bus station with my unpacked bag from Japan (which luckily had enough clean clothes left to make it through) to squeak in at the last second. An hour bus ride and a four hour flight to check in at a four star hotel at the Gold Coast in Hong Kong, which means "Fragrant Harbor." Not a second was lost the next morning as we were rushed from one place to the next by a chartered bus with excessively large and delicious meals all too frequent in between. Temples and towers, beaches and mountains, tea and bamboo liquor at a floating restaurant in the shipyard (oh, and guess what; the US nails Chinese food. 'Cept for fortune cookies. Those aren't Chinese). All ended with a bang at an American operated recreation of Venice in Portuguese-owned territory of southeast Asia where we were all given a generous amount to gamble away at the casino, which we all promptly did.

P.S. I read this quote from Mitch Hedberg and nearly pissed my pants; thought I'd share: "Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something."