Worst Cover of Anything, Ever

This is an affront to all that is good and holy. Kindly die and be forgotten forever, MCR.

Fish Master

I ate this fish tonight. It's called karee, which I think is like flounder or something. It looked like a frying fish, so I did that with it, and that worked out pretty well. The salad is made of edible chrysanthemum and some other vegetable that I'm not going to bother looking up. It seems like fried fish usually comes with lemon slices, so I bought a lemon and, weirdly enough, sliced it.

Cooking is very strange when you aren't using a recipe. It is like art or something because you have to picture what you want beforehand and figure out how to get there. Obviously, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. This time it turned out pretty well, despite the fish seemingly being designed not to be cut up, being a flatfish with all the organs pushed to one side.

Which reminds me, intelligent design is ridiculous. There are only two Americans within an hour of where I live, I'm pretty sure, and neither of them believe in evolution. When somebody mentions that, I instantly lose respect for them. You pretty much have to be an idiot not to think evolution by natural selection is the right theory. It seriously makes me very mad to think that my country is being represented here by people who are not only ignorant but willfully ignorant, and all too happy to spread their disdain for science and reason anywhere they can get a foothold. Seriously, stupids, leave Japan alone.

Hard Rain

I've been trying to fix the whole in my musical knowledge where jazz should be lately by listening to John Coltrane and Charles Mingus, just for a start. While they are both really wonderful even after only a cursory listen, with Mingus standing out as being particularly inventive and fun, I find myself return to the places I'm familiar with, like Tom Waits's proverbial rain dogs. In this case, I mean returning to my idol, Bobby Dylan.

He's like that, though, always having something to return to, no matter how you feel. I'm listening to Hard Rain tonight, an album probably not many of you are familiar with out there. It's a live album recorded in 1976, part of the Rolling Thunder Revue, post Desire. I think I've mentioned Desire on here before. It's really the last in his string of great albums starting with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Desire is preceded by Blood on the Tracks (technically by The Basement Tapes, but that was recorded earlier), one of his most famous albums. Blood is simply beautiful in its sadness, generally seen as Dylan's reaction to his separation, mostly soft songs of confusion and hurt and definitely worth a listen. Desire is part travelogue, part angry calls for justice on behalf of American anti-heros, and part desperate last cries at a failed relationship. It is probably his most intense studio album and wonderful, even if it requires a few listens to get into past the immortal "Hurricane."

Enough background, then. Hard Rain is from the tour presumably in support of that album, but only features one track ("Oh, Sister") from it. He's backed by similar instruments, anyway. There's screeching violin and drums that somehow come off as a mix between haphazard pounding and pinpoint accuracy. Dylan's own performance is what I love, though. It's really as if he can't stand what he was thinking when he wrote/recorded the originals. "Idiot Wind," the closing track, is a little disappointing, but "Lay, Lady, Lay," "Shelter from the Storm," and "I Threw it all Away" all come off almost like him mocking his own efforts out of self-loathing and doing a great job the whole time. He turns some of his most touching, softest songs into multi-layered battles with himself, winning by yelling over top of his band, who is trying their hardest just to keep the songs some sense of orderly, it seems to me.

Critics don't like this album, and I see why; the band lacks the energy to really capture the songs in one way or another. The critics are really right in complaining about it, but sometimes it is just right. It's Dylan right as he is finally collapsing, before he is mumbling from the ruins of his life on Street Legal, before his conversion to fire-breathing evangelism. Dig it tonight.

Pictures of Drinks

The promised picture of beer. This is Kirin W (?), which seems to have just been introduced with little fanfare. It is pretty much the worst beer I have had here, very light on flavor.


You know how on cereal commercials, they always say, "part of a complete breakfast," and then show a picture of the cereal with other breakfast foods, with the pure sugar cereals needing a whole other meal to complete them? Without fail, part of the breakfast is a glass of milk and a glass of orange juice. I always thought that was ridiculous because who does that, and why would you need to drink milk along with cereal IN MILK? Anyway, I actually had both milk and this kind of orange juice substitute (10% juice!) for once, so I thought I would take a picture in memory of all the junk cereals out there.

Comments

Seriously, that last post was good and you people aren't commenting at all. I know you don't like seeing posts that are just pictures of beer or links to YouTube garbage, but that is what is going to happen if you don't comment on posts about crazy cultural stuff I have done. I know there were no pictures, but it is not possible to carry a camera around in a loincloth while you are fighting a thousand other dudes for some chopsticks stuck together.

Naked Man Festival

On Saturday, I took a train down to the beautiful city of Okayama, home to the legendary Momotarou. That night there was a festival at a temple that I was participating in, with a group of foreigners from all over Japan. There were tons of Japanese people there, too, of course. This festival involves around a thousand men (I think, I don't know, really) wearing only fundoshi and tabi, which are a piece of cloth wrapped around one like a diaper and cloth shoes, respectively, pushing each other in a giant mass, trying to get one of a few shingi, which are some kind of stick. It's absolutely unbelievable. There's a temple building at the top of some stairs where dudes are just packed in and fighting to get these little sticks. If you manage to get a stick, the goal is to get it down the steps and out the front gate to the temple. A couple of the bigger sticks are worth about a thousand dollars if you can get them out the front. Keep in mind that you are so packed in that you can't really move at all. It's a bit dangerous and these people are actually trying very hard to get the sticks, but they're also generally looking to make sure nobody gets really hurt and are generally friendly. Before the match, if that's what you can even call it, all the men participating run around the temple grounds and the surrounding streets in fundoshi and tabi, including running through a pool of freezing cold water, generally in groups, arms across shoulders, chanting. It's crazy, but crazy fun. Two of the guys in our foreigner group managed to get sticks, which is basically unprecedented. This is the first time that a foreigner has gotten one, I think, though they weren't worth any money. Too bad. For the record, I didn't even get to see the sticks until it was all over and we were back on the bus. It is that insane. Sorry for the unorganized paragraph style.

"People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people."

-Peep Show