First. Sorry Mom.
Second. Yes. I am holding a man I thought to be Mister Miyagi in a train station. We all did. Wax on, wax off!
Third. 11,000 people (incredible. Thank you) read my last blog entry about drunken shenanigans so who am I to not ride the wave? I figure a drunken story brought you all here so I'll tell you debauchery filled stories about my life to keep you coming back.
This episode starts with a close friend of mine that I used to work with at an airline. He had won two return tickets to Tokyo, Japan at a company party and invited me to go. We had two weeks off around Christmas and decided to head over to the land of the rising sun before the tickets expired. You'll find some of the photos in the gallery below.
The night before I'm supposed to fly to Tokyo, I find myself flying from Calgary to Vancouver with The Legend (yes, that's his real name, no not the guys I went to Japan with) who happened to have two floor tickets to see ACDC at GM Place. I'm not really a rock guy but the idea of getting out to Vancouver a day early for my flight just seemed to make sense and the concert was just a bonus. The concert was awesome. Drunk as fuck on fireball and way too fuckin' many beers consumed equaled a pretty good time. After the concert we had plans to hook up with one of my best buddies who works at an extremely popular rock bar in Van.
Everything is awesome, were partying and having a fucking beauty night with some random retired NHLers. BOOM. The ugly lights come on. Party over. My buddy grabs myself and The Legend and ushers us out the back door carrying his backpack which is FUCKING FULL of airline-sized liquor bottles, were talking hundreds. The three of us start to tuck into these tasty morsels in the back alley like we were homeless men finding... well... like homeless guys finding a shit-tonne of free booze. Good and shitfaced we stumble off to what was described as an "apartment trashing party" where one of the tenants had been evicted due to him and his boyfriend(?) making loud gay-sex noises during their gay sex. Or something like that.
We arrive at to this party at 3am. Loud gay porn music playing, gay disco lights flashing at seizure pace, gay dudes running around everywhere and all sorts of other non-christian behaviour being displayed for the public eye. As we come in through the sliding door we are greeted by a rather large lesbian lady who is stapling thousands of gay porn pictures on the wall. Not one square inch of this apartment wasn't covered in some sort of anus smashing, pole sitting, gay rodeo kind of visual entertainment. We made a hasty exit from what truly was the weirdest and most visually disturbing party I've ever been to.
I wake up fully clothed and sleeping next to The Legend on a 'rape' mattress in the living room of my buddies house the next morning. I'm still pretty drunk. My flight leaves in 2 hours and I'm 30 minutes from the airport. I smell like a bag of smashed asshole and I'm sure my breath could start a diesel engine. Panic sets in. Bypassing the shower, food, or any sort of sobering measure, The Legend and I catch a cab to the airport.
Arriving at the airport an hour and a half before a major international flight looking and smelling like someone just kicked you out of an AA meeting isn't the best idea when you're trying to get bumped up to first class. The Legend ditches me for his flight back to Calgary and I meet up with my travel companion who we will call - Hanamasa (He's Caucasian but it means "cheap groceries" in Japanese and that's a pretty accurate description of this kid). After standing in line for what seemed like 3 weeks while using the baggage cart for balance we get to the front of the line. The only two seats left were first class. Bingo. We just paid under $150 dollars for a round-trip, first class ride to Japan. Fuck all of you.
After spending the first night at my buddy Mantwon's place in Tokyo we take the train to Hiroshima the next afternoon. The minute after we checked into our hostel and got our bearings, we did what any Canadian on foreign soil would do. We went in search of sweet lady liquor. Shocking. It's a week day and there are four (4) other people in this Irish pub (yea, we went to an Irish pub in Japan. Eat shit) and not one of them spoke any sort of English.
After what seemed like a thousand beers later the two of us start to get a bit... Canadian? I mean in the best, most polite, peacekeeping, let the world know you're friendly kind of Canadian. We invite the four Japanese dudes over to our table and using the international language of drunkenese, are able to communicate somewhat effectively. We're like the UN right now, except wicked drunk - as in we're smoothing over international relations through alcohol. The amount of alcohol consumed starts a whole series of events that included us going behind the bar to pour our own drinks, shirts off arm and leg wrestling, and finally, Hanamasa peeing into a Christmas Tree which eventually lead to us being kicked out of the bar. This means there are two large, drunk as fuck Canadians loose on the street at 11pm or so we think. Look out.
Somehow we got rye-whiskey drunk while punishing beers like it was our fucking job. Two large guys that are ryetarded in a country full of small quiet, respectable humans can only equate to one thing. Godzilla. The streets are getting torn up, traffic cones are flying into the street, signs are being used as stripper poles, bushes are being jumped into, mayhem ensues. Then as quickly as it started, we got bored and we flag down a cab. Fun fact - Almost every cabby in Canada takes Visa. With Japan being a technologically superior nation we assumed that this one would too. Politely, we ask the cab driver if he takes credit cards, obviously not understanding a fucking word we've said, he shakes his head yes.. The cab goes literally about 30 feet before we show him a credit card, just to make sure. He slams on his brakes, starts speaking loudly in a language we don't understand so we say fuck it and get out and start walking.
I should say that before we left Calgary, a few of our coworkers started a pool on how long it would take us to get arrested. The consensus was 30 hours. Spot on gentlemen. Spot fucking on.
15 minutes of drunken stupor goes by before we start seeing flashing lights behind us. Police. Fuck. They have to be after us as we just went Kat Williams on the strip in Hiroshima. In this moment of worry and panic, Hanamasa has a BRILLIANT idea, "Lets switch hoodies so they don't know it was us" he says. Yea, two huge, loud and obnoxious white drunk kids are going to evade the Japanese police by trading sweaters...with each other. Drunken logic prevails, we swap.
As I'm walking away from the police lights I'm grabbed by 3 little dudes who look like they just left their job as an elevator attendant, or flight attendant, or every evil Japanese character in any movie. Little navy blue hat, tight navy blue button down jacket, little navy blue pants, nice dress shoes. You know what I'm talking about. Anyways, being much bigger, much more drunk and in a foreign country my fight or flight response kicks in. I start throwing these dudes off of me like I'm a sexy new inmate running through a prison shower.
In front of me is another every-asian-movie-actor-ever little dude who's bowing and pointing to the back seat of a police car. I get it now. I'm being arrested not attacked. It runs through my head that I'm going to get deported less than 2 days into my trip because we Godzilla'd the main street of Hiroshima. Fair enough. These folks have seen enough trauma for a hundred lifetimes. We deserve it. Turns out Hanamasa got chucked into another police car behind me. Just like that cheesy, sappy saying goes - A good friend will bail you out of jail but a best friend will be sitting right next to you asking what the fuck happened? Confirmed.
There's a lot of 'grey' as to what happened next but I came around in the middle of conversation I'm having with a police officer. He's on me, asking me questions in full unbroken Japanese. I'm replying in English as if we fully understand each other. Idiots we are. The trouble is, somehow he's got my passport and pointing to a document written in Japanese and as drunk as I am, I can't turn the paper around enough to have the symbols make sense. At this point I'm too drunk to care. I snatch my passport out of his hands and get out of the car. As I exit, a TV camera is shoved in my face with bright lights and the whole bit. Little dudes running around with headsets on and talking to each other, moving around to get the best angles. Hanamasa and I are on the Japanese version of COPS. Fuck my life.
I hear Hanamasa yell into the camera "WE'RE THE BIGGEST THINGS TO HIT JAPAN SINCE THE A-BOMB" . In a city where that shit actually happened it's pretty offside to belt out but at the time it just felt right. Legendary. Crude as it was, Legen-fucking-dary.
The Japanese are awesome people. Ridiculously respectful and kind. As this whole being on TV nightmare istaking place, the cab driver from before shows up to explain to the cops that he called the police because we ditched the cab without paying. Or so we think. The cabby walks over and bows to Hanamasa, hands him like 4 dollars in change and leaves. We're now free and clear to go. What the fuck is this place?
Before letting us go the fuzz made me sign some papers that were written in Japanese. There wasn't a table or hard surface to sign on so I used the next best thing. I grabbed a cop by his jacket and hauled him over so I could sign the paper on his back. In Canada, I'd be tazed to death before being charged with assaulting an officer. In Japan? The other officers started laughing hysterically at their buddy who was being manhandled by the chubby white kid. Japan is so awesomely backwards and fucked up.
I still don't know what those were for. A release for the TV crews? Maybe. A note promising I'd get the fuck outta Japan tomorrow? Or maybe we were actually famous and it was just an autograph. Who knows. Who cares. Just get me the fuck home. I guess we were nice enough that the cops even drove us back to the hostel and had a lineup of officers waiting there for us, shaking our hands and bowing. Pretty fucking impressive. That night, we were huge in Japan.
All of this added up to be one of the most rowdy 36 hour periods of my life involving some of the best people in my life. Some times you've just gotta risk being a fucking idiot to get a good story out of it.
Some of the trip photos are in the gallery below.
Second. Yes. I am holding a man I thought to be Mister Miyagi in a train station. We all did. Wax on, wax off!
Third. 11,000 people (incredible. Thank you) read my last blog entry about drunken shenanigans so who am I to not ride the wave? I figure a drunken story brought you all here so I'll tell you debauchery filled stories about my life to keep you coming back.
This episode starts with a close friend of mine that I used to work with at an airline. He had won two return tickets to Tokyo, Japan at a company party and invited me to go. We had two weeks off around Christmas and decided to head over to the land of the rising sun before the tickets expired. You'll find some of the photos in the gallery below.
The night before I'm supposed to fly to Tokyo, I find myself flying from Calgary to Vancouver with The Legend (yes, that's his real name, no not the guys I went to Japan with) who happened to have two floor tickets to see ACDC at GM Place. I'm not really a rock guy but the idea of getting out to Vancouver a day early for my flight just seemed to make sense and the concert was just a bonus. The concert was awesome. Drunk as fuck on fireball and way too fuckin' many beers consumed equaled a pretty good time. After the concert we had plans to hook up with one of my best buddies who works at an extremely popular rock bar in Van.
Everything is awesome, were partying and having a fucking beauty night with some random retired NHLers. BOOM. The ugly lights come on. Party over. My buddy grabs myself and The Legend and ushers us out the back door carrying his backpack which is FUCKING FULL of airline-sized liquor bottles, were talking hundreds. The three of us start to tuck into these tasty morsels in the back alley like we were homeless men finding... well... like homeless guys finding a shit-tonne of free booze. Good and shitfaced we stumble off to what was described as an "apartment trashing party" where one of the tenants had been evicted due to him and his boyfriend(?) making loud gay-sex noises during their gay sex. Or something like that.
We arrive at to this party at 3am. Loud gay porn music playing, gay disco lights flashing at seizure pace, gay dudes running around everywhere and all sorts of other non-christian behaviour being displayed for the public eye. As we come in through the sliding door we are greeted by a rather large lesbian lady who is stapling thousands of gay porn pictures on the wall. Not one square inch of this apartment wasn't covered in some sort of anus smashing, pole sitting, gay rodeo kind of visual entertainment. We made a hasty exit from what truly was the weirdest and most visually disturbing party I've ever been to.
I wake up fully clothed and sleeping next to The Legend on a 'rape' mattress in the living room of my buddies house the next morning. I'm still pretty drunk. My flight leaves in 2 hours and I'm 30 minutes from the airport. I smell like a bag of smashed asshole and I'm sure my breath could start a diesel engine. Panic sets in. Bypassing the shower, food, or any sort of sobering measure, The Legend and I catch a cab to the airport.
Arriving at the airport an hour and a half before a major international flight looking and smelling like someone just kicked you out of an AA meeting isn't the best idea when you're trying to get bumped up to first class. The Legend ditches me for his flight back to Calgary and I meet up with my travel companion who we will call - Hanamasa (He's Caucasian but it means "cheap groceries" in Japanese and that's a pretty accurate description of this kid). After standing in line for what seemed like 3 weeks while using the baggage cart for balance we get to the front of the line. The only two seats left were first class. Bingo. We just paid under $150 dollars for a round-trip, first class ride to Japan. Fuck all of you.
After spending the first night at my buddy Mantwon's place in Tokyo we take the train to Hiroshima the next afternoon. The minute after we checked into our hostel and got our bearings, we did what any Canadian on foreign soil would do. We went in search of sweet lady liquor. Shocking. It's a week day and there are four (4) other people in this Irish pub (yea, we went to an Irish pub in Japan. Eat shit) and not one of them spoke any sort of English.
After what seemed like a thousand beers later the two of us start to get a bit... Canadian? I mean in the best, most polite, peacekeeping, let the world know you're friendly kind of Canadian. We invite the four Japanese dudes over to our table and using the international language of drunkenese, are able to communicate somewhat effectively. We're like the UN right now, except wicked drunk - as in we're smoothing over international relations through alcohol. The amount of alcohol consumed starts a whole series of events that included us going behind the bar to pour our own drinks, shirts off arm and leg wrestling, and finally, Hanamasa peeing into a Christmas Tree which eventually lead to us being kicked out of the bar. This means there are two large, drunk as fuck Canadians loose on the street at 11pm or so we think. Look out.
Somehow we got rye-whiskey drunk while punishing beers like it was our fucking job. Two large guys that are ryetarded in a country full of small quiet, respectable humans can only equate to one thing. Godzilla. The streets are getting torn up, traffic cones are flying into the street, signs are being used as stripper poles, bushes are being jumped into, mayhem ensues. Then as quickly as it started, we got bored and we flag down a cab. Fun fact - Almost every cabby in Canada takes Visa. With Japan being a technologically superior nation we assumed that this one would too. Politely, we ask the cab driver if he takes credit cards, obviously not understanding a fucking word we've said, he shakes his head yes.. The cab goes literally about 30 feet before we show him a credit card, just to make sure. He slams on his brakes, starts speaking loudly in a language we don't understand so we say fuck it and get out and start walking.
I should say that before we left Calgary, a few of our coworkers started a pool on how long it would take us to get arrested. The consensus was 30 hours. Spot on gentlemen. Spot fucking on.
15 minutes of drunken stupor goes by before we start seeing flashing lights behind us. Police. Fuck. They have to be after us as we just went Kat Williams on the strip in Hiroshima. In this moment of worry and panic, Hanamasa has a BRILLIANT idea, "Lets switch hoodies so they don't know it was us" he says. Yea, two huge, loud and obnoxious white drunk kids are going to evade the Japanese police by trading sweaters...with each other. Drunken logic prevails, we swap.
As I'm walking away from the police lights I'm grabbed by 3 little dudes who look like they just left their job as an elevator attendant, or flight attendant, or every evil Japanese character in any movie. Little navy blue hat, tight navy blue button down jacket, little navy blue pants, nice dress shoes. You know what I'm talking about. Anyways, being much bigger, much more drunk and in a foreign country my fight or flight response kicks in. I start throwing these dudes off of me like I'm a sexy new inmate running through a prison shower.
In front of me is another every-asian-movie-actor-ever little dude who's bowing and pointing to the back seat of a police car. I get it now. I'm being arrested not attacked. It runs through my head that I'm going to get deported less than 2 days into my trip because we Godzilla'd the main street of Hiroshima. Fair enough. These folks have seen enough trauma for a hundred lifetimes. We deserve it. Turns out Hanamasa got chucked into another police car behind me. Just like that cheesy, sappy saying goes - A good friend will bail you out of jail but a best friend will be sitting right next to you asking what the fuck happened? Confirmed.
There's a lot of 'grey' as to what happened next but I came around in the middle of conversation I'm having with a police officer. He's on me, asking me questions in full unbroken Japanese. I'm replying in English as if we fully understand each other. Idiots we are. The trouble is, somehow he's got my passport and pointing to a document written in Japanese and as drunk as I am, I can't turn the paper around enough to have the symbols make sense. At this point I'm too drunk to care. I snatch my passport out of his hands and get out of the car. As I exit, a TV camera is shoved in my face with bright lights and the whole bit. Little dudes running around with headsets on and talking to each other, moving around to get the best angles. Hanamasa and I are on the Japanese version of COPS. Fuck my life.
I hear Hanamasa yell into the camera "WE'RE THE BIGGEST THINGS TO HIT JAPAN SINCE THE A-BOMB" . In a city where that shit actually happened it's pretty offside to belt out but at the time it just felt right. Legendary. Crude as it was, Legen-fucking-dary.
The Japanese are awesome people. Ridiculously respectful and kind. As this whole being on TV nightmare istaking place, the cab driver from before shows up to explain to the cops that he called the police because we ditched the cab without paying. Or so we think. The cabby walks over and bows to Hanamasa, hands him like 4 dollars in change and leaves. We're now free and clear to go. What the fuck is this place?
Before letting us go the fuzz made me sign some papers that were written in Japanese. There wasn't a table or hard surface to sign on so I used the next best thing. I grabbed a cop by his jacket and hauled him over so I could sign the paper on his back. In Canada, I'd be tazed to death before being charged with assaulting an officer. In Japan? The other officers started laughing hysterically at their buddy who was being manhandled by the chubby white kid. Japan is so awesomely backwards and fucked up.
I still don't know what those were for. A release for the TV crews? Maybe. A note promising I'd get the fuck outta Japan tomorrow? Or maybe we were actually famous and it was just an autograph. Who knows. Who cares. Just get me the fuck home. I guess we were nice enough that the cops even drove us back to the hostel and had a lineup of officers waiting there for us, shaking our hands and bowing. Pretty fucking impressive. That night, we were huge in Japan.
All of this added up to be one of the most rowdy 36 hour periods of my life involving some of the best people in my life. Some times you've just gotta risk being a fucking idiot to get a good story out of it.
Some of the trip photos are in the gallery below.
RSS Feed