Entries this day: Dream Messages Phone cherry_blossoms_in_Ueno

Dream

8:40am JST Friday 4 April 2003

"It's a charley barley barely burger"

My friends and I had through it would be fun to ride on the back of the truck as our boss was driving to Tennessee or someplace hopefully not so far away. The truck had started out as trains and we were testing our train boarding skills. I had been able to barely climb up the slick stainless steel outer casing of the train, but somehow I did it. I held on for a while, but it became apparent I wouldn't be able to do this the whole time.

So we opened the doors more and I climbed in with my friends onto the futons and other soft things loaded into the back of the truck. The back doors swung open and some of our stuff fell off. I was all, "oh shit our stuff is falling off!" and I jumped off to go rescue it. Like a couple sleeping bags, and a purse (although who needs sleeping bags with so many futons?)

The truck was driving quite slowly, though I didn't know how much longer it would be driving so slowly. I ran away from the truck, grabbing two sleeping bags, and tossed one up. It almost made it through the small gap between the futons and the edge of the door. I tried again and made it. I tossed the other bag up as well, and then ran further away from the truck to recover my friend's purse.

I had a distinct feeling that our boss driving the truck would be able to see me in the rearview mirrors since I had run so far back behind the truck.

Grabbed her purse anyway and ran back toward the truck. But the truck turned toward the left, making me clearly visible in the mirrors, so I dropped down prone on the floor to make myself less visible. He turned right (back away from me again) and I thought I was okay. But then I realized he was just swinging around to U turn.

I was caught. I lay on the ground with my friend's purse and another bag as the huge 18 wheeler drove slowly toward me. At this point, the game was up; I didn't try to hide what I had been doing, nor try to implicate my friends; maybe they could still get away.

I ended up at the main office, with no way to get home, but I had called my dad for help. After a while a woman came in.

"Rob? This is from your dad [to help you get home]." She held three items: bag of cookies, stack of bologna, stack of white bread; she placed them down one at a time on the table beside me. "He said to tell you it's a 'Charley,' 'barley,' 'barely burger'"

Good pun there, dad. Not.

Messages

1:04pm JST Friday 4 April 2003

I'm in Tsunashima train station waiting for a train to Ueno, where I'll meet Janelle, Kevin, Andrew to ooh and ahh over cherry blossom trees. I expect they'll be quite lovely, but I wonder if they will meet my expectations...

I chatted with Janette (& Sean a little bit (& Josephine a very little bit)) and Marcel this morning. Janette and I had set up an electronic date just for chatting. Good stuff. Got the latest on the Dallas-YRUU front.

Here's my train.

- - - -

Okay; I'll take this train to Shibuya (one of the big stations on the train-track-loop around Tokyo) and then take the loop to the opposite side (almost exactly according to this not-to-scale map) of Tokyo to Ueno (another big station on the loop around Tokyo) where I hope I can follow the directions in Janelle's text message (the phones here are one's dream or nightmare).

GINZA LINE SOUT
H EXIT 2PM BRIN
G PICNIC CALL I
F PROBS
J

Awrighhhh.

1:18pm

Haha I just wrote a message to DruDaddyG and spelled Shibuya with hiragana instead of romanji. Man, talk about fun! My ideas of fun have certainly changed......

I told Dru that I'm going to SHIBUYA and he's all, "why are you going to SHIBUYA, we are going to UENO" (and the station names (all caps here) were in hiragana) so I wrote back

UENO?  i thot it
wz KAKIBOBACHIHI
HABOBACHI

Phone

1:48pm JST Friday 4 April 2003

dammit

I was so entertained with myself that I left my phone on the other train.

I wrote the message, laughing to myself at how fucking funny I am and put the phone between my legs for safe keeping while I wrote the entry. Got up off the train... left the phone.

Maybe if the little fuckers weren't so small!

I'd be willing to bet more money that I'll get my phone back than bet money I'll love the cherry blossoms today.

I hope I can fin.....

nevamind.

I had put it in one of my lower pants pockets.

I was going to say I hope I can find Dru et. al.

cherry blossoms in Ueno

11:21pm JST Friday 4 April 2003

Today was packed.

Janelle & Kevin plus Dru were already at the park by the time I arrived. I thought I was late, but tons of people came after me.. Mindy, Emma, Chris, Shehan, then at the very end, Robbie, someone else... durnit

ANYWAY, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom and quite beautiful. Imagine a park covered in trees and all the trees blooming white with small blossoms, delicate and fragrant.

The ground was mostly covered with blue tarps, with a few families using them for picnic type things. The tarps remained clean as everyone removed their shoes before stepping onto them.

Janelle & Kevin brought sheets for us to use and we got some giggles from those around us. We moved to a tarp, but got gently booted off cause we had not paid to use it. We were moved under a short cherry blossom tree with pink blossoms.

Turns out this tree is like the cool tree in the place cause tons of people came to photograph it. Japanese girls across from us wrestled and shrieked and giggled and fell all over each other in drunken revelry. One of the tarp dwellers across the tree from us came over with a bottle of sake. He was all pointing to the blossoms and saying the name in Japanese (which I've forgotten), like "cherry blossom :: sake!!" holding up the bottle, and poured us all some sake to celebrate the cherry blossom in full glorious bloom.

Over the next hour or so they offered us plenty of sake, Jim Beam whiskey "Amelican!", donuts, white knit gloves, and maybe other stuff. So friendly and so great!

THEN some guys came over with a big TV camera all smiling and friendly and the guy was like, "nihongo?" to ask us if he could interview us in Japanese, but we were like, "no" and he goes, "oh, English only" and therefore proceeded to ask Emma (the only female among us five guys) a simple question that seemed to be about the cherry blossoms. She was all, "oh they are beautiful; I enjoy them everyday," and then moved on to the next tarp for some Japanese interviews. We fucked with Emma like, "oh, he was asking you about the salarymen," or "what if he was asking you about earthquakes or tsunamis?" or some shit like that. Funny.

Janelle, Kevin, Emma, Mindy, Shehan and I went down by a bunch of booths to explore the offerings (mostly food). Immaculate and careful presentation. A waffle iron to make waffles out of batter, except the batter was the same as for fortune cookies, and the waffle iron made little cat and dog shaped waffles. So cute!!

We had fucking cool bottles with a marble for a lid, er a cap that gets pushed into the bottle to open it.

We played a card drawing drinking game. I drank orange drink. Ace is for avalanche, two is for you, three is more me, four is for whores, five is to the right, six is for dicks, seven is to the left, eight is a something else, nine, blah blah blah. Fun-ish game, but silent football is far better.

As the original group was leaving for the evening, Robbie and friends came and we all walked around the park. All those who remained in our group.

Robbie taught me by example that it's okay to have fun with Japanese. "Campai!" he yelled to a group of salarymen on a tarp, and within a minute he was sitting with them, being offered a full glass of sake. Like a five ounce glass from 7-11 (we call it 7-11 Sake). Such a magic word Compai.. It means cheers or get schnockerd or the like.

We took lots of pictures and one guy was all extravagantly miming a home run in baseball. Crraaazy stuff.

More walking until we found a fire juggler who spoke relatively good English. He could identify as Aussie my phrase "no worries mate," and was a good juggler to boot. Fun pictures of that.

Robbie was infatuated with the concept that they were allowed to drink out in public. "80% of these people are *drunk*," he explained. "We could *never* do this at home!" So we got a picture of him carrying a beer and posing with two cops.

On our way home he said "compai!" to a girl next to me on the train. They ended up having a long conversation. Fuck being shy. i can do this.