Entries this day: Early Hugless To_do_Today coaster_writeup night

Early

10:10am JST Tuesday 3 February 2004

This morning I did *not* want to get up.

The air around my bed just felt so COLD that I couldn't bear to bare myself to it.

I didn't want to be late more than I didn't want to be cold, so I got up with 15 minutes left to get ready and catch the train (which is 6 or 10 minutes away (by bike or foot) from our apartment).

Up, out of my room. "Dan,"

"Rob,"

"why is it so cold??"

He assured me it had been colder, which I figured was just cause he's gotten used to it; he had only been awake 10 minutes.

Dan left soon thereafter and I got ready without delay (and without eating) then rode my bike to the station.

Caught the local train before the express train that I had planned to catch. Local train (with a view out the front) to Jiyugaoka and hopped (*) on the express train, which by that time had caught up to the local.

Silently rode to Shibuya with my nose pressed against the door (this is not an exaggeration) and when the doors opened, burst forth from the train as the first morsel of the carbonated spam explosion.

"I'm a balla, shot calla, twenty inch blades on my impalla"

For some reason this burst forth from my memory, packed in there by Jason Fricke.

Put my tickets in the machine and it got mad, but I rammed through because the ticket was legit. I checked it and noted that the ticket had not been properly processed the previous night, actually from 2 days ago because (!!) that's when I last used it, coming home from Yokohama. Oh well. I have a theory to explain what happened; the ticket machine that I used two nights ago wasn't able to process my teiki and the ticket at the same time; it just saw the teiki and said, "cool," but didn't tell the other ticket that I (it) was now out of the system.

Anyway, got on the Ginza line, followed the instructions to walk to TELL, found the green iron gate on my left, recognized how I had misremembered the meaning of the instructions I had written down and remembered what I had been thinking when I wrote them, found the door, went in.

Filled in the first visit form and then the woman who had just recently arrived was like, "I believe your appointment is for eleven."

[blink]

"Unless it's been changed recently..."

"I'm Rob Nugen; I talked to ah, Rhonda" shit that's not right.

"Ramona"

"Thank you,"

"yes [I know all this]"

"I wrote down ten," and pulled out my book to verify.

"I don't think she'll be here,"

"I wrote down eleven(!)"

"You're welcome to stay,"

"Nah; I'll just get something to eat..."

etc.

Wow. I could have been in bed for another hour.

- - - -

(*) by hopped I mean crammed my way into a packed train. I had to stand kind of at an angle because my footspace wasn't directly below my torso space. Had to pull my coat in from between the doors after they closed on it.

(!!) the friends of the guy with an Irish accent have just arrived and he told them he had been there since 9:30. He accepts that he had arrived too early. An hour early.

Hugless

12:23pm JST Tuesday 3 February 2004

Counseling with Josephine went well I guess. I dumped all my braincells on her as completely as I could.

At the very end, I was like, part of my work is asking for what I want and I recognized (rationalized?) how a hug is harmless and even beneficial. "May I have a hug?"

No.

I jerked away. FinefuckyouIhateyou.

- - - -

During the session I gave a summary of my life and she helped me notice a distinct change in the number of hugs I had been getting in the US (YRUU, men's group, Bibby crib) vs the number I don't get in Japan.

- - - -

After the slap of no hugs allowed, I was like, I'm going to need that number for the male counselor, having judged that a male counselor would be just like Kim Sawyer or men in my I-group, and share a hug after (and maybe before) each session. I recognized my judgement, wondered how to reframe it.

It seems that I have grown accustomed to hugs. According to what I see, it's possible to live without them, or without as many, as these cats in Japan seem to be hugless creatures.

- - - -

I want Josephine (counselor) to fall in love with me. I want her to see how money I am. I want her to know how difficult a path I've chosen for myself. I want her to know how many directions my brain thinks at one time. I want her to pay me to have a chance to peer inside my mind.

- - - -

Why have I chosen such a hard path? To what end do I not smoke and drink or otherwise have an acceptable addiction to quell my emotions? What is the fucking point of feeling this emotional pain?

I see people walking down the street, smoking, and I'm like, "fucking stinking ass fuck" and "you don't even know that you're smoking right now; your mind is gone; you have no awareness of how you're affecting your body and the people around you, and you probably just add your butt to the rest of this disgusting sea of butts all around us" etc etc and I just really mentally go off on the person, and part of it is I'm just mad that *my* addiction is not allowed in polite society. I'm not allowed to just grab someone and start shagging. But that's not actually what I want. I just want a hug. I just want some bit of validation that what I'm doing is good. That what I am is good.

- - - -

Sleeptime on the train; my brain is checking out now.

To do Today

1:28pm JST Tuesday 3 February 2004

I have two more things to do today. One is write to Justin about roller coasters and shit. I've mostly written it, but I have judgements against how awesome it is.

The other is to call apartment places to begin me an' Dan's search for a new apartment. It's become me an' Dan's search. I wonder what that means about me moving out? Or him moving out? Hmmmmmmmm. Do we have to move out together? Hmmmmmm.

I imagine if I call an apartment place, they'll be like, "come on over and have a look," and I will be tempted to come over right now like I owe it to them or to myself to go look. But I've got to write today or I'm going to kill myself with guilt that I've not written about coasters, but if I write *first*, I'll get stuck on the computer.

Okay: Call two places; schedule two appointments to look. "Go. Now." (Morpheus on Matrix)

1:44pm

Bang. No English. 3pm appointment has been set. Good work, G.

coaster writeup

5:06pm JST Thursday 3 February 2004

I sent this in to Justin of First Drop magazine.

I went to Fujikyu Highland in Tokyo recently.  The lines were quite(!)
short compared to when I went during the summer.  The park is open
from 9 to 5 these days (winter).  I went to Fujiyama first.  It's the
best coaster I've found around Tokyo.

Fujiyama (my fourth time to ride it) still proved to be a great ride.
From the fantastic view of Mt Fuji while clicking up the slow lift, to
the first drop (79 meters), to the last ending manuevers, it's smooth,
fast, beautiful.  And really packed into a small space; the bars look
so *close* to my hands thrown in the air.

Fujiyama offers like 7 seconds of total freefall time for the back car
(*) and does the final close-to-the-ground curve to go back to the
beginning REALLY fast. Why? Cause it's not over! 3 more crazy
shake-a-brain humps back and forth like a skater in a halfpipe and
then it's over.  WHOAH no it's not! one more crazy hump and Wow. NOW
it's over - What a ride!!

I also rode Dodonpa, the new air propulsion ride by S&S.

Dodonpa is really really fast.  0 to 172 km/h in 2 seconds.  The ride
operators disallow anything that could fly off: gloves, scarves, hats,
earrings, glasses.  (I'm pretty blind without my glasses; I wonder if
the experience would have been better if I could see.)  Overall, I
felt unimpressed with the ride.  It has all this speed and just zooms
out and back then over a single hump.  Granted, the track goes
vertical on both sides of the hump, but it's quite anti-climatic.

After waiting for nearly an hour for this 60 second ride, I was
unimpressed.  Good props to S&S for the speed, but now let's see a
ride that actually uses that speed for some cool manuevers.

(*) In the parks I've visited in Tokyo, riders may not wait for or
request a specific car.  Next available car from the front is your
car.

night

10:52am JST Wednesday 4 February 2004

The apartment that I viewed was for *sale*, not for rent. 15,000,000 yen, I think. The price per month (98,500 yen) was for the equivalent of mortgage payments, I think.

Um... no; I don't think we'll buy it.

- - - -

I fell asleep and was way late meeting Yuuko last night. I was like dammit, but she didn't seem to care. I paid for dinner at TGI Fridays.

In Kawasaki she showed me two suit shops. The first has new suits my size for 18,000 yen. The second had more expensive suits, and I'm like, "no" to that.

We found a suit shop after a packed train ride to Yokohama. Also too expensive for me right now.

Then we went to eat for 2500 yen. Waiter was good and rememebered that I wanted no ice in my drink both times he refilled it. Would have gotten him a better tip in the US.

Yuuko came over to me and Dan's to show us the annual demon exorcising festival where we throw beans outside and say "get out demon" and "come in angels" or something like that, and then eat one bean for each year old that we are.

Then we played footbag for about an hour and it was suddenly near too late for Yuuko to get home on the trains. We went to the station and she asked the cat if she could get to Kawasaki and he said no. She asked me if she could stay over and I'm like "yah" and I was like hmmm in my head.

It turned out alright; she slept on my bed; I slept on the couch. No kissing occurred.