Once Upon a Time In Nippon

The sun rises and sets, like all life form.
mine hasn't set yet, not yet. 

I love babies. I really do. The way they wrap around their tiny, tiny hands around your relatively massive finger and the way they look at you with their googly eyes (and all you can give them back is blank, dead looking stare) and give you that cheeky gaga gugu smile is priceless. I shall say that I have never been able to frown looking at babies, nope not at all. But then you put them on flights and it really is an entirely different story.

On my flight to a country that gets rattled by an earthquake every now and then, I had the pleasure of not sleeping the previous night and then nearly missing out on the flight entirely just because I had an hour total to reach the airport from school. Anyone who lives in Seoul will say that's impossible but when you have crazy wheeler as your boss and can drive around like the furious five or furious six or furious seven, then anything is possible.

Having now finally got my glass of orange juice, sipped on it a couple of times and got comfortable on those uncomfortable economy seats, I fell asleep rather quickly with all the exertion and anger and pain that an engineering school forces you to endure, but then was rather awaken by some baby crying out for i dont know what. It just wailed and on and on and on. And when that little bastard made sure he woke up every tired soul on that flight, it went back to sleep. Like nothing happened.

As you can see, my first japanese experience wasn't exactly what i was hoping for. But like all things that start from the bottom everything started looking up..in a weird way.

Japan and its crazy cartoon loving citizens are one of the most eccentric people on the planet. If there was to be a spectrum of eccentricity, they would be at the extreme end of total weirdness. Well not exactly in everything, but for the most part of it, they are, very very interesting people with some very very strange interests.

I have here a visual take on my Japan visit, which wasn't primarily or exclusively for visit but visit nonetheless

This passport does bring a lot of attention these days;
Some warranted, some not

Starting out with their fast food staple, Ramyan with mass produced lager.

The first things you notice is that the food are much much saltier and at time sweeter

Usually when you get hold of these free nakpins that distribute, it's always the church.

Not this time. 

Prof. Masui looks funny here. Nothing to do with anything else.

He just looks funny.

Japanese also seem to have this taste for everything green.

Musabi, Green Tea, Green tea icecream, and green jellos

The way they measure was that they stack the plate and measure the height. 

Then everything is automatized. Even the waitress seemed to be human robot.

We associate sake with Japan like soju with Korea and rightly so. 

However, what sake actually means is alcohol.

So Beer is sake, soju is sake, sake is sake. This sake here is Nihoju.

Fish seemed to be a staple with-sake food. But everything incredibly salted

Japan has probably the most craft centric people in asia and that was reflective in the market.

Even mass produced beers were catching on the trend. Seoul has something similar these days.

No travel is complete without having a taste of cup noodles, this one being UFO brand

fried noodles. I just remember the name but was quite appetizing..and addictive

The first time I have had to look at a GameCube closely.

Notice something strange on the stake of DVDs?

Will touch on the topic later

Japanese bbq is well ventilated. Unlike most bbqs here

The chilly sauce you see is rare commodity. Far too few chillies compared to what Korean palate is used to. You will also notice that these chilli looking sauce will have a sweeter undertone

Now here's why i call japan weird. On the outside, in real life men and women seem to be as segregated, pure as possible. Looking under their skin, not so much. 

The sex industry in Japan, like most businesses, are open, competitive and legal. 

Port cutlet dog. Never seen one of those here

Fries are served without ketchup but tons of salt instead

In the mean time, Fukuoka's Begian Beer Festival was knocking right on the doorstep. 

Would be mean not to open it, you know. 

Our handsome french bloke drinking some beer and having a good time.
He will probably kill me for posting this up. Ah well. 

The city of Kokura had some oldies to show for. Nothing special though

Time for Namihodai. The deal is to drink and eat unlimited for two hours straight

Not bad at all. cheap drinks being poured but who cares?

Weird looking, incredibly noisy slot machines encroached by a generation that looks increasingly old

That's not a mobile torch shop. It's his bike.

And btw, bikes here are licensed meaning you need to register to ride a bicycle. lol

Dont know the name but it reminds me of the time i tried out Sizzler at the bakery cafe

Train tickets. Pop it in pop it out

What's the best sake you guys have?

Daiso 50, its obamas favorite sake. 

 (notice coins. In japan everything, the usual trend is to pay in cash. And when you do you have tons of coins you dont know what to do)

Spelling my name in Japanese. 

Apparently A means buddhist monk, Ba means horse and Su means Elite

Basically i am an elite buddhist cowboy. Not bad at all.

Monster drink. The other monster drink i mean.

Japanese whisky. That's about all the text there is

Reminds me finding nemo but this guy here is considered a delicacy and

can only be found in select sushi shops to be devoured. 

The fish requires skilled sushi makers to remove the poison

Our local go-to pub had tons of soju names posted

Japanese animation is an important aspect of the culture.

Its completely normal for people like me to spaceout while there's people talking about anime characters and shit. Pretty fascinating to see people fascinated. 

Back home

Thanks nori for taking the time to take us around. Had a great time!