I am back.

Or more exactly: I am back closer to an internet connection. Still somewhere down south, albeit in a more family-oriented settings.

These five days in the boondocks were absolute paradise and helped reminding me that, was the choice to come down between: big city and the internets on one side, friends, sun, fresh veggies, cheap wine and homegrown on the other, I’d easily slide toward the latter as a permanent way of life.

During my blissful stay in the heart of French Aveyronais region, I:

• ate lots of delicious homemade food including chlada felfel, aligot, moroccan brownies and much more.
• spent entire afternoons on a sun-drenched deck reading, chatting, smoking and overall doing absolutely nothing requiring electricity or a phone line whatsoever.
• stunk to high-heavens of lemongrass essence the entire time, but didn’t get bitten by mosquitoes once.
• spent hours excitedly exchanging musical tips and hundreds of bad-ass 70’s funk tracks
• had to climb up a ladder to get to my bed (when I didn’t opt to stay in a hammock outside).
• walked through a [small] open field of odoriferous plants with strangely shaped leaves and got to sample last year’s crop.
• realized that buying and fixing a house somewhere deep in the country, away from civilization, wasn’t only a way to live a healthier, cheaper and simpler life: there are a few perks on the side.
• spent a whole night playing poker while a fierce Summer thunderstorm raged outside (complete with flickering lights, blown fuses and all).
• met Chucky, the mellow schnauzer, who has never been quite the same ever since he accidentally ate half a pound of mushrooms found drying under his master’s bed.
• made two gallons of frozen margaritas and brought a few more converts over to the church of the Holy Citrus Tequila Cocktail.
• did many other things that shall remain safely out of read from potentially underage eyes…

Back in P-town this week-end.

When asked about what it is that they like most about Japan, the Japanese will often gladly inform you that one of the top reasons their country is so great is that it counts four distinct seasons in a year. Reaction upon learning that, indeed, most countries of the civilized world also do, ranges from genuinely surprised to incredulous. They also think the song you may know as Auld Lang Syne is an old Japanese ditty, so great at announcing the closing of public places that some smooth-voiced Italian-American singer decided to cover it in English…

Anyway, about the season part: I think they may have been onto something. Four seasons has become a rarity in our pre-apocalyptic, globally-warming world. As I recently discovered, places like Paris have already switched to a much easier to maintain two-season yearly schedule. Translated, they would be something like: Rainy, from September to May and Balls-Hot, from June to August.

If I might have some regrets over skipping Spring on the way, you will not hear one single complaint from me about finally leaving Winter behind. Instead, let me tell you how my first Summer evening of the year went.

Yesterday was the much anticipated downgrade from code red to code orange-ish yellow on the Deadline-o-meter. A moment eagerly awaited by my liver for the past two weeks.

All that was left between me and an entire evening of drunken debauchery were a couple paragraphs of cognitive linguistics rambling and a few chores to take care of. Of course, by the time I finally left my place with one errand still left to run, the clock was ticking 11pm. Hopeful nonetheless, I grabbed my trusty iPod, a half-empty pack of menthol cigarettes, some cash and dashed out, phoning my friends that I would be meeting them shortly thereafter. Note the cigarettes: they are important.

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Does effervescent codeine taste like crap or what?

Having to stomach the incredibly bitter aftertaste nearly offsets the pleasure of absorbing pharmaceutical-grade mind-numbing painkillers.

What’s with French meds and bubbles? Can’t they just make them into tiny little pills you swallow, as the rest of the world does?

Must be the Champagne factor…

Do you feel it too?

This warm and fuzzy feeling of well being all over your body, the sensation you are constantly swimming through mellifluous pink cotton clouds, this uncanny inclination toward benevolence and understanding when confronted to the vast dumbness of this world…

It’s seasonal…

Yep: cough-syrup season is upon us!

Party tidbit from years ago…

dr Dave: - You know: Pandas…
About that whole “nearly-extinct-but-won’t-fuck-behind-bars” problem…
I wonder… What if you just fed the pandas a few E’s?

Brian: - Bah… They’d probably just go into a corner and pet their own fur for hours.

Chalk it up to a simple equation involving roughly 2 weeks of time, 50 pages of yet-unwritten report and 500+ pages of reading material… Blogging just hasn’t been a priority round here lately.

What has been a priority, though, was the quest for any combination of chemical aides, likely to make the required 250 hours of studies in 10 days, a technical, if not quite reasonable health-wise, possibility.

Thus, in the spirit of killing two heart-attacks with one stone, and without further ado, the first episode of:

Dr Dave’s Guide to Chemically-Enhanced Studying in Japan

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The definition of cruel is when your friends, over at your house for some lo-key, yet highly inebriated, bbq dinner, drunkenly (and unwittingly) opened that one very special bottle of Piper Heidsieck Special Millesime.

No. Hold on. Cruel is when it turns out they drank but a glass and left a full uncorked bottle sitting there for you to mourn in the morning.

Inhumanly cruel, is when all this takes place in the middle of your shot at reaching ascetic enlightenment, and subsequent self-imposed ban on all forms of alcohol consumption.

If I end up not drinking off that bottle today, I will personally write in a demand for a medal from the British National Temperance League.

Breaking with that old personal habit of favouring vices over addiction, I decided today that it was high time to resume heavy drug use for a while. And since methamphetamine is so damn expensive round here, I naturally turned to the second best option: Caffeine.

The deal is: I never drink coffee. Or hardly ever. Save for the odd cup or two when meeting people in a coffeeshop (and that’s only because the local Starbucks employees still refuses to this day to serve me Mojitos, even when I am ready to bring my own bottle of Rum). But coffee in the morning (i.e.: before 8pm) is a rarity.

Because of my complete non-addiction to caffeine, and since I still have my old hardcore coffee drinker habits, dosage-wise, those rare instances where I fix myself a cup usually result in uncontrollable twitching and borderline dizziness for most of the day.

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Hunter S. Thomspon killed himself today.

Damn, it’s like the loss of a spiritual father.

Here is what he had to say about this poor excuse for a President.

As promised, here is a first update on the progress of the previously mentioned no-roommate project.

And I am ashamed to say that there isn’t much progress altogether.

You see, after briefly considering adult movie-making or experiments in urban anchoretical life as chief occupations for my week-end, I finally settled on a much more pedestrian — yet of proven entertainment value — plan. A plan essentially centered around a few easy concepts such as: alcohol (preferably cheap and plentiful), friend(s), cultural exploration of new neighbourhoods (through random sampling of bars and izakaia) as well as, potentially, use of substances and sex (on same requirements as alcohol).

In that case, you may ask, why am I sitting in front of my laptop on a friday night, typing this while most obviously not partaking in any of these activities. And that is a very legitimate question.

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I cannot be the first one to notice how incredibly close the kanjis for medication (薬: kusuri) and for comfort, enjoyable, fun (楽: raku, 楽しい: tanoshii) are…

Is it Japanese way of saying “better living through chemistry“?

Because my last entry on Japan might have sounded overly negative, and also because the tone of the last few weeks is dangerously edging toward serious and mature stuff, here is something to bring back the balance on both counts.

Although on some level, this might read as yet another episode of Wretchedly Altered Dave’s Comical Adventures in Magic Tokyo, it is also a heartwarming testimony to a people’s confounding sense of honesty underlined by the epic struggle of a man with the evil power of pharmaceutical-grade narcoleptics. A modern tale of hope and pride, if you will.
This is what I will be solemnly citing in answer to the usual insipid inquiry regarding my inspirations for coming to this country. Of course, I couldn’t have cared less about this when I bought my plane ticket, but I sure ain’t telling people the truth about coming here to complete my lifelong collection of worn Japanese schoolgirls uniforms.

Anyway, this all happened about two weeks ago. I know this is no longer fresh news, but, as you might recall, I have been quite busy lately ensuring that I did not have to find a spot for my tent in Yoyogi koen. And after the move, NTT persisted in taking more than ten days to move an ADSL account that had been created in three days, thus ensuring my internet activities were limited to the most essential stuff (which oddly enough, does not include ranting on this page).

This actually happened right after we had found a place at the last minute and gotten approved by the owner: all that was left to do was bring the cash and sign the lease, on Saturday morning, and move in the following day.
On Friday evening, I had planned to go play a few records at Bar Tokyo with Miss Kate, which seemed like a great occasion to celebrate at the same time. Lease-signing meeting time was 10:30 in Ueno: that gave me ample time to get back home with the first train, take a quick shower, maybe even a post-disco nap and then head over to the agency with Nordine and Yoshiko (who had been enrolled as our personal scribe). NOTHING wrong with this plan, right?
Oh yea… one important detail: a conjunction of factors such as daily ATM withdrawal limit, the scarcity of ATM accepting foreign cards in this city and the presence of one such bank, open 24h, in Roppongi, had caused me to stop on the way there to withdraw the last leg of the rent/deposit/gift money we were supposed to bring in the day after.

So it was half past midnight, I had about 60,000 yens in cash on me, and I was heading toward some seedy bar for the night.

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While doing some online medical research, I accidentally (I swear!) stumbled upon a French “Cyberpharmacie” featuring, among other regular prescription drugs, a brief overview of recreational substances, their use, risk and chemical properties.
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because every once in a while, I dip in my rather, ahem, eclectic collection of music and put whatever I get my hands on first (sometimes it can be atmospheric d’n'b, other times chopin), I was listening to some old Led Zeppelin stuff and through a brief association of thoughts, ended up reminiscing about a rather random party snapshot from a few years back…
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