NB: Remember to treat Nordine to a fancy dinner some time soon. (So sowwwy I had to wake you up: I promise it won’t happen, ever again).

This morning, though, I had to check in at my neighbourhood clinic and undergo a whole series of health exams. Not that I was feeling in any particularly bad shape (nasty lingering chest cough and faint hangover from previous night’s gin&shochu outing aside), but the Japanese Ministry of Education and Research insists on making sure that I don’t have tuberculosis, cancer or bubonic plague before even considering shelling out some Yen toward my World Domination Plot research, otherwise known as PhD.

In the grand tradition of furthering cross-cultural enlightenment that has made this blog famous in the greater Shin-Nakano Sanchome area, I figured I would share some random observations about the experience:

I wasn’t feeling very enthusiastic about the whole thing, given a number of horror stories I’d heard regarding Japanese medical institutions and Japanese doctors. As it turned out, it all went relatively well and I was pleasantly surprised overall. Granted: the absence of actual worries about my health may have made me more impervious to that well-known habit of treating patients like autistic 5-year-olds with overgrown limbs rather than adults that may want to know what’s going on. Save the one or two times where I off-handedly inquired about results of a just-completed test, not one of them ever volunteered to share even the most basic assessment of their ongoing prodding.

But otherwise, I really can’t complain.

On Friday, Rie had kindly called the local public hospital to inquire about time, price, duration and possibly make an appointment for me. As it turns out, I just had to show up any day Monday-Saturday before 9am, making sure to skip my morning tofu beforehand. Despite that walk-in policy, the ridiculously long series of exams required by the Monbusho (ranging from speech, eyesight and potential color-blindness assessment to multiple blood tests and chest x-ray…), I spent a grand total of 70 minutes, followed by a one hour wait for blood and x-ray results to come back and be added to my completed file. I don’t think I ever waited anywhere for more than a couple minutes at a time. Oh yea, and the whole thing was pretty damn cheap: without National Health Insurance and despite involving every medical technology known to man, it came down to a little over ¥13,000. Which is probably the price I’d have paid to get a cold looked at in the US (yea, I know: you do not get a cold looked at in the US. Precisely).

As for the details of how a routine health check goes in Japan: after first checking at my assigned counter with the lovely clerk that was to become my guide and beacon for the whole morning, I was asked to file an entry form, informed of the total cost for the tests I needed done and finally handed my exam-bingo card with all appropriate kanjis circled. The rest of my stay was spent going on quests to service number: 24, 25, 14, 34, 15, 4, 3, 25 again (physician forgot the ever important color-blindness the first time around). All done with frequent pit-stops back at the front-desk where I would hand in newly gleaned results and receive further instructions, one or two numbers at a time.

Blood draw went OK considering my intense hatred for all things pointy at an unsafe proximity to my bare skin. Didn’t get a cookie afterward.

Eye testing was of course the most fun with language, although not that challenging: Japanese vision test involves describing C-shaped symbols orientations: up, down, right, left… And I was given a small Japanese drill to check that I wasn’t afflicted with daltonism (apparently I can both tell green from red and read random numbers between 1 and 99).

An interesting and perhaps off-putting fact (especially if you were to go to a hospital to get your cellphone dislodged from your rectum or somesuch) is the absolute lack of privacy everywhere. I’ve seen doctors coming out to the waiting area to interview their patients (even administer some eyedrops), most examination rooms (those that do not involve getting naked, of course) are basically just large open spaces with patients occasionally taking the same test side-by-side… Ironically: each of the small station counters, where one hands in their admission form for a specific test, are equipped with that love-hotel style low-rise curtain that only lets you see each other’s lower torso and hands. Frankly not sure what’s the point (making sure the desk-attending nurse doesn’t know you are the one with gonorrhea even though every other patient in the examination room is likely to find out?).

Anyway, that’s roughly it for my exciting morning among the sick and the old (mostly the old, actually… I swear, I was not only the only paleskin miles around, but I must also have been the only non-professional there, who hadn’t witnessed Perry’s landing in Yokosuka….). By all means, don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime tourism opportunity next time you are in Japan.

Her: [Looks up suggestively and moves hand across bed]

Me: You do realize this is quite possibly the worst pre-coital movie. ever?

Her: [Keeps silent and smiles a wicked toothy smile]

Me: That’s it! stay the hell away from me!!! I’m sleeping on the floor tonight.

(awesome movie, otherwise)

Upon latest head count, it would appear that direct family members are:

• Brother #1: Expecting the great Kanto earthquake from his Tokyo apartment (any day now).
• Brother #2: Traipsing the Moroccan Desert with his backpack and a donkey.
• Brother #3: Learning Cantonese pillow talk in Shanghai.
• Dad: Watching snow melt in Eastern Canuckistan.
• Mum: Enjoying Lebanon northwestern coast (lovely weather at this time of year), currently deciding between Syria and Cyprus for an emergency evac (wins extra bonus points for Country-on-the-Brink-of-Civil-War).

Honestly, I don’t know what that says about us as a family.

Seriously: who goes out until morning on a Monday night? More to the point: who goes to work the day after, on a national holiday?

A sucker, that’s who.

I mean, the alcohol, the drugs, the neverending nights of feral sex, the uninspired blogging… it gets old, really.

Alright, so maybe not the booze, drugs and sex part. But the blogging part: definitely. I don’t mean the part about writing inane crap that nobody in their right mind should care about, in between two intense navel-staring sessions. I don’t think I’ll get tired of that part any time soon (I’m trying though). I mean, the sterile format that this blog has come to follow.

Oh, trust me, I am very aware of it. Sure, I have many excuses as to why my posting rate has dwindled to the levels of Bangladesh’s strawberry production on a bad monsoon year… Work, life, love (or pursuit thereof), happiness (idem) etc. But we all know there’s more to it. Truth be told, blogging here bores me, most of the time. There are a couple reasons for that, chiefly among them are:

• This blog started out on the wrong foot.
  When I decided to open my first self-hosted online space, it started as a bastard mix of for-friends-only (”hey guys, long time no see”) news reports and travel-journal (”lookee all the whacky things they have here”)… Both rather boring genres in the long run, neither something I really felt like doing much. But I have been pulled toward these roots ever since.

• It is read by all the wrong people.
  Quite expectedly (although I originally never intended it to be), this has become the place where all people who either have invested some DNA into me, or were court-ordered to stay at least a continent away, come to get their life update on Dave. Knowing that both your genitors (hi Mum! hi Dad!), extended family, past love interests (and potentiall future ones) are all reading this, puts a serious cap on any attempt at spontaneity.
• And therefore… I write elsewhere.
  Yes, I know, it hurts, but I have been seeing other people. In other locales, other languages even. Usually with completely different style and contents. Don’t even try to search the web: believe me you won’t find it. Those other writings are all that this isn’t: personal, fun, hyperbolic, unauthentic, uncensored etc.

Then why bother?

Good question. I suppose because this still serves a purpose for some writings, in some contexts. Also because I hate giving up. And closing that blog before I turn 50 would feel like giving up.

But things need to change. Not sure what, but they do.

Still working on details. I technically have about 10 days before the official 5 year anniversary of this blog. Do not expect grand announcement or sudden changes, just be warned.

Sorta.

Yet another tragic example of a young life cut short by the evils of drugs.

Of course, we knew from the start that our lovingly put-together mural art would have a very limited life expectancy (the walls are being torn down as I write this), but that was part of the fun: it’s all about the ephemeral bathroom art.

“By eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the circumscriptional appelations are excised.” [sic, emphasis mine]

I am looking for rooming options (sublet/flat-sharing/nice-blue-tarp-in-Yoyogi…) in Tokyo, involving some amount of pre-furnishing (the more the better), starting roughly now and until mid-September.

Location-wise: anything within reasonable distance of a subway/train station is eligible for consideration. Bonus points for biking distance (less than 30 mins.) to Shinjuku/Shibuya or other West-Tokyo hubs, Extra Bonus points for quick access to my work in Jimbocho (no more than one change is a must, but that’s pretty much 80% of all Tokyo stations).

Situation-wise: as long as your homicidal schizophrenia is medicated and your pet hyena on a leash, we can negotiate on the rest. I guess a bit of common sense and mutual respect (if it’s a flat-sharing arrangement) would probably help too. As for me: I am fairly easy-going, social but way past my teenage party-animal days, gainfully employed during the day and possibly less annoying in person than this page may lead one to think.
Also: I don’t smoke, bathe daily and can probably relinquish my meat-eater’s morning bacon addiction for the perfect place. Furthermore, my mastering of weather-conversational Japanese and world-renowned trash-sorting abilities should make me a hit with all your nosy obachan neighbours/landlord.

Money-wise: I can afford market-rate on any of the aforementioned options, but since it is money coming from my own pocket, I’d just as well not go for those laughably overpriced expat dwellings. 120k seems a fair upper-bound given my search criteria (that’s an upper-bound, and definitely not what I’ll be paying for a 2-tatami flatmate option in Saitama).

Best way to contact me is by email, to zedrdave[at]gmail.com. Feel free to pass this on to your friends.

The first metric tonne is always the hardest to part with… After that it just comes off naturally.

^(*) Don’t get all excited now: I am far from done… Still got a couple reports and projects to hand in, not to mention thesis defense(s) in the coming months/years. Not to mention JLPT in December and any other such certification test I may ever be foolish enough to apply for… Still:

The last written test of my entire existence!

Frankly, I find it all rather funny (or at least: would find it funny, if we weren’t talking about a massive PR operation unequivocally benefitting a dictatorial government).

If you still have some delusion about the International Olympics Committee upholding some sort of code of ethics or caring for democratic values and such, you have clearly been sleeping through the past hundred years.

Forget the widespread corruption, the notorious bribing, the less than inspiring list of IOC members (a good half of which sits atop one minor autocratic regime or other) etc. etc. For fuck sake, do you know who was the head of the IOC for more than 20 years until 7 years ago (still Honorary President for Life)?

Ask your Spanish friends what they think of Mr. Juan Antonio Samaranch. Ask them, for instance, how they feel about Juan’s former boss and good pal: el Caudillo de la Última Cruzada y de la Hispanidad, also known as the guy who butchered thousands and kept Spain in an iron fascistic rule for 40 years. Before his gig at the IOC, Juan Antonio was a prominent political figure in Dictator Franco’s regime (and stayed involved, long after joining the IOC full-time). Best to say that, despite an innate dislike for those dirty heathen Commies, there were certain Human Rights abuses he very much could live with.

The IOC is not a humanitarian organization, they are a for-profit corporation, and a very conservative-right one at that.

So, shout all you want about the World’s powers leaving their principled Human Rights concerns at the door in the name of Olympic Brotherhood and Coca Cola partnerships, but please spare me the part about how you’d expected better from the IOC. Chances are, the last time the IOC expressed an ounce of concern for the ethics of the Games, you weren’t even a glimmer in your dad’s left testicle…

U.S. gold futures surged above the historic $1,000 mark

If this is not “The Market’s” way of saying “Fuck yea we think this is a recession!”, then I don’t know what is.

In between miscellaneous artsy touristy stuff and random Parisian strolls, we eloped to Barcelona for a 3-day weekend. Considering how packed our schedule was already, it seemed we could have done without an extra travel: but honestly, after my 2 month anachoretic stint, it took very little to get me booking a flight and a room in that gorgeous boutique hotel S. had been telling me about.

No regrets whatsoever.

Unlike Paris’ usual February semi-freezing drizzle, Barcelona was a mild upper-teens (evening included), sunny most of the time, and still serving cava around every corner of the city. We started our first day by kicking it in park Güell, taking after Gaudi’s famous dragon by sitting in the sun until we had forgotten the mere meaning of Winter.

Actually, we didn’t exactly start with the park, since we first dropped our luggage at the hotel, which lovingly had our room ready upon arrival in the morning: it took massive efforts of will not to just throw away all plans of outdoorsy activities to spend the entire stay between the room’s cozy bed and adjacent lounge room’s hammock… If I had any lingering hesitation about picking this over some standard high-rise hotel with swimming pool on top and fat midwest families crowding the lobby, they all about disappeared when the super-friendly staff showed us to the 24-hour free organic buffet. I know, I’m gushing (and sound like I’d be on the hotel’s payroll), but that place really made our weekend twice the fun (and it was pretty damn awesome already).

Miraculously we managed to extract ourselves from our room often enough to show H. a couple of the numerous architectural wonders that seem to make half the city: some Gaudi, of course, but also a couple more recent designs among my personal faves. Staying 2 minutes away from Plaça de Catalunya in Raval, we were within walking distance from both Barrio Gotico’s historical strolls and Passeig de Gracia’s tapas bars and clubbing.

On Saturday, we took a day trip to Figueres, where Dali’s humongous legacy kept us busy and amazed for the entire afternoon. Followed by dinner with my mum and her companion, who had come to meet us halfway.

By the way, on the matter of day trips and trains: may I use the occasion to emphasise how important it is to really check the destination of your train before you get on it. And definitely before it arrives to its terminus, 5 minutes later, in the opposite direction to where you intended to go. You may feel smug for flawlessly understanding the directions half-mumbled by the stationmaster: it won’t help all that much when it turns out your train is 5 minutes late on its schedule (seriously: Europe. What was I thinking?) and therefore the train coming up to your platform just on time is not actually your train. On a related matter, language was a much more frustrating experience than expected: while understanding everything came as natural as rain, trying to express myself often resulted in some comical mix of Japanese and Castillan, whence I had to dig another two or three attempts before coming up with the proper Catalan version. Still all there, just buried really, really deep under all those new weird sounds I’ve learnt since the last time I lived here. Priceless moments: H falling over laughing, each time I’d let slip an “ehh-tto” while looking for words in my discussions with local speakers.

Anyway, after some late-night clubbing and some trendy electro beats at a nearby bleep factory (other priceless moment: realising I had not the faintest idea how to order the ‘cassis soda‘ H. had asked for, neither in Spanish nor, for that matter, in English), we capped the weekend by more lounging, more strolling and a last art excursion to see some Picasso. Although Barcelona’s Picasso collection is dwarfed by Madrid’s and doesn’t feature his most seminal pieces (it’s essentially centered around his early periods), I personally like its more subtle, slightly old-fashioned, figurative paintings (my favourite? Two nudes and a cat, a small sketch you’ll have to go check for yourself since I cannot seem to find it anywhere online). Also his fascinating obsession with Velázquez and a roomful of deconstructed Meninas…

Less than 4 hours after our last drink at a Barcelonian sidewalk café, we were back in Paris. Special shootouts to the security troll at Barcelona airport’s security checkpoint, who unceremoniously trashed the two mini-bottles of cava H. had just bought at the airport’s own souvenir shop. The very same unopened, hermetically sealed bottles they were selling 3 feet after the checkpoint. I swear: I will smack in the face the next person who comes to me yapping about the need for more inane security measures at airports and how removing shoes or throwing away shampoo bottles makes it so much safer.

After that little episode, I could only agree with S. that private flights are the way to go. Well: that and her invitation for an overnight party excursion to Milan in her friend’s plane on a Tuesday evening. Back just in time to pick up some fresh bred and H’s breakfast on the way home the following morning. When exactly did I switch lifestyles from mad-scientist to jet-setter and what happened to that guy last seen sitting at 5am in the middle of his living room amidst 300 scattered pages of science articles, mumbling math equations in a rather demented tone?