Brazilians know how to eat

 

 

damn.. look at that pink

Random Observation/Comment #93: Brazilians know how to eat their beef.  This hypothesis was confirmed when I met a Brazilian family Upstate that buys their own cow from a farm, and owns three freezers to keep her fresh for 6 months of eating.  When the mother said, “I went to a farm to buy the meat in this soup,” I thought her “farm” was a Upstate saying for grocery store.  When I asked how often she went, I realized she must have had 250 pounds of moo left in her freezers.  I opened it pretending to find a drink just to make sure – Impressive.

 

My arm started to look like a proper sacrifice for my stomach pains.  This odd glaze fell over my eyes as I pictured recipes over everyone’s body parts.  People’s names blended into new dishes: Rodrigo soufflé, Mia Tenderloin, Richie Shish kebab.  Even inanimate objects morphed themselves into savory meats.  I imagined swimming in a pool of gravy and mashed potatoes.  I think that would be like quick sand.  The gravy pits would probably explode and form gaps that suck you into its bottomless pit of deliciousness.  What would be the worst thing to happen would be if it was made from that crappy boxed mashed potatoes garbage and gravy without gravy master.  I would probably cry.  Surrounded by a mashed potato lava quick sand pit of doom doesn’t sound very appealing to me unless there are Idaho potatoes and garlic involved.

Needless to say, I had skimped on lunch knowing that dinner would be a feast.  I think I ate an onigiri and drank a 1.5 liter of Aquarius to pass the day. I shopped around the area to ease my appetite.   It’s weird how that type of distraction can keep me full through the day.  I might need to start getting help for shopping.  Shopping alone is the first sign of a problem.  I think I just need someone to pull into the jeans obsession and I’ll be okay.  Two people shopping is not an addiction – that’s a Saturday.

The Brazilian buffet was called “EternA” and it reminded me of the “Master Grill” in Flushing.  There’s a normal buffet of mediocre foods, but the main course of meats come from the guys with the large knives and skewers.  A little salt-shaker-looking contraption has green painted on one side and red painted on another.  Always keep it green.  Keep the meats coming!  Friends with smaller stomachs should sit around me.  The rule is: Continue asking for more even if you’re not going to eat it because either me or Richie will certainly take that off your plate.

I think the main things I ate that night was red meat and cherry tomatoes.  I took pictures pointing to the part of the happy cow I was about to devour.  I felt so barbaric, yet the tender cuts relinquished any morsel of guilt.  The meat was already killed, butchered, marinated, grilled, and served on my plate in perfectly pink slices.  Wouldn’t I be offending the sacrifice by not, at least, enjoying this orgasmic taste to its fullest extent?  I think I would have had an erection, but my stomach was too full to maintain the blood flow. 

Before you completely stuff your face and fall into a food comatose state, be sure to stay awake and leave room for the best part: Toasted cinnamon pineapple.  I didn’t even think it was possible to enjoy something so much when I’m on the verge of breaking my belt buckle.  I think it was analogous to seeing baby Jesus with your taste buds.  I can’t explain it any better than that.  I’m not even going to try.  What a good dinner.

~See Lemons Carnivorous

orgasmic

Schitz

 

 

on the roof of a high class department store

Random Observation/Comment #92: I’ve realized that “new favorite places” is just a quick infatuation.  It’s like a really bad middle school crush that is purely sexual… maybe not.  I think more accurately as love at first sight.  After some time of getting to know her, you find out she’s a psychotic, ex-con drug addict with a huge debt and fake, detachable body parts (Not firsthand experience).  It really takes a lot to become a favorite place.  There needs to be that special quality – maybe a set of emotions that rushes back to your mind that leaves your body immobile.  It’s something about the smell of the surroundings, taste of the air, warmth of the sun, or a feeling of freedom that just makes all the sorrows melt away.  Sometimes when you go back to a place you claim as a “new favorite” you become disappointed at the lack of impact you expected.  There was always something missing – always someone missing to complete that feeling in Japan.  A sigh is appropriate right about now.

 

There wasn’t a lot of time left and I had so much to relive.  I wanted to go everywhere again and retake all those pictures with new and interesting people.  What I needed was a time machine, and all I had was a camera and 20GBs of pictures and videos.  It would become useful in my recovering days after my trip, but at the time, I knew there were more memories to make.  I had revisited Spa World for the pure relaxation and dropped by Den Den town to actually shop around for friends and family.  After the waterfall massaged my back and I took a nap in the public lounge, I filtered through the exotic stores in the area.  It wasn’t exotic to me anymore and for some reason I felt the same loneliness and seclusion I feel in the city. 

St. Mark’s Place is exotic to most tourists, right?  After walking through it for four years every day, it just seems like any other street covered with sex shops, tattoo parlors, yogurt stores, mangled manikins, and butchered Barney dolls – nothing out of the ordinary.  Crazy taxi drivers accelerating through crowds of people and even crazier people trying to cross the street with clear oncoming traffic doesn’t faze me at all.  Double-decker tour buses stop to take pictures and wave at us like the entire city is a living zoo, yet I don’t feel offended.  It was the same thing with Japan.  I stopped looking from the outside in, and the unique flare about the culture was buried in an orthogonal vector (::grin::).

I wanted that part of my brain to switch off.  That memory has done me so well, yet it has dimmed the lights and dulled the colors.  Why am I not trying to read every single katakana and hiragana character anymore?  When did those little things about you stop becoming interesting?  It didn’t bother me that people stared at me.  I didn’t freak out when people helped me for no reason.  The constant inability to fully understand dialogue was just accepted and pushed aside as noise.  And worst of all, I started one of the worst habits I could think of in a foreign country: I listened to familiar music.  I sat there on the bus like a local and felt the drag of a routine holding me back.  It killed one of my major senses and it meant I had been converted.  At this point near the end of my trip, I no longer considered myself a gai-jin.  Sure I didn’t speak the language fluently or follow the customs exactly, but I had found a rhythm that only locals see.  It was boredom, and I hated it with a passion.

I spent one of these days completely alone.  It rained and I was in a weird mood.  This was actually the day I walked around my hotel building like it was a museum.  I shuffled in the slippers they provided, and wore a yukata at 3PM like I owned the building and just didn’t give a shyt.  Nothing mattered.  There was no plan.  There was no motivation to make one.  There was no ambition to be productive.  My camera sat on the desk growling, but I ignored it.  My notepad haunted me by appearing in places I don’t remember placing it, yet I stayed away. 

I laid there in my large bed wondering about home – missing family and missing friends.  When there isn’t a sound in the room my mind is louder than ever.  My multi-core unit has pipelining and yet it all makes sense in the end (I hope someone gets it).  Memories mixed with predictions mixed with assumptions mixed with conversations mixed with song lyrics mixed with randomness just became a mush in the end.  I let the snowball roll and then I made a snowman out of it. Hello, Lime.

~See Lemons search for something in nothing

Oh how I’ve missed you, Osaka

 

 

ooo a pretty flower.

Random Observation/Comment #91: It had only been 3 weeks of traveling with no idea where to sleep and full-unplanned days, but this was enough time for me to be thankful for a comfortable bed and a reliable place to keep my belongings.  I long for such adventures, but I don’t know if this excitement is what I really I truly want.  Maybe it’s all an excuse to run away from commitments in relationships, careers, lifestyles, and everything that governs my life.  If I throw myself into a hole, will it help me make a ladder?  (That made sense in my head – very gnomic).

 

This would be my last week of a laundry list of luxuries.  Every moment needed to be embraced and enjoyed before returning to a routine lacking cute Japanese girls and a ridiculous number of vending machines.  I knew I would miss a lot of things from Osaka, so I gave myself time to experience all of my favorites one last time.  The names of a few girls popped into my mind, but I was reluctant to pursue.  I felt these sharp stabs of guilt plunged by my own hand.  It is all for the better.

I visited the lab to see some familiarity.  Kadiru had taken my seat, and the name “new Clemens” after I had left.  Everything looked the same.  I don’t know why I expected such a huge transformation; it had only been 3 weeks.  It felt like the beginning of the trip again.  There was lively conversation and I shared a lot of the pictures I had taken from Mt. Fuji.  Friends were not so impressed by the 6,000 pictures I took in 3 weeks, but rather shook their heads with a light dismissal of a recognized addiction.   I was surprised how well they knew me after only two months. 

I guess someone could easily spot the photographer in me (I didn’t actually eat one) if they observed me for one day.  Every meal, situation, event, object, incident, occasion, or occurrence (I know most of those are synonyms) was recorded.  If three camera angles weren’t enough to tell the whole story, my soul stealing notepad would always clear things up.  Clearly, this was an indication of my problem.  It was an itch I couldn’t stop scratching.  Every other thought involved capturing the previous one in order to post it in a blog the next day.  It had taken control of my life.  My world revolved around writing about my world revolving around writing.  The recursion confused me, but yet I kept writing in circles.  Somehow, I had defined my words with the same letters in different orders.

I had lost all hope as I drowned in a sea of literary amusement.  Unfortunately for me, there was no easy cure.  There was no 12-step program where I could succumb to some religious salvation.  I needed to do this by myself and with my own willpower.  I started drinking to keep my mind from focusing on remembering every detail.  The steady buzz throughout the night left me social and consumed in sharing my opinions with other people.  I didn’t have the time to sit at home and write.  There weren’t enough sober hours in the day.

I would like to think I’ve recovered from this, but I often have nightmares where I just can’t stop writing in that notepad.  The camera grows arms and chokes me while blinding me with the flash.  Oh, the humanity… Luckily, my friends, black and tan, are not far away to cure my obsession.  Sure, you may say “it’s not healthy to cure an obsession (in this case, photography) by introducing an addiction (in this case, alcohol) to solve your problems.”  Well to that I say, umm… that’s a good point.

~See Lemons Just Chill

 

damn straight - I'm Brad Pitt

JICA… nice

 

 

balcony view

Random Observation/Comment #90: I don’t usually act very stressed or concerned about anything, but that’s usually because everything goes according to a set of expected outcomes.  In my mind, there are plans for every little thing that shouldn’t even be relevant.  I’m not a big fan of surprises.  It’s most probably a control issue or a desire for security and stability, but I think everyone has some level of this obsession.  I mention this because booking a full week in Jica was the best decision I could have made to relieve stress.  Homelessness in the middle of a foreign country with little-to-no means of communication seems to put a damper on my sight-seeing enjoyment.  In the back of my mind, I keep worrying about my clothes, laptop, and luggage like a mother worries about her teenage daughter’s love life – I really wanted to put up surveillance cameras and hire undercover investigators (In my experience, most Moms are psychotically protective CIA Moms).

 

The moment I stepped foot into the lobby, I knew I had walked into a five star hotel straight from a brochure.  I saw chuckling groups of diverse ethnic backgrounds in congregations around a reception desk.  The generically cute Japanese girl wearing her well-ironed uniform at the reception desk spoke perfect English while maintaining a flawless smile.  There wasn’t even a pause to swallow excess saliva or any form of lip movements to interrupt her pearly whites.  She did it so well that she could have been a ventriloquist, or a robot (This oddly made me attracted to her).  The entrance was complete with the photoshopped insertion of a businessman reading a newspaper near the futuristically tacky furniture in the lobby.  I couldn’t tell the difference between this view and a poster made by an architect to show their finished product.

The receptionist’s welcome was warm and chewy.  I felt important, but it didn’t seem like a forceful act.  She made casual conversation through her genuine interest while finishing all the paperwork and keeping eye contact – it was a textbook execution.  Her form amazed me and I wished I could have tipped her for the excellent service.  This is the Japanese mentality that I respect most – a pride in their job and overall helpfulness.  I remember much earlier in the trip, I was trying to make a phone call with a calling card to the Erics.  I couldn’t figure out what the telephone error was, so I walked into a hotel and asked the reception desk for assistance.  The guy literally abandoned his station, walked me to the nearest phone, and dialed the number for me – waiting until I was satisfied with the answer.  I’m not sure if this treatment was for foreigners, but I’ve only had these positive experiences with talking to employees of any company.  Everyone is just so accommodating.  I feel like someone could definitely take advantage of this kindness.

The hotel interior design was so simple and shiny.  My single room was huge compared to any place in Manhattan and I was only paying $35 a day for a full week stay.  I had my own twin size bed, large desk, drawers, in-room internet access, and bathroom.  This was my bachelor pad.  The balcony overlooked a lake and the TV provided me with unlimited crazy Japanese game shows.  Unfortunately, Jica is a little secluded from the rest of the city life, but there are frequent buses that stop at major stations and locations for the doctors and international students that mainly live there.  Before you leave, free breakfast with all the cherry tomatoes you can eat is also provided.  I love you, cherry tomatoes.

As with all of my stays, I wandered around the building like it was a museum.  The floor plans mapped in my mind so I could find my way around in case of emergencies.   Besides having really spacious rooms, this international housing area had three pool tables, a volleyball/basketball court, two tennis courts, a piano, karaoke rooms, and two ping pong tables.  There were designated times for all events, like a ping pong day and hour.  Every hallway was decorated with some type of artifact from around the world like it was all for historical display.

One very important thing about the stay is its midnight curfew, which I broke almost every night.  They expect you to return every night so you have to notify the front desk when you plan to sleep somewhere else.  I’m not going to lie – it felt really good telling someone where I was as if they actually cared.  It gave me a taste of home that had been missing in my past 3 months living independently.  I think the staff actually sleeps in their offices because I walked in at 3AM and someone was there to greet me with my room key.  This place made me feel safe.  I was very impressed.  I wouldn’t mind living here as a rental for a year.

~See Lemons Really Lucky

 

beautiful hallway on the main floor

A Hellish trot downhill

 

 

45 degrees steep

Random Observation/Comment #89: Conversations tend to die off when you barely have energy to stay awake, let alone climb down a mountain.   “So… what’s up?”  “What’s up? What’s up!?! Shut the hell up! I’m going to rip your head off and crap down your neck! – Oh, Sorry! I’m really not a morning person…”

 

I urged my followers to begin our next journey down the mountain mostly because I would have needed a Phoenix Down if they didn’t move in the next minute.  I knew that my Sun God would help warm me with its love and clemency.  Continuous movement is essential during the ascent and descent to maintain blood circulation.  If you stop for too long, you just fall asleep and won’t move for a really long time.  You’d probably start hitting people who try to convince you to continue, but think otherwise because it would require exerting an amount of energy that just didn’t exist.

At one point, the mountain angered me.  I wanted to jump up and down to stomp it and then verbally abuse it with “your mom” insults.  It really didn’t help anything except for my insanity case.  It was so cold and I was so tired that I just didn’t want to be there anymore.  I wanted to sit down and fall asleep on the side of the mountain.  The sandy, gravel made my socks brownish red and every hair on my body felt starchy – covered with a mixture of frozen sweat and random debris.

The descent had a completely different terrain and method of walking.  I was used to slowly conquering one step at a time, but here, you should do this really weird horse trot to efficiently use your energy.  Walking slowly down the 45 degree slant in wavy beach sand will quickly tire the back of your legs and take you forever.  However, if you pretend like you’re skiing down the gravel with a few skips and small jumps, you’ll get down the mountain much more quickly.  Be sure to walk in a zig zag path to get the most surface area on your shoes and to prevent rolling down the mountain from the momentum.  Don’t be embarrassed if you collapse.  You will definitely be exhausted and the new style of walking will take a little time to get used to.  Luckily for you, there is plenty of time to practice before you reach the bottom.  The layers of clothes were very important at this point because my clothes were completely drenched. I remembered advice about sunscreen, but I was too lazy to do anything of that sort.  The main thing to keep in the back of your mind about the hike down is the lack of stations.  Rest a little more often because you won’t be able to just rush to the next station to rest. 

I felt terrible, but every time I looked up and outward around me, I was overwhelmed with the beauty in front of me.  I couldn’t stay angry at the mountain when it gives me those puppy eyes.  As I stumbled down the mountain like the undead, I looked to my left to see the path of our ascent.  It was scary how much we climbed that night, and I was surprised that we made it that far. 

We eventually made it back to the fifth station by 10AM.  It’s actually quite a good feeling to see your accomplishments, but when you finish, you’ll be thinking “I’m never doing that again.”  After thinking about it for an overly extended period of time, I feel exactly the same way.  Let’s just keep it as a check off of the to-do list.

~See Lemons Wish for flat ground

 

the mountain is red?

the view