So we eventually got into Tokyo via bullet train from Nagoya.

On the way to the hostel in Asakusa, Tokyo, we saw what we later realized was the Asahi building. there’s a giant golden sperm on it.

We also saw this awesome Samurai Statue.

During the day this long thig of shops is teaming with tourists all buying souveiners in by the giant nearby temple. At night, it is dead. In the distance is one lone woman with an umbrella.

Brandon finally met up with us after he had continued on the bike trip. This photo was taken shortly after he informed us that he woke up in a ditch seeing stars and a broken bike which was now hanging on a fence. He has no idea what happened. All he knows is he was riding down a hill in the rain, and then all his shit was in the road and he was in fact in a ditch. He was a day away from his Tokyo destination. He trained in to see us.

That night, we ate at one of the many restaurants which we had to put our shoes in a cupboard. there’s a piece of wood where, if you pull it out of the cupboard’s latch, it locks it. Mine was in the middle. My shoes barely fit.

We next left for the Fuj (Fuge, phooge, Fuje). Which is what we called Mount Fuji… Which is also Fujiyama. We didn’t take this train though. We bused. We took a bus with barely anyone else on it, due to the fact that either tourist don’t care about Mount Fuji, or else the season was just getting rainy… which it was… the town we went to was Kowaguchiko. It was an awesome little town.

Our hotel in Kowaguchiko had a view of a lake and Mt. Fuji in the distance. Although you couldn’t see it, because it was ingulfed in a large cloud the whole time.

Our hotel was Traditional Japanese. And we also had robes and bought beers made from the snow on Mount Fuji and drank them naked in the onsen at the hotel, which also overlooked the lake and the mountain.

Onsen means, hottub, or hot springs, or bath, mostly I think it means bath.

The next day we took another bus up the the fifth station on Mt. Fuji. This little diet Whistler was the only place tourists went to on the mountain.

Rules at the capsule hotel.

Rolly Polly Fishheads.

Meg Ryan is still famous in Japan.

Toast.

Flamboyant hipster offering a couch to a round granny.

Witty comment.

Perplexed onion kimono dance party.

beware of elevator crabs.

Happy puppy grateful to cary fecese. Bird chirpings bring joy.

All city signs have a happy cartoon inatimate object telling you how to live.

No sweaty, scratched-up, three legged dogs alowed.

Signs reads “Dont be a dumb bitch”

Awesome.

really awesome.

Dont cry, just run with your dove and bear friend away from the flaming mound and the masked winker.

Pooh Poo.

Star Belly Sneeches

In Vancouver, I bought a cane and an ankle tenser brace at Shoppers Drug Mart, got some T3`s for the pain, went to the airport and randomly ran into this idiot:

I was supposed to go to New York with Rob Sweatman on the same date of departure as my flight to Japan. I ditched our New York plans because I wanted to spend way more money to go to Asia. I forgot that fact and when we came across each other in the duty-free zone, we quickly figured it out. Our flights left at the same time.

I finally reached Osaka airport where my friend Max Mitchell met up with me. He`d been there for just under a month already.

He had been attacked by a kemushi catepillar and his hands and back were all blistery.

Here`s what a Kemushi looks like:

Me and Max were planning on riding bikes from Kyoto to Tokyo with our friend Brandon Flumerfelt (real name). Max and Brandon had bought us woman`s city shopping bikes with baskets on them to do this 550 kilometre quest on.

thant`s my cane in the basket.

On the first hour of the first day of our bike ride to tokyo, we had to go through a steep mountain pass in ass-wrenching hot weather.

Coming down the mountain Brandon`s front tire popped and he rolled in front of a mini japanese truck.

Max found a Jizo statue right by where Brandon almost died. Which was eerie because they are erected where other people have died.

After we fixed Barandons tire, we kept on to Otsu which is on the shore of Japans largest lake, Biwa-ko.

After day on of the bike trip, we had traveled only 50 kilometres of the trip, and I quickly realized that my chubby, sprained body may not make it al the way to Tokyo.

on day two, we woke up from a dingy night stay in a Japanese business-man hotel and ponchoed it up for the torential downpour we were about to bike in for another 9 hours.

As we went on, I Screamed and almost cried from the frustration and pain from biking up hills and wind pushing on my chest and forcing me back. Max had a similar problem and we came to reality. We were not going to bike the whole way to Tokyo with Brandon. He was way more fit, had way more drive, and at our rate it would have taken 10 or 11 days to do. Plus, I didn`t want to spend my vacation along a highway looking at trucks and rural scenery similar to that of Abottsford. But we were still in the middle of nowhere and we had to keep going until we foud a real town.

In another mountain pass, we found a shrine built under the highway…

…and a Temple on the side of the highway…

We finally reached Kameyama which had a train station and a realy straight forward city map…

…a playground…

…a segaworld…

…where you can play games while Japanese employees watch on as they smoke cigarettes in the distance…

…and a pachinco parlor.

Video!

We went to our hotel and said goodbye to Brandon before he continued on bike to Tokyo. We said goodbye in the form of drinking CUPS of sake and playing the best game ever, “Black Beard`s Critical Blow”.

You gotsa put swords in Black Beard`s barrel. If he pops out, you lose bitch.

The day Brandon left, me and Max had 20000 yen bikes that we tried to sell at the train station with a shitty sign which just said “For Sale”… We tried to sell both of them for 10000 yen.

No one would buy them, so we went to a bike shop and sold them for 1000 yen, which is like ten bucks.

Then me and Max trained to Nagoya, where we went to their Japanese equivalent of Science World and saw an awesome exhibit on Pteradons… which are now my favoutite animal.

And we stayed in a “capsule hotel”…

Here`s a video of that shit.

And they made us wear these awesome mandatory pajamas…

And their bathroom and everything was comunal. So we had to strip naked and go in a public bath with these gentlemen.

The next day, me and Max saw some bands play in a music festival in Nagoya. This one was a punk band called The Emeralds and they were alright… And they had tragic vintage 70’s shirts on.

We also befriended some music festival staff girls and they put us on their website… Which I’ll have a link to when I’m not lazy.

Sequence of events from May 22nd to May 27th:

May 22nd - Film a beer commercial in Vancouver in the morning, ride my scooter home, meet up with my roomate Jeff, catch a skytrain to Surrey, meet up with my friend Lewis, let him drive us to Kelowna, check in at a hotel, go to Yuk Yuks there in Kelowna, perform a 30 minute stand-up set for a cancer benefit for a room full of racist remax employees, go to bed.

May 23rd - Wake up at 6am, shuttle to Kelowna airport, fly to Vancouver, film more beer commercial, catch a cab to Vancouver airport, finish my book, fly to Kelowna, shuttle to Yuk Yuks, perform a 30 minute stand-up set to a room full of racist hicks, go with Jeff and Lewis to a couple shitty Kelowna night clubs, visit them at thei hostel, throw a matress on top of Lewis while drunk and walk on him and sprain my ankle, put ice on my ankle, fall asleep in a hostel I didn`t pay for.

May 24th - Wake up, hobble to the hostel lobby, sneak out unnoticed, catch a shuttle to the hospital, get an x-ray, fall in love with 3 nurses, get casted up, buy crutches, catch a cab to hotel, watch home and garden channel, sleep from 11am to 5pm, go to Yuk Yuks Kelowna, perform a stand-up show to a room full of racist hicks while sitting on a stool with crutches against the stool, go to Lewisaunts house, watch a Documentary on Donkey Kong, go to sleep.

May 25th - Drive to Vancouver, pack for Japan, sleep.

May 26th - Wake up, pick up contact lenses, cab to airport, fly to Osaka Japan, sleep on flight.

May 27th - Meet my friend Max at the Airport, train to Kyoto, sleep in a hotel.

…The next day I left for an across-Japan bicycle trip… With a sprained ankle and severe jet-lag…to be continued.