3 Day Weekend-Day 2: The Rivalry Continues...

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If you’re offended by anything, don’t read further.

You’re all going to fucking read it anyway cuz you’re curious, but don’t say I didn’t warn you…

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Read Day 1 Activities here.

I resisted the vile urge to sniff my finger, tiptoed to the bathroom and spent the next 30 minutes washing my hands under scalding water until I had used up half a bar of soap. With my hands redder than a casino owner’s, I walked into the shower and hugged my knees for 2 hours, huddling under the warm cascading water. No matter how hot the water was, I couldn't stop shivering. No matter how many times I scrubbed, I couldn’t feel clean. No matter how many times I cried, I couldn’t cleanse my insides.

I had been brutalized.

But there is a minute difference between actual helpless victims of rape and people who drink way too much and finger their grandmothers: the latter didn’t get raped.

So I quickly realized I could look on the bright side of things, “Hey! This is the first hit of the season! And a triple! I haven’t hit a triple since the last week of Texas! Things are looking up!” (I realize all of you just vomited onto your laps, but look on the bright side of life: you’ve always wanted to be a cheerleader!)

I had been in the shower for two hours so I was extra clean! And I’m a guy so I don’t have to worry about cleaning my soul after disgusting sexual acts! Instead, I can laugh about it on the Internet! And whatever wasn’t cleaned, I can use Axe to mask! (Not that I have Axe, but “Hey! At least I won’t smell like Guido!”)

I whistled a little ditty as I started shaving.

The world is sunny! The birds are chirping!

An apparition appeared in the mirror besides me. “What do you want for breakfast, Gen?”

I screamed, tearing a chunk out of my face with my 5 blades+1 Gillete Mach Turbo Fusion Elite Limited Edition Super Ultra.

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I locked myself in the room, applying a steady batch of paper towels to the stream of blood dripping from the side of my face. Apparently, the “Power of 5 blades, the Precision of 1” had worked as advertised, cutting an elegant hook on my jaw, straight to the bone.

It finally stopped bleeding and I looked in the mirror. Fuck. My face looked like a near complete jigasaw puzzle, missing that one piece. I tiptoed to the bathroom, found the mangled flesh piece and shoved it back in.

Good. Great. Perfect.

Impressed with my handiwork, I quickly put on some clothes and sprinted out of the house before I had to see my grandmother again.

I wandered around for a few hours before it was time to meet some family friends in Tokyo for fireworks.

This family is straight Tokyo. The father, mother and two sons live in a tiny one room apartment in the slums of “Shitamachi” Tokyo, they speak in a rolling Edo-ben and the father is perpetually drunk with a cigarette always handy.

Every year in Tokyo, they’ve invited me to Sumidagawa fireworks festival but I could never make it due to work. This year though, I have weekends off due to a normal job and I was finally able to roll through.

We went to the roof of their place, sat down with beer and food, and then…BANG!

Holy shit!

I dove for the deck, then glanced up to see the whole family laughing at me…what the hell?

BANG!

The fireworks were fucking going off not 20 yards away. The family had told me the house was close…but this close? Where the fuck were they shooting it off?

Then I saw it, a sliver of water that would be considered a stream in most places…the river was probably only a hundred yards wide and it was surrounded by densely packed Tokyo…imagine shooting off fireworks in one of the canals of Venice except replace quaint, sinking houses with structurally sound skyscrapers and this is what you got. Now picture a 20mph crosswind that was blowing that day and you can see how fucking scary this was. Pictures of Dresden and napalmed Vietnamese villages ran through my mind…fuck that would be lame—literally—if I lost a limb from fireworks.

After spending a good fifteen minutes jumping with each bang, I finally got used to it. If Japs can actually make Gundams, I’m sure they can engineer fireworks to not hit their civilians.

I leaned back. There’s something agonizingly sad about Japanese fireworks. In the US, we just shoot as many as we can at the same fucking time and try to make the biggest, baddest fireworks extravaganza to party to. Here, they shoot them one at a time, as if to give the viewer a short glimpse at each one before it dies out. You’re made to fleetingly appreciate each and every one.

As such, watching fireworks in Japan is not a group activity, but rather a solitary affair. There is no bumping rap music to dance to, no steaks sizzling on the grill, no wild partying…

Instead you sit silently. In between each “pyuuuuuu”… “boom!”, you sip on your beer or grab some edamame and reflect back to every other time you sat watching fireworks on a plastic sheet and drank beer and ate edamame. If you’ve got a girl, you look back with nostalgia at the first time the two of you watched fireworks. If its your first time with your girl you keep sneaking glances at her cuz she’s smoking hot in a yukata. And if you’re single, you think about the last fireworks you went with your girl and reflect silently on every aspect of your failed relationship.

I had only been to fireworks once before in Japan…the infamous day I met Chiaki.

I sat there, every dull “boom!” flashing me to a different scene. Boom. Me and Teddy switching off between Soon Hae and Chiaki in Tachikawa. Boom. Going home with Chiaki. Boom. Getting cockblocked by Soon Hae. Boom. Canada. Boom. Meeting her again. Boom. Spooning. Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

I leaned back so I was lying down, pulling my cap over my face.

I couldn’t watch anymore of this.

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Thankfully, I had an excuse to leave. Kang 2.0 (remember her?) was in Japan with some Korean conference tour group and she was throwing a hotel room party.

I split the fireworks festivities with 3 beers in my system, trained to Suidobashi and ended up in the opulent Tokyo Dome Hotel lobby.

I was wearing boarder shorts, flip flops, a t-shirt 3 sizes too big, a fitted and in a “Fuck It Mode” attitude because of the depressing nature of fireworks, A security guard quickly intercepted me as soon as I entered through the revolving doors.

“Excuse me sir, are you lost?”

“No.”

I plopped myself down on a leather couch and threw my feet up on a glass coffee table.

“Are you meeting someone, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

This was getting irritating. I was used to this sort of questioning in the States because I happen to have been graced with pigmentation in my skin tone, but over in this country I fucking pay the $300 per year to be in the national registry or whatever bureaucratic bullshit is required to be a citizen.

I’m also from New York City.

And a little drunk.

So I answered his question like every other drunk douchebag from NYC would.

“Your mother.”

He was floored. He had probably never heard a line like this before; “Yo Momma” jokes, despite being widely accepted as hilarious, have not been exported to the Far East.

He answered me seriously. “My mother isn’t staying at this hotel.”

Now it was me who was staring at him gape-mouthed.

Thankfully, the timely intervention of Kang 2.0 stopped me from continuing my asshole schtick and getting kicked out or knocked out. I followed her to an elevator as we made small talk and caught up.

Funny, I had forgotten how hot this girl was…I had liked her in the beginning of the school year (when Teddy was going after Nerdy K-Chick), but then backed off when him and her made out right next to me. I liked her…but not enough to cockblock a friend, and my interest fully waned when girls like Herbal Essence and HKW popped into my life.

She had ass-hugging short-shorts and some tight ass t-shirt which left little to the imaginiation, but inversely made my imagination run rampant.

I broke out of my lascivious thoughts as the elevator “pinged” open. We walked down the hall, entered a room and walked straight into a large circle of Koreans.

They all glanced at Kang 2.0 and then openly started staring at me.

Alexis threw some Hangul to them (probably something to the tune of “this is my J-friend, Gen”).

They stared. And then in unison, they all started applauding. “Woooooooo!”

Huh?

I’m a fucking all-star, but what the fuck is this reception? Am I supposed to fist pump? Clap along? Dance?

I decided to do what every Asian does in an awkward situation…bow.

Which led to more clapping…I was asked to introduce myself…which led to more clapping…

…this really isn’t helping my ego…

Somehow, I became the center of the party without being able to speak a word of Hangul. The guys kept refilling my drink, the girls kept giggling whenever I made a face after downing a shot and curious Korean eyes followed my every move.

In the midst, Kang 2.0 bounced out the room and suddenly everyone exploded around me.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I lifted my hands. I don’t speak Korean.

They looked disappointed but someone said something and they all huddled in a corner, whispering, planning something…

I started easing out…Korea/Japan relations are never good…now that Kang 2.0 had left and made me defenseless, they were going to do their real evil… they would take WWII revenge and make me into their sex slave…or beat me with a bat for the WBC…or claim me as a random island under Korean waters...

Suddenly, they all stood up and a guy walked tentatively forward. He paused in front of me.

I wildly looked around, then got into a defensive posture. All the people behind him were staring at me again. What the fuck…I slanted my eyes further as he took another step, getting dangerously close to my jabbing range…

He eagerly bent forward and in broken English, “Is your girlfriend?”

Oh…I calmed down.

But not much.

It could be a Korean trick. Kim Jung Il looks really huggable…until he tests another nuke…this guy is no different. I waved a nonchalant arm but kept my other hand gripping my iPod Touch, ready to deck this guy with 120 grams of sleekly designed portable music player it he made any sudden movements.

“No, no, no…she’s not my girlfriend…”

“Really?” He bent forward even more and I almost clocked him in the fucking head, but I managed to hold my hand back. Instead, I took a half step back, widening my stance and dropping my center of gravity in case he lunged forward.

“Yes…really.” Quick, change the subject…”Yaja chingu issayo?” (do you have a girlfriend?)

Everyone paused, it was surreal…the whole room froze and the Koreans all turned and looked at each other, their eyes widening, then slowly rotated their heads to me…

…and then the room fucking exploded like kimchee in a Westerner's mouth…

…people jumped up and down jabbering and pointing and yelling in their Korean language about how crazy it was this J-Popper could speak English and I almost got caught up in the hype cuz I was screaming random Korean words I knew (“Kim-chi!”, “Seoul!”, “Bulgogi!”, “Dry cleaners!”) when out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guy lunging for me, undoubtedly to hug me in joy…but my drunk mind quickly recalled the lifetime of brainwashing the Japanese government had pounded into me and I could only see a bloodthirsty Hangulminator pouncing for my neck…

…I rotated my hips, threw my upper body forward and then whipped my arm down, slamming the edge of my iPod into his dome with a sharp crack.

I leapt onto the bed and threw my hands to ceiling.

“BANZAI!”

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For some odd reason, I ended up not getting lynched in the ensuing silence as the crowd stared at their bleeding comrade and then looked up at my decidedly brash right wing Japanese gesture.

For some odd reason, my Japanese “reading the atmosphere” senses were hinting I should leave though my American side argued that I had saved half of their country from Communism. I was about to start reminding them of the vast contribution America's army had in providing them with freedom but another look at their convulsing friend stopped me. No, I shouldn’t stay…it was time to split like the 38th Parallel.

I bowed a few times in the universally Asian way of saying “sorry”, “thank you” and “goodbye” but actually meaning nothing and then bolted out.

Jesus…I’m a fucking retard. I staggered through the hallways, hoping I would stumble upon another room party and be polite and quiet to make amends for the night.

I started randomly knocking on doors, when Kang 2.0 magically appeared besides me and admonished me for my idiocy. Drunkenly slurring my apologies, we went to her room with two Korean guys and started pounding back a surprisingly amazing mix of Suntory can beer/JD.

I was way too drunk…I lay down on the bed, the room swirling in my vision, I shut my eyes to make it stop but my head just got more confused with the lack of olfactory stimuli. I opened them, the guys had disappeared, Kang 2.0 was next to me, we started making out…I quickly swiped second, she threw my hand out, we made out hard again, I swiped second again, she threw me out again…

…we both stopped. Breathing hard.

She paused, “I liked you…but I’m over you. I like one of the guys in this conference.”

I probably had a million responses I could’ve made but I stuck with the only ones my battered mouth could manage. “O…K…”

I made out with her slower this time…but then we both paused.

We both liked each other in the past.

But we were both in love with other people.

And before I passed the fuck out, I couldn’t help uttering two things.

“Chiaki…”

and

“Japan 1, Korea 0”

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Photos

Korea-Japan Relations
Japan owned

Japan wins?
I spy highly controversial WWII symbols in the background...and no, stop looking for the swastika...