A milestone in The Adult Life Of Christine:

July 25, 2007: The first time Christine completely neglects to pay a bill and has to suffer the consequences.
My cell phone company, AU, has pulled the plug, and I have no cell phone until I drag myself to the AU office and do some remorseful bowing. Shame upon me, my family, my ancestors, and my nation. Or something like that.

On Sunday, I went to a festival in Urawa. When someone invites you to carry a heavy ceremonial shrine ("omikoshi") down a long street with some whiteys and some Chinese people, you take it. Bring on the gawking.

There weren't enough happi coats for everyone, but I managed to rush in and grab one for myself. America!

This isn't so bad! (notice the tall guys in the back taking all the weight)

Weight redistributed. Starting to feel the burn.

And then a child climbed on top and started waving fans around...

"Motherfucker, this is heavy!"

A good time was had by all. We only had one drunk old man yell at us for befouling his culture, and my shoulder made it through with only a little bruising.
All that rhythmic yelling and clapping and bouncing really gets you PUMPED! and THIRSTY! So we proceeded directly to the beer garden afterwards and proceeded to drink our weight in beer. It's all a bit fuzzy after that.
Wasshoi! Wasshoi!

Here in Japan, we have these things called "natural disasters."
This is kinda a problem.

You see, at home, the most I ever had to worry about was the winter "nor'easter," which would come through like an angry bitch and take a big white dump on my house. The aftereffect of which was the enormous hassle of having to pay my brother to shovel my car out.

But Japan. Japan's full of tricks. There's always the danger of the earth spazzing out all of a sudden without warning, and then bam! a building has fallen on your head.
This happened in Niigata last weekend to a lot of sad old people who thought it would be a good idea to live on a fault-line in a house made of paper.

There are also typhoons (from "taifu," which is the Japanese word for hurricane and also really fun to say), and wouldn't you know it, we had a typhoon warning, right smack in the middle of my first long weekend in three months.
The typhoon was due to arrive mid-day Sunday, so I naturally started thinking about disaster preparation oh, around 7am Sunday morning while I was still in Shibuya and still quite intoxicated.

I then decided that the only safe and responsible thing to do would be to head home and buy food, as it had been quite a long time since I'd had anything in my fridge besides expired tofu and skunky beer.
So off I went in the pouring rain to my neighborhood grocery store, where I bought the following:

Two blueberry yogurt cups
Two bags of frozen "Spicy Chicky Bone" (half price!)
One bag of frozen edamame
One can of condensed clam chowder
A carton of milk

After squelching back into my apartment sopping wet, I immediately went to sleep, and by the time I had woken up, the storm had passed. False alarm. I was pretty disappointed, since I'd had big plans to spend the day watching the mayhem from the safety of my living room.
I hadn't, however, realized the following:

1. I had taken the batteries out of my flashlight long ago, to power my speakers.
2. Said flashlight had then been dropped behind a piece of furniture, and I had since forgotten which one.
3. Dairy products and two bags of frozen buffalo wings do not make good emergency rations in the event of a power outage.

I'm an idiot.

Stay tuned for the next installment of the Christine Clusterfuck Hour. Same time, same channel.

The squat, redheaded woman named Irina offers to get me a drink, but I decline. She laughs, then straps on her shoes, gets up, and wraps herself around a metal pole.
...
WAIT, WHAT AM I DOING IN A RUSSIAN HOSTESS CLUB?!


Long story short, on Wednesday night I made friends with a crazy Russian girl at the usual bar, and when 2:30 or so rolled around, she dragged me across the street to her place of employment. I got a couple free drinks (vodka), made friends with some ho's (miserable-looking), and had compliments showered on me by some lecherous Japanese men ("customers").

Around closing time, drunk Irina decided that she would try to give me her shoes - some scary pleather-wrapped-around-the-calf, metal spike-heeled numbers. This is how the conversation went (we were speaking Japanese to each other because her English was crap):

Irina: "Here."
Me: "Huh?"
Irina: "You should keep these."
Me: "Me? Why?"
Irina: "I think you like them."
Me: "But they're too small, and I can't walk in them."
Irina: *shrugs* "Well, you can have them. I think you like them."

There may have been some sort of larger, symbolic exchange happening here. I wasn't sure. But I didn't take the shoes.


Never a dull moment.

Meet Loincloth Guy.

But first, let me backtrack:

A Japanese man in sunglasses spends a good half-hour spastically dancing alone in front of the DJ. No big deal.

A spastic Japanese man in sunglasses makes it readily apparent through his dancing that he had a couple handfuls of various drugs before showing up at the bar. No big deal, he's not bothering anyone.

A spastic, drugged-out Japanese man in sunglasses takes off his sunglasses, lies down on the nearby couch, and begins thrusting his pelvis into the air to a techno beat. No big deal, we all have our forms of self-expression.

A spastic, drugged-out, pelvic-thrusting Japanese man gets up from the couch and raises his arms in victory.
Double take! What's that peeking out from his jeans?! A piece of cloth in front, a piece of cloth in back, and some string. Well, no big deal, just your average, run-of-the-mill sexual deviant.

A spastic, drugged-out, pelvic-thrusting, sexually deviant Japanese man marches up to the dance floor, rips off all his clothes down to his bright red loincloth, and jumps up and down until George the Bartender stuffs his clothes into his arms and ushers him away.

He does this three times.

Meet Loincloth Guy.

Ingredients for a successful 4th of July:

Booze - check

Corn on the cob, hot dog, fried chicken - check, check, check

Enthusiastic random outbursts of "Amurrica! YEAH!" - check

Fireworks on the street - check

Fireworks fired off balcony, in living room, and into sleeping friend's bedroom at 3am - CHECK.

Dangerously improper use of bottle rockets - check

Barking dogs all over Omiya - check

"Oh shit, the cops are totally gonna show up LETS BOUNCE" - check

Two white girls attempting a "getaway," one covered in soot and the other with no shoes on. - check

The look on Pat's face when he turns on the lights tomorrow and sees the damage done to his room - priceless?