Lists

I like lists, and I like being able to cross things off lists. I recently came across a list on my computer that I made last year in Vietnam entitled “100 things to do before I turn 35″, and although I had almost forgotten what was on the list, I got to cross off a few items (get a lebret piercing; eat that disgusting duck embryo thing; eat the beating heart of a snake in Vietnam).

This time, to hold myself accountable to doing things that I say I’m going to do (this is really important for me — my pet peeve is when people talk about doing awesome things and never do them), I decided to share my list of experiences/foods/crazy things I want to try while here in Japan — and to give myself a specific timeline so that I can’t cop out and say “but I’m still in Japan, so I’ve got time…”

Oh, and I’m very open to suggestions if anyone has them (comment below please!)

This list is mostly for me, but people may get some ideas for their own and that’s cool.

Things I want to do in Japan in the next two months:

1 Lose 1 000 Yen ($10) in a Pachinko Parlor

2 Stay in a Ryokan in an Onsen town

3 Play Mah-jong in an illegal parlor (found the parlor, now just need to make a connection…)

4 Work a weekend at a Japanese Host Club

(connections made; early 2008)

5 Stay in the Hello Kitty S & M room at the Adonis Love Hotel (Osaka)

(see picture above)

6 Stay in that love hotel (Gang Snowman Hotel) with the basket swing/bumper cars/Caddillac-converted bed (Osaka)

7 My first article published in a Japanese magazine – about the Nanpa Sensei in Osaka

(interview finished and almost finished first draft)

8 My first article published in a North American magazine under my name (long story) – about Jules, an American Host at a Japanese Host Club

(interview finished; in the process)

9 Visit the old gang at Kumamoto Gakuen University

10 Get a gig as a bartender instead of a shitty English teaching job

11 Go to one of those restaurants where you eat sushi off a naked woman

12 Spend an afternoon in a “Maid Cafe”

I’ll be posting updates on my progress through the list… as well as probably adding a few things that I didn’t think of in the 5 minutes it took to create it.

Other cool things I’ve done in the past week that I wish were on my list so I could cross them off:

1) Went to a host club for the first time.
(crazy. just wait for the article)

2) Met a “Master” Sex Therapist
(don’t get the wrong idea now… for my Nanpa sensei article)

3) Watched the entire Godfather Trilogy for the first time
(yeah, that’s not that exciting, but they were damn good movies…)

Postscript: Trains Suck

Shitty things happening doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re stuck with having a shitty day. That’s what the people I look up to say, and that’s what I’ve been trying to implement into my life. It’s not that easy though. To build a habit, you have to be conscious of what you’re doing — that takes energy and time, and often seems like more than it’s worth.

Tonight I bought my ticket and ran up to the train track. I knew I was close to not making the last train of the night, but I thought I was just in time. I looked at the schedule. Last train, 11:46pm. I looked at my cell phone: 11:47pm. Fuck.

At first I felt like crap, knowing that I’d have to walk pretty far. Then I stopped and thought about how it’s not your circumstances that define you — it’s how you deal with those circumstances. I walked out of the station and into the conbini (convenience store) and bought two “one cup” sake bottles and a bag of dried squid (you’ve been in Japan too long when…). The guy at the conbini even heated up my sake for me.

It took me an hour and a half to walk home, but it was a nice walk. I talked a little with a homeless guy setting up his cardboard box home near the river and later I met a group of very cute girls dancing outside a building, using a dark window as a mirror to practice in front of. They told me to come back again soon and they’ll teach me some dance moves.

So why am I bragging about this? I just think that every time you can pull yourself out from an old, deep, useless pattern that you’ve been following for years (like feeling shit about being inconvenienced), you deserve to pat yourself on the back. So, the point, I guess, is that I rock.