Day One: Shinjuku

Todays Japanese Word: Kawaii - Cute

a simple word with uses all over japan

I'd been off the plane for something like an hour and I was on my way to shinjuku with ben.

Known for being one of the largest train staitons in tokyo and a hub for all the major railway lines, i was excited to see it. i hadnt remembered ever seeing it before.

it was a huge area. so many people and so many different lights and sounds.

i had taken my guitar out to play for about five minutes when a young japanese guy came up and started talking to me.

i dont remember this kids name, but he definitely was not from around here. he said he was from shizuoka and his favorite band was bon jovi.

it seems like every japanese person likes bon jovi in some form or another. i guess bon jovi is pretty legit.

we talked for a while, then i went and ate some tempura before being hoisted back to the american housing area at camp zama.

i spent the next night there.

it was kawaii. I woke up the next morning to the screeching sound of crows. i remember it so well from my first mission area, yamato. they screech so loud.

another thing i am reminded of so well here is the smell of this country. its not a bad smell, but more of a unique something or another. i cant exactly put my finger on it right now.

but ill try later.

best wishes and stay kawaii.

Swine Flu

you step on a plane in atlanta, or i do at least

youre in washington dc. you wake up and youre sitting on a plane to tokyo. its a 13 hour flight. the stewardesses wear cute little scarves and hats. they look way too cute and way too japanese for what youre really used to.

it might be the most cramped youve ever been. everyone around you is sipping wine slowly or reading a newspaper in some incomprehensible language. these languages arent japanese. some are going to china, some to vietnam and some to korea.

it wouldnt have been too badly cramped if the trip had been about four hours, like a domestic flight or something, but 13 hours is overkill for the seat i was in. i could totally understand now how i ended up with such a cheap ticket.

i was bamboozled.

I met a really cool guy from tokyo on the plane and we talked it up for a good long while. sometimes in english, sometimes in japanese. he told me my japanese was good by using the words "nihongo ga ojyouzu desu ne" which means something like "your japanese is bombin."

but i know the truth. when japanese folks say this to you, they really mean something like "way to try" or "A for effort."

the best part of the plane trip was the giant drinking of alcohol ceremony followed by an immediate naptime. the stewardesses walked around with trays loaded with all different types of beer, wine and maybe even a little warm sake to appease the older crowd. since i am a non-drinker, i sat twiddling my thumbs as everyone around me drank and drank and drank some more. there was singing and loud conversations. the guy in the row in front of me kept shouting for about ten minutes about how happy he was.

after the alcohol had been consumed, they dimmed the cabin lights, the stewardesses sat down in their seats which of course faced the opposite of all the passengers in the plane, and everyone took a nap.

this was a great naptime. i guess it is just part of standard policy on the plane to have naptime following the meal and consumption of large amounts of alcohol. after all the boisterous cacophony, all was silent. we all went to sleep.

but anyway, were on the flight for 13 hours, then they come on the PA after we land and tell us that there are doctors that will be entering the plane and we have to wait for them to show up and do whatever.

so they show up in about 30 minutes.

these guys come in and theyre dressed up like astronauts. they look like the government guys at the end of ET or something. way too cool to be true. then they start to examine everyone with a futuristic video camera that i reckon was supposed to pick up swine flue vibes or something.

i passed, but one around me was not so lucky.

they came on the PA and made another announcement that someone close to me had traces of what could POSSIBLY, just MAYBE be something like the swine flu. So then they sent in the big guns. Doctors dressed in blue like this sucker in this picture right here.

i took lots of pictures of this, which apparently started a trend. everyone around me started taking pictures until eventually they had to tell everyone to stop.

they gave us cute masks to wear that made us all look like sub zero from mortal kombat.

Then they came on and made an even better announcement. Everyone sitting in a 2 meter area of this poor infected kid had to stay on the plane longer for more tests. of course i was one of the hundreds on the plane with this honor.

So I stayed and stayed...and then i stayed a little more.

They finally let me outta there about 3 hours after the plane landed. i go through the motions, jump through the hoops.

and im in japan.

i meet my frind ben at the baggage claim, pick up my bag that was sitting there for 2 and a half hours. i go out to the train station, meet my same friend i had met on the plane, who in turn followed me and took care of me as i went through customs and all, and we were on a train for shinjuku, the heart of tokyo.

B Riggs: Going Home

only slightly different from a music special on the disney channel. this is mostly the real deal.

columbus georgia is my true home

and probably always will be

so being able to come home has been a wonderful experience for me. i dont remember the last time i felt as excited as i did that morning three days ago when i pulled into my home after a 17 hour drive. i felt like i had returned after being gone for years even though it has only been four months.

i wasnt able to enjoy being home as much as i would have liked. ive spent a large amount of my time preparing for this trip, which has made me happy but i feel like i have missed a lot of chances to spend time with my parents. oh well i guess. there is always the rest of the summer.

i had delayed coming home days and days from when i had originally anticipated after finishing my school finals. speaking of which, i received my grades today, and they were crap. BUT im grateful those classes are over cause they were the most extremely dull and frustrating set of classes i believe i have ever had during my already mostly dull college experience. not to say my life is dull, cause it isnt, but in my humble opinion, my college can be dull in the affirmative.

because i put things off, it just made my time here more constrained. which is fine. ive worked hard and feel like i am ready to go.

most of the days have been buying things. some trips to wal-mart, greatest store on the planet, the army surplus store and some occasional trips to columbus high school. i was able to speak for two japanese classes taught by my high school japanese teacher, who is of course great.

she kept reiterating to the class that i was one of the students in the class with a constant attitude of hopelessness. i had vowed after completing my high school foreign language requirement that i would never speak japanese again.

but oh my friends, the joke was so on me.

i ended up living in japan for two years, and even though a lot of the time was spent with me still convincing myself it was impossible for two languages to fit into my one huge head, i was able to eventually do it.

my teacher is proud of me for being able to do that but maybe not as proud as myself. ive learned the importance of not putting down or willfully restricting your own potential. i believe that regardless of who we are or where we came from, this potential is constant and neverending.

im just as sad as i have ever been to leave my home. i grew up here and had some of the best times of my life here. the people here made me who i am.

even though i often think columbus doesnt have that pizzazz of big city living or hustle and bustle, this is my home. i thank god every day im from this town, this state and this country.

so i leave columbus at 6am to head for atlanta. from atlanta to washington dc. from washington dc to tokyo. arriving in tokyo at 3pm and from then...?

i love you all and will see you there.

60cities 2days - day two

I wake up in the downstairs bedroom of a home in glenwood iowa.

and it is glorious.

Mike gives me a huge spoon and i eat a big bowl of raisin bran. i never liked raisin bran before about three years ago, but let me tell you, theres something delicious and amazing about that stuff. its kinda gross though if you think about it.

i chill out in glenwood for about two hours, watch some cartoons, swing by the cemetery and then im on my way to kansas city.

kansas city, hey hey hey. what a great city to travel through. i mean, its part of missouri even though you might expect it to even be a part of kansas, but it isnt, its kansas CITY.

there was a rollercoaster along the road i saw as i was driving, and that was about the most fun i had there.

ok, so as i was going along the road to st. louis, i noticed that for some reason, that stretch of road is loaded with all these adult superstores. there are signs everywhere. i remember a specific instance i saw a long group of them as i was listening to a fiona apple record.

i wonder...what are these adult superstores? why do they call them superstores? what kind of fun things must be inside.

i can only assume that because it has the word "adult" in the name, it has to be something only adults would like. maybe it was loaded with diet cokes and vhs tapes of c-span, adults seem to like that stuff.

maybe ill never full comprehend the mystery of what is sold in these adult superstores. i couldnt look inside cause the windows were blacked out. maybe they were watching a movie or someone was in there trying to sleep.

a couple hours later, the sun went down. it got dark outside. real dark.

i had been driving for almost six hours before i finally made it into st. louis. i was tired and delirious.

i also got to a certain point where i didnt know where i wa. yeah, i was lost. i did the first thing i could think of, i called my dad.

the conversation was something like this:

Brandon: Hey...whats up.

Darren: Hey son! I'm at a church thing right now!

Brandon: (under my breath) Oh...F*&$...S@#*!

Darren: ...what?

Brandon: Nothing, I cant talk to you (hang phone up)

I eventually found my way out of there, and narrowly risked crashing my car in the middle of a grafitti laced tunnel so i could take this picture for your viewing pleasure. if you look close you can see the arch, and youd better look cause taking this picture wasnt easy.

then i was on to peducah kentucky, the second best place in america to get killed by idiots, or in this case one idiot. second only to laramie, a hotspot of yesterday. i had been driving now for a good nine or ten hours, and i was feeling it.

i stopped at a truck stop in nashville at 3am. i bought two 5 hour energy shots to try to keep myself going. i knew i should have stopped and slept for a little bit, but i had to do the ballsy thing andd just keep on truckin.

when the girl at the counter asked me my age so i could buy the energy shots, i couldnt exactly remember. was i born in 1987? 1988? yeah, it was something like that.

i ride on through chattanooga, slapping my face to stay awake hoping the sun will come up soon. i roll down the windows and blast abba on the stereo. i can stay awake. i can keep going to columbus.

i cross the georgia state line sometime around 5am. it feels so good to breathe in the georgian air. i make it into atlanta about an hour and a half later.

those folks in that city are crazy. theyre going 90mph in bumper to bumper traffic so they can get to wherever the crap they work. no job is so important that you have to drive like a total freaking idiot to get there, but i reckon some people feel different. i finally made it out of there as the sun was rising to the east, the left side of the car.

it was one of the most beautiful sunrises i could remember in a long time. the georgian sky looks different than anywhere else i have ever lived. the rising sun glows on the horizon and the clouds come in the most beautiful and vibrant colors.

i drive for an hour and a half to columbus with the windows down breathing in the morning air. i leave my arm out the window feeling the moist air on my hands.

i had been driving for 17 hours with the only stops being for gas. i was tired, feeling almost half dead. i was delirious and was losing sense of where i was and why.

but i was happy

i was home

60cities 2days - day one

ladies and gentlemen,

ok, so driving to georgia was something like an absolute hell. i apologize i have not updated recently, but preparing for the trip has me swamped.

but lets skip that crap and get to the point here. the time has arrived and in less than 36 hours i will be on a plane bound for tokyo. life is good and i feel like i am ready to go on and see 60 cities in 60 days.

but let me tell you about 60 cities in 2 days, the trip from provo utah to columbus georgia. a good 35 hours sitting in a car, feeling like you truly want life to end with every hour after six.

day one:

i leave provo utah at about 9am. 7-11 had just had a huge hot dog fair and so they still had hot dog balloons up in the building when i buy my hot dog and fill up my 100oz mug with mountain dew. i slowly begin to replace the blood in my bloodstream with a mixture of yellow food coloring, caffeine, aspartame and water.

interstate 80 could be the loneliest and most desolate road in america. wyoming probably has more people driving on the highway than actually reside in the state. it is a state of cowboys and bad weather. i drove through the worst ice storm i believe i have ever seen. the whole hour or 75ft visibility and winds up to 50mph was spent listening to alison krauss and robert plants record. it was glorious and serene.

heres the only two things worth mentioning about wyomings cities

cheyenne: the state capital. it has one or two mcdonalds.
laramie: the city where an alternative sexual preference could possibly get you killed by either one or two prejudiced and intolerant rednecks.

and here is a picture from wyoming compliments of the ol samsung camera phone.


image this natural beauty in the distance for over 14 hours straight. "14 hours...doesnt it only take 7 or 8 hours to drive through wyoming!?" you may ask.

well, i got to drive through nebraska also before finally stopping in iowa! here are some pictures of nebraska!!!


and...


and...


im almost falling asleep trying to look at the pictures now.

throughout the day i made about three stops for gas. at each stop i would promptly order one bag of doritos and a 5 hour energy shot.

this continued throughout the next day as well.

then at about 11:50, i made it into the omaha city limits. i gave a call to the lynes and met them in their home in glenwood for the evening.

on the lighter side of things, the trip on friday wasnt too excruciatingly painful. i got to listen to the newest radiohead record and victor frankl's mans search for meaning on cd.

if you get the chance, read that book. its life changing.

until next time, god bless ya.