Ya know, it's the little things in life. Really. Nudges, glances, pauses. Platelets. There really isn't anything much smaller than a platelet. Some hemoglobin thing that helps the blood clot. I think it's what hemophiliacs are made of. Or not made of. But your platelet count falls when your albumin gets low which happens when you have hepatitis c. So I'm getting to know my platelets, we've been talking a lot lately. I tried to go to some high altitude places last year and needed to not go because of my platelet count. But I'm way better than I was so this year I got to do my trip. My goal is Mt. Kalash, Tibet. On a motorcycle. A '33 Vincent, with Brian Goggin in the sidecar. I'm only kidding about the motorcycle. So this is my trip. And this is the chronicle of my trip. I kinda have a lot of balls in the air right now so it will be interesting to see how this turns out without editing. I am just typing from internet cafÈ's and such. I have been doing an exercise of late. I've been trying to be mindful of all the little things. So it's only fair that I should tell you of:

The Day I Realized I Was Short….

Or

19 Hours in Tokyo…. By chicken john

I get on the plane I and I am seated next to this guy, who I talk to for 7 hours straight without stopping. Then we both take a nap. His name is Boris, of course. He is from Canada. He's a web developer guy who works for non-profits doing the blogging rights thing. He is staying in Tokyo because he has a free place to stay and he loves it. I've never been. 747 fishtails on the touchdown. The Japanese on the plane applaud. I have a flash of a vision: Monster Planes!!!!! Sunday!! Sunday!!!!! SUNDAY!!!!!! Jet fuel power funny planes, wing-ding aeronautic disaster planes!!!!!!!!! I imagine how much fun a demolition derby airplane thing would be. Someone steal that idea, please. Boris invites me to hang out with him. He says that Tokyo is better if you have a guide. I say OK, I'm down with whatever. I contacted the Yahoo tribe thing for Tokyo Santas. A few wrote me back with their cell phones and said to give them a call. That's kinda neat, thinks me. We get through customs and are in the cleanest airport I have ever been in. There are people cleaning it. There they are. That's why it's so clean. There is a guy with one foot on a ladder and one foot on a Fed Ex drop box reaching high to clean a window. The foot that is on the Fed Ex box has no shoe. He took it off. It's neatly placed perfectly square under the Fed Ex box. Like someone was gonna be there with a level and kill his children if it wasn't just so. We were put in a line next to 3 other lines of people in a diagonal to the curb to wait for our bus. It couldn't have been more confusing, but it didn't matter. There were 4 guys making sure that everyone was in their proper line. They took my luggage and gave me receipts for it. They handled my luggage like it was the remains of a war hero. I get on the nicest bus I have ever been on. The Japanese don't talk on their cell phones in public. But they text like chronic masturbators. The phones they have are like jet packs compared to the phones we have. 2 cameras, so they can video phone. Cellular video phone. They have that TODAY. We don't even have video phone. Their batteries last days. The quality of the photos taken from their cameras is better than your $500 camera. That phone costs them $300.

We arrive in Tokyo and stuff our bags into lockers at the train station. I get some Yen out of an ATM and Boris takes me to the best fish dinner I have ever had. It was stunning. And it was surprisingly inexpensive. I was expecting double the price of everything. But it was the same like NYC or SF. Which kinda bummed me out, as I had scheduled my trip to be only 19 hours thinking that anything more would break me. I go to my hotel solo and pay them the $52. The room is small. OK, the room is an RV. The bathroom is one piece of plastic. Hard to explain. The walls floor and ceiling and sink and tub and shower and medicine chest are all one piece of plastic. It's like a toy. The Japanese use the metric system for everything except the SQ. footage of their apartments. For that they use the mat system. They sleep (or used to sleep) on these mats. I forget what they are called. Lets call them matzillas. So a matzilla is basically 2' x 4'. So the average apartment that has 5 people living in it is 6 matzillas large. Ya get one matzilla per person. My hotel room was 3 matzillas. Plus the bathroom, which now I'm remembering was more like a phone booth. The average American from Iowa would not have actually been able to fit in the bathroom. They did give me a bathrobe, though. I was imagining lounging around in my bathrobe. The hotel rooms was the size of like 6 of those bathrobes. I decide that I only have 11 more hours, I should make the best of it. My hotel is in Euno (way-no) which is cool but I wanna go to the intersection made famous by the movie Baraka. I go to the subway, and there is much activity. There is a large mirror. I stand in front of the mirror and watch the torrents of Japanese pass by me. Then, a horror washes over me: I relise that I am the same size as these people. I was listening to a Dharma talk and the guy was talking about noticing the little things. All the little things. Like me! Jesus, I thought these people were…. Ya know…. Smallish in size…. MY SIZE!!!! From the vantage point of the mirror I can see that we are all the same height. I didn't know. I always thought I was big… ya know… I keep moving. I get on the subway. I then realize that I'm wearing the same clothes that I was wearing 2 days ago moving tires around at Ace Junkyard. I didn't really think about it. I was in such a mad rush to get to the airport and park all the cars and deal with the stuff I just didn't think about how dirty I was. Compared to these people I was undead. I realize this by the look of shock and horror this woman is giving me as I'm biting my nails and spitting them on the floor of the subway. I laugh out loud and pick it up and eat it. I move to another car to give her story of me a concrete ending. I am starting to notice that Japanese women are really beautiful. Like, every 5 minutes or so I am struck with awe at the inconceivable beauty of one of them. Not like, "Wow, she's hot." Like, "Wow. Our children would be beautiful." I actually was caught staring and she just stared back for a minute then she turned away. No emotion. I have no idea what I look like to these people. There are a few westerners but it's one in thousands or less. The latest fashion, it seems, is red hair. Orange-red. Like fire. Everyone younger than 25 has red hair. I arrive at the Shikuko station and there are so many people out on this Saturday night I'm claustrophobic. There are a million people here. Standing outside the subway terminal. All dressed up. With nowhere to go. There are too many people. Where are they going to the bathroom? There is food everywhere, but very few people are eating. Did I mention the girls were hot like fucking fire? In the evening they literally roll up the streets. Tokyo becomes a deserted wasteland. I wait a long time for a cab to take me back to my miniature hotel.

There are no homeless persons. I wake up very early and walk around. There is a time when the homeless can't dissolve into the cityscape. They have to stop moving a few hours a night. They usually sleep just before dawn, when they just can't keep going anymore. I was walking and taking cabs all over. There are no homeless in Tokyo. There is no evidence of them. It kinda all fits. There are 7 people directing traffic in a tiny parking lot. There are people to help you get on the elevator. A restaurant that has 15 seats has 8 employees. Everyone has a job. Everyone. Even what we would consider unemployable they find something for them to do. Then I remember why: they have no military to waste 60% of their money on. They can perv out on cleanliness and shit. There is 1 stream in Japan that doesn't have a cement bottom. You can do that when your not training troops and buying airships. So it all becomes a jealous game… this is what a society looks like that has unrestricted growth and no major conflicts. Kinda boring. For 19 hours worth, I have to assume that if you went to Vail Colorado for 4 hours then wrote an essay on American culture you would misguided. I'm just blabbing to see what comes out. Did I mention the young school girls in sailor suits?????

The young school girls wear sailor suits. Beats the shit out of our catholic school girl outfits. Hands down. These girls have porn soundtrack music that follows them wherever they go. They keep it in your mind. It's convenient.

It's Sunday morning and I'm looking over the city from the vantage point of the top of one of the tall building's observation deck. The sprawl is awesome. It's endless. Mostly 3 story buildings. But they go on for eons… Mt. Fuji in the distance… hard to see through the smog. I find myself at a pachinko game. I'm trying to have the guy explain it to me but I don't see how you can 'win'. It makes me wanna smoke so I leave. I pass by a park where there are 26 people feverishly carving blocks of ice. Like maniacs. Saws and chisels and arms and legs. They are working at such a metered pace I am sure they are racing. I then realize that the ice is fucking melting. They are all carving the same thing. That was totally neat. There are people passing out free plastic junk everywhere. The consumer culture thing is fully out of control and it's funny as hell. There is American stuff everywhere. I have traveled a bit now but I'm still baffled that our games and toys and foods and booze is everywhere. I buy a Big Mac, just to see what it's like. The beef is peppered.

The 15:20 train for Norita airport left at 15:20. It was $20US but no one checked my ticket because no one would ever think of riding without paying. As the train rode east through the Tokyo suburbs I saw many matzillas hanging out the windows, airing out on a Sunday afternoon. When they ask me to take my shoes off to go through the metal detector they give me slippers. I say: "What, no robe?"

In the bathroom of the airport I soak myself trying to photograph the toilet with the car wash feature and laugh so loud that some guy comes to help me. He sees me laughing laying on the ground with the camera and soaked and starts rolling his eyes and chuckling. I leave Tokyo vowing to return sometime with purpose. I wanna open a fecal facial shop in downtown. C'mon, that's funny…..

…So that was the first 29 hours of my trip. I am now in Bangkok with the Kai Doom Doom puppeteers trying to get the paperwork filled out for their immigration to USA later this summer. It's not easy. I'll next write about the little things from Kunming China. Saywayde Cop, chicken john