Adam Prebola runs the website Bluesocks and has been published several times for his short stories. Below are collected excerpts from his travels as an American dude in Tokyo.
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Yesterday I was riding the train, reading some comics when at Tokyo Teleport a few couples got on. To my left was a guy and girl couple and across from us was two girls and a guy that seemed to be their friends. I was just sitting there minding my own biz when after about 15 minutes, the girl to my left started handing candy out to all her friends. She started with her boyfriend, to my immediate left she was next to him, and then her buddies across from us. She then reached over her boyfriend and thrust a sourball my way. Her boyfriend said "are you kidding me?!" or something, it was Japanese and I don't feel like looking up the real meaning (for the nihongo-ists out there, he said "Maji de?!"). Well, I took the candy and said "thank you" in a nice guy voice. She said, "well, he's reading manga!" as her explaination. The boyfriend was just staring at me in disbelief. It was just candy, relax. But he kept on looking. So, I turned and popped the candy in my mouth and gave him a real shit eating grin as if to say, "You've been buying her dinner and plying her with booze, and I'm just some random guy on the train; but all I would have to do is wink and her cargo pants would hit the floor." He gave a polite smile and turned away. It was a Brachs sourball.
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And just something I did because I was having a shitty morning.
I woke up at 8 am today. It is now 12:43 pm.
25 things that pissed me off today:
1. (Kind of cheating) I had to wake up 3 TIMES to take a leak last night.
What am I, 80?!
2. The loud construction work outside that seems to never end and have no purpose. Wait, that is the definition of construction work in Japan.
3. Its cold
4. Its raining
5. The train is crowded. As always. I should be used to it but it still sucks.
6. The dude on the train who kept looking at my book and my phone while I was typing mail.
7. The dumb broad with dirty hair who kept bumping into me.
8. I couldn't express myself in Japanese this morning, thus pissing off me and M 9. The dude reading manga while walking in the middle of the moving sidewalk. 10. The woman with the huge coat and bags that seemed to walk every place that could block me from getting around her
11. The chick who quit 2 days after starting and now I have to take the heat from regional IT because I already created her mail account
12. The pc that won't detect its cdrom
13. The pc hard disk I can't reformat from dos because it7s in NTFS
14. The network card I can't find.
15. The fact that I'm broke as shit
16. I'm eating pasta with meat sauce for what is easily the 7th day straight
17. The fact that I'm eating pasta, again, reminds me that I'm broke. Again. 18. I'm having a lame hair day.
19. I've got a zit right where my glasses sit on my nose.
20. I got a zit in my nose.
21. I broke my Wendy’s fork.
22. I have two choices. A soupspoon.
23. Or chopsticks.
24. To eat my Damn pasta. Again.
25. That stupid fucking pinwheel in Mac OSX that I have to watch spin as my FireWire hard disk spins up. It easily takes 10 seconds.
Posted by rob at December 15, 2003 08:56 AM