home run

The final days of the Japanese sojourn are here and soon I'll be back there, home.

How can a year have flown by so quickly? From the moment I boarded the plane to Tokyo semi-drunk and semi-stoned it's been a bleary eyed adventure to say the least. Tokyo presented itself as a miscreant insomniac from the first night out in the hardly infamous Tokyo Loose nightclub. Hooking up with JohnnyAwesome and TheImmigrant I had a good feeling about the year ahead. Then I met the rest of the JETs. People who are beyond description with romantic views of ancient Japan, people obsessed with manga, people who can't talk with other people, people who thought they would change the world starting at the worlds second largest economy, in short people who are bland entities corrupted by self help books, Linux operating systems, comic books and the hope of latching on to a wife.

Controversy has clouded the year here from the very beginning with the rice-wrestling party and the Sapporo adventure. Privacy doesn’t exist and a network of gossipers ensured every time you missed the bowl when taking a piss it would get back to the Inner-Party. As such the gossipers created skewed images of who I am. I've been described as evil by one person, although I'm sure more share the same opinion.

Nights out have been the highlight of the days spent here. The winter being the most mentally challenging time I've ever endured. Boredom took on unprecedented levels as I watched and re-watched Ferris Beullers Day Off and The Bourne Supremacy. I need zero erotic images to flip into masturbation mode and can almost cum at will now. Blankie became a confidante and a friend always by my side and there for me when I needed somebody the most.

A year starved of stimuli and motivation would be a little harsh. It was only the working days that were the bulk of the void. When I look back on the year that was in years to come I'll think of the moments, that grafted together, make one of the fullest years to date. Like one of those cheesy end-of-year montages on TV I'll play over the songs that meant the most and underlie them with the moments that compile the brief flirtation with Madame Japan.

The nightclub TV steal, Sleepless in Sapporo, in another world at Womb, nomihodai (countless), off-piste jumps, mushrooms and valium and weed and booze and sun and mopeds and waterfalls and hammocks and saving JohnnyAwesomes life and firing an ak-47 and sea-urchins and LadySnapper pissing on me and Group D passing out in a sewer and TheFuhrers smile at the killing Fields all in Thailand and Cambodia, internet dating, dating in general, dating a model (won’t harp on about that though), being a radio star, enemas, foursomes, twosomes, O’Brien and TheInnerParty, outdoor sex, indoor sex, free ketamine, over-priced cocaine, dodgy pill things, strippers, hostesses, kudos, the students, the teachers, RuralSlut, MarbleMouth, FuckingSalarieMan, nutmeg and most of all Lawson’s cheesecake. These images and more will pass by in a flash with Everyone Has Aids being sung over them followed by Making Plans For Nigel.

It's time now to call it a day on Japan and continue the search for the Golden Toffees elsewhere. London seems the obvious choice as I can file thought the countless documents in academic, and laymen’s, halls on my quest for the Toffees. In London I can also start making the plight of the Iwate 4 known to the outside world and the oppressive state in which they were exiled from.

Freedom, I can taste it. Rice-free.

To those who loved me, I love you back.

To those who've loathed me, as my mother always says "you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all the time.

TheRunningMan is now on the run again.

Sayonara, you've been great, I've been wonderful.