MY KINGDOM. MY KINGDOM FOR A VOICE!!!!

and a happy halloween. quick, someone Fed-Ex me a Twix.

A week of silence online - my sincerest apologies. While all has been quiet on TOWNIJ, I have been exercising my voice more than the Town Crier. So much to the point that like a bored hobo it has packed it’s bags and like any rational person left me completely. Essentially, I am now completely useless. After all, what does one do with a walkman or iPod when it can no longer produce sound? In my case I used my iPod as a bright shiny paperweight. While I might make a rather pretty paperweight, no one has asked me to perch myself upon, or take up the Asian squat position, on any important documents yet. However, just as life always goes - the second you are missing something everyone wants a piece of it.

This includes the little old lady from Kobe with thinning hair who I sat next to on the train coming back from Matsuyama. She asked me to save her seat while she ran to get more snacks at the station store and then persisted in trying to talk to me and make me feel welcome. What a fucking chatterbox.

All of a sudden every taxi driver in Japan seemed to become one of the Riddler’s henchmen, posing all sorts of questions, wanting to know my life story, a detailed commentary of the weather back in New York and a hundred page thesis expanding on my take on the symbolism behind the Taiko floats in the recent festival. With my raspy voice which has morphed me into a seventy-five year old chain smoking male who sits at home reading Sherlock Holmes mysteries whilst smoking a pipe and chewing tobacco, I attempted to answer, but a good portion of the time all that escaped were incoherent burbles - much like my normal speech in Japanese. What I really wanted to do was save my voice for things that actually mattered, like class.

In any case, my Voice is still AWOL. I suspect it may have gotten tired of attempting to speak Japanese. While my Voice is completely fluent, my deteriorating brain that is rapidly approaching dotarism has difficulty keeping up. It can’t possibly remember what happened last week to Sawyer on Lost AND those five new words that popped up in today’s lesson. There is a good chance my Voice has simply returned to New York where it can reside in a peaceful, lazy, sullen silence, wearing all black, reading the Beat poets, downing Starbucks coffee and ignoring people who might happen to say hello.

There is also a chance it has breezed over the Sea of Japan to South Korea or maybe the North to yell at that stunningly fashionable Korean dictator for stealing Mary Kate’s sunglasses (among other things). So that is where I am headed. I will search far and wide, high and low, but will set aside enough time to ogle the rich Korean kids in Apgujeong Rodeo Drive and nibble on some roasted mini dachshunds. I have about three or four entries that I have started writing but have been constantly interrupted with people demanding my dazzling presence and the various hoarse, raspy gargle of sound that is passing for English these days. So expect a slew shortly and, if all goes well, a bit of video courtesy of Korea.

Cheers. And a Happy Halloween!

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Published:
10.31.06 / 6pm
Category:
what i call life, travel, culture