Self important dickhead tourist 36 months behind the times

[Big Booger]

yah, id hit that.

From the front or back?

[Greji]

From the front or back?

Picky, picky, picky!

[mr. sparkle]

We had specifically opened accounts at Citibank—which is fairly widespread in Japan—so that we could get money out overseas and thereby save 0.1% on the exchange rate.

Kick ass tip dude. Man, you'll save dozens of yen with that plan!

[floatr][/floatr](I love this picture: my wife is so gorgeous.)

I hate to break it to ya bud, but...she's kinda homely. Nice jugs though. I call her, "Sguj" (pronounced Scooge), that's jugs spelled backwards. Is that cool? Anyway, the other chick in the pic is about a million times hotter.

Up early, I discover that this country also has its assholes: trying to convert ＼95 in loose change to a ＼100 coin that the vending machines will accept, the desk clerk staunchly refuses—despite my puppy dog eyes—unless I cough up the missing ＼5 (4 cents).

Yeah. What an asshole. Puppy dog eyes while trying to Jew them down (your expression, not mine) usually seals the deal with minimum wage Conbini Clerks.

I see two people with sand suede Clarks’ Wallabees—I’ve owned one or more pair continuously since 1979—but they’re the cheap new kind made in China for $110, not the classic, top-quality $170 Irish handmades that every upper-middle-class Jewish boy wanted to own.

.
Dude man. Wallabees? Totally state of the art. Not quite as avant-garde as Birkenstock's though.

We hunted high and low for free fish or free meat, but there was none to be found

They have loooooads of free stuff, but this was a Tuesday, right? Yeah, no free stuff on Tuesday. MAN did you miss out the rest of the week. Free damn sake too. You can get fuuuuuucked UP.

Finally—and most surprisingly—we see two dangerous-looking black American homeboys hanging out. They are discernible at quite a distance by the steady stream of "fuck" and "mother fucker" issuing from their mouths.

American homeboys? Doubtful. Nigerians? Likely.

Waking at 1:00AM, I popped a few VALIUM(C)

Supply of OXYCONTIN runnin' low?

I pick up the phone out of curiosity and note that the dial tone is a broken G, not a steady F-A chord like ours.

G Minor to be precise. Nice kooky notation for the train chimes too. That was appreciated. The first one is called "ATOS". Perhaps you could do a composition and post it.

Cheryl has a crazy idea: she wants to head down to the Asakusa Kannon temple to see the Sanja Matsuri festival, where literally millions of crazed worshipers will be toting portable shrines through the streets on palanquins. I convince her that this is asking for trouble and that we should skip it.

What a NUT she is. She nearly steered you into quite possibly the only authentic cultural experience you could have had. Dancing and drinking beer in the streets with actual Japanese people? Hell no, that's cuhRAZY talk man.

Even here there are problems with alcoholism.

Amazing, ain't it? You can blame it all on the Gaijin.

I try to jew down one of the merchants but succeed only in drawing giggles from the shrewd grandmas as they pick through the piles of garments with their clever, bony fingers.

Dude, Jews learned how to "jew down" from the Obaasans. Or didn't you know that? You know what makes 'em so good at it? Yep. It's those clever bony fingers. The Clever Bony Fingers is also a death rock band from Cleveland. Nice Reference!

The Japanese do not require that, perhaps because they all have the memory of Kreskin.

Actually, Kreskin learned that shit from the Obaasans with the clever, bony fingers. The Obaasans also taught all the highly-educated train conductors as well.

He is probably highly educated even though he’s a train conductor: indeed, he looks distinguished. Nearly everyone is dignified and spotless and has excellent posture.

Except for that salaryman over there. Doesn't look dignified lying in a puddle of his own puke.

They are Japanese, man, and that means pride. I’d be willing to bet that, should the national anthem start playing, they’d all burst into tears.

Fuck yeah. Japanese, man, PRIDE! Locking arms, singing, all together, AS ONE. BAN-FUCKING-ZAI!

Specifically, the food consists of an unidentifiable sandwich on lowly white bread, from which all of the crust has been neatly trimmed—the way I insisted my mother prepare my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when I was four.

Who doesn't love 'em that way?! All trimmed and lowly. You should get the sando that is both deviled egg AND ham. Now THAT is insane. Oh, that's right. You couldn't eat ham. Too lowly.

I sneeze, and a lady stares at me in horror. The Japanese have a real problem with other persons' emissions.

No they have a problem with crazy Gaijin emissions. They're like, NASTY.

I could ask, if the Japanese are such a nation of Einsteins, why are their islands so gravely overpopulated?

Dude, I KNOW. Like, they should start building condos on Monster Island. And why not? How 'bout a massive underground complex under Mt. Fuji. You'd expect more from these J-Einstein Otaku MoFos.

Testing out the free food theory anew, we discover that, just as at Mitsukoshi, only the vegetables are free: you must pay for flesh.

Free vegetable day is Wednesday, fogot to tell ya. Every other day, it's AMAAAZING, with all kinds o' meats on a stick served up by race queens. You TOTALLY missed out. Next time, man.

The windows open to the street with no screen, which is out of line with the safety-consciousness (fanaticism, even) that we have seen.

Oh yeah...they're fanatical about safety and shit.

En route to the shrine, I hand ＼30 to a monk with a begging bowl; I hope he was real, not just some clever character preying on tourists. I start to wonder, since I recall that his bowl was empty except for my three coins.

You gave him 30 freakin' YEN? You got totally ripped off then. Shoulda jewed him down!

I figure that, since deer eat apples and also the standard Todai-ji crackers, they might enjoy my Fig Newtons(R), and I am not disappointed

Yeah. Gooood job there, feeding wild animals good old American junk food. You must belong to PETA or some'm.

All I know is that it’s a delight not to continually stumble across revolting-looking jalopies belching out black clouds, driven by Hispanics, and featuring a mismatched rear door and a trunk lid in yet a third color.

Oh those WACKY wetbacks. I tell ya....

...but an Indian couple’s young child won’t shut up—which ruins the tour for all of these nice, patient customers who paid an arm and a leg—so I chastise the mother, calling her a sudra and the bus is suddenly as quiet as a tomb.

...which means BEOTCH, right? Good job Bruce. I'm glad you took it upon yourself to "get 'er done".

Meandering back through the city streets, we see yagi antennas and satellite dishes everywhere and conclude that there is no cable TV in Japan.

Fantastic conclusion, but as usual, completely unfounded and horribly wrong. Kinda like yer kanji.

Crossing the street, we see that the north-south "walk/don’t walk" sign chirps rhythmically in a monotone, while the sign on the cross street chirps rhythmically in two tones. This, we learn, is for the assistance of the blind.

Another brilliant observation from our world traveler.

Oh, well, who can sleep anyway in this God-forsaken place where people are thirteen hours out of synchrony with the real world? In the old cartoons, one would dig a hole through the center of the earth and emerge in Japan, where people were walking on their heads.

Yeah! Why can't Japan be more like Baltimore? You know, it's also a God-forsaken place. Let's start by synchronizing watches, shall we? Oh that's right, yours ain't workin'. Shoulda got a Seiko.

We notice another difference: perhaps the sensor that flushes the toilet has malfunctioned, since the commode is stuffed with paper. I’m shocked to see such a thing in a public place in Japan.

You know, I've never seen a dirty public restroom in Japan myself. That's just WRONG.

The puppies inside are barking plaintively in Japanese, “Please don’t sell me to a Vietnamese restaurant!”

Mmmmm, puppy! Don't knock it unless you've tried it.

Yoshimi tells us that the tour should take ninety minutes, but we know that, with my questioning mind, she’s in for about twice that long.

It's good you've decided to be a total pain in the ass upfront. I'm sure Yoshimi appreciated that.

We encounter more racism here. Some people on the castle steps mock us (one can detect mockery in any language), and the guide quickly puts them in their place.

You gotta admit it dude, you look kinda goofy. What do you expect from kids anyway? When aped in Japan, ape 'em back and have a laugh. Stop pointing clever, bony fingers and relax a bit.

Later, when I offer to help an ancient lady negotiate the steep steps, she patently refuses. She would evidently rather tumble to her death than have a Caucasian assist her.

No, she thinks you smell like butter and Japanese don't like that.

The gentleman next to me waiting for the shinkansen back to Kyoto gets his e-mail on his cell phone in kanji, which I find amazing.

Yeah. That would totally blow me away too my man.

We pass a Roy Liechtenstein poster, and I find it humorous that his name (Roi Likutensutainu) is spelled out in katakana.

How UTTERLY droll. Oh....my side is splitting. Stop it, please stop!

[cont'd]

[mr. sparkle]

[omae mona]

Dude man. Wallabees? Totally state of the art. Not quite as avant-garde as Birkenstock's though.

Give him a break. His Wallabees are obviously important to him. He has one of my all-time favorite Amazon.com reviews (for a product he obviously did not actually buy).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A30YM91ARQDGN7/103-8858939-9000643?ie=UTF8
[quote="Brucie"]
bait and switch!!, July 8, 2006
Be forewarned! Never mind all the mellifluous flubdrub about nature-formed last, footwear classic, nineteen sixty-five, etc. The facts of the matter are that (a) the Irish factory where Wallabees were handmade with love closed down in the late 1990s]

[mr. sparkle]

Cool Find! Turns out he believes in Bigfoot and reads books about him too! You GO Bruce!

[Taro Toporific]

He has one of my all-time favorite Amazon.com reviews

Oh but he does have a way with words in his reviews.

...[SIZE="6"]Disappointing potpourri of foodle-shnoodle[/SIZE]....

Wait! Here's the ticket. He needs to gather all his bits of wisdom and write a book.

[FG Lurker]

What I really wonder is how in the hell did this guy ever get a girlfriend, far less get married!? He has ZERO social skills -- he makes Chuck and maybe even Jack look.....not bad. His wife is a bit on the homely side but she MUST have had better options than this 'tard. Mail order bride maybe?

I'd consider that the entire site was some sort of bad joke, but the Amazon reviews match it well so I guess it is real....as fucked up as it is.

[james]

mr. sparkle, you sir have made my day and right when i needed it most. this guy needed, dare i say asked for, a new asshole ripped into him and you did it in stellar fashion, sir. my hat is off to you.

as for brucie and his "gorgeous" wife, two comments: 1. borderline autistic / asperger's 2. blech.

[Taro Toporific]

...consider that the entire site was some sort of bad joke...

I think a lot his lame comments actually are attempts at Dave-Barryesque humor -- what he calls "frequent one-liners" such as:
[INDENT]Quote:
Oh, well, who can sleep anyway in this God-forsaken place where people are thirteen hours out of synchrony with the real world? In the old cartoons, one would dig a hole through the center of the earth and emerge in Japan, where people were walking on their heads.[/INDENT]

Since he's the self-professed "polymath," he must be making light of China, not Nippon. .]anus-picket-small-vibrant [/URL]. Don't worry, I've used a google proxy for this link ---You can find Bruce at the bottom of the anus-picket page:
[INDENT] Trains, Temples, and Hordes--Gozaimasu!
... interesting substances (including a small emergency supply of OXYCONTIN ... hot water against your anus with some force in ... seems that youngsters frequently picket, based on the fact ...
----via the
maxi-sexe-shop.com/sex-shop/9/anus-picket-small-vibrant.htm[/INDENT]

[Catoneinutica]

Meh, cut the guy some slack...15 years is two-thirds of his life, after all.

That said, Mr. Sparkle's molecular-level deconstructions of his posts rank among the Best FG Replies Ever.

[Big Booger]

Give him a break. His Wallabees are obviously important to him. He has one of my all-time favorite Amazon.com reviews (for a product he obviously did not actually buy).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A30YM91ARQDGN7/103-8858939-9000643?ie=UTF8

I thought I would be the only one to read his amazon quacks... where's the duck when you need him?

[Iraira]

WOW. And I thought that I was bitter at times. Dude completely....I mean completely should not be allowed to visit any other countries, let alone blog about it.

[gomichild]

I love you Mr. Sparkle.

[Taro Toporific]

Meh, cut the guy some slack...

Anyone notice that Bruce has not said one word.
I always assume good faith in posts on the FG, but all of this seems like just an attempt to provoke. If Bruce's aim was to elicit attention, this may be an elaborate, long-term, innovative way to troll-and-run.

<OR> We can expect Bruce's response in another 36 months.

[GaijedupJake]

Oh don't worry, he'll be back somewhere between 1.5 to 2 years from now, with another witty insight on some country that was unlucky enough to be visited by him. This type of guy just sorta takes the 'fucked' out of 'fucked gaijin' for me... now that he is back in america I can find even more things I love about Japan!

[mr. sparkle]

Oh but he does have a way with words in his reviews.


Wait! Here's the ticket. He needs to gather all his bits of wisdom and write a book.

Which would be entitled, "Mellifluous Flubdrub, the Tao of Bruce"

[FG Lurker]

I think a lot his lame comments actually are attempts at Dave-Barryesque humor -- what he calls "frequent one-liners" such as:

Thinking about this, I figured out who Bruce reminds me of.

Ever see Good Morning Vietnam? Remember 2nd Lt. Steven Hauk (Bruno Kirby), the guy who "knows funny" and for whom comedy was "a little more than just a hobby" because "Reader's Digest is considering publishing two of my jokes"?

I think Bruce is the real life incarnation of Lt. Hauk. Everyone knows he's the personification of unfunny.....except (of course) himself.

Some quotes applicable to Bruce:
[indent]Adrian Cronauer: In the dictionary under "asshole" it says "See him."

Staff Sgt. Dreiwitz: "Hey, Bruce. Eat a bag of shit. You suck." Now that's pretty much to the point, sir, not much gray area in this one.

Edward Garlick: "Bruce sucks the sweat off of a dead man's balls." I have no idea what that means, sir, but it seems very negative to me.[/indent]

The difference of course is that in real life Bruno Kirby is a talented man...but Bruce in in real life is........Bruce.

[(1VB)freels]

i'll see your 'supercilious' and raise you a 'vainglorious'

man, what a pompous, uppity jackass.

You are all wrong. He's not a jackass or uppity. He's a [SIZE="7"]DICK, Phallus, Penis, ASSHOLE, P.O.S.!!!!![/SIZE]



This guy is beyond fucked. He's a fucking retard with too much wind in his bag. I say screw him and his enormously large breasted wife.(I'll take on those babies) He just don't know what the hell he's talking about. Must be nice to feel like your a superior to us lowly folks. Fuck you Bruce!



p.s. The President called. He don't like you either!

[cstaylor]

Ever see Good Morning Vietnam? Remember 2nd Lt. Steven Hauk (Bruno Kirby), the guy who "knows funny" and for whom comedy was "a little more than just a hobby" because "Reader's Digest is considering publishing two of my jokes"?

Speaking of Kirby, he just passed away.