"Dr, what are these?"

In place of the usual lemon tea and milk tea cartons, tonight there is a brown glass bottle of some kind of small brown pill.

"Please, have some. Good for your penis."
"What?"
"When you are becoming older, your sperm numbers lower-"
"No, try this - 'When you get older, your sperm count decreases.' Dr., stay in tense."
"Ah thankyou. Yes, so this is a yeast pill, it is high in Z."
"We say zinc."
"Which makes your penis stronger. I read in the young men's magazine, many young couples are now take this before to enjoy the facking. "
His grammar always seems to go wrong when he talks about sex, which is rather often.
"Dosage is very high, maybe 10 pills 3 times a day. Have some, healthy."
"No, doctor I'm-"
Dr. Nono's head is tilted back under the bright japanese flourescent light in such a way that the many ringed layers of bags under his eyes are suddenly visible down to the last pore - its as if they grow from his face like great warts; grotesque, and in strong a way, unhealthy. He is pouring a handful of the pills into his mouth, eating them in a way that reminds me of a child eating Cheerios from the box.

Several of the pellets escape his old mouth, roll onto the the printout of a recent Sotherbeys auction lot that he was bidding on. A pixilated image of a Murakami painting - next to it prices listed in British pounds, USD, yen - is lined with a thin glistening trail of saliva as one of the pellets from Dr. Nono's mouth rolls across the page.

"Excuse me."
"No problem."

I look at the trail of saliva, across to the prices of the lot. USD, $29,000, high bidder: Nonogaki.

Amazing letter from Kevin. Kevin is living in northernmost Honshu, in a frozen place called Akita, famous for dogs and sake, and festivals, apparently.


"
Boyz:

Last night, we attended the Takeuchi festival in Rokugo, up here in
Akita, and it was quite possibly the most insane event I have beared
witness to in Japan. At about 8pm, after many bottles of sake, the town
fellas divide tthemselves into North and South sections. A pitch had been
cleared earlier in the day for the festival, and by 8pm, it looked like
a massive dog-fighting arena. Just after 8:30pm, all of the guys taking
part were drunk enough to begin, and they strapped on helmets and
wielded 20 foot long bamboo poles.

The whistle sounded for round one, and the guys all went at each other,
slapping sticks into each other and pushing and shoving. Three minutes
later, round one was finished. A second round followed, and it was
crazy as well.

But when the third round warm ups began, the air about the place
changed. They lit a 10 foot pile of garbage on fire, and all of the
participants (about 100 from the North and 100 from the South), lit their bamboo
poles on fire. The folk story says that if the North wins, there will
be a good rice harvest in Rokugo this year, so they shoved all of the
foreigners onto the South`s team (can you believe it? of course you can).
When the whistle blew, all hell broke loose. Dudes were going back into
the fire with the poles and just all out wailing on each other, in
order to push back their opponents and win the battle. The townfolk were
screaming bloody murder at each other, and lil` Takeru watched as his dad
beat the pulp out of his best friend`s papa. About halfway through the
fight, it became clear that the poles weren`t very important. By this
time, there were dudes running in, no pole in hand, and just all out
wailing on other guys. My friend Geoff, a humongous rugby boy, got the
living hell beaten out of him. He crawled to the sidelines for help,
shouting `stop` in French, and the guys from the North followed him into the
crowd. He was about 5 rows deep into the audience, on all fours, before
a woman stopped the kicks that were coming his way.

Finally, after about 5 minutes, the whistle sounded and the fight was
over. The sides retreated to their corners and that was that. Kind of.
Once the referees left the pitch, everyone came out to congratulate
their buddies. That`s when the fistfights started. And they went on for
about 30 minutes.

I had no idea what to expect from this, and I didn`t have any headgear.
Next year, I will be prepared and I will fight to the death. Maybe I
can even get the construction helmet my friend Brian wore, which bore the
phrase "FUCK YOU" in masking tape on the front.

"

Dear Not Paying Me For This People:

I will post again in a day or 2, but now I am using my sparse free-time working on an article, for money, for chrissakes.

And teaching Dr. Nono English.

Back soon.

Cem