Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

Welcome back! When last we left off, Sheila and I had returned from the Keyaki Beer Festival and the frivolity thereof. With our first weekend concluded, we looked forward to Monday morning and the week ahead. But before I can get too much into that, I need to get something out of the way. We Need to Talk About Chu-Hi So, chu-hi. Or chūhai, or chuuhai, or however you want to write it. You may recall a passing reference to it in Part 1 of this very blog series, but I'd like to take a moment to describe what exactly it is. Chu-hi is big in Japan . It's a beverage of the adult variety, a refreshing concoction that comes in one of numerous light fruity flavors. Our favorites were lemon and grapefruit. Lest you be fooled by this seemingly innocuous description, chu-hi is potent . Deceptively so, in that it doesn't really even taste like it contains alcohol, but is actually packing a quite respectable 6% or so. And if that wasn't enough, there is a variety we ni

        A longtime friend of mine informed me last year that he would be getting married in Japan in May, 2015, which was at the time unfathomably far in the future. At first, attending didn't seem like a reasonable option: there was no way I could afford plane tickets, hotel rooms, etc. without racking up some unwanted debt, and I didn't even have a passport, having done all of my traveling to that point within the continental United States. Eventually, however, I decided to just go for it and make the trip happen, a decision which had nothing whatsoever to do with my girlfriend's desire to see Japan, no matter what she or I may tell you. So how did it go? I'm glad you asked! Otherwise I'd just stop writing here, and it would be a pretty crappy post. Bon Voyage      First off, let it be known that ANA Airlines is fantastic. Mind you, this is coming from someone who had never been on an international flight before, but still...keeping me from going out of m

Even though my ostensible first novel only came out a few years ago, I've been writing ever since my chubby little fingers were capable of scrawling squiggly approximations of letters. I distinctly remember some of my school journal entries being succinct fictional works, many of which involved Godzilla or a sentient puddle of acid with grizzly bear arms named Gory Glob. Eventually, I took the next step and started creating full-length works. That's right, Henry Garrison wasn't actually my first book...not by a long shot. Don't believe me? Well check this out! That, my friends, is the cover of my first book, Nightmares and Other Tales . If you aren't familiar with the 1993 best seller charts, you'll just have to take my word for it when I say that this baby was lighting them up . And with a cover like this, how could it not? I mean, you've got a tombstone with a spider and slime AND a spooky monster claw poking out from behind it. You've got a

Ah, Nintendo. I cannot overstate the importance of Nintendo to Young Me. Nintendo was the almighty, the most important thing in the world, and I mean this quite literally. Food, love, oxygen...mere impotent sparklers in the face of the massive celestial body that was Nintendo. If you'd like evidence of this, please observe my recently unearthed copy of the rather oddly-named Nintendo Calendar: The Power Game 1993 Calendar . It was the physical manifestation of Nintendo's pixelated tendrils snaking into every single day of the year. I'm rather annoyed that the numbering scheme for the dates ALMOST but not quite matches up with next year (damn leap year, screwing everything up), so I can't put it up on the wall in 2016. But in life, much like in video games, you win some, you lose some, you trade some in to the store in exchange for newer ones. Some numbered stray observations: 1. "The Power Game"? What the hell is that? Sounds like a USA Network origina