Duggan!

I was surprised to encounter my old friend Ryan Duggan outside Imamiya station in Osaka City on Saturday. Granted, he’d been planning his trip to Japan for months, but because of a string of hang-ups (his brief stint in the clink, my incommunicado disposition of late) I never thought it’d happen--at least not so smoothly.

It had been seven months since I’d last seen Ryan, but when we walked away from the train station toward our lackluster hostel room, I felt like I’d never left Chicago, and also like Ryan had always been in Japan.

That night I introduced Ryan to distinctively Osakan cuisine. The most accurate way to describe okonomiyaki is as a rice, noodle, and vegetable omelette with a “savory” sauce. But that doesn’t really do it justice. Just ask Ryan; it tastes like shit. But we had it anyway, hunched over the crowded bar of a cozy diner called TAKO TAKO KING, where we gulped down overpriced pints of good Japanese beer and ended the meal each with a too-tall glass of hot sake (which Ryan couldn’t stomach, so I had to help him out).


Next: Strolling about the always-humorous America Town, we wandered into a third-floor bar called Cobra King, where--yes, believe it--a Japanese ska show was in full swing. We got there just in time to watch the headlining band (and just late enough to avoid paying the cover). They were called Good, Better, Best, which I liked because it was like an English lesson on comparatives and superlatives for the Japanese 15-year-olds in the audience. Win-win.

The next day we met up with the lovely Gillian, who came down from Shiga to hang out with us.

We frolicked through groves of blossoming plum trees (and ate yakisoba among them).
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Then, having had enough culture for one day, we went bowling.


[Gillian “The Kidd” Osborne]


[Ryan “Tatted Up Like a Mother Fucker” Duggan]





We all really sucked. A lot.