Michael John Grist

Kentucky- the land of Abraham Lincoln, Bluegrass music, Bourbon whiskey, the Kentucky Derby, some of the biggest losses in the Civil War, and all the family on my mother`s side. I`m British because my Dad is British and my mother ceded American citizenship when I was a kid- but I`ve always felt my soul was American: Kentucky American, and to a very small degree: Native American American.

I`m talking about this because I just got back from a 10-day vacation with my family in Kentucky. I haven`t been back to visit my grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins in Kentucky for around 7 years. The last time I was there I was just 21, just done with University and still pretty raw, passing through on my way to the summer camp I worked in close to Boston. The cousins were all still little kids, and I was still viewing everything through the lens of a kid myself.

Well, not this time. This time, the gloves were off, Kentucky! I was on the cultural and familial Straight Talk Express- getting to the real deal of my family and heritage in Colonel Sanders` Bluegrass State.

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The Russian Village Theme Park in Suibara, Niigata, sprawls empty and forlorn atop a small hill set back from the main road, shrouded by a thick raft of cedar trees that hide its embarassing failed extravangance from the world.  Built only 6 years ago and abandoned after just 6 months, the endeavour was ill-fated from the start: a theme park in the middle of nowhere with no rides. Now its giant fake mammoths rest unseen in their dark and musty show hall, the vibrant blue onion-domes of its vaulting ’Russian’ church slowly tarnish to white, and the shops once filled with Matroska dolls and Russian jewellry lie in vandalized ruin.

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Shimoda has some of the most beautiful and pristine yellow-sand blue-ocean beaches in all of Japan. Commodore Perry certainly picked a choice spot to roll up at in his black ships- further up the coast other trade envoys were met by steel-toting Samurai’s stood on the grey-sand grey-ocean cock-roach infested trash-havens of Enoshima and Kamakura. Not for Perry though, and not in Shimoda. Shirahama, Tatadohama, and Ohama beaches are gorgeous, sun-kissed, and every time I’ve visited them- about 50% empty.

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Deep within the solid rock of the Negishi Plateau in Yokohama, spreading beneath the old race-course Grandstand and Yokosuka Naval Base, lies a twisting warren of hidden World War 2-era caverns. Once filled with ancient munitions, bustling troops, and rooms full of military dossiers, they now rest in lonely silence, unexplored for up to 20 years, their secrets stopped up behind entrances back-filled with avalanche scree and trash, overgrown by thick vines in loamy earth, and walled off with sheets of blast-concrete.

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There was a village in the mountains at the top of the world that was always shrouded in mist. Its name was Ballahee, and in it lived a small community of people, good people, who tended to their crops on the mountainsides, and looked after their sheep and their hardy goats.

The villagers had many problems, such as the cold winters and the wolves in the scrub-woods, but by far their biggest problem was the mist.

The mist had always been there, and the villagers knew there was nothing they could do to stop it. They could barely see each other out on the street, but that was normal, and they accepted it. They could barely see the earth to pull out their crops, turnips and potatoes. The school-children could scarcely see the school-teachers jottings on the blackboard in the school, and lovers could barely see their own names they had etched into the old oak tree behind the Jansen’s stead. But that was normal, and they accepted it.

Things had always been like this in Ballahee. The villagers had tried everything, but nothing did any good, and they all thought the mist would always remain.

That is, until the Mistman came.

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Snake Cat lives in the city’s gutters and drain-pipes, crawling along on his side, hunting Snark and weevils, distending his jaw to swallow them whole. He is lithe and lissome like freshly steamed yew, he can contort into the shape of the letter ‘O’ or even the letter ‘A’. His tail is prehensile like a monkey’s and he uses it to slide down power-lines and into the homes of unsuspecting Wombles- whom he also eats.

This was a rare day-time sighting of Snake Cat. Crawl, Snake Cat, crawl!

Video after the break.

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You’re in space. The trip up took 8 hours- most of which involved you sitting sideways strapped into a second-hand shuttle waiting for air traffic control to give you the all-clear, with no option to get up and go the bathroom (yep, adult diaper). Now you’re on board a creaking old Russian hybrid rust-bucket where everything stinks of Ozone, you’re losing bone mass on a constant and permanent basis, the weather outside sucks, you can’t relax for a second without strapping yourself to a wall because your limbs float off randomly in zero-G, you can’t go to the bathroom without having to attach undignified hoses to your body, and you’re sharing the cramped and claustrophobic quarters with a bunch of super-earnest elitist prats.

The least you could ask for is a bit of honest-to-goodness, home-made cooking just like Momma used to make. Well, you won’t get that, but if you are a Japanese citizen you are entitled to freeze-dried comfort food mass-produced by machines in high-density chunks. Flavors so delicious as Shrimp Gratin, Kimchi, Ramen Noodles, Yakitori, with Ice Cream to top it off.

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I’ve always been fascinated by ruined buildings and abandoned places. When I was 14 I went to the ancient city of Pompeii in Italy, and was blown away. It’s hard to explain why- but it’s something about the life of the place, and the lives of the people who were there, being suddenly cut short. Whether they were killed, driven out, or just moved on, the things they leave behind tell the story of their life at that moment, a snapshot captured and crystallized like a fossil.

Haikyo in Japan are not the same as Pompeii- they’re buildings abandoned in the recent past, not ruins that have been sat mouldering for thousands of years- but they seem to flick the same switches in me that Pompeii did, powerful feelings that rumble up from within, that seem primal, that seem to cut down to something important inside. But what something important? Why this connection? What is the thrill of exploring them? I’ll attempt to answer these questions below.

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Skimboarding is a lesser-known cousin to surfing, though quite different in the approach. Where surfers go from the sea to the beach under the sea’s power, skimmers go from the beach to the sea under their own power- which is to say, basically they run at the sea carrying a short board, drop it in the shallows, and jump on. Perhaps then it’s more like skate-boarding than surfing.

My friend Jason loves skimboarding, and I’ve gone along with him a few times, including 3 weeks ago to Hiratsuka beach where I took some video- which I hope he forgives for its somewhat irreverent air. Video after the break.

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Japan-based companies Asahi (the brewer) and Kagome (the fruit and veg juicer) have teamed up to present us with a new and unique product: a range of fruit and vegetable sake cocktails. No longer will you have to choose between getting drunk cheaply or drinking a healthy vegetable juice mix, you can now do both at the same time. It sounds like a strange concept, and it is- the marketing ploy behind it must take its inspiration from the recent upswing in the number and variety of vegetable juice drinks available on convenience store shelves- but I have to wonder, who is thinking about their health when they want to get drunk? I would imagine none of us. But perhaps that is about to change…

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