The Even Greater Tokyo Region

Two Months is all it took.

It was like whitening toothpaste WITH tartar control. You knew it would happen. It was like North Korea making nukes. Like Micheal Jackson reoffending. It was just the logical conclusion. Inevitable. I got bored of Tonami city.

Tonami city is the city I live in. I mean, it is silly for me, who comes from Nelson, to complain that Tonami is too small. Unlike Nelson, we have a mall here. In fact, we have two! We have mega stores, clothing chains, retaurants, a brilliant 2nd hand shop, convenience stores, giant electronic stores, supermarkets, a bowling alley, a train station...

A train station!!! Nelson has a train which is goes to the other end of the historic park. And yet, Tonami is more boring.

The only noticable omission infostructurally, is a lack of decent bars and nightclubs. There are 2 bars that I frequent ("frequent" should be taken very literally), but sometimes you just want something different. That is why we local Jets were very excited when we heard of a danceclub in our town. So we went along. It turned out to be just another tiny bar where they removed the majority of the chairs. There were DJs, who took up 1/3 of the dancefloor. Luckily, the DJs were so bad we didn't have much use for the dancefloor. We spent most of the time outside in the makeshift tent. The first few DJs weren't exactly terrible, they might have even been considered to be good had they been playing in a hotel lobby. But for a danceparty, it was about as exciting as watching the Queen Mother talk to Al Gore.

I was looking forward to the Reggae DJ who came at the end of the night. This guy was actually terrible. He wasn't just bad, he was maliciously ruining the genre of Reggae. Every 10 or 15 seconds, he wold turn down the volume, and scream as loud as he could into the microphone. He wouldn't have needed a microphone, considering the size of the room, to piss us all off. So we all went back outside. The moral of this story is, do not get ones hopes up when one hears of an event in Tonami.

So... Last weekend I was sitting around with another Jet trying to think of something to do. It was so boring it was almost painful. Eventually it wass decided we would just drive. Drive to the next town. This place was even worse than Tonami. It was so bad, that during our walk through the town, we found ourselves whispering to each other. It was mid afternoon. The shop doors were open, but no-one was inside. No-one was outside. The only people we saw was two sets of boys kicking a soccerball in the middle of the street. It seemed like the calm before an air raid.

So maybe Tonami isn't so bad after all. But from now on, it is important that we make our own fun here, preferably without getting arrested.