Earlier this morning, I was pissing angrily into a Japanese-style squat toilet on a train going one-hundred-and-seventy-nine miles per hour. We’d just left Kyoto. We wanted to be in Tokyo.

As the stream spray-rocketed into the gray-plastic hole, I thought this: “I will put a pistol in my mouth with a degree in my hand. Whenever that happens, I don’t know.” I held my hand over a sensor to flush the toilet and whatever had been in me was sucked away instantly, terribly. It disappeared into the horrible black orbit of hell, conveniently located under the train.

Anyway, I’d like that degree now, thanks.

After that, I can see to the pistol bit. Maybe it’ll be a fun thing to do. I’ll devote a whole Sunday morning to it, actually, I think now.

Why in God’s name am I in an internet cafe in Tokyo? All the night trains to Akita were sold out, so here I am, sucking down milk tea (which I don’t even really like) while some fat slobs jerk off to manga at open booths that do not have doors! as they pour milk tea all over their adult-children bodies. It’s a hell of a Saturday here in Tokyo, Japan, let me tell you!

Man. If I’d gotten on that night train to Akita, hoo boy! That would have been something else. I was planning on flopping on to the station floor and screaming until my eyeballs popped open like eggs. I would have stood up and dusted off my jacket and caught the next train to one of the last-remaining samurai towns. Kakunodate, or whatever. I’d love to be walking around that place right now.

But, no!

I’m in an internet cafe hugging Nakano Broadway near the Sun Plaza. This is ridiculous.

I apologize, gentle reader — whomever you are, God bless you — for my absence. I’ve been too ball-blasting nuts to do anything with the English language in the last two weeks. What a swirling storm of nails and potted plants it’s been. Eggshells and acorns, over here.

Two nights ago I limped along in a snowy eleven-hundred-year-old city with a Frenchman in search of a convenience store. A day before that, I spent two nights in a city that my country blasted into oblivion sixty-something years ago. Before that, I was in warm little room in Virginia, thinking about the rooms I would be in days later.

And now, look at me, in a place with porn advertisements hanging over the urinals. The girls on those posters are showing off their basketballs to anyone who fancies a look. What a jerk you’d have to be to order any of that garbage. There are little hearts punctuating the page that say things that make you wish you were born dead. Jesus God, these ads.

I’ll say something nice and comfortable and sleepy soon. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe on Wednesday. Man, who knows! Who the hell knows, I don’t know!

Sleeping in this place, puh!