Jessy Randall – Japan Suzie: A Found Poem

Jessy Randall

Japan Suzie: A Found Poem

we went to an arcade and played this game where you hit the drums to get points like in the movie lost in translation. I also did the dancing game and a horse race game where you ride a horse like a rocking horse I have taken a japanese bath. dogs say Wan Wan like ours say Woof. I saw rice fields but there is no rice right now. and I saw Sock Glue which is glue that school girls use to hold up their ridiculously large socks reminiscent of our leg warmers from the 80s sumimasen means excuse me but if you say it like Steve Martin said excuse me, like Suuu MEeeeMaaa Seeennnn, people get FURIOUS and they don’t get sarcasm at all. I bought a lighter shaped like a pig and the flame comes out of his nose. there are gardens everywhere and big fat white radishes perfect lovely guys poking their heads up. and tree frogs stuck to the cold metal railings but they are ok. sleeping. sugar comes in straws like pixie sticks! I ate eel and soba noodles and tempura shrimp and pumpkin and eggplant and fish flake/seaweed soup. even after eating it, and enjoying it, my brain was going, you just ate an eel. eeew. but then I got eel on the brain. so we ended up just going to the grocery for dinner and I bought: eel sushi there are an enormous amount of japanese people here! wow! I mean, they are everywhere! nothing but japanese! incredible! they don’t have soap in the bathrooms nor often toilet paper. but they do often sell it for exactly 40 yen from a vending machine, which is a difficult amount to have…i mean, it’s like a vending machine that costs 17 cents and only takes three nickles and two pennies, nothing else. sometimes business men use their socks…ick…and so sometimes there are signs that say do not wipe your self with your sock and then try to flush it we saw geisha but they weren’t REAL geisha but they did have the outfits on. and dogs with dresses and hairbows. and a flock of crows, like hundreds if you sit on the veranda you hear the stream going by and it sounds like the ocean, little lapping waves. the water comes down off the mountain and is shunted through various little concrete stream beds. people remove the grate off their part of the stream and use a dipper and bucket to water their plants there are monkeys in the mountains! oh two days ago we found a 100 yen store and today we found a 99 yen store! amazing…and the best part of the 99 yen store was the music which was 3 songs over and over about 99. Source: emails from Suzie, 2003

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