Portlandia

I grew up with a lot of sketch comedy shows - MadTV, AllThat, SNL, and everything in between. Portlandia held a special hipster indie place in my heart during my stoner college years.  Was it all good? No. But it had some great skits that made a ton more sense after visiting Portland. 

Sums up this city perfectly. 

                                                    

True to my word, I'm spending time exploring the US. This being my first longer stay in the PNW, I didnt know what to expect. War torn Portland? too many coffee shops and dispensaries?  queer everything?  Yeah. It had all that. Plus some really incredible nature and a car scene that satisfies every niche you could imagine. Truly, time capsule perfect Azteks, Elements,  Th!nk City electric cars, yugos, and more. I'm used to seeing these things rust out and disappearing into oblivion; instead, they seem to appear in Portland like some kind of Backrooms and just don't age.  Sure, I love a good supercar, but the amount of random JDM imports putzing around the city is amazing if you know what you're looking at and for.  The car guy in me loved this!

The whole area is a hikers paradise, a foodies dream, and a stoner mecca. I was genuinely impressed that this place had so much to offer, like some hidden gem that everyone knows about but isnt talking about enough. Low key and underground. 

Above all, its walk-able and friendly. You can leave your home in the city, walk into the mountains, and walk back for late brunch. I haven't had that ease of nature and city in a long while!

The city makes for a charming place to fall into a simpler life. Reading by the water or cruising around a nude beach. It's all at your doorstep. 

okie, so this is actually in Washington at Rooster Rock State Park but its as near as makes no difference. I love a good nude beach, and I can't wait to go back to this one!

There was a lot I should have taken more photos of and even more I could do silly photo shops with. For now, I'll leave it here. This city is going to be a big part of my life and just as I did for Australia, I didnt spoil too much of it trying to cram everything in over a couple weeks.  Its slow down and settle in vibes here 

The value of this space

I started writing about my adventures in a notebook I picked up in Sweden 10 years ago in effort to be able to look back at what I experienced through more than just pics on my phone... when I kept losing that notebook, it dawned on me that I needed to find another way to keep track of my antics. So I bought this perfect domain name and began transferring everything out of that notebook. 

This blog wasn't for me to become popular or make money, it was a fun place to tell my stories in a way that captures my weird perspective on things. Its now filled with ridiculous photoshops, random thoughts, that time I wrote a book (and that time I wrote a book of poems that is 100% never going to be put on here but at least I did it), and nearly all of my little adventures - but most of all - it is me. 

Life throws you some ups and downs sometimes, the kind of things that can really make you lose yourself. What I didn't know through the years of making this blog was the power it had to bring me back to who I am. I could have easily lost that notebook a decade ago and let it be…which comes with the care free attitude…but that's not how it played out.  

I'm sitting here reflecting on a challenging last 2 years - and, a particularly difficult last few months….being thankful for my past self to make this space for me and giggling over the metrics. This site somehow became a reminder of who I am, how far I've come, and how I have always had the capacity to live the dreams I set out for myself. There is as much power in this space as there is random nonsense. 

Do I sometimes think "man, my future husband is going to see all the weird photos and parodies I made of myself as Carry Bradshaw and think I really love that TV show" ....yes. (I've not seen it). or "could this blog offer a psychiatrist the opportunity to diagnose me with a mental illness?" also yes. But at the end of the day, you get what you get. This is me and I'm proud of that. 

Whether you're sitting there in Hong Kong or Brazil reading about my journey, I encourage you to find a way to do something like this for yourself. Create something that can bring you back to you. I'm a huge fan of getting lost in the world, not a huge fan of getting lost from yourself. 

TBH did expect Australia to be #2....

Okinawa

 OKINAWA - ONE WAY 

Surely I have seen kill Bill 100 times, I have such a ridiculous obsession with this film for no obvious reason and every time I finish this film I am stuck with the scene of Uma Thurman saying "Okinawa one way".

                         

Anybody who has been following my blog for any amount of time knows that I love going on adventures in order to satisfy movie quotes,  song lyrics, or just some random part of pop culture that I wanna be able to live a little bit. So on the tail end of my wonderful adventure through Japan I’m sitting down with my mate and I’m telling them I’m kicking myself that I didn’t make time to go to Okinawa to do this movie line. I only had a week left here and I’m really bummed because I don’t know when I’m gonna come back. They looked me in the eyes and said quite plainly why don’t you just go? 

1 paragraph in and already on my bullshit

I don’t know what it is about me forgetting sometimes that I have complete autonomy as an adult to just go do things but that was the little kick in the ass that I needed to get myself on a plane to Okinawa. I'll skip over all the comparisons to Hawaii but call out that it has the proper above-ground transport system you never got lol... Suck it HNL

              

I fucking love it here. The weather was amazing. The water was beautiful. The food was incredible. The people were delightful. Everything about me has a vibe for islands, I just really connect with them. Japan itself is already an island nation so to shrink it down to small tropical island form and still have all the best parts in Japan there... you better believe this was paradise to me! and the hotel for no reason was straight out of Laguna Beach!

                                                      

socks on cause yall are pervs

okay some blurry toe cause you're my good boy

seriously reminds me of Walfor Astoria Monarch Beach 

Not into churches but this would be a fuckin tits greenhouse. 

Was it cold? Yes. Did I swim anyway? Duh 

I didn’t need much. It was me and the beach just having our vibe. The following days I treked back into the city to check out all the things that are good. True to form for Japan there was an incredible amount of shopping packed into some really wonderful spaces. But what got me the most and also pretty true to the form of Japan were the temple and green spaces. There is an incredible garden called Fukusyuen Garden. That place was absolutely magical. I spent about three hours wandering around this garden through all the little wandering paths, taking time to stop, relax, and observe.  There was a really lovely energy that just made you feel balanced - like you took a shit tonne of lithium.

I've been taking pics around the world for over a decade now and still LOL this the best you get. 

Art skewl drop out

important

                        I chased around a lot of butterflies on this trip lol 

flowers cause people never see flowers anywhere

I had such a lovely last day when I got back to the hotel,  I decided to treat myself to a very special dinner to honour it. Now the quality of this hotel meant even the “” cheap restaurant was a bit of a wallet breaker. So when I sat down at the fancy restaurant, I knew I was going to need a loan to finish this meal. And while the hotel staff didn’t speak much English, we had a really lovely time navigating explaining the courses of the meal with my limited Japanese and their English. It was smiles all around and just a really wonderful way to end the day.

Dont know what it is, but man it was fucking tasty

a lobster stuffed with urchin or something

                           It was worth every yen and i could have eaten 10 of them

           I AM HAPPY

Sadly was a two-way trip lol and so was hers cause girl Bill was in Mexico

Tokyo 2

I'm back on my bullshit, like Jordan, no Pippen....If this is my life then I'm Tokyo drifting

I’m a huge car guy, I can’t tell you how many times I would read about an international car show and be kicking myself that I hadn’t gone and seen it firsthand...one side of car culture that I always see reported on through my favourite car blogs are the customising and tuning vendors of Japan. 

The absolute best place to take all of that in is the Tokyo auto saloon. This is just another example of divine timing and my amazing luck with everything in the world, but it just so happened that the Tokyo auto saloon was going on during my unplanned trip to Japan.

I’m sitting in in my mates house reading a car blog talking about the auto show and then it dawned on me, oh my gosh I can just fly up to Tokyo and go see that myself. So that’s what I did! 

It's a quick flight from Osaka to Tokyo so I didn’t plan on doing anything here that was gonna require an overnight stay. I just arrived early in the morning and made sure that I had a really late flight out. I chucked my day full of three things... Team labs museums, Tokyo auto saloon, and sittin' by the dock in the bay.

Tokyo bay that is ...mission 1 complete

TeamLabs had come up from all of my other mates who talk about Japan, and I had never fucking heard of it but here we are ...TeamLabs - of which there are two flavours: Borderless and Planets to choose from in Tokyo. Of course, I had to go because I had the time to live someone else's dream. 

One of them (Planets) was a bit more physical and the other one (Borderless) was more interactive art, of the two I connected more with the art side of things - it felt the more physical one was geared towards children and families. Nonetheless, I was able to squeeze both of them into the itinerary. I won't spoil it with a huge photo dump and even still, you can't grasp the movement and dynamic from a still photo but go see it for yourself!

Me in my natural habitat ....surrounded by balls

I am the art, the art is me

At times it felt like I'd taken a heroes dose of mushrooms and forgot about it

TL Planets was more interactive in terms of having to climb shit, slide down shit, or feel like you had to throw a child out of your way... so I didn't get a chance to take heaps of photos....imagine holding a phone and balancing on a bunch of broken rainbow steps. I digress, the wait time was worth it - but if I had to only do one, it would have been Borderless.

The main event tho was of course the Tokyo Auto Saloon. 

I cannot say enough. I fucking love minivans and supercars. Specifically adventure mini vans ....speaking directly to the Mitsubishi Delica here which was a very popular van to have customised in the show because it comes out the factory already kind of prepared for an off-road camping adventure. Was it weird for a grown man to run around a car venue sporting an 8" boner for all to see cause he can't hide his adventure-van love? No...not here anyway., if anything it'd be weird not to. Sport that van boner mate, this is a safe space!

UGHHHHHHHH YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

YEUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

OH MY GAUUUUUDDDDDDDDD

OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

*cums*

Bro, I am feeling so AlphaHard rn 

Btw that is my favourite car name of all time....Alphahard. followed by StepWagon (Honda). ...Stepwagon, what are you doing???

And of course you had all of your showstoppers ...the latest Lexus supercar and latest Lexus minivan....

Slammed, how I'm tryin to be

....Project V...for Vandetta..

.. the coolest component of this show were obviously all of the tuner vehicles. Everything from Nissan to Rolls were here ....

I liked this far more in person than I had in magazines 

M'urica

I'm gonna give you my Initial-D 😏

There’s a really cool vibe to the whole event that makes you feel very connected to what each tuner is delivering.

For scale...you have like 5 rooms of this size just full of goodness

...and I picked up my first Daruma for my mate and I!

Special mention to this ramen spot btw!! If you wrap up your TeamLabs Borderless and want something tasty...

I am always happy eating. 

OHHHHH Buddy.  Of course, I had to  squeeze in my lyrical nonsense on my way out of here....do I now own a pair of lacy underwear from Tokyo? You bet your Billie Eilish I do. 

Don't have to guess the color of your underwear
Already know what you've got goin' on down there
It's that lacy black pair with the little bows
The ones I picked out for you in Tokyo