The Old Neighborhood..

A few houses away, the son of the woman who holds prayer service every week in her house has disappeared and been missing for a week..
..he turns up a week later, hacked to pieces, in a quarry pond so badly decomposed that he can only be identified by the name on his earing..

(In other news the little kid living across the street, who used to walk past my house throwing rocks at my dog, has just been released from prison after serving a three year sentence for robbery)

Back To The Island

10 days into my trip to the Caribbean and my biological clock is finally switching over to local time. Jet-lag isn't always a bad thing, however; it makes it a lot easier to be up all through the night (provided I've slept a bit the day before). I've been using this 'new' ability to peruse the local nightspots:

First Stop: George Acosta, Zen Nightclub(map) in Port of Spain.

Zen's rooftop has a cool, breezy, open atmosphere and surprisingly, I was able to relax there. The music helped, I suppose.










Next was Pier 1 Nightclub(map) in Chaguaramas for Tribes' "The Secret of Silk" Band Launching.
I was more than a little impressed with the actual production, (being able to gain access to the madness that going on behind the scenes) Respect to the video production team that managed the video screens and Triniscene for their live webcast.
I don't know if the audience noticed though - they were too busy strutting, preening and posing for the most part from what I saw.
That in itself was interesting though; it was good to see so many damn beautiful, sexy, socially adept people of any colour and race you could think of pressed together like sardines and all getting along quite fine.

19,800 yen

What's that..'bout US$200？

It costs some serious ching to buy foreign in Japan:

NY Yankees cap:
Stateside - US$25
Tokyo - \7000 (about US$80(？)

Pair of Levis:
Stateside - US$40
Tokyo - \14,000 (about US$150(？)

This trendy urban store in Nakameguro中目黒 sells 'vintage' clothes. By 'vintage' I mean someone's buying used clothes and shoes really cheap and selling them really expensive..like 100% markup expensive.
That's ok, though - in Japan, if something's expensive it means it HAS TO be good； you just need one person to buy it and everyone else'll run out and get it just to be part of the fad.

I Don't Use Credit Cards Anymore But..

Train fare: \790

Corona: \700

Swim trunks: \1990

Corona on the beach and looking at an MTV swimsuit model shoot for 3 hours: Priceless

Salt and Pepper

At first I thought it was just my table..

..but they're all like this.