Long Time No Taco

Part 4 SANDAN-JIKOMI (Part 1 is  HERE ) Their village demolished, Sakamai - the people of Tanbo - were tortured and twisted in strange ways, physically combined with tiny hive-minded creatures called Koji. As the two became one, these new "Koji-Mai" learned from the Koji's memories that their towering and unstoppable alien captors were "The Creators" - an alpha race who designed and cultivated all they had ever experienced, just for this. But these answers only begat more questions: What would happen next? To what end was any of this happening at all? When would it be over? Would the Koji-Mai ever see the Sakamai they were taken from in their last steel prison? Even if they did, would their families even recognize them after yet another transformation?  As usual, the Koji provided soothing thoughts of complacency:  "All is a cycle The Creators have planned for. We are not the first or even the thousandth, and we will not be the last. W...

Part 3 SHUBO (Part 1 is   HERE ) An alien race had descended upon the sleepy land of Tanbo. Abducting every last villager, uprooting their verdant homeland in the process and tearing it to shreds. The people, known as Sakamai, were subjected to all manner of torture by their insouciant captors. Starved in the cold, and then worked over mercilessly. In a sudden 180, they were reunited with their brethren and plumped up, only to be separated once more. Finally, they found themselves subjected to some bizarre biological experimentation at the enormous hands of the towering aliens. Latched onto by hundreds and hundreds of previously harmless house pests they recognized from Tanbo, slowly the Sakamai began to link telepathically with these simple creatures, who they came to learn had their own thoughts, and a name: "We are Koji. Soon we will become one..." True to their word, the Koji were not shy as they latched directly onto each and every Sakamai, adherin...

Part 2 KOJI-KAKE (Part 1 is HERE ) The once robust and happy Sakamai, villagers of Tanbo, were already quite unrecognizable. Stripped not only of their brown clothing but their very layers of body fat and protein, only to then be engorged with steamy hot water. They looked like a new race; fluffy, round, and starchy white like snow. The mysterious alien beings who forced such change upon them without mercy or explanation were not finished with the Sakamai's transformations - not by a long shot. For all the brutality and advanced technology they utilized up until this point, things were about to get incredibly, deeply weirder. Resting in their latest prison, the Sakamai were trapped but momentarily reunited, warm, and fed. Despite the terror they had endured, the villagers were grateful, some even overcome with joy for the respite. It seemed as though throughout the chaos and torturous conditions, everyone had somehow survived, undergoing the same process. Just as reli...

Part 1 Sakamai Our heroes' journey began in a small, agrarian village called Tanbo. All of Tanbo's residents were known as Sakamai, and they enjoyed abundance, growing happy and plump as if divine intervention had chosen them for a life of comfort, ease, and opulence. Until one day in late fall. A day like any other... Suddenly, horrifically, alien beings of unstoppable power and size laid waste to the village. Uprooting homes mechanically and devoid of remorse, whole families of Sakamai were ripped apart and bound - seemingly at random, and in defiance of the laws of gravity. A quiet behemoth works methodically. For weeks they hung motionless, quietly suspended midair above the only land they knew. Devoid of life nourishing resources, most importantly water, the Sakamai became so parched from the sun's dull rays, even cool autumn breezes were abrasive and withering. While each of them prayed for an end to this misery, and a return to the land that taunted t...

Welcome back, class. This is part 7 of "Why Did No One Tell Me?!?" Normally I would link you to the 1st lesson, but instead, ( Part **5** is here. ) That is because today's lesson correlates so closely  to personal, romantic relationships, the parallels are almost creepy! Today's lesson is:  Choose Your Career Like You Choose a Lover  Again: Understanding lesson 5, " Relationships: By the Numbers " should help this lesson click easily. First. everything in K-12 education is designed with two messages: (1) " Go to college! ", and (2) " Fit in! "  FORGET THAT. As soon as you finish high school, you are tossed into a world with countless trades and entrepreneurial routes that already exist and require zero college education, and the highest echelons of society are filled with outliers who refused to conform to a previously existing model. For examples, look at the founders of Apple, Snapchat, Facebook, Netflix, or Amazon. No m...

You spot a small Sake section while shopping for wine. You know enough about wine styles to tell a Riesling is sweet, a Merlot dry, but what about Sake? Can Sake even be sweet or dry? Do you know your preference? When shopping for Sake, you might look for something you tasted at a restaurant. If you can't find that, you grab whatever is cheapest, or something priced in the middle with an appealing label. Sound like you? Everyone, myself included, has shopped this way for some kind  of specialty item. For Sake, this means consideration of sweet and dry becomes an afterthought, and you may end up with something terrible  - or worse: something great that just wasn't for you! To help you judge dry and sweet, Japan developed a Sake Meter Value, or "SMV" ( Nihon Shudo , in Japanese). The scale is simple: any positive (+) number would mean dry, zero neutral, and negative (-) numbers sweet. Turns out, that scale was too simple... Japanese importer and distributor...

"Hold on, I'll Man-splain" - Ieyasu-kun It's unusual for me to talk about a city and not go straight to talking about the food. I promise I will get to that. First, I want to talk about Hamamatsu, "The City of Music". Having taken my third trip there last year, I noticed more and more, the city has an authentic identity. Home to Yamaha, Roland, and Kawai, Hamamatsu has flourished thanks to these internationally recognized companies, and the city has shown their support in kind. I laughed out loud when someone pointed out that my hotel in the Act Tower, was very literally designed in the shape of a harmonica, down to the elevators lighting up the teeth as they ascend. That is so wonderfully  Hamamatsu! The manhole covers and other promotional materials, depict Hamamatsu's  kawaii,  mascot-version of Tokugawa Ieyasu (pronounced: E.A. Yeah, Sue), the powerful Daimyo who conquered and occupied Hamamatsu in the 1570s. His piano-key pants a nod t...