Another weekend, another barbecue
Took the curvaceous and emminently capable Ms. Rev. Paperboy and the youngin' up into the mountains of Yamanashi Prefecture this weekend to camp out on a mountain top at The Northlands with 50 of our closest friends from my old watering hole in Kawasaki, Moby Dick, (named for the drum solo, not the whale) the friendliest bar in Japan, if not the world.

We took the train up early Saturday morning and my big little brother Take-chan picked us up at the station and whisked up up the mountain for a day of eating, drinking, loafing in the sun, barbecuing, drinking, playing music, and more drinking. The next day we got up to bright, bright (I have never wanted sunglasses so much as I did when I stepped out of the cabin - did I mention I'd been drinking the night before?) sunny weather, let the kids feed the horses at the riding stable (priceless). After checking out of the campground we took a short, scenic, vomit-filled (Anyone know what the Japanese for "Gravol" is? Dramamine doesn't seem to work on my kids, in fact, I suspect it is making them sick) drive through the mountains we stopped for soba and then took the train home.

Special thanks to Kaki-san, Takarada-san, the G-Tribe Motorcycle Club, Linn-chan and Ayu-chan for drumming and babysitting above and beyond the call; wheel man and soup chef Take-sama and of course our gracious host The Chief.

To paraphrase the master (and this is the real list): "We had 5 cases of Heineken, 2 bottles of Captain Morgan's dark rum, 2 bottles of Blanton's Single Barrel bourbon, a bottle of Black Bush, 2 bottles of Beefeater, 2 bottles of Jose Cuervo Gold, a bottle of Bacardi white rum, 5 litres of red wine, 5 litres of white wine, a bottle of Glenlivet, a bottle of Kalua, a bottle of Amaretto, a bottle of cassis, ten litres of assorted sake, a half dozen different kinds of sho-chu, 5 kilos of Rev. Paperboy's homemade spicy Italian sausage, 3 kilos of chicken, 4 kilos of assorted beef, 2 tuna heads, a dozen baguettes, a broad assortment of salads, pickles, olives, cheeses, chocolates, 'smores and 6 litres of Take's fabulous vegetable chicken-sausage soup.
The only thing that worried me was the tuna heads. There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man drunk on sake in the depths of a tuna binge."





I'm not claiming we drank all the aforementioned booze - though I think I had the last beer the next morning - but we certainly put a dent in it. I know we went through about half of the Irish whisky just er...toasting my sausage -- which isn't nearly as dirty as it sounds.