This past week in Ehime, the weather has turned warm and sunny. As such, I was a little skeptical that there would be snow on the mountain. I needn’t have worried, because the snow was manmade. Yes, conspiracy theorists, the weather machine is real, and they’re using it to make fake snow. That was a first for me, as my limited skiing experience had always involved natural snow on the mountains of Oregon (or most recently, Maine). I had dressed for such winter weather, and found myself roasting in my Uniqlo thermal underwear as the sun beat down.
Digicam is back with a vengeance
I was at Kuma Skiland thanks to AJET, an organization by and for JETs that puts on activities and events for us. This was a certified adult field trip, down to the long bus ride and the buddy system. I got my gear rented, strapped on my boots (size 29.5), and hit the slopes. It didn’t take me long to get back in the saddle – skiing is like riding a bike in terms of muscle memory, gravity does most of the work for you anyway. I nonchalantly cruised down the bunny slope, weaving around the legions of people, kids and adults alike, who were earthbound. I might have had the most experience out of our group, which isn’t saying much considering a significant portion of our delegation hailed from warmer climates like the Philippines and Jamaica, areas not known for their skiing. But everyone gave it their all, regardless of their level of experience (although I did have to threaten one of my friends with bodily harm to incentivize him to go down the mountain – he will remain nameless, but if he’s reading this, he knows who he is).
The very 80s feeling of the ski resort – and the entire prefecture – can really be felt in these warm, fuzzy tones
After several runs on the bunny slope, I was ready to get on the ski lift and head up the mountain. I put together a posse of like-minded individuals who were ready to soar like Icarus on our carbon fiber wings. Bombing a hill at a speed that feels much too fast, flying 75% out of control, is exhilarating like nothing else. I wiped out several times. The first time, I was struggling to get one ski back on, and a random Japanese man skied up and helped me, which was very kind of him.
Some spectacular wipeouts were had on this slope
Our time was up after three hours, which was honestly fine by me because I was absolutely spent. After heading home, sitting in the tub with yuzu-scented bath salts for an hour, and popping an Ibuprofen, I reconvened with friends old and new in Ozu, a town south of Iyo.
Mikan squad
We had a big dinner to celebrate multiple birthdays, and capped it off with a long night out at a local karaoke bar where the Ozu ALTs seemed to know everybody. We split into two tribes for our night lodging, with four of us (myself included) at the apartment of Turo from the Bay Area, and the other three at Jaren’s from Trinidad (who is a big Warriors fan and has decorated his apartment with not one, but two separate framed pictures of Draymond Green choking out Rudy Gobert).
The next morning, I was slightly incapacitated. But after a 7-Eleven freshly-ground cup of coffee, I was feeling more human. We were waiting for a cafe to open (Japan is chock-full of small businesses that keep minute hours that seem to be more of a hobby for the owners than a main source of income – because why does your coffee roastery not open until 10:30?) But the sun was out in full force, warming our bones as we gazed out at the serene scenery.
The cafe opened, and we descended upon it for their Cuban sandwich. While the sandwich was small (I could have eaten four of them) and was a far cry from the ones I took down in Miami daily, it was delicious nonetheless. We reconvened with the Jaren delegation down by the river. The temperature had reached the upper 60s, bringing with it a vivid, practically psilocybic sensation of euphoria. Some friends opted to shed their shoes and dip their feet in the river. After a quick jaunt around Ozu Castle (more of a fort, really, compared to Matsuyama Castle), it was time to get back on the train and head home. But because this is semi-rural Shikoku, we had to stop at stations for upwards of 20 minutes twice to allow express trains to pass us on the single track.
Sandwich, castle, and cool architecture
On the train ride, I listened to the new album from Baby Keem, Ca$ino. The sounds of slot machines serve as a refrain throughout the album to bring us to Sin City, where Keem spent much of his childhood. There are basically three types of songs on this album. There are hard, brash, defiant tracks, softer pop/R&B-style songs, and deep, introspective family portraits. This latter category was a pleasant surprise. Thus far, I knew Baby Keem for the former, songs like “trademark usa” from his Grammy-award winning debut The Melodic Blue and collaborations with his cousin Kendrick Lamar like “family ties“; bouncy beats with catchy lyrics, but nothing terribly eloquent. The song “I am not a Lyricist” stood out the most to me, as Keem taps into his inner Andre 3000 and waxes rhapsodic, smooth as a surfboard, about his childhood trauma: his time in a foster home, his grandmother’s incarceration, and how a gift of a keyboard when he was twelve helped him escape. Other songs in this vein – albeit with his standard staccato flow are the titular track, “Highway 95 pt. 2,” and “No Blame.” The other, more standard offerings, are decent, if largely forgettable. Two features from cousin Kendrick, who gave Keem his start at his record label, Top Dawg Entertainment, but Keem has successfully dodged the nepo baby allegations on Ca$ino.
J. Cole also has a new album out. At a younger age, I really enjoyed J. Cole’s music, especially his award-winning album 2014 Forrest Hills Drive. I even went to see him in DC on his tour supporting his 2021 album The Off-Season. But lately I’ve noticed that I’ve been skipping his songs when they come up in my playlist. When he released this latest (and allegedly last) album, The Fall-Off, it took me a while to get around to listening. Last time J. Cole was seen, he had taken shots at Kendrick Lamar on Drake’s “First Person Shooter,” followed by his own song “7 Minute Drill.” After Kendrick responded with his verse on Future’s “Like That,” J. Cole apologized onstage and removed “7 Minute Drill” from streaming services.
I love how the Wikipedia entry for the Drake-Kendrick Lamar feud is formatted like a military engagement. Though Wikipedia claims the origin of this conflict to be Kendrick’s verse on the Big Sean track “Control,” I would actually consider the origin of the beef to be all the way back in 2002, when Birdman allegedly never paid the Neptunes for the “What Happened to That Boy” beat, thus sparking tension between Cash Money Records (and later Young Money Entertainent; Birdman, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, Drake) and the Virginia Beach crew (The Neptunes (Pharell Williams and Chad Hugo), Clipse (Pusha T and Malice), and their allies including, eventually, Kendrick Lamar). But this behavior was weak sauce from J. Cole. You can’t claim you’re not only “Top 3” but the best of the bunch, and then drop out when Kendrick responds. Don’t enter a rap battle unless you’re ready to go down swinging, not apologizing.
When I saw on Twitter that he was driving around Silver Spring, Maryland, in his Honda Civic picking strangers up to listen to the new album, I chuckled wryly. For those unaware, J. Cole has been humble to the point of parody throughout his career. In a now-infamous piece of Internet culture, a Twitter user poked fun at this, which turned into an entire “J. Cole Meal” meme.
While this is a silly joke, making fun of J. Cole for his efforts to stay grounded despite being a mega-celebrity, it popped into my head as I listened to The Fall-Off (which I did so sitting on the beach, where the wind whipped sand into my Hawaiian Sun Natural Guava Nectar). Has J. Cole’s incessant insistence on how humble he is backfired? Artists of any ilk get mythologized – these people with a creative gift can feel untouchable and removed from regular society. We perceive them at a distance, unable to relate to them. Depending on who they are and who we are, we might deify and worship them. This can turn them into egomaniacs – look no further than the Kanye situation. Small moments that show that celebrities are “just like us” are newsworthy events. Some celebs strike an equilibrium between stardom and regularness – any video of Adam Sandler playing pickup basketball in shorts from 2004 is viral-worthy, because we all like the idea that you could randomly hoop with the Sandman at any time. But J. Cole might have laid it on a little too thick. Or maybe it just doesn’t resonate with me the same way it used to.
It also runs perpendicular to much of established hip-hop culture: the sense of braggadocio and competitiveness. An essential part of rap music is to talk your shit and distinguish yourself from your less-talented colleagues. We can go all the way back to 1983 for Run-DMC’s “Sucker MCs” to observe this. Think of rap battles, think of 8 Mile, think of Lil Wayne stealing everyone’s beats in the aughts, think of every rap beef from Kool Moe Dee onward. The wealth is a factor as well – even as a self-professed anti-capitalist, there is something voyeuristic about listening to Pusha T call me broke in various eloquent ways (“the only Audi here is driven by my au pair“). Bravado is essential – and you can retain that while showing your vulnerable side, as many all-time greats have done (Jay-Z’s 4:44 might be the gold standard). I don’t doubt that J. Cole’s “regularness” (for lack of a better word) is genuine; I just think it works against his claims of being the greatest. I’m not the first to make this observation; this point was even brought up to J. Cole’s face in a 2019 GQ feature.
Anyway, I found The Fall-Off to be fine. Just fine. Tracks I liked from the first half – titled “Disc 29” – included “SAFETY,” “Drum n Bass,” and “Bombs in the Ville/Hit the Gas.” I appreciated the two Future features. Other lines got a hard-nose exhale for the unintentional comedy factor (like “I need a Yelp for hoes” from “Legacy”). The second half – “Disc 39” – had bright spots like “The Villest (with Erykah Badu),” and “Man Up Above.” But overall, it was fairly uninspiring, and as a double album, it felt bloated. I didn’t think J. Cole on the trap-type beats like “Old Dog (with Petey Pablo)” was a good fit, preferring him on more melodic instrumentals like “Life Sentence.” Double albums, especially in hip hop, are like long movies (150+ minutes). If they’re good, they have the potential to be masterpieces. All Eyez on Me, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, Life After Death parallel Scorsese pictures, Spike Lee joints, and Robert Altman pictures (side note: I recently watched 3 Women (1977) with Shelly Duvall, and it really demonstrated how bullshit cooking used to be – thank you to Alice Waters, and later, millenials, for raising our standards) in the sense that their quality and gravity justify their length. But if it’s a clunker, you really feel how much of a slog it is.
The next weekend, my good friend Tom and I hopped the ferry for the nearby island of Gogoshima (kind of redundant, because “shima” means island in Japanese – it’s like saying “chai tea,” but whatever). I had visited back in September, when the sun blazed down and I slogged up the mountain on my rented electric bike to reach the sanctuary of the sea below. But this time, with the temperature in the high 50s, sunny skies, and a more-than-gentle breeze, it was a blast.
When I was a kid, I didn’t have much access to technology. In hindsight, this was probably a good thing. I didn’t have unfettered computer time or a smartphone from a young age. But I did have a Nintendo Wii. And one of the games on the Wii was, of course, Wii Sports Resort. Set on the fictional Wuhu Island, here you could play a variety of virtual sports, including golf, cycling, and much, much more. I wanted to live in this idyllic tropical paradise, where you could play Frisbee with a dog on the beach, duel legions of swordsmen, and fly a plane down the chute of the volcano.
Gogoshima is basically Wuhu Island. If the demographic/population/fertility crisis of Japan existed in the world of the Nintendo Wii.
There aren’t scores of Miis engaging in various forms of exercise. In fact, besides the occasional car, there’s almost no one.
You would think that such a beautiful island close to a large-ish city would be hot property. Instead, the island is in various shades of delapidation, as if nature is in the process of reclaiming it. There’s a kind of beauty in this life/death cycle – like fermentation.
And of course, Ehime is the land of sunsets.
Stay tuned for more of my adventures – I’m pleased to announce that my brother from another mother, Mete, will be coming to visit me later this month, and I’m sure we’ll find some trouble to get into.
Eat It 
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