Theirs Is the Superior Society. No, Correction: They're Going to Hell

On the sex toy floor, there was a large wall with dozens and dozens of cans - all of them in different colors and sizes, and all of them with different naked cartoon girls on them. A great deal of Japanese men were perusing this wall, carefully studying and comparing the different cans before making their decision. With nothing in English, it took me a few minutes of analysis to figure out that the cans were actually fake vaginas. ...

Yes, I bought one, purely out of curiosity as to what might be inside. ...

This reminds me of a story I know I'm going to regret telling, but here goes: Quite a few years ago I was passing through New York for some reason or another, and one night I went out bar-hopping with a couple friends. We stumbled out of the last bar around 3am, drunk and giddy, laughing and tripping as we walked back towards our hotel. On the way we passed a porno store, which aside from the occasional pizza place was the only thing open at 3am. I'm not sure why - I think one of my friends wanted to buy a magazine - but we went in, ...The most absurd thing we found was a large plastic beer can - meant to look like "Coors Light," or something, but much larger - and when you unscrewed the cap at the top, there was a latex vagina inside, that you were meant to stick your dick in and fuck the can. Well, not really "fuck" the can, exactly, but masturbate with it....

So of course we have to buy the beer can vagina, because we're drunk and it's funny, and we figure we'll find some entertaining unintended use for it. So we paid for it and continued on our merry way back to the hotel. Once there we said our goodbyes and retired to our rooms, and I realized that somehow I'd gotten stuck carrying the bag from the sex store. "Maybe I should just try it. Just see what it feels like..." You know. Just for kicks, right? So you know what? I fucked it. Yeah. I fucked a plastic beer can. I fucked the shit out of that can. And you know what? It felt alright. It did the trick. That is, until it was all over. Until the moment after, when I was hit by a sobering freight train of humility, looking down at my dick stuck inside a latex vagina housed in a plastic beer can. Moments like that you start to question everything - "How the hell did it come to this? Who am I? What am I doing with my life?"...

The next morning, when the subject of the previous night came up and someone said, "oh, where's that funny beer can thing we got? Rob, you had it, right?" And everyone looks at me, and I just stare at them for a moment, and then say, "...I fucked it. I fucked it and I hated myself, and now it's gone." There was a slight pause, followed by uproarious laughter. The ridicule took months to subside.

Anyway, back to weird Japanese sex toys."

I'm convinced, "Tokyo" is Japanese for "New Orleans." Sure, differences abound. Tokyo's a lot bigger, and its resident speak English to a reasonable degree. And there's the whole Asian thing. I grant you all that. Still, rising above those differences is the overpowering sense that in both of those places, you'd have to go out of your way to find an appetite that would frighten the locals.

I like that in a city.

In fact, if I'm found dead of unnatural causes, I hope it's in one of those wonderful places, laid low by some appetite, fetish, or apparatus catering to one or the other, and I hope it causes the police officer or emergency medical technician who finds me to say, "Now, there's something you don't see every day." (I can't tell you how much I hope he's saying it in Japanese.)