Recently I’ve been hearing some whining about the fact that I haven’t posted an entry in almost a third of a year.

Believe me, this is not my fault. How many times have I started to write and then stopped? How many times have I looked back upon the genius of my fifty-something previous posts and thought there is no way I can beat that? Many, my friends. Many, many times. And every time I shut my laptop in disgust.

Listen, blogs are fickle beasts. In order to write a blog, a lot of things have to come together. First, something interesting needs to happen to you. Now, while I clearly don’t live the rip roaring life I used to in Japan now that I’ve taken up semi-permanent residence on the second floor of Casa Griffith, I would be lying if I said I didn’t do interesting things every now and then. The problem I have is my lack of righteous indignation.

The righteous indignation is gone. Plain gone. I have nothing to be angry about. Instead of angry, I’m mostly sedentary and often tired. I’m kind of like a cow. Have you ever seen a pissed-off cow? Of course you haven’t. Hell, you can squeeze a cow’s boobs until junk comes out of them and they still won’t get pissed.

But recently I’ve done something I must write about, because in a roundabout way it involves Japan.

For reasons unknown to me, when you work for the Japanese and then cut and run on them, they give you back almost every tax dollar you paid them. Don’t ask me why. All I know is that I got a grand and change in the mail about four months ago. I then halved it, and put one half in savings. The remaining half I divided up again and put a portion of this in a long-term mutual fund, and another in a growth index fund. With what was left, I took my Grandmother out for a nice dinner.

Just kidding. I immediately purchased a ticket to Argentina to go get drunk. I left ten days ago, and now I’m back.

The thing about Argentina is this: It is awesome.

No offense to all you JETs, nor to my supervisor, because you were awesome people, but If I hadn’t signed up to go to “charming” Toyama back in the day and instead had found some sort of similar employment in Buenos Aires, man oh man, would I be sitting pretty right now. There is no way I would have left after a year. You couldn’t have paid me to go home. In fact, when I reached the three year time limit, you would have had to shoot me with some sort of sedative and locked me in a cage to get me out of that country.

Here’s the bottom line about Argentina: The food and wine are world class, for a third of the price. The weather is beautiful. The city of Buenos Aires is modern and hip and stays up all night. The clubs and bars are numerous, and also world class. And the overwhelming majority of people, both women and men, are beautiful.

Here was my average dinner for the last ten days: 1 fine top-shelf cocktail, one salad, one delicious appetizer, one generous portion of top-quality Argentinean beef tenderloin, one delicious dessert, one cup of coffee, one half-bottle of fabulous Argentinean Malbec wine.

The price? About 25 bucks.

I’m not kidding. I felt like I was robbing them. When I paid my bill I kept looking over my shoulder waiting for the other shoe to drop or for Candid Camera to jump out of the bushes. But they never did. The good times kept on coming. Four rounds, four rounds of shots at a hip nightclub? Twenty bucks. Cab ride across town? Four bucks. Cup of coffee and some ice-cream? Four bucks.

I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to wake up after a night of drinking and find that I’d spent an Argentinean King’s Ransom of 200 pesos, but that it had only really cost me about sixty bucks. I laughed all the way to the toilet.

Now, much has been made about the beauty of Argentinean women, and it’s mostly true; They are unfairly attractive as a peoples. But what’s strange about them is that they look just like us, basically. If an American tourist went down to Argentina, took off the stupid fucking Abercrombie baseball hat and the goofy white running shoes, traded in his cargo shorts for some slacks, and kept his damn mouth shut, there is a good chance he or she might pass for an Argentine baller moviestar because of all the money they’d spend.

The only real difference is that Argentine people have wavy or curly, dark brown hair, a predisposition to being thin, and are a golden tan all of the time. I know people that look like that in the US, but here they’re mobbed because the majority of us are chubby and pasty white. There, it’s standard.

Anyway, since I’m not expecting another thousand in the mail for no reason at all, I think my travels are at an end for a while. I’d like to tell you I’ll be writing again soon, but I probably won’t. Or I might. Who the hell knows? I’m a cow.

Meanwhile, I’ll be working on my Spanish. Next time I’m down there I want to be able to say, “I’d like four of your most expensive bottles of wine, please. One for me, and three to throw against that wall just because I can. Thank you.”