LAST UPDATED 4/3/2002
AGE: 24
STAR SIGN: SCORPIO
WHEN WAS YOUNG DUDES CREATED AND WHY?
YOUNG DUDES grew out of a desire to record some of the more special moments I'd had in Japan and in my life for my own personal reading pleasure as I grew older, and was started around September in 1999 the minute I had returned to England after having lived in Japan for six months. I guess you could call Young Dudes a success story if you take a look at the amount of hits this place gets, but I really had no idea it would become such a popular page as in the beginning the site comprised of nothing more than emotional babble that was going through my mind at the time of writing, and hadn't really been intended for public consumption. Somehow or other it was linked to a few other pages and I found myself recieving e-mails from people to say how much they'd enjoyed the site compared with all the 'How to compose Haiku', 'Photos of me in Tokyo' and 'Practicing the Tea-Ceremony' pages that the search engines brought up when you they typed 'Japan' into them. So with that encouragement I came round to the idea that I could use my site as a medium to express my love for Japan and it's people, and hopefully inspire others to do the same. Frankly, I was amazed that nobody had decided to write about the things that amazed me when I went to Japan, or weren't discussed on the net. There's a lot of fascinating shit to be said. My mission was to illustrate the beauty of the country and the mindset of the incredible and unique people of Japan through a series of anthropoligical essays that were amusing and revealing of life in Japan, and that could possibly inspire some others in the way that Japan has inspired me. I think the Japanese experience brings with it its own interpretations for the individual, and I often find myself wondering if it really is the dreamland I remember it being, or was I just young and impressionable?
WHATS NEXT ON THE AGENDA?
AS FOR Young Dudes, I'd like to work on a Flash version, but for now I'm quite satisfied with pursuing other projects and getting my ass back to Japan for good. A lot of people have said "Hey Kris, you should write a book man!". Well that's exactly what I've been doing for about the last 5 months, and with any luck I'll finish one of these days and then go and live in the sun by the beach in Kanagawa or somewhere with some sexy surfer-chick I've yet to find. Who knows what I'll do with my life in the future, Jesus, I just wanna be a bum. Find some sly way to make a million, and spend the rest of my life bumming around the beaches of Japan and getting drunk with my future surfer-chick babe and make up excuses to my family as to why I never work. I do alright, I can play guitar well and I get laid, and money's never been a bother to me and I get my greatest joy in life comes out of making those around me happy, so life doesn't get to me. My old man didn't have a penny to his name but he was the greatest pop alive, and found happiness when he jacked in the taxi driving job he'd been doing and and went to live like Robinson Crusoe in Belize. In a perfect world I'll finish the book, marry a J-babe, have my own island and live in a mansion that would make Hugh Heffner jealous, buuuut
probably I'll just become one of those homeless dudes you see walking around with a baby-pram full of Pepsi Cola cans, making squawking noises at people who walk by. All I know is that if I keep my ear to the ground and be as resourcefull as I usually am, something'll turn up, being a drifter sure beats the shit out of being a company monkey anyday.