Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No. 1 Edición Limitada 2003

The day is pleasant, high twenties and humid, and I have spent much of it on foot – so much, in fact, that my pedometer has crested 25,000 for the first time in living memory. Now, however, I have reached my destination. I am in the back corner table of a nice suburban pub, my friends and I well shaded beneath an umbrella. The beers are cold, and there are no other patrons to bother. It’s a fine afternoon for cigars.

The dusky beauty in question is the 2003 Romeo Edición Limitada, the Hermosos No. 1. From what I recall, these were well received in 2003, but thirteen years changes a cigar, so in 2016? Who knows. 2003 was such a mixed bag for ELs – the phenomenal Cohiba DC, the reviled Monte C, and the not-especially-memorable Partagás D2. The Romeo could go either way.

Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No. 1 Edición Limitada 2003 unlit

I’m lighting the cigar with a Bic lighter – there was a plane journey before my walk, and I didn’t like to bring a torch lighter in case it was confiscated – so it takes a little while to coax a coal from the Bic’s fitful fires. Eventually I get there. Perhaps a symptom of the slow light, the first puffs have no heat to them, and no bitterness at all. The tobacco is extremely light, the flavour slightly lactic, slightly herbal. All those things are marginal. Mostly it tastes like nothing. I wonder if perhaps this cigar is a little old.

The friends I’m with are old friends, school friends, and as we puff and laugh away, an ancient anecdote comes to mind. The year would have been around 1998, and I was in year 9, the youngest of the four forms at my high school. I was pimple faced pubescent with hair that was just marginally too long (by year 12 it would be a greasy mop that frequently earned me uniform citations for crossing the collar limit) and a voice that still cracked occasionally. My parents had become friendly with the parents of Fabian Swann, a classmate of mine. Fabian and I were largely ambivalent toward each other, but I guess it was convenient, so the Swanns had brought him over to my house, notionally so that we could do our homework together, while our parents attended the school’s Parents Trivia Night.

Fairly predictably, not a lot of homework was getting done, but Fabian and I felt that we had to at least make some show of it, so we were spreading our books out on the kitchen table when something fell out of Fabian’s diary. “Oh yeah,” he said “check this out.” It was a proto-selfie, taken on a disposable camera some weeks prior at school camp. The subject was one of our classmates, Stavros Dimitriadis. Even by the standards of a teenage boy, Stavros was enduring a particularly brutal puberty; he was overweight, with pale skin that acted as an ideal canvas to extenuate his acne, a big, nobly nose, thick glasses and braces. Stavros always copped a lot of shit (it didn’t help that he had an identical twin brother, lived above a fish and chip shop, and proudly wore the Christian fish symbol on his blazer lapel), but at the moment in question he was undergoing an especial moment of fame. A few weeks prior, at the aforementioned school camp, we had gone caving (essentially writhing through foot high tunnels in close quarters with your classmates). Stavros was one of the last of the class to exit, so we were all standing around in a circle watching when he popped out of the ground, his glasses fogged up, and wearing a miner’s helmet with a light on it. Somebody yelled out “it’s a mole-man,” and that was it: Stavros would never be known as anything else. Being still relatively fresh, any reference to moles, mole-men, or Stavros had the class in stiches.

The photo that Fabian produced was about as unflattering as any that has ever been taken: low angle, it captured both Stavros’ double chin and his nose, and the sun gleamed equally off his greasy skin and his braces. “Let’s put it on a chick’s body,” I suggested.

The year being 1998, my family internet connection was restricted to a 28.8 baud modem that connected to a server at my dad’s work (he worked at a university). He had cautioned me repeatedly that every site would be monitored by their IT department, so an AltaVista search for something like “female body” was completely out of the question. Instead we leafed through a coffee table book until we found a picture of Chloé, a rubenesque nude that famously hangs in a pub in Melbourne, and scanned her. Using a trial version of some editing software that I had gotten on a shareware CD, we successfully planted Stavros’ head on Chloé’s body. The editing was awful, but good enough: the dichotomy between the pale nude’s body and the Greek boy’s greasy face was hilarious.

We printed out two copies, and the next day at school Fabian had one in his folder, and discreetly we began to show our friends, who all found it just as funny as we did. It was all going swimmingly until Cameron Sprague got a hold of it and stuck it up on the whiteboard. The whole class pissed themselves except Stavros, who snatched it down and fled the room in tears. Half an hour later the year-level coordinator came to get me.

Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No. 1 Edición Limitada 2003 somewhat smoked, on a bic lighter

The cigar at the mid-point has thickened considerably, although it is still only barely a mid-strength cigar. There are a few vague notes, some floral elements, the occasional lactic hint, but mostly at the moment it is dominated by a Mānuka honey taste stronger than I recall finding in any other cigar.

They only knew about me, but in the hopes of a lesser punishment, I immediately rolled on Fabian. It didn’t work. After a lot of shouting I was given a one-day suspension, a week of detention, and I had to have my parents sign the offending picture. I thought my parents would be the worst part of the punishment, but in the end it wasn’t too bad. They yelled at me a bit, but mostly they seemed mildly amused.

After I had served my detentions the incident died down. Stavros seemed to forgive me. Classmates would reminisce about it occasionally, and ask if I still had a copy, but alas, a condition of my parent’s punishment was that I delete the files from the computer, and the signed copy that I handed to the coordinator I never saw again.

There was something of an epilogue some years later, however, when Miss Kok (Miss Kok [she insisted it was pronounced “Coke”] too was the butt of a lot of our jokes, but also our pubescent fantasies: she was blonde, busty, wore a lot of singlet tops, and did a lot of jumping, leaping and jiggling around in her role as a drama teacher) asked me about it.
“Hey Alex, do you still have that picture of Stavros on the girl’s body that you made in year nine?”
“No, they made me destroy all the copies. How do you know about that?”
“Oh, we had that up in the staff room for weeks – that was hilarious.”

Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No. 1 Edición Limitada 2003 final third

In the last few inches the Hermosos No. 1 firmly establishes itself as mid strength, but as it does the honey fizzles out and is replaced by a sort of chemical tang, not unreminiscent of high-quality fly spray. As it progresses the tar gets stronger and stronger, until I’m basically just smoking for the nicotine. It is neither bad nor good.

Overall, the Hermosos No. 1 is a fine cigar, and what notes there are are delicate and delicious. In 2016, however, there is not a whole lot to it. I suspect it may be five years too old. If you have a box and are saving them for something, now is the time.

Still better than a Petit Coronas though.

Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No. 1 Edición Limitada 2003 nub

Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No. 1 Edición Limitada 2003 on the Cuban Cigar Website

Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No. 3 510 Aniversario Humidor

I messed up a little with the selection of today’s cigar. As I have opined before, the 510 Aniversario Humidor contains five cigars from five different marques. Three of those cigars are essentially regular production with a fancy band, no different to any cigar that you could pick up in any petrol station the world over. The other two, the Royals de Partagás and the Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No. 3, are unique to this humidor, and only 10,200 examples of each ever existed on this earth.

I smoke today at a suburban barbecue while drinking beers, eating flesh and telling tall tales. As I was leaving the house I thought “I should grab a cigar… nothing too precious, I probably won’t be concentrating on it too much. How about the 510, isn’t that just a regular production?” I was wrong, of course, but I wouldn’t realise until it was too late.

The first great disrespect of the Hermosos No. 3 came pre-light. I was setting up a nice photo with the cigar balanced on a fencepost, the barbeque going on behind, when a gust of wind dashed the cigar earthward and its foot smashed on the pavement. To add insult to injury, the more stable platform that I opted for as my second choice was the lid of the garbage bin.

Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No. 3 510 Aniversario Humidor unlit, resting on a bin

(A note on cigars with broken feet: they’re not really that bad. Any other damage and you can have unravelling, burn issues, ruined draw for one reason or another, but the foot? Not such a big deal. If anything it’s easier to light, and the issue burns itself away before too long. Shaggy foot unfinished cigars are even sought after in the customs market. Many cigar shops offer deep discounts on damaged stock – if the only problem is that the foot is a bit cracked, I say go for it.)

The cigar begins a little bitter, hot, no doubt, from the ventilated foot, but quickly mellows out into something light and sweet. There are strong vegetal notes, some herbs, a little flowery. Very nice.

I’m drinking a Brooklyn cocktail, which a friend brought to this party pre-mixed. It’s basically whiskey and vermouth, a little sweet, a little dry, and it goes nicely with the cigar; sweet enough to cut the bitterness, but not so cloying as to ruin the palate. Being essentially the same strength as whiskey but not much less drinkable than Coca-Cola, it is also laying a good foundation for what is to come.

Our host today is Kurt. He’s an excellent cook. He’s a decent carpenter. He’s an absolutely abysmal home distiller. In very simple terms, when you make any distilled liquor what you do is take a liquid that has been made mildly alcoholic by the digestive processes of yeast and boil it until you separate the alcohol out. This alcohol will be pretty dreadful when it comes out of the still, but if you took time and care with your mash, made it with the water from your nearby mountain stream, and with barley smoked with the unique peat of your backyard bog, then it might just have some subtle nuance to it that 10 years in a barrel (and some water) will enhance to the point of drinkability. If you didn’t take too much trouble then you can always mix your grain alcohol with some herbs and spices and call it Gin, or with sugar and fruits and make some kind of liqueur.

What Kurt does in the production of his flagship product, Colonel Kurtz’s No. 1 Special, and what most backyard distillers do, is make his mash out of what amounts to a bag of sugar and a sachet of commercial yeast and then add store bought flavouring essences to it that will allegedly make it resemble whisky or what-have-you. What he fails to do, I theorise, is properly separate the poisonous methanol from the somewhat less poisonous ethanol. The No. 1 Special tastes foul, gives you a headache, makes you anti-socially drunk, and leaves you with as bad a hangover as anything on this earth, but because I am a foolish, foolish man, I know that as soon as I finish this Brooklyn I’m going to go looking for some.

Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No. 3 510 Aniversario Humidor, somewhat burnt

The cigar is burning with a nice white ash, showing its age. As the smoke combines with the Brooklyn on my tongue it brings out a strong, sweet coffee note. Very smooth and pleasant.

I find the No. 1 Special, Batch #3 (a good year), in the bar and have a snoot. It takes me back. The last time I was in this home I had a few belts of the stuff, and then walked back to the train with a couple of friends. Being out in the suburbs, the nearest train station is a kilometre or so away, and we walked merrily along, slugging from a plastic takeaway bottle of the No. 1 Special as we did. The train station in question is built with the platform in the centre of the two sets of tracks, so in order to gain access you walk across the tracks (literally across, the rails run right through the footpath), and then up a ramp in the centre of the platform. Being full of No. 1 Special, I decided on this particular night to take the more efficient path, and simply climb the two-foot rise directly onto the platform.

Waiting for me at the top of the cliff were two PSOs – Public Safety Officers – a variety of jackbooted thug that has emerged in Victoria over the last five years or so. They’re basically cops without the training (they do have the guns though). They asked me what I was doing, and if I’d been drinking, and if I knew there was a $2000 fine for being on the tracks. They asked what was in the plastic bottle. I didn’t handle the interrogation well, replying to every question as belligerently as I was able. “Yes, yes, but I wasn’t on the tracks, I climbed up from the footpath, it was paint thinner, but it’s empty, and I was just about to recycle it.” When they asked me if I’d ever been in trouble with the police before, and I replied that I wasn’t in trouble with the police now, they asked to see my license. They called my name into the police switchboard to check for warrants, but were still waiting on a response when the train arrived (real police don’t have a lot of time for PSOs either). “Thanks guys” I said, reaching over to take my ID. They looked at me unhappily as I got on the train and left, another arsehole off into the night. I guess it wasn’t worth shooting me over.

In the city twenty minutes later my friends were keen for a cocktail, but I was rapidly entering the final stage of the No. 1 Special effect, and insisted on McDonalds. The nuggets didn’t help. “Guys,” I said “you gotta go on without me. I’ve got a splitting headache and my whole body feels toxic. I need to sit on this bench for about twenty minutes.”

In the end I got a cab to drive me the six blocks to my home. I woke up with as bad a hangover as I’ve ever had.

Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No. 3 510 Aniversario Humidor, final third

Perhaps it’s the No. 1 Special burning my taste buds off, but it seems like the Hermosos No. 3 gets bitter before its time, with almost two inches remaining. There are two main kinds of bitterness at the end of a cigar, the pleasant bitterness of coffee and chocolate, and the astringent bitterness of tar. This lies somewhere in-between. I’ve had worse.

When it comes down to it, the Hermosos No. 3 is a fine cigar, with plenty of flavour and a good balanced elegance. It falls somewhere in the upper echelon of the Romeos I have had thus far. I apologise, 510 Romeo, you probably deserved a bit more respect.

In any event, it’s better than the Petit Coronas.

Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No. 3 510 Aniversario Humidor nub

Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No. 3 510 Aniversario Humidor on the Cuban Cigar Website

Romeo y Julieta De Luxe Edición Limitada 2013

Of the Romeo y Julieta De Luxe, Edición Limitada 2013, I have nothing to say. To be honest, when I plucked this cigar from my humidor, I had no idea what it was. “2013 Romeo EL?” I thought “Never heard of it.” A brief Bing does not reveal much: it appears to be another EL that has failed to distinguish itself, either in excellence or mediocrity. Ah well. The facts, as they say, will be in the fire.

Romeo y Julieta De Luxe Edición Limitada 2013 unlit

I lift the cap and toast the foot. It begins very dry on the palate, mid-to-light tobacco with notes of straw and dry dusty earth. Somewhere in the back of it there is the tang of fresh basil.

For all my lifelong debauchery, I’ve never really got that much into food. Drink, women, drugs, cars, boats, watches, racehorses, fine clothes, finer tobacco, and all the other pursuits of the epicurean? Sure. Food? Not so much. It’s not that I don’t like it – a good meal is a good meal – but I never really saw the need to seek it out. The maximum threshold of deliciousness can be reached for $10 at the local Chinese greasy spoon. Beyond that I don’t much see the point. Particularly my meals at home – the ones I consume as a solitary bachelor, in my underwear, slumped in front of the television – those meals I get no pleasure from. I resent every aspect of the experience: the time spent in the hellish supermarket, the time cooking, the time eating, the time cleaning up: it’s all a waste! An hour a day at least, spent in the service of a joyless calorie obligation! You can imagine my delight, therefore, when Soylent burst onto the scene.

Soylent is a nutrient slurry, designed by a tech entrepreneur to take humanity to the level beyond food. Essentially it is a beige powder that, when mixed with 3L of water and drunk throughout the day, gives the body 100% of what it needs. Nothing more. Nothing less. On a diet of Soylent there is no shopping, no cooking, no washing up and minimal preparation. Meeting the food obligation is reduced to minutes in the day. Most people with whom I discussed the idea were offended by it: “food is a fundamental part of the human experience” they would say. “How can you forsake it?” What they don’t get is that it’s not replacing all food. Lavish banquets with friends? Sure, I’ll eat those. But the miserable tin of baked beans on a Tuesday night? The tuna, spooned unheated from the can on a Wednesday? Give me the slurry. A month of Soylent costs about $350, which seems like a lot of up-front cost, but is pretty cheap when you consider that’s it’s your entire caloric intake for a month.

Soylent is not available in Australia (our nanny does not only disapprove of tobacco), but they make the recipe freely available, so I was able to cook my own (it’s basically oats, protein powder, and 50 or so vitamins and minerals). Like most of the innovations I bring about in my life, it eventually trickled down to my manservant Davidé, who fell in love with the stuff.

Romeo y Julieta De Luxe Edición Limitada 2013 somewhat smoked

At the midpoint the cigar is very dry, with a slight umami flavour, shitake mushroom. The straw still lingers, as does the dust. It is dry, very dry.

As long as I’ve known Davidé, the brute has always had a terrible digestive constitution. If we go out on the town, it is guaranteed that at some point he will be running for a public toilet in a state of desperation. If he comes to my home, his first demand is to immediately use my bathroom. Very often he regales and disgusts me with anecdotes about soiled clothing. When I began my post-food lifestyle I threw him a few tubs, and a week or so later he came to me, glowing. “Mr. Groom” he said “this stuff is a goddamn miracle. I’ve never done shits like this in my life. Solid perfect lumps that sink like stones. Regular as clockwork. I don’t even have to wipe anymore!” His questionable personal hygiene aside, I also felt pretty good. Strong. Lean. I was never hungry, and always energetic. It was my first experience of having a balanced nutrient intake, and it was good stuff.

Davidé has always had a very specific taste in women, which is to say he likes girls who are deeply, deeply damaged. At the moment in question he was dating a Singaporean diplo-brat named Jade. They’d met on the internet, and rapidly become lovers. She was gorgeous, a pouty, fine boned Asian. She had shaved her head completely bald, and wore an ever changing series of brightly coloured wigs. Needing something to get her through the day, she huffed nitrous-oxide bulbs constantly (she had started on the NoX because she didn’t want to take an addictive drug, but was on them to point of complete addiction, psychologically, if not chemically. She needed ten to get herself out of bed in the morning. She had them delivered weekly in industrial quantities, and there was a basket of empty canisters in every room in her house. Davidé referred to her home as Da Nang.) Ringing her arms and legs were rows of scars, and whenever Davidé angered her she’d tell him she was going to add another. It was a promise, not a threat. She hated to sleep alone, and would demand that he stay over nightly. When he refused she would threaten to cut him, or failing that, herself. If he spent more than an hour or two away from her he would start getting hysterical messages accusing him of cheating. She was deeply, dangerously damaged.

Because of her separation anxiety, Jade, therefore, was present when we cooked our second batch of Soylent. They’d just recovered from one of their frequent splits – Davidé had announced that he was leaving her, and she’d sent him a constant stream of alternatingly sexy and suicidal images until he’d relented and gone over to her house, where they’d had wild sex while she screamed abuse at him. At the cook-up she mostly just brooded in the corner. Soylent is mostly cooking by spreadsheets – it’s just a matter of figuring out ratios – and Davidé, in an attempt to include Jade, gave her the job of crushing up the various pills that make up the micronutrient quotient of the Soylent with a mortar and pestle, while we handled the “man’s work” of reducing several kilograms of oats to flour, and mixing in great sacks of protein and maltodextrin. She performed her task diligently, but silently, watching something on her computer. When she was finished she handed us the mortar filled with grey-brown powder and wordlessly disappeared into Davidé’s room. He rolled his eyes. “She doesn’t like it when I talk to other people.”

A week or so into the new batch, I came to the conclusion that something was definitely wrong. I felt weak and lethargic. When I stood up too quickly I would get dizzy. In the shower I would feel myself starting to black out, and have to sit down and run the water cold. There was a constant slight feeling of nausea. For the first few days I just thought I was coming down with something, but as it continued to get worse, I eventually began to wonder if something might be wrong with the Soylent. I called Davidé, who by this stage had broken up with Jade again (for what would prove to be the final time) and asked him how he was feeling. “Shit,” he replied.

We returned to our spreadsheet and did an audit of our left-over ingredients, comparing the amount left in the containers from the amounts that should have been expended in a proper, balanced cook. The big stuff all seemed fine, the oats, the maltodextrin, but when we got to the micronutrients the issue quickly became clear: she had given us almost thirty times the recommended daily dose of chelated molybdenum (a mineral that, among other things, leeches copper from the body), and no copper, iron, zinc or vitamin B12. We were in the advanced stages of copper deficiency. She was clearly trying to kill us.

We Googled for hours looking for a solution, and debated at length the merits of adding a large copper supplement to offset the molybdenum, but eventually decided it was too risky. We snuck out at night and dumped great garbage bags of Soylent into a skip at the construction site across the road. The post-food experiment was over.

Romeo y Julieta De Luxe Edición Limitada 2013 an inch or so left

In the final third the cigar gets ashy and a bit tannic. The is a strong herbaceous quality, that is not entirely unpleasant. It ends without tar, but very tannic. A fine cigar for any occasion, and better than a Petit Coronas, but the least of the three Romeo ELs I’ve had in the recent past.

Romeo y Julieta De Luxe Edición Limitada 2013 nub

Romeo y Julieta De Luxe Edición Limitada 2013 on the Cuban Cigar Website

Romeo y Julieta Duke Edición Limitada 2009

Osaka, Japan: hot, humid, overcast, with just the occasional touch of drizzle. A fairly typical afternoon at the end of the Osaka summer.

I lived in this city for a little over a year, mainly in 2009, and have returned here many times since. Today I am on vacation. My friends in this part of the world are all either bartenders or English teachers, but either way, they live the same lifestyle: rise at noon, work until late, drink until dawn. Now in the third week of my vacation, my body has entered a kind of toxin survival state where I no longer get hangovers, which means my afternoons are free. I have decided to take a walk.

Despite living here, I really have no idea about the geography of this city. There are no hills to speak of, and the whole place is tall buildings, there’s never anywhere you can get a clear line of sight. I know certain areas quite well, but only in relation to their nearby subway stops – how the districts fit together into a city I really have no clue.

I have decided to head to the aquarium, starting near my hotel on the Dōtombori canal. I know that the aquarium is by the harbour, and my logic is that the canal must eventually wind up at the water. The aquarium has the world’s largest Ferris wheel right next to it, so once I’m on the waterfront I figure I should be able to spot the wheel and head toward that.

It’s not a sound plan, but the point is the journey, not the destination. I’m bringing a traveling companion with me, a Romeo y Julieta Duke, Edición Limitada 2009, a handsome brute with a deep red wrapper.

Romeo y Julieta Duke Edición Limitada 2009 unlit

The Duke begins well, sharply floral, like chewing on rose petals rather than sniffing them. Somewhere behind there is a nice, beany coffee and more than a little cream. There’s no EL chocolate here yet, but you can clearly see the dust of its approach on the horizon.

Like most people in their mid-20s who wash up in a foreign land, I came to Japan mainly to get away from my mother. At the time I had just spent two years working in my first real job, eight hours a day sharing a cubical with a guy who crunched sunflower seeds unrelentingly throughout the entire workday. The money was great, and I was basically running the show, which is an unheard of career progression for a guy my age, and yet, I had come to ask myself that inevitable question, “what am I doing with my life?” My mother had the answer, “you have a good job, you’re doing well, you need to work hard, get some security, buy a house, meet a nice girl maybe.”

She was right, of course, but my young brain couldn’t see that. “Why is my mother trying to enslave me,” I wondered. “Why would she want me to spend all day in that prison?” I was a lost soul, and I needed to find myself. And so I fled.

A friend had recently moved to Osaka, so I applied for a job with his company, teaching English. They told me I had it, but after a month or two of messing around, they changed their minds, so I decided to wing it and just left. Tourist visa. One-month booking in a foreigner friendly flop house. No plans.

It was cold the night I arrived: January in Osaka is a marked shift from January in Australia. Somehow I found my way to my guest house and checked in. It was around 10pm, I think, by the time I settled in and ventured out. I found a pay phone around the corner and called my friend. “Hey man,” he said “I’m a bit busy right now. I’m in Hiroshima having a bath with an old lady. I’ll be back in three days.”

It was an odd three days. I had no phone, no internet access, I didn’t know anybody, I didn’t speak a word of the language, and I knew nothing about the city. If I got lost there was a non-trivial possibility of my dying on the streets, so I wasn’t too willing to venture far from my home range. Japan has one of the lowest levels of English in the world, but it is a strangely friendly country for the non-vocal illiterate. The western idea that Japan has a vending machine for everything is a myth (they do have a block of vending machines every ten meters, but they all just sell drinks and cigarettes), but in most mid-range restaurants you order from a machine that has pictures of every item, and don’t have to interact with your waiter beyond a curt head nod. In any event, I think I spent the next three days mostly in my room watching Japanese television.

Romeo y Julieta Duke Edición Limitada 2009 somewhat smoked

Back in the present, all is lost. The canal I was following branched, and then zig-zagged, and then I came to an industrial district where the walkway along the canal bank ended, and large warehouses obscured my view of it long enough that I lost it. I am walking in the direction that I think is toward the bay, but really I have very little evidence to back up that theory. The Romeo is holding together nicely though. Earthy. Christmas pudding. Cherries. Nice fruitcake. Strong coffee notes. Eventually I find my way to one of the huge bridges that span the harbour, and scale it, and from there I am able to determine the magnitude of my navigation issues. The Ferris wheel is visible, but several kilometres away. The only landmark that looks attainable is the giant IKEA on the next island, so I head towards there. The new goal is a $1 hotdog.

Romeo y Julieta Duke Edición Limitada 2009 half smoked

When my friend finally returned to Osaka he picked me up at my guest house and took for a tour of the surrounding district, which I would later come to know as Shinsaibashi, the main entertainment district. At the time it seemed completely alien, a maze of crowds and tall buildings. That night he took me to a club. I was delighted, my first social interactions in three days, my first exposure to Japanese girls, and the nightlife scene. I was a little tipsy and chatting in broken English to a girl in short shorts when my friend tugged me on the arm and said he was leaving with a girl.
“Should I come too?” I asked. “I don’t know how to get home.”
He shrugged it off, plainly not wanting to chaperone me when he had a female in his sights. “Just go outside and go straight, it’s just down the road. You’ll be fine.”

An hour or so later the girl I was talking to left with her friends, and I decided it was my bedtime too. I headed out to the street, and instantly realised I was in trouble. I had no idea where I was, or which of the four cardinal directions he meant by “straight.”

For the next four hours I wandered, first by heading about a kilometre or so in each of the cardinals before deciding it was wrong and heading back, and eventually just roaming at random, hoping to find some landmark I knew (which at this point in time was essentially limited to the 7-11 down the street or my guest house door). Eventually the sun rose, the trains resumed their service, and I was able to find one to take me to the station that I remembered as the one I had got off at upon my arrival. I didn’t have the map I had had then, so there was still a little random wandering before I found my bed, but I got there eventually.

I saw a lot of the city that night, and over the next year I was constantly finding familiar things, landmarks from my ramblings. If you want to find yourself, you first have to get lost. It’s a good way to get away from your mother, also.

Romeo y Julieta Duke Edición Limitada 2009 final third

In the final third the chocolate emerges, deep, bitter swathes of it. The coffee remains resilient also. The burn has not been great, requiring several relights, but I blame that mainly on the humidity. The ending could be smoother, but it’s not as rough as some. All in all, the Romeo y Julieta Duke is a fine cigar, and much better than the Petit Coronas.

Romeo y Julieta Duke Edición Limitada 2009 nub

Romeo y Julieta Duke Edición Limitada 2009 on the Cuban Cigar Website