Here's a write up (with pix) of my DJ stint at the Acid Panda Cafe on Saturday Night. I'll try and reassemble the set list for a HToS Gaiden podcast one of these days. Lots of Ichiro Mizuki and Yokohama Ginbae.
Crows crows crows screaming and cawking greeting sunny Musashi Koganei morning. I’m here on the floor of the new apartment, hereby christened Draft Two, feeling like part of me is still on some airplane shifting around, trying to fight turbulence with some of my own. We’re next to an elementary school, it seems, one where they play Imagine by Some Old Dead White Guy every day on the dot at 5pm, which will take getting used to. Google-mapping my conbini and crow’s nest options while a plushy of Gatchapin dressed as one of the Black Birds hangs from a curtain rod starring out into rising sun. Jet lag, hungry for dinner/breakfast, wanting to savor being on the ground before the wars begin. First salvo, as always, at Narita Immigration. Lines of red faced hakujin in cowboy hats, Asian exiles in barely-jeans who refuse to, or can’t figure out, how to fill out both sides of the entry form, that jrock guy from SFO with a patch that reads “Shock” sewn into his hoodie. A detail missed from before: he has a cloth English schoolboy’s book bag slung over his shoulder, customized with a patch depicting geisha and samurai and Mt. Fuji. I am not making this up. Nor the rickety wooden Suggestion Box that rests in a part of passport control that would be impossible to actually get to without being clubbed to death by agents of G.O.D., which gives the place an air of a roadside motel or a really ironic twist on jail.
They take one look at my passport, and as has always been the case since 2006, they need to put me in the “special room” for interrogation (a legacy of the Battle of Shinagawa). This is the real suggestion box, the real shit right here, with classic deportation slogans liked GO FUCK keyed into the walls and similar sentiments in Korean and Tagalong. They usually play nice and always let me through, but I’m usually required to do a bit of a song and dance to pass the audition. But this time, the migra obasan takes one look at me and says, “Oh, I think I remember you from Eigo De Shabera Night” and I’m out in seconds with a new world record presumably set free to dance in the streets of Akiba to celebrate the new era of Rozen Asao with the maids.
The third airport in 24 hours. Boarding gate six. J-rock white kid nearby in kanji hoodie and designer jeans. Indian families. Korean dude hunched over laptop playing avi. action film. Not much time to unpack from AWA. "Fear the Gooberzilla" pen scribbling in the forms at check-in. Guy next to me trying to make the most out of mediocre sandwich. Hoodie kid pacing now, pursing his lips, and twitching his fingers like he's playing guitar or Rock Band. I guess we're supposed to get out of here now...
Tamori Club, 2002?
Car-themed café in Nakano Broadway. It’s a gray day with rain, so where else is there to go? Fast food colored seating. Walls lined with hundreds of old JAF Competition Licenses. Unlit neon tubing on the ceiling shaped like famous race tracks in greasy glass and wood cases. The unseen master, here only as a faded ‘70s era portrait in front of some barbed wire, probably dead with a hard on in a crashed up funnycar. A giant fake oak tree, his spirit maybe, explodes out of the wall, blooming little white Christmas lights that glisten in the eternal tobacco haze (At the slow ramen stand an hour earlier, the staff trash-talks nervous customers from the countryside). Little wait staff girl, normal but for a pink Zaku pin badge on her apron and a hint of stretch pants with a black lace motif that bunch around the ankles (Someone taps me on the shoulder as I exit the station. I can’t remember their name or who they are). The showcases at Broadway excite the imagination. I buy a used OOP CD of the BGM of King Kong Vs Godzilla (KKvsG). Heavy drums of angry gods and chanting natives praying to great mystery gorilla. Man, this must have been a great recording session. In the liner notes, penned by some hack from Columbia Records: “Some of the great storylines from the Taishomei Jidai finally seem to have run their course, sadly. Other tracks continue as they should, constantly maintained and massaged. If January’s theme was Dreams Come True, this one is a stack of moving boxes, a series of bins in which all matter must be separated: M (the unknowable), M (a short, but sweet cameo), paper, plastic, soft vinyl, chogokin, and so on. In the movie, King Kong climbs the diet building. He gets high on narcotic berries and passes out. The military attaches balloons to him and floats him like a massive and hairy Macy’s parade balloon over to Mt. Fuji.”
Mine is a question that spirals up the Yamanote-sen to a secret destination: Could you actually be, in your heart of hearts, actually cold and distant or are you just as determined as you need to be to forge the future in your own tiny personal post-war economy?
The Omotesando days (no wars here, never wars) continue with me doing Marui stuff in the maybe-kanemochi spot. Faded Harryhausen cyclops T-shirt from 1990, tattered generic cargo pants, Converse that leak and stain my socks and feet navy blue when it rains. Amazing bossa nova version of TV’s Match Game theme on the hidden BOSE speakers here and now, sound waves and sun bouncing off silver glitter tile squares that plaster the walls. The staff routinely takes turns to look out the window in casual awe, pointing out some odd bit of tourist strange or obasan mayhem on the street below. Even the worst here will only evoke lilting laughter, offhand amusement. But still Omotesando dori continues to fascinate as much as anything could. Zoom in on a line of stragglers, always at least three people deep, at the Omotesando crossing police box doing Q&A. Little policeman spreading out a map or peeping into a notebook and then pointing the way out. The cops are also playing light samba music inside of their koban as well, the seal of the Imperial chrysanthemum doubling as a delicately tuned subwoofer. It will be desert time here, with drink service, until the windows crack open and rich bored woman come tumbling down.
In Shinjuku, you are the role. The role is you. The middle-aged overweight security guard on his lunch break REALLY IS the middle-aged overweight security guard on his lunch break. Same for the fleets of Isuzu truck drivers hauling a billion empty bottles, hage salaryman with suits swung over their shoulder. Little blue deliverymen rushing through the back streets with heavy pallets. Anti-smoking suicide squads on patrol. Hot today and the bad hair months are coming. Someone in the table behind me (can’t see her face, something white and chiffon) staring out the second story window like aquarium show. Packs of beautiful weird women prowling the streets: smiling when with friends, scornful and harsh when alone, nervously turning corners, every step forward some kind of gamble, and it’s only Monday afternoon. I’ve only seen one person so far modeling the gauze kaze mask. In winter, they are like a species apart. But one is enough for today.
The sick person REALLY IS the sick person.
Hedge your bets as best you can, you slow Saturday parkside strollers. Your unsuccessful dog theme café dies and becomes an unsuccessful sporting goods store and dies again. Now it’s back to a café all over, with girl outside begging people to stop twisting their heads about from one side to another long enough come in and try something called the “Charming Snow Ice”. One of many gargoyle perches: a balcony overlooking the entrance to the park, the air filled with grey yakitori storm clouds.
Now and then, Tokyo walkers see hidoi gaijin face peering over dirty PC screen. But the majority of people just mercifully pass by. Still, what a frightful shock it must be to find me of all things hiding in your landscape.
I wake up with the hours in the tiny room in Draft One, swearing this will be the day I’ll finally buy some new bedding or start packing all the kipple in the closet. It’s been nearly three years since the Taishomei jidai begun and I really don’t have much in the way to show for it in the apt sense, aside from rotating gifts, storylines that never conclude, and multiple save points like this.
The Fruits version of the Charming Snow Ice looks like something out of a Bigfoot’s ass: thick orange mango chunks, fine fibery strands of delicately sliced pineapple. White backpacker dodging a cluster of children in the street. So proud and happy to be holding a beer bottle in his hands. High teens boys with Gatsby hair and bright hoodies, wincing cutting expressions of disdain. Girl arm and arm with man in suit, her lips pursed and eyes blinking hard. Three joshi kosei with no makeup, style, or attitude; absolutely real.
Mom in neon green pants and a vintage faded top with a cracked and peeling Smurf on it. Her doll-like daughter dashes for a toy shop nearby, causing a manhole to briefly rumble out a cadence of approval.
The shirt Smurf says, “I (Heart) Me”
OK. We’re in the secret hair salon deli café over looking Omotesando crossing, looking like the cover of "Do You Like Ojisan?", eating some foo foo shit, playing America’s favorite game shows, “Korean or Japanese?” "Oshare or Gay?" and “Rich or Just Faking It?” Do you know how much I dream of this view, wasted on what-passes-for-the-good-stuff in SF with a case of the Xbox controllers hand cramps and too much food in the refrigerator-stomach? Here skinny girl in pink blouse top, designer cut off jeans, and high heels, flipping her hair all over the place, picking at “gorgeous and lovely” bagel on plate, coldly assessing the humanoids scurrying and battling for power below and above. Hot status, cold status, always the pursuit of the appearance of it, no real thing left. Imaging the pink girl’s tiny cramped apartment where she sits on a makeshift throne doing make up for hours: train tracks instead of a yard, dusty ignored last gen-video game console system, and mad miniature dogs kept in cages. (The average length of stay or typical customer here seems to be about 10-20 min.)
Earlier laying siege to the 109-2, finally investing in some Coffee and Donut underwear. Sad to say that Buffalo Bobs seems to have taken the Yankee a Go Go shirts off the racks. Jack Rose making a last ditch bid for the crown with desperate “I Like Rock” shirts. A flood of high school boys, the children of Boy’s Knuckle and men’s egg youth, just out of class and still in uniform, fondling fake diamond-studded belts and imitation alligator-skin wallets. The staff and service is approximately 10.9% warmer than before, even at Vanquish, previously the paragon of “get out now” before. We’re all King of Dandy now!
Over to Harajuku. Packs of blotchy red and white folk in the Bape Cafe, little kid slouching over the table, bored, playing with his food. Inside of HARE, Sheryl Crowe’s Soak up the Sun inexplicably warbles on. Straight up gangster rap in the ZACC and it’s like at any min Lil Wayne is going to give some kanemochi sister a hot one with a stirring ode to Pussy, Money, Weed.
According to the latest reports, "you are always going to be my baby." But try to wear make-up as often as possible, anyways.
Doing tacos, pineapples, and bourbon out on the dog’s end of Koenji Look. The monday feels like me: bored staff clerks, heads bowed down over joyless, useless merchandise. No one wants to either work or shop today, which is like the sort of dramatic impasse that Koenji does better than anyone. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone laugh or smile since I got off the train hours ago. A weekend in Shinjuku sounds like an airport taking flight. This is a slow sweet funeral. The cost of the day becomes clear when when a sleeping suit, copy of Shonen Jump on his lap, nods off for seconds before violently throwing his head back in shock and then over and over again, probably still doing it now. Occasional silent girls skulking by like destroyer class hovercrafts, oversized celeb sunglasses, black stockings, and the aura of the heavily armored. You feel them coming in shifts like cops or storm clouds. The boys are so weak and painfully vulnerable by comparison, scarfing McDonald’s fries in front of the conbini, toes pointed inwards, their dangling cardigans might as well be on a single delicate coat hanger. The girl in the magazine, with her sunglasses off turns out to be talkative when on the job, when she’s getting, you know, paid for it. “I like dandies, not ikeman” she says while the pit boss polishes glasses. “What’s the difference?” asks the customer, half-Japanese, born in America, and totally lost before he even took the stairs down or the elevator up. “Ikemen are young and stupid. Dandies are…adult.” Still doesn’t understand. Never will. Nervous white boy with backpack pacing up and down the block, taking pictures of that faded, busted up Koenji Look sign that looks like it will wind up at Mandarake hen-ya tomorrow. And now it’s starting to rain out there. Our nights must be incredibly long, when they begin and end in Koenji.
The morning we wake in cold Shimorenjacku room, better again faced to do the sweet business of Counter ESPY and all that portends. Barely able to contain rage over rude interruption but able to siphon off blame for simple the fact of being here. Bu-chan the cat with the two-tone face and hiding under a cardboard box, stretched out in a strange posture. Me here on the floor after the 10 hour plus no-flight, barely sleeping in-between. Almost growing to like the seat and space. Spilling out into Narita. Immigration the usual hard bitch. Sweaty, fluorescent, shuffling humanity. Returning English teachers to the front of the line. Withered old men with red skin and blue eyes forgetting to fill out the back of the forms. Everyone leaving grubby fingerprints, craggy features captured on camera on little polite pedestals made by NEC. My usual one man show with nyukan. Female officer this time, not the usual Uchu Keiji tag-team. Soon it will be a bus pulling me down into the undertones, great and terrible Shinjuku defying gravity, and Kichijoji station, which smells like a McDonald’s fry cook. But now, face sitting dragon mom all has a lot of questions for the gaijin who came to Counter-ESPY, beginning with, “What are you doing here? What is your business?”
Today: Shizuoka Hobby Show.
In between: Stan Lee interview in today’s Japan Times.
Everything else: _________
I get my passport back after many mysterious Xerox shuffle. She waves her hand over my face, pausing to cross her index fingers in front my eyes, which are closed shut as we make the transition. I’m in. The Tokyo Wars have begun.
Shrine to Momotaro from Kamen Rider Den-O, from inside a bar next to Tokyo Midtown run by ikeman monster suit actors.
I guess even the janitor is a fan too.
Could be a Shinjuku Sex Shop if it weren't for those Tastee Cakes.
The OTACKERS new favourtie shop in Nakano Broadway.
Girlz Gone Wild in SHABOOYAH!
Storming the Tokyo Eye reality studio.
Date Warui!!!!!!!!!
The worst kind of jet lag here: like a brick surgically inserted between the eyes. Can barely see a thing, and the trees in the park are all bare. Wandering through Kichijoji with Denki Watanabe, trash talking what Comic Gumbo did to him went the ship went down last Xmas. Invading the Young Jump shinnenkai together next week. Go Nagai expected to hold court (and here were are, having missed Ed Chavez in town by hours). If I take a picture or ask for a signature, the Abashiri Family escorts me out of the building.
Stumble into Shinjuku Marui Men’s, guzzling stamina drink and trying bad not to buy anything. Casing out the joint instead in anticipation of Friday’s free for all. Serious Sparkling Sale action going on with 30%-50%. Mountains of down jackets with fur-lined collars to contemplate. Distressed jeans up in your Jack Rose. Sounds like a commercial, but damn, I was impressed for a fucked up gaijin.
Holding on to last vestiges of life for Kabuki-cho / slasher summit next. Today, your love. Tomorrow: Matt Alt (and hopefully Marxy)!
The unmarried obasan in front of me on the flight dropped a Mini-Disc labeled “Backstreet Boys”.
By an astonishing coincidence; Peace Now was on the same plane.
The new detention center at Narita, where all known affiliates of ESPY are interrogated upon arrival, is much nicer than the graffiti-strewn one in Terminal 1. Immigration official’s review of OTAKU USA #4: “Akiba kei mitai.”
I tried to make it to Kabuki-cho for slasher and drinks, but I passed out instead around 7pm. Honda-saved my life with an electric heater around 3 in the morning. Business and Death are tearing down our ancient apartment building this summer. What a bummer.
Today: Marui stakeout and Shibuya shakedown.
When Col. Baldwin throws the switch.
When the Overtones become too tight.
Whenever there's a striking place, a fit,
And the means to see the light.
Then the ESPY shall appear to honor their gifts, sacred oaths
And fight.
Will be in Tokyo 1/15 to 1/31. Contact me if anything is going on. All offers considered.
The interracial couples are really out tonight. Wishing I had something nicer to wear. A Dashiki maybe. Wondering what’s in it for them, those that have to date or marry the club hook-up or the guy from the classified ads in the back of the free weekly. Having to explain everything over and over again. “This is a Starbucks. People come here to drink macha lattes.” “This is Kentucky Fried Chicken. Pop stars eat this on New Years Day.” They pace up and down the block leading up to Eigashira koen. Funny little cop trailing them for the next edition of Gaijin Crime File. Bonus cash in his pocket for a pic of a couple making out by the swan boats. Perfect little shoes, silver and glittery contrasted with bright white Nikes. The rich man’s fanny pack. A simple accessory makes the coordination come alive. And she makes noises like a squeaky toy being mauled by a Rotweiler when the mosaic breaks.
B.A.D. (Business and Death) eyeing up the arcades and pachinko parlors, all of them, wondering when to close them down and what to reopen in their place. Soft Bank takes over the TV Games place near the Inogashira line. Pachi-slot place one million is boarded up in a Koenji alley, which is incredible since the Chuo line is like Atlantic City for losers. Big gaps in the New Akiba now. Construction sites and men at work. You can tell who is real and who is faking it by the way they navigate the main drag. Real otaku dash forwards, either alone or in packs, eyes fixed forwards like spawning salmon. Everyone else looks up in awe and terror. Lost. Maybe someday the JR train goes flying off its tracks and straight into any number of buildings that deserves it. Yodobashi Akiba, the UDX building. Akiba is crying out for a disaster to match the mood of expectation, which is oddly reminiscent of an audience walking into a new movie theater, like that one they built in Shinjuku on top of the new Marui.
(“You know how the Japanese movie business works? It’s so dirty. The studio buys up all the advanced tickets so they can say that their film opened big. So you have all these ‘hit films’ playing to empty theaters.”)
So I go to Kabuki-cho and into some old cranky hole in the floor. Old white guy sits behind me, leaving a Stephen King-sized paperback on his seat when he makes for the lobby. I think he’s with another Westerner, because both of them laugh and snicker whenever it’s actually appropriate, whereas the rest of the audience acts like they are at a funeral. I was never sure which I liked better, the thick and obvious rock concert approach to film going in the states or The Bereavement in the Family feel of a Japanese theater. The snack bar only has popcorn and “boring chips.” Previews for a bunch of foreign fantasy films (the ultimate of which would probably be this very view outside of the Italian Tomato Cafe Jr. window) and movies based on TV shows starring ageless members of SMAP.
Even if everyone is inscrutable you can feel it in the air. It’s kind of weird when Harry kisses the Asian girl, not just because he probably got a boner (although there is that), but also because it almost didn’t seem like a movie anymore.
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