An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla

Ah chi chi ah chi

Inside El Torito now in Minami Shinjuku. Figure some Mexican chow will reboot my system. I’m about as Mexican as Danguard Ace (For the record, I’m American), but God in high heaven do I love the food.

Non-smoking section. Seated across from a bad Diego Rivera parody mural that looks like something Batty Cheese would paint. 3pm. It’s all high-class women up in here, either in pairs or by themselves. The portions are a joke. The paltry amount of meat in this taco is the punch line. I’m going to need three of these combination plates after what I’m used to from the Mission District.

Next to me sits an English teacher and her student. “I have. No, I haven’t. Yes, I have,” written in large letters on a Xeroxed work sheet. Sounds about right.

You have one guess as to what song they’re playing right now:

Livin' la Vida Loca, of course.

Having wrapped up a set of liner notes, I buy some tall boys and take ‘em to a show of Uchu Senso (War of the Worlds).

Before the film, Peter Jackson addresses the capacity Kabuki-cho crowd: “Hello everyone in Japan. You’re going to be among the first to see a special theatrical preview for King Kong.”

Aside from a few extra shots, and we’re talking milliseconds here of machine gun fire and the T-Rex, it’s the same preview that’s been released to net, minus Jackson’s Jerry Lewis telethon-like begging.

Yoshiki says “it scores,” but somehow I’m just not feeling it.  Naomi Watts is too old. Jack Black is too young. Everything else is CGI.

While I wish it were a remake of Toho’s Uchu Dai Senso, War still winds up a good time. So much fun to watch bitch ass America fall down and disintegrate. Best loss of innocence in a Spielberg movie since Empire of the Sun. Palpable sense in the room of “go team” when someone says of the alien tripods “they managed to bring down one of them in Osaka.”

I wake up in Shimorenjaku sweating and sticking to myself. The Gods and me hate Japan during the summer.

I swing the door open. Bu-chan the cat with the inkwell-spill face is pawing at Honda-san’s carryall bag. He digs around inside slowly, in total control of his feline senses. No big deal, I figure. Cats are weird enough for me to seldom be surprised by anything they do anymore. He’ll probably go back to passing out in his cardboard box any second.

The Coffee. The toast. Me in my Muji yukata, waving myself with a paper fan with a map of Asakusa on it - a gift from the Chuei girls.

Suddenly, there’s a bird in Bu-chan’s mouth. A small sparrow. That’s what he was poking at earlier inside of Honda’s bag. He looks at me with an expression I can only read as “want some?” before he waddles off to the living room.

Bu-chan is big and fat. Silent and deadly also it seems. The windows are closed, the doors are locked. How the fuck did that bird get in here?

Bu-chan drops the body smack dab in the middle of the floor. It’s not moving much. Just getting in a few last gasps of humid sticky air before it croaks. Bu-chan stands at attention next to it, pawing at his avian prey and meowing like he’s not sure what to do next.

Cats, I know. Birds, especially Japanese birds, are still a mystery. Honda-san is still asleep. I imagine the bird regenerating itself like a phoenix and flapping about the apartment, an earthquake on wings. Total chaos.

I grab the wash bucket from the bathroom and throw it over the dying little bird.

I pet Bu-chan until his eyes close and his ears slide back against his head. Cats kill. That’s what they were born to do. His performance today was a guitar solo or a four legged surfin’ safari.

My god. The manager at El Torito might actually be Mexican. And I’m Mexican too, whenever it’s convenient.

I should ask him for a job washing dishes. But what if this place gets raided by La Migra?

Kemono no kata

The Anna Miller’s Lunch Special. I had to have it. “Please ask us about the Five Allergens,” the menu begs. Note to self: they keep the cute waitresses in the freezer until the weekend. Nice uniforms though.

Having some kinda weird headache thing since last night.

No, for once it’s not a hangover. It began even before meeting up with Yoshiki in Golden Gai for the torrential downpour of Jack & Cokes (Spanish-speaking tourists, waddling like slow toddlers down the narrow alleys with video cameras. I get in an angry *tsk* and they get out of my fucking way).

An ex-red light district, full of tiny bars and stairs that lead to secret make-out rooms. We somehow wind up toasting Paul Smith, who played Bluto in Popeye the Movie. “Paul Smith was like God in that film,” says Yoshiki of Smith’s turn as the Beast Rabban in Dune. He'd be the ultimate American GI in some unmade karate flick about Golden Gai.

Pain around the temples now, behind the eyes. Japanese Buffarin, about as strong as Japanese beer, which is to say, not at all. Still too early for pie, even though everyone else here is stuffing themselves on it.

So what’s causing my ills? Am I dehydrated? Do I have meningitis? Trench foot? And what about the Five Allergens?

Above normal temperatures, I suspect. Human tempura. The sweat goes out, non-stop, days on end now. Coke, booze, and those Sports Water drinks go in.  And coffee…coffee, dearest. Blend. American. Iced. One starring back at me now even now, placing my reflection in a clean Anna Miller’s chalice.

Interacial couple at the table across from me. Textbook middle-aged white guy, mowing the lawn in a red polo shirt near the church in Denton, Denton, USA. Young Japanese wife across from him dressed like it’s 1987 or something. An overstuffed baby carriage rests between them. Cute little brat inside of it. Yoshiki on Kichijoji: “Those goddamn suburbs.”

No matter where you go, it seems that Anna Miller’s does not cure headaches. And I wonder if I can just order French Fries here and fuck around until closing time like we used to at Sherri’s on Florin Road.

Entropy greets me on my third week in Tokyo (Tokyo. Not Japan. I have no interest in living in Japan. Zero. It’s like North Korea out there.). The iPod broke, the watch needs a new battery, I’ve been using the air conditioner wrong this whole time. I’m losing weight - bad news for a boxer - which makes no sense as I’ve never eaten this much fried shit before.

A baby starts crying, and a table of housewives fret over him.

There’s nothing else to do but buy some juicy bananas at Lon Lon, waltz around the food vendors – like Asakusa, another clear manifestation of heaven.

Deadlines, deadlines, and the heat is on. But I do it all for you (he says to his own face captured in an Anna Miller's coffee mug).

Otoko no damashi

"Motion pictures began to cater to the solitary bachelors in the big cities. Most of them, myself included, came to the city alone...without family connections. They empathized with the yakuza hero, an orphan in the universe."

- Tadao Sato, 1982

hotto hotto

Showa era minstrel act Rats & Star once commanded in song “Go Back to Asakusa, Baby.” But the call of these crooners in blackface fell upon deaf ears. The bubble economy kids wanted disco and fake punk. Not gawking tourists, chintzy souvenirs, and fading amusement quarter sadness on slow burn. Nope, the babies did not go back to Asakusa.

But the tourist’s gauntlet that runs from the immense Kaminarimon lantern to Senso-ji temple is still lively. A pair of young plain clothes Sumo stroll around, pupils like marbles stuck in dough; going  from “authentic Japanese” vendors, rice cracker box sets, and back to their cell phones. A contingent from, I dunno, India maybe, pauses to get a look at those prices, which are either dirt cheap, or jacked up. 60,00 yen for last year’s Final Wars Godzilla vinyl. For that you can get two fake samurai swords, maybe even a rubber chomage headpiece to boot. A pile of shirts  that say “Ichiban,” or “Japan” in a modified Chop Suey font. And of course, there are Americans: fanny packs, backpacks, every possible kind of pack, sandals, big feet, mix of confusion and pleasure on their faces. I’m feeling it too. We are blessed just being here.

Suddenly, it smells like peanut butter and burnt toast. I look left. A homeless guy has emerged from his cardboard coffin to wipe his ass. His dick flops merrily around, all of Kanto can see it, but he takes his time, hopefully priding himself on his fastidious personal hygiene. The look on the face of the osembe vendor across from him is fucking priceless.

The temple simmers in thick clouds of incense. The soundtrack is a jangle of coins hitting the bottom of the wooden box in offering. Some of them mine. A huge white guy in a purple yukata and topknot stands at the top of the stairs posing for pictures.

Asakusa makes me want to convert to Shinto, as soon as possible. Time is running out. This is where Tokyo's divine gimmick culture of nonsense was born, and it might wind up in the boneyard here as well.

“50 years ago, this used to be Tokyo’s entertainment district,” Happy says, as we venture across Asakusa Roku Broadway, about a five-minute walk from holy sacred tourist trap. Some of Tokyo’s first and best movie theaters were originally minted here. There’s also an absurd amusement park nearby too, complete with creaking rides about to collapse at any second and roller  coaster tracks right next to someone’s house.

Most people go to Yurakucho, Shinjuku, or Roppongi Hills to see movies nowadays. Last year, Toei closed down one of their flagship cinemas in Asakusa. But there’s still a need for a certain kind of entertainment here. One look around does the demographics up for you. The street is owned by packs of destitute crazy looking oyaji (old men) who squat in the event horizon of an ancient bowling alley and the France-za strip club, cooling themselves on mid afternoon brewskis.

They inspire us to stock up on provisions too: a sack of popcorn and a conbini basket full of Yeibisu tall boys. We will need them. We are going to the Asakusa Meigaza, one of the last true grindhouse movie theaters  in Tokyo.

An old lady takes the ticket, which you buy out of a vending machine like curry rice. She’s probably growing out of that stool by now. Next to her are posters for coming attractions: Nihon no Don and Yamaguchi Gumi Gaiden: Kyushu Shinko-Sakusen (AKA The Tattooed Hitman). There’s a huge chalkboard for the day’s results at the horse races. Signs everywhere reminding you No Smoking. Memories of the Showakan come rioting back, but this place is different. That theater was like a day care center for Tokyo’s rowdiest old men. At the Meigaza, you come to watch the triple features reverently. But it’s okay if you just want to get a few winks in as well. This place is all about comfort.

The medium sized auditorium smells like a roadside Motel 6: stale air and years worth of nicotine build-up. There’s a metal bar in the back where you can prop yourself up while waiting for the next movie to start. I count 13 rows with 11 seats each. Amazingly, the place is nearly full. Baseball hats and fisherman’s caps dot the landscape. Tube socks are perched on the seats in front of them. The projector is slung so low than anytime an oyaji stands up, which is often; his face and shadow are broadcast across the lower screen.

Happy-san and I are both very impressed. But he wagers one complaint, which cannot be argued with. “The screen at Showakan was much bigger.”

Right now, the flick playing is Jubei Ansatsuken. A spotless new black and white print from Toei, no less.

It is high summer. Legendary swordmaster Yagyu Jubei is stalking foes in the plants and water around Lake Kamikochi. While they nap in their canoes, Jubei leaps into their makeshift beds and slits their throats one by one. Meanwhile, he is being hotly pursued by an enemy who sails around the area in an immense barge. The pair evade each other, but are destined to collide. Eventually, there is a brutal duel, and one of them loses their head. The mood is arid Macaroni Western. It’s the cinema of men staring at each other, watched by men who stare back in approval. There’s no music and minimal dialogue, just ambient sound and the clash of steel. The widescreen shots are beautifully composed, and the director’s control of tempo in all things is sublime. Why isn’t this one a classic?

Meanwhile, the Oyaji of the Year Award goes to the guy planted right to next to me in the rail. He’s wearing a cheap, cheap yukata robe and flip-flop sandals. From the look of his gray hair and wrinkles, and generally out to pasture attitude, I’d put him well into his sixties. He’s plowing into an oversized ice cream bar, waffle shell with creamy vanilla inside. He looks as happy as a little kid. Happier even.

The lights go up and we take our seats. My shoes go off by themselves. I get beery.

A cough. A wheeze. The click of a flint wheel and a spark as someone lights up. Then a harsh buzzer sounds, like something you’d hear in a prison cafeteria. There’s a brief 35mm PSA spot begging you, no really, seriously, man, No Smoking. And then the Toei logo whisks us away like a pair of ruby slippers with the soles falling off.

Oh yeah. It’s Truck Yaro – Dokyo Ichiban Boshi, starring Bunta Sugawara and Kinya Aikawa as a pair of roustabout truck drivers living the good life one white line at a time. It is directed by Norifumi Suzuki in the style of Mad Magazine with ribald Shinto priests for guest editors.

Bunta needs to take a whiz. He gets out of his truck in the rain and goes over by a temple. Suddenly, he sees the spirit of a beautiful girl. While he proceeds to piss all over his foot, she tells him her name is Sado and then vanishes.

By an incredible coincidence, Bunta and Kinya’s big rigs, which light up like pachinko machines and are tricked out like Bond’s Aston Martin, are headed next for the Sado islands.

Upon arrival, they immediately run afowl of the local Jaws gang, all of them tough motherfuckers dressed in camouflage; driving trucks painted with great white shark motifs, lead by no less than Sonny Chiba (“in his most challenging role”).

Bunta meets a nice girl, a schoolmarm who looks just like the Sado spirit from scene one. He disguises himself as teacher to impress her, and even installs a juice machine in his truck for the kiddies. But it turns out she’s engaged to marry a doctor. And you know how that one feels. Bunta drowns his sorrows by drinking and driving…at the same time. He takes a fierce swig of beer, sprays it against the inside of the cabin, and pours the rest on his head.

The next stop for Bunta is a hellacious rest stop brawl with Chiba. They swing from wooden chandeliers at each other, fly across tables, and do the opposite of making love. It ends with Chiba the White covered head to toe in flour, and Bunta in ashy blackface, a lettuce leaf on his head and a cucumber in his mouth.

Turns out, Bunta was wrong. The girl isn’t engaged to be married after all. “Suki desu, suki desu” she tells an elated Bunta while he makes up plans to quit truckin’ for good and become a surrogate father to her charges.

Meanwhile, old Kinya, who has spent most of the movie mining for gold in the river, is reunited with his own family; a dozen brats in identical Mickey Mouse shirts who’s names he can’t remember anymore.

Everyone is overjoyed.

Then, Bunta’s fiancée is drowned in the river just as she finds the mother load of gold everyone’s been looking for. The deluge washes both of them away.

Bunta’s world falls down, and only a wild flight to Niigata to deliver some fish while being chased by the cops -  a paper mache tanuki the kids made him as his co-pilot - can sort out his sadness. The Jaws gang helps out, causing mass havoc along the way, making police cars and motorcycle smash into each other. They corner Sweet Chiba, who punches out a cop, takes his handcuffs, and then locks himself to his truck’s cabin.

Thanks to him, Bunta makes his delivery on time, so happy ending sorta kinda after all. But the road beckons, and the message is clear: there’s no escape from the Life for a bunch of trucker bastards.

After the movie, we go to the theater next door to meet Happy’s friends: a pair of girls who work for the Chuei theater chain. One moonlights as an illustrator for Jappy Magazine. The other is the theater’s engineer. Old obasan in identical uniforms surround and outnumber them 2 to 1. I have to wonder when they started working in Asakusa, and when they are going to stop.

“What’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened in that theater?” I ask them over a set of immense summer beer mugs. The girls sigh and shake their heads. Tales too terrible to tell.

“Too many things. Everyday.”

Ujihashi wagers a story of his own. “Someone actually died at the Showakan once. An oyaji. They found his body in the toilet.”

I think I know where his spirit went.

Back to Asakusa, Baby.

Chonoroku

Honda-san is escorting a blind man off the train.

He clutches tightly onto Honda’s arm down the stairs, out of the ticketing gate, until he’s safely at his destination, which is the same as ours: the Inokashira Koen exit at Kichijoji station.

They say goodbye to each other, then we make for the roof of Yuzawa-ya, to find the fabled mini-race car track that Mizuno Junko told me about last Sunday, while surrounded by Anna Miller’s coffee and pie.

She sold it to me as a roof garden, but there’s not a patch of greenery in sight. A giant statue of a cat surveys the joyless scenery. A Muzak version of “Something” by the Beatles plays loudly from hidden speakers, probably to encourage the reviving up of tiny engines to drown it out, and maybe to discourage loitering.

A homeless guy snoozes peacefully on a bench. Blue tarps spread out over greasy bits of machinery. The radio controlled car track itself is empty except for bumpers and trails left behind by tiny black rubber wheels.

To get here, we had to pass through an arcade, where at least half a dozen children sat happily playing Mushi King video games. But there are no kids up here at all, besides my stunted adolescent ass of course, only a young couple who sit on the other side of the roof staring at a laptop screen (I wonder what their blog must look like). Nearby, an oyaji entrusted with the scared duty of “maintenance” mucks about clanging this, banging that.

Honda-san and I agree to leave without saying a word. We tip toe away as quickly as possible, pausing only to admire a vending machine that emits everything from cold onigiri rice balls to deep fried fare at the press of the button.

The next day, Yoshiki is wolfing down tonkatsu at a diner located an inch away from prestigious Waseda University. This place is ancient for Tokyo, dating back to just after World War II. The owner, who slings me a plate of sautéed pork, began working here when he was twenty-one. A few years ago, Bill Clinton passed by the front of the restaurant on his way to the university. He rushed out and shook his hand.

“Ok. Let’s go pray to the Gods of War.” Yoshiki says. And soon we are in Idabashi, passing through the great bronze Torri arch to Yasukuni Shrine. Which, as you may have heard, is a little controversial these days…

“I feel like we are going into the Jedi Temple,” I say.

“Hmm, I think it’s more Sith than anything else,” Yoshiki replies.

He is wearing an official Church of Satan T-shirt, along with a medallion with a pentagram on it. Yoshiki identifies himself as a Satanist. Yet he makes sure I’m going to play by the  Shinto rule book while I am here.

“Wash your hands, and then rinse out your mouth,” he says as we stand in front of a stone basin of purifying water. “You are about to stand before God.” And not just Him, neither. The spirits of dead soldiers, and other animistic beings will surround us as soon as we enter the shrine proper.

My senses remain mundane. Hardly anyone is here, except for a few carpenters who are setting up the wooden foundations for the summer festival. The spirit world is out of range, but I can feel, hear, and smell a coming courtyard full of tekiya vendors with their steaming yakisoba and goldfish games.

As we stand in front of the temple, a flashpoint for crummy international relations, there are more instructions: “Bow twice, c lap your hands twice, bow again, and then pray” Ujihashi taught it to me once in the basement of the Shinjuku Showakan, on a cold New Years Day 2001. I hope I get it right this time. I pray for something I can’t even remember now. Infinite lives on Contra.

“Is that the machine gun?” I ask, pointing to a protrusion on the wing of an actual Zero Fighter airplane.

“No,” Yoshiki corrects me. “That’s the antenna.”

Just behind the green aluminum wing, a woman sits in a table sipping coffee. I can’t see her face. She’s behind frosted glass in the foyer of this, the Yushukan, the Shrine’s war museum.

It begins as a march of heroes. We see military artifacts beginning from the Tokugawa government spanning back to the Sengoku all the way to the dawn of J-time in the Yamato era, including armor and a sword that perhaps slayed the demon Orochi. Banners surround us with Japanese-English quotes from Shogun and Emperors past: The willingness to die for victory. The transitory beauty of cherry blossoms. Proclamations of unstoppable determination. That sorta thing.

My cell phone rings. Shit. Shit. Fuck. I forgot to turn it off.

We continue to waltz through Japanese history, privileged observers of events past tense. Swords and armor. Swords and armor. Then the black ships arrive. Commodore Perry pops up only to be greeted with the very first dasai gaijin jokes. The country erects telegraph lines, adopts western style dress. In 50 years, a single step across the floor in museum space, Japan has become itself.

The samurai rebel. We figure Tom Cruise is due for a wax statue here soon. There are wars with China, Korea, and Russia (which as Yoshiki points out was “the first time Asians kicked the white man’s ass”). Commanding the first Japanese battleships, victories outweigh the losses for these generals and majors with impossible moustaches.

World War II. Old newsreel footage plays on a Hitachi plasma TV as soldiers advance east. The soundtrack is made up of tinny military marches and anthems. Yoshiki sings along, knows the words by heart, as do two old timers in fisherman’s hats.

Before me in a glass case is the actual military order for Tora Tora Tora. The attack on Pearl Harbor.

We reach 1944, and the tide begins to turn. Diaries from the front in New Guinea. It’s not on the official tour, but Yoshiki talks of cannibalism, how the soldiers referred to the native’s meat, and their own, as “white pork, black pork.” There are ruined bullet-pierced flags recovered from the battlefield. Bits of machinery and flight caps from Midway. Pictures of smiling young girls from Okinawa, lost in a ground invasion that lasted a full three months.

As the Empire surrenders to the Allied Forces, we see a parade of last wills and testaments signed by men moments before killing themselves. One of the tiny books is almost entirely a faded reddish brown color. Human blood.

The great exhibition hall looks like Superman’s fortress of solitude, if he’d landed in Saitama instead of Smallville. There is a full sized torpedo and it’s cousin, a suicide submarine, which is the same basic model as the torpedo only with a cockpit, a periscope, and enough air for a one-way trip.

We touch actual shells for the main guns of the battleships Musashi and Yamato, each weighing tons. There is a glass case is full of rusted helmets, many of which are shattered by bullet holes. The spaces around them are taken up by broken pairs of glasses, bullet clips, guns crushed by Some Terrible Weight.

There is a group of old people wearing hats saying that they are from the Japanese Red Cross. The stagger around and tap the wings of airplanes, peer into the muzzles of silent 50mm cannons. A big bald white guy; shorts, sandals, and some hideous T-shirt passes among them.

Above us all is the delicate Cherry Blossom Special, a single seat glider missile designed for suicide missions. There is a warhead in the nosecone which points down directly at us, a sight that must have been the last thing the sailors saw before it struck.

On the way out, we pass though a gift shop. It’s almost closing time, so a solemn old man is beginning to cover up the merchandise with a white cloth. There are Zero fighter cell phone straps, Imperial flag stickers, cassette tapes of the old marching songs. I spend $15 for a Battleship Yamato Coffee Mug.

“Why the fuck does it have to say ‘Battleship Yamato’ in English on it?” Yoshiki asks.

Later, I walk home from the café after grinding out another column. It always feels like summer camp in that park, deep in Inokashira, especially after the sun sets.

I can hear singing over by the stage. There’s a group of young voices together in chorus and the words are unmistakable, 

Nothings Going to Change My World

Nothings Going to Change My World.

Sempai Waitresses

Sunday.

Junko Mizuno and I are sitting inside Anna Miller’s in Kichijoji. It’s what they call an “American style family restaurant” here in Japan. Naturally, it’s totally bizarre. Yellow Submarine era drawings of food and comfort hang on the walls (Peter Max chef in floppy hat feeding pie to a cat). The table is imitation aged wood. The color scheme around us is earthy: brown and orange. The portions are huge.  Junko is having the tuna salad. I’m with a club sandwich and a Kirin Larger. But it's not the food that I'm paying attention to.

I can’t stop staring at the waitresses.

“Please don’t do that,” Junko says laughing a little, but w ith some genuine discomfort as well.

Young women wearing pastel pink or yellow aprons. Their skirts are hiked up impressivley high. The uniform has been designed to accent the bust. And just above the butt is an enormous intricately tied bow. In short, Anna Miller’s is a very weird down home version of Hooters.

“I recommend the Key Lime Pie,” Junko says. Her English is flawless now.

The classic Anna Miller customer is an otaku. Sure enough, I spot at least adult three  males sulking by themselves in their pens attending to some manga, portable entertainment device, or simply staring off into deep space. This place is a clear prototype of the cosplay and maid cafes that have sprung up in Tokyo.

Junko tells me about some Anna Miller dojinshi she saw once that gives instructions on how best to use hidden cameras to take pictures up the staff’s skirts. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“One of my friends was into cosplay,” Junko explains. “And they really wanted to get a real Anna Miller outfit. But when you stop working here, they make you return the uniform. So she had her co-worker tell her boss that she died. That way, she got to keep it."

"She became kind of a dominatrix after that. She called me and said that she would be doing a show where she would be wearing the outfit and would pee all over the stage. She wanted to know if I wanted to come and see. I haven’t talked to her since.”

“I got to try on the outfit once,” she says. For half a second I imagine the author of  Pure Trance and Cinderalla serving pie and coffee to a bunch of peep freaks armed with Akihabara  shoe cameras. “It was too tight. I could hardly breathe. You can’t even tie the bow in the back by yourself. One of the sempai waitresses has to do it for you.”

The mind reels. So I stare at the waitresses for confirmation of my own senses. The worst that can happen is that all of this will start to become normal. Soon, I’ll hit the two-week mark of my stay in Tokyo. After that is undiscovered country. I run the risk of getting comfortable now, imaging I could someday go native, feeling like I understand even a fraction of all this somehow.

“I always try to see things through the eyes of an alien,” Junko says. “I think you have to if you want to make manga or be a writer. Even when I am at home, I’m always trying to see things as objectively as possible.”

She asks a lot of questions about Bu-chan. Junko doesn’t have a cat, never has, but wants dearly wants one. I can’t help but brag a little.

“Bu-chan is fat and strong. Like a sumo wrestler,” I say. “He’s very smart and extremely sweet.”

“Sometimes dumb cats are nice too,” she insists. “I really like Scottish Fold cats. Their heads are too big for their bodies, and basically they are all retarded. Some cats will run and hide from people they don’t know. But Scottish Folds think that everyone is their friend. They have such big eyes.”

Meanwhile, the otaku in the corner is shooting me - the baka gaijin – an alternating current of dirty looks. Or maybe I’m just projecting the usual insecurities. Then again his face could just be cast that way, or  mutated by the burning passions of his waitress moe.

The guy at the counter who rings us up looks like Junichiro Koizumi. The Prime Minister of Japan. But what do I know? I thought I saw Mamoru Oshii on the way to the convenience store the other day, his International Space Station T-shirt tucked into his pants. Perhaps there were flakes of pie crust on it.

The last time I saw Junko, we went to Sunshine City Mall in Ikebokuro together. We were admiring the sad and noble animals in the aquariums and zoos there when a major earthquake hit. I half expect something as dramatic to happen here and now, but we are spared a natural disaster ("Fuck it. It's Sunday," a tectonic plate deep underneith the Pacific Ocean sighs).

Instead, Kichijoji is sweet and kind to us. There’s a store in Parco where Junko buys a complete set of candy toys, miniature household items from France. There’s also a little roof garden we find at Isetan, with Astroturf instead of real grass and little boxes of flowers lined up like coffins. A lone oyaji sits on a bench by himself, face buried in a tiny paperback. The sky overhead is a rusty summer red.

Someday, all this will be gone.  And so, for the sake of preservation, Junko takes some pictures, remembering the roof gardens that no longer grace Tokyo.

“There was one in Ikebokuro. It had a huge tree house and a waterfall. It was so amazing.”

I insist she go to the one at the Fairmont in San Francisco, still my favorite. She tells me about the  nearby Yuzawa-ya store, and what sounds like an amazing roof garden there. “There’s a huge race track, where boys play with RC cars.”

A week ago, I’m sitting with a wild-eyed Clive in Asagaya. In between insulting the owner of the restaurant we’re in, (“He’s from Newcastle, for fuck’s sake. Where do you suppose he learned his culinary skills? At a building site?”) he rants about how Japan is a third world country, and how no one will admit to or even knows it. Everyone lives in a rabbit hole, he says, emerging only to eat dango and feed the carps in the park. They buy designer brand clothing and plasma TVs. They live out miserable lives in tiny apartments, work themselves to death, and how it's up to draft beer to bring us any comfort.

Only bottles are served at Anna Miller's. But the unexplainable sadness and ennui that always manages to leak into Sunday afternoons takes over anyways. Maybe you felt it too. At the bottom of your brand coffee at the secret Showa café, on the toy shelves at the children’s floor at the department store, and on those long escalator rides to the top of the building bumping into other weekend shoppers like yourself along the way.

We tried to go to the zoo at Inokashira park, but they closed the gates at 4 pm.

I guess this is where I live now.

Tabun

We sit on a bench in the park and get drunk.  We become winos. 

Pussycat Dai Sakusen

The Kichijoji ward, where I now reside, is a beautiful place to behold. I am especially fond of nearby Inokashira Park where you will find  forests and ponds populated by children, families, feral cats, lovers, and old timers seeking refuge from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo’s busy streets. Inokashira is also home to the Ghibli Museum, a testament to the magical world of animation director Hayao Miyazaki.

Yoshiki lights another Marlboro Red and takes a drag. 

“About ten years ago, they found a garbage can in the park that was stuffed with arms and legs. They were human. Someone cut them off and dumped them there. Some homeless guys or some children found them.”

We are inside a dimly lit bar in Shinjuku Golden Gai, surrounded on all sides by pimps, hoes, and players. It’s only a 15 min train ride from Kichijoji, but the difference could not be more dramatic. We’ve gone from Spirited Away to Takashi Miike. And the vehicle connecting the two is a single overstuffed garbage can.

Shinjuku eiki. Around 10:25pm. East Exit. I’m barely out of the gate and already the craziness kicks in. A businessman is arguing with the station agents “Dame! Dame! Dame!” he yells over and over, while the JR suits politely nod and blink. Four feet away, a trio of chocolate brown ganguro, clad in neon pastels and clacking heels, attend to their friend who has drunkenly gone down for the count on the floor of the busiest train station in the world.

On the way up the stairs, a single otaku sits, PSP in hand, earphones on. I’d like to think he’s up to no good, hacking a cell phone conversation or pizza delivery dispatcher. But he’s probably just playing Metal Gear Acid. The jumbo Alta TV set overlooking station square displays an ad for the Maritime Japanese Self Defense Forces; a parade of battleships, radar screens, and military salutes. A pair of Chinese tourists stare up, frozen in place. Poker faced fortune tellers wearing business suits sit behind small folding tables, illuminated by tiny lanterns.  But you don’t have to be psychic to figure out the future for Shinjuku’s populace on this or each and every night: “you are going to get shit-faced hammered and feel like you got hit by a bus the next day.”

I’m almost to the Kinnokuniya bookstore when an overweight middle-aged man soars horizontally across my eyeline and crashes to the ground. I didn’t know those things could fly. His cell phone spills out of his pocket and his glasses skid across the sidewalk. He just lies there, stunned, as people walk by paying him no mind: the oyaji who fell to earth. One sympathetic couple, takes minor interest, leaning in for a “dai jyobu desu ka?” before quickly wandering off again.

Yoshiki and Hawk appear out of the wet mist and humid shadows. I try and point out the poor old drunk, the latest addition to the Shinjkuku diorama-petri-dish, but neither seems very impressed. As Yoshiki will soon point out to an Australian bar hostess drinking at the table across from us, he was born here. He is beyond jaded and better for it. Rather, he is totally accepting. “Shinjuku is the asshole of the world,” he says with no contempt at all.

Around 4:45am, Asakusa-san and I finally emerge from the dmx vinyl bar in Shinjuku Ni-chome. They played Randy Newman’s Simon Smith & His Amazing Dancing Bear, Harry Nilsson’s cover of Makin’ Whoopie; sweet lullabies for a bald man whose head is planted sideways on the bar in deep slumber. They closed the place down and chased us out with a brutal Rammstein set.

It’s not even 5am yet, but already the sky is an impossible baby blue. Days of overcast skies and rain have been washed away by beer, bourbon, piss, and sweat. I’ve never seen a Shinjuku dawn before. Never had to wait until the station opened to go home.

Crows pick patiently at overflowing white plastic bags. They tried to kill them off recently, the noble squawking karas, but the wise old birds have made a comeback. Every single corner is strewn with empty bottles and food containers. Yasukuni dori looks like a Lucio Fulci masterpiece, right down to the swaying zombie populace who stagger in the streets.

Amazingly, fresh-faced young girls offer us menus for food and drinks, urging us into their izakaya, because obviously now’s the time to tie one on. Young host club scouts and their hostess girlfriends line up at a McDonald’s counter. Adults are planted  at steamy udon and donburi counters. Everyone and everything that is good and decent is safely home in bed.

I’ve never seen Shinjuku like this. The quality of light becomes like an X-ray. I can admire every single cable on the Chuo line tracks. I can see just beneath the rails even, and into the JR’s network of secret tunnels and service chambers. And as the train speeds back to Kichijoji, and 90% of the passengers snooze, every air conditioner, water tank, and patch of fading paint on the multi-plane animation skyline says hello to me.

By 5:30, Kichijoi is yawning and stretching. The park is populated with sprightly seniors and the fattest pigeons in the world. I hope what they find in the garbage cans there will always sustain them.

Bushi

It is a perfectly preserved slice of the Showa era circa 1971. From the mummified look of the staff, it’s probably much older. Large black and white booths with faded cloth covers, harsh metal ashtrays that will outlive all of us, enormous speakers that are built into the wall, prototypes maybe for Senssurround. I bet old Niagara Triangle or Hideki Saijo 45s would sound amazing on them. It looks a lot like this.

If it were in Middle America, phantom truck drivers would tip you off to the joint, throw you a dime, and tell you to “get a cup on old big Joe.” And they’d also serve greasy chow for breakfast. But this perfectly preserved coffee shop in Japan, that’s somehow managed to survive encroaching legions of Starbucks and lesser chains, both yasui and takai, serves only the barest minimum of food; strange and tasty varieties of toast, mostly. I want to eat them all, to fill my stomach with dust and diffused lighting. But there’s no hurry. At a place like this, you have all the time in the world. And it’s easy to slump into that booth, light a smoke, and briefly forget about the ESPY plot to liberate Akihabara-X, and the fact that Miss Namikawa has switched sides again, this time most definately, for good.

Mixi-friend Nadei-low has taken me here, to this celestial coffee shop at the end of time, prior to what’s being billed as our “Karaoke Jyu-nen Dairi Senso.” The rules are, no songs after the fixed date of 1989, when the Showa era closed for business. Again, there’s no hurry. So we sit at the tiny white table, sip our Brand Coffees and sigh, “Natsukashi ne?” It’s mostly me who keeps saying it, feeling nostalgia for something I’ve never experienced firsthand. It will probably get me in trouble someday. Probably has already.

Nadei-low’s friend Fujii-san shows up. We exchange business cards. “Core Magazine Co. Ltd.” I gasp. It's the home of fabulous idol scandal magazines Bubka and Bubka Maxx. He edits the porno comics in them, she often draws them, and there’s no shame in their game.

The Karaoke Senso only lasts about three hours, a step down from the planned 10-year Proxy Struggle. We ignite Rats & Star, The Checkers, Happy End, the Roosters, a lot of Akiko Wada, and The Man Who Stole the Sun, Kenji Sawada. The theme songs for Ashita no Joe and Kozure Okami (complete with opening narration) also go into rotation. I try out the Queen Medley and do allright. My Outrageous Cherry shirt smells like a tropical jungle afterwards.

Next day, the curious olde coffee shop beckons, but the rain keeps me tucked inside Draft One. Perhaps it’s for the best. It’s not yet clear to me where and when I shouldn’t whip out the laptop and start grinding out lies and exaggerations. While I’m always going to be, as Tomo christened me in the new issue of TV Bros, a “baka gaijin,” the best I can do is to be politely stupid. But whereas old National washers and driers would rumble back to life, a computer probably wouldn’t even work in that coffee place anyway. But what about the forests of Inokashira Park nearby? The orgone energy is high there, and the frequency detector didn’t pick up any overtones…might be the perfect spot for clarity and free inspiration. Coffee still costs a buck or two, of course. Honda-san suggests, when in doubt, Starbucks as a sure thing. Hopefully he understands why I’m hesitant.

Meanwhile, the Gatchaman marathon continues in the living room. I hope it never stops. Bu-chan pauses from doing whatever it is that cats actually do to meow at the door every now and then.

He’s probably telling me to go get a real job.

Powerful Shakey's

You can find it inside the showroom of Mandarake Heya at Nakano Broadway. It looks like an ordinary black briefcase, a little lighter than most maybe. Not much in the way of distinguishing features.

Inside the case are nine different types of rectal disorders.

From a minor case of hemorrhoids to a mini-series of escalating prolapsed rectums, they are lovingly sculpted in 1/1 scale out of plastic whose colors range from healthy pink to angry-looking red. Nothing kawaii about them. They were designed with Japanese post-war ultra-realism in mind.

Our best guess is that the case was designed for educational purposes decades ago. I can almost see Black Jack lugging the thing around, charging yokels 100 yen each for a peak. Today, it would have been a presentation for a new line of Gachapon capsule toys and they’d all be named “butthole-chan” or something. How perfectly they could each fit in a plastic vending machine bubble. Either way, I wonder how Mandarake Heya got their hands on it and who it was that kept this Miraculous Treasure of the East in such fine condition.

It’s yours for a mere US$150.00. The Message from Space Liabe-go, which Matt renamed “the Labia-go” in a split second, that I’ve always wanted was a full hundred bucks more. So fuck that.

I settled for a candy toy of the Goten from The War in Space for 400 yen. Now, I’m sitting here in Draft One assembling it, wishing the rain would stop, and gleefully avoiding looming deadlines with a little bit of nerd heroin.

We hit Shakey’s over by Kichijoji station for the all you can eat buffet lunch yesterday. Yes, Peter. You will be relieved to find out the place is still there, straw hats, “olde fashioned” fonts, and everything.

A proclamation behind the register tells the origin story of Shakey’s, how it erupted full-blown from the sidewalk on J Street in Sacramento and promptly became “the world’s greatest pizza.” Very inspiring.  I’d love to hear Tatsuya Nakadai do the narration for the jitsuroku eiga version of Shakey’s no Kyodai, like he did for the opening sequence of Final Yamato.

The pepperoni was almost as I remembered it. But they blew it on the sauce. Bu-chan ate a roach for breakfast this morning.

GizaGiza heart no komori-uta

Jun the Swan, off duty from her post as a Science Ninja for G-Force, is dancing the boogaloo, like her ass is on fire, at a really, really funky disco. Too bad she’s only a cartoon, an old drawing from 1973, now either locked up in some dealer’s Book of Overpriced Animation Cells or gone to dust.

Yeah, I still have Jun moe from watching Battle of the Planets (AKA Gatchaman) when I was a little kid. Always will. Would be great to bump into her, or indeed anyone from the International Science Organization, at a place like the Shakey’s Pizza near the Kichijoji train station. And if only they had a single coin-op videogame, Zaxxon, Tail Gunner, or Gorf, then the illusion would be complete (dad sitting at the table: pitcher of beer, tennis shorts, infinite patience). 

It’s these old childhood associations that brought me to Tokyo in the first place. It’s why I can’t look at the skyline in Nishi-Shinjuku without imagining a guy in a rubber suit falling on top of it, tossed out of an airplane spin by a superhero like Mach Baron. A single moment of Gatchaman on TV, like the one right now, ignites a chain of old primal scenes. And when I see the streets here  lined with cardboard stand-ups and banners for Ultra Seven pachinko, I want to lie down, scan the sky for brush strokes, and laugh because it feels like I’ve won the gaijin otaku lottery. But it always fades away. A Group Sounds version of Pictures of Lilly comes up on the iPod Shuffe. “If only I’d been born in Jun the Swan’s time, it would have been alright.”

For my host Honda-san, watching Jun shake her peppermint hip huggers and green locks is “work.” He’s a screenwriter for Tatsunoko Productions, the same company who made Gatchaman 30 years ago. He leans back in his chair next to his ever-present industrial size can of Mixed Nuts while Bu-chan the cat stretches out at his feet like a fat rubber chicken. He puts up with my fanboy squeeling admirably.

Honda loves The Simpsons, Futurama, and especially Spongebob, which he regards the same way I do Gatchaman.

“It’s a masterpiece, I think.”

I once asked Yasuharu Konishi how he first became obessessed with the sound and imagery of the West during the 1960s, where the soul of Pizzicato Five was forged. “You always want the culture you can’t have. The one far away from you.”

The funny thing is, you can have it now. When I was a brat, there was only a Battle of the Planets lunchpail to covet. Honda has a complete collection of his favorite shows and the toys to go with them. Everything but the Wal-Mart to buy them in. Although he went to one recently in New Jersey.

I told him how hardcore that was.

I wouldn’t have made it past the parking lot.

Meet Me at 0101

Bu-chan the cat just waltzed across the keyboard. Here's what he typed.

65,km

Naka

Kannon, the Goddess of Wisdom chimes in.

"Japanese= Nice to other people. (because they need to always share atmosphere with surrounded people. Default mentality  to survive in overclouded land. Automatically, they need to behave responsible and adult (careful and thoughtful). They are always acting things based on knowing the external people's existence.'

Confusion part is, if it's yes, maybe not yes. If it's no, maybe it's not no.

Americans =Not Nice to other people (because they need to live tough in a huge land. Default mentality to service in isolation. Automatically, they need to behave straightly expressing own needs out loud, and self centered =childish mentality (simple and pure). They are always acting thing based on self protection against external existence.

Good thing is more obvious and clear. It it's yes, it means yes. If it's
not, it means no.

Interesting phenomena. You had been surrounded by those who always challenges you. You needed to be as selfish as possible in order to survive. Instead, when you became sounded with people full of care and compassion, you automatically need be aware to change the behavior to be more caring about others.

I can say at least from my own experience. (Only externally, and socially) I am not SO nice people anymore since I came here. And I used to be more nicer before in Japan. It's just a wisdom human should gain for the survival."

Ok. Sounds reasonable. Now how do I check my voicemail on my cell phone?

Osu to Mesu

Honda-san and I are taking the JR train to Akihabara. Like any sentient being in Japan I need a TV. Bad. I want cute and weird NHK puppets to teach me Japper-knees. I need to see Kaoru Yumi kill wicked-looking men with chomage hairstyles while dressed as a ninja, walking towards the camera grinning before the credits clad in a kimono-slash-secret-identity. I need this kind of shit every minute every day. Otherwise, I would have settled for El Cucuy and the La Raza show back in SF.

Honda-san is telling me about the manga-only prequel to Astro Boy, Tetsuwan Atom, the one I’ve never heard about before. Forgive me Fred S. and Fred P. if you guys were feeding Tezuka the Fritos when he came up with it.

Atom travels back in time, in search of his “father,” Professor Ochanomizu. He makes the journey  just fine, and manages to contact his maker, but he finds he can’t go back to the future. To move past the point of his own creation is impossible. He is stuck in time.

Honda-san produces a piece of paper and draws three dots, and then a line straight through them. The first dot is where Atom came from, the second, at the other end is where he went to. The one in the middle is a fixed point that Atom cannot pass, because two atomic-powered Pinocchio’s cannot be in the same place at the same time. So Atom commits jisatsu. Hara-kiri. Whatever you want to call it. He kills himself. The very last Astro Boy story turns out to be the first one, his death is his birth, and the word “bittersweet” doesn’t begin to cover it.

Suddenly, the Chuo Rapid begins to exceed its best-ever time on the rails. By Yotsuya, the scenery is speeding by so fast it looks like we are on Space Mountain. But no one shows any alarm. The ojisan, obasan, and aka-chan alike are used to Tokyo's peculiarities regarding time and passage along it's corridor. This town changes direction every 5 minuets, even as the train tracks stay the same. Regardless of wherever Honda-san and I will wind up, the rest of the passengers will reach their own destinations in time.

When we get to Akihabara, the train conductor announces it is the year 200X, well after the Kaiju Dai Senso, the Great Monster War, but just enough time before an angry Neo-Seatopia emerges in the Okinawan Islands so as not to worry.

The huge NTT IT complex, a collection of cold steel and glass tower with a total floor space of 160,000 m² located on an 11,500 m2 site in front of Akihabra station, the one that The Reporter from the Washington Post utterly failed to mention in his recent piece that ripped off me and Tomo, has finally finished construction. And, in fact, we have arrived on the occasion of its opening day.

The textbook otaku and shifty-eyed salarymen mill about as usual, paying the whole scam no mind. They lug about backpacks or briefcases of Real Doll porn (pictures of flesh and blood women making love to silicone counterparts in the front, with ads for rubber vaginas in the back), sweating in the hurricane humidity until they smell like death, swimming upstream to the New Release section of Gal Game emporium Furukawa Denki. I note computer chips for keychains and beautifully designed Kojiro Abe shirts from Bon-Kura. I shake my head, and can’t resist a giggle. He’s seriously like the new Charles Manson to these guys now.

The mayor of Tokyo himself, Shintaro Ishihara arrives via armored police escort. The Spinners are in ground-mode, and are modeled after the old cars from Seibu Keisatsu, which starred Shintaro’s dear old brother Yujiro. He does the usual thing, making proclamations of this and that, how Tokyo will be remade and rejuvenated for the 2Xst century thanks to the gold from the defeated Planet X which Walt Disney also used to help fund Miyazakiland. Meanwhile, the kigurumi mascots of NTT Urban Development and Kajima Corporation  (a pair of kawaii Zeros and Ones with familiar looking big white four fingered gloves) hand Ishihara the Box with the Button. One press, and this thing they call “Akihabara UDX” will be open for business. Honda yawns. He’s been doing this all day, but says he’s not bored or tired. But he confesses only writes anime scripts, and isn’t an otaku himself (Carl, can you find evidence of anyone, other than yourself, actually admitting to it? It seems to be the sort of title that's only bestowed on you by others.). I merely wish I’d brought my camera. Doubly so after what happens next.

Ishihara’s features begin to change. His eyes take on a sickly yellow pallor. His spine begins to fold in on itself. The puppet reporters from NHK are stunned and rush in for a Dai Scoop. And then Ishihara begins to laugh. The sound wave it produces induces vomiting all the way to Mister Donut. Even That Reporter From the Washington Post begins to taste sour chunks of Jiffy Pop in the back of his throat.

An angry green line of energy rockets forth from the top of the NTT building. It strikes the Radio Center Building dead center. All the way though the ero-dojin of K Books and smack into the Kaiyodo showroom. The point of contact is an exquisite anatomically perfect statue of an Orangutan that’s not for sale, even though some guy who had Orangutan Younger Sister Moe tried to buy it once. The building goes down like Godzilla Final Wars at the box office.

A million otaku cry out in terror and are suddenly silenced.

The beam, which now zaps straight up into the sky overhead like an erect Overfiend also has a carrier signal, designed, I surmise, by ex-agents of ESPY, which activates secret command Roku-Roku. The collected Cosplay girls of Akihabara begin to leave their posts as waitresses and spoon-feeders at their numerous cafes and begin to robotically march into Chuo Street.

The otaku who emerge from the dojin store are stunned, gasp, and reach for their keitai. From the eyes of the maids come deadly energy beams. The air smells like ozone and that bad pork they put in 500 yen ramen. The otaku, the ones who reclaimed Akihabara from the electronic stores who abandoned them for the suburbs, are systematically being disintegrated. The fuckers don’t even put up a fight. They should have read more Golgo 13, more Kajiwara Ikki.

There’s nothing more to do, except buy that damn television at the LaOX chain store. The set is small and cheap but turns out to get shitty reception.  If I got that copy of My Doll Friend back in the Radio Kaikan, I would have been killed too. But all I had in my bag at the time of betrayal was the Tokyo City Atlas (now, sadly, outdated) and a copy of Kenka Bancho for the PS2, still-shrink wrapped.

The New Way still permits some games to remain in what is now called Akihabara-X, although it’s mostly Kingdom Hearts and it’s lame-but-popular sequels nowadays. I take some solace that the antique transistor shops, the discarded hard drive vendors, and LED light makers - who first invented Akihabara as a post war black market, are still allowed to keep their dusty pens. These old wizards and Akihabarbarians of electricity and frequency are still feared and respected, even by the emerging IT empire.

The Cosplay girls will be marching into the NTT plaza soon, to renounce their vows, to trade in their maid costumes and cat ears for wireless headsets and elevator operator uniforms. No one will ever make toys of them, and it’s said that you will be cursed for a thousand years if you cum while thinking of them.

As I write this, back in bunker Draft One, my geto Tu-Ka pre-paid cell phone buzzes. It’s Happy Ujihashi over in Shinjuku. He's standing in front of the new Showakan. But there is a distant rumbling in the background and I can't hear him so well.

“Do you hear that?” Honda says, calm as ever, while Bu-chan the cat - face like someone spilled an inkwell on it - leaps to the top of the TV. “Do you know what that is?”

I shake my head and say “ie,” no, with the baka gaijin accent.

“Those are Bosozoku.”

He may have well have said Boso-Nazgul, the way the atmosphere has changed.

I imagine them making a line for the nearby Ghibli Museum, the Yankee Mamas shouting “bari bari!” over the boys with their mighty cries of “yoroshiku!” But they could be headed for the warring Shotengai city-states near Kichijoji station. Either way, I wonder who has sent them.

Then I I know who it is. Who else could have been behind this? It could only be Gyaku-ESPY.

Counter-ESPY.

Okyakusama

I’m doing the DVD liner notes for Hideo Gosha’s Sword of the Beast. The Criteron Collection will be putting the disc out later this year.

Tomo and I were interviewed about our sexy book Cruising the Anime City for LO Magazine. It’s free and worth the download. Maybe our best ever interview together. Maybe.

Bu-chan is a very cool cat who likes to stretch a lot and sleep in a cardboard box.

I saw a boxing gym nearby with multiple heavy bags on the way to my new apartment in Kichijoji.

Dasai Gaijin

The street is lined with dry cleaners and places to buy your daily bread, the kind of stores your mom would go to out of pure necessity while she dragged your hapless bored ass behind her. In fact, a few desperate housewives dart past Yoshiki and I as we sulk down these decidedly non-mean streets of Tokyo in search of the Acid Panda Cafe.

The Acid Panda is the clubhouse of two-man techno group Leopaldon, named as Matt Alt points out, after Spider-Man's giant robot from the perverse Toei live-action TV show. Purveyors of old school hip-hop, 8-bit Super Famicom samples and Japanese superhero theme songs, Leopaldon were playing with mash ups and techno remixes of  the Kamen Rider Amazon theme beginning  years ago. I believe that future history will regard them as pioneers.

The lighting is lowkey. There`s a pro wrestler in training named Big Masa here who keeps a tub of Whey Protein behind the counter.  I see artifacts from Leopaldon album covers and liner notes past. Well-thumbed copies of the Big Silver Bibles of Kaiju and Kaijin rest in a bookshelf behind me, while a child sized disco ball looms overhead. If this place was a spaceship, then you`d have the next Crusher Joe, or a better Cowboy Bebop. But that would risk being cool. And uncool, AKA dasai, is where it`s at... Or at least it fucking well should be. And you knew that already, didn’t you?

The bar has only been open for about a month. The joke goes that sad sack salarymen are always talking about the place that they are going to open one great and glorious day when they get the money and the power to make it happen. Which of course, poor office drones, never comes. So Leopaldon had to do it, just to spite them.

Yoshiki has brought a sack of CDs to practice his burgeoning DJ skills on the Acid Panda  turntables. As I write this, MC Hammer, straight out of Oaktown says, “You can’t touch this.” Before him, it was Axel F from Beverly Hills Cop, and the School House Rock chestnut `3 is the Magic Number.` A slurryslowed down Akiko Wada song, which reveles Japan’s pre-eminent Showa soul singer to be the heir apparent to Barry White has got to be the best single piece of music I’ve heard in Japan thus far.  But what do I know?

Dasai Gajin. Un-cool foreigner. Leopaldon worship at the altar of the random photo of the fat white  cosplayer, the wayward Christmas snapshot from suburbia, the timeless face of the just fucked up American. There’s already been one Dasai Gaijin event so far at the bar, with another planned for July 2^nd.

“Watashi wa Dasai Gaijin desu,” I tell them, believing it with all my heart. No, they tell me. You are otaku gaijin. “Mania gaijin!” I call back, but they say that’s real old school, someone who collects stamps and model trains. Sounds pretty fucking otaku to me, but the Mystery of the Orient remains a subtle, slippery thing.

Now Yoshiki is playing William Hung. I need another Super Baggy cocktail.

Baggy is yet another social phenomenon whose merits Leopaldon have long espoused. I can’t even pretend to grasp the concept yet (Yoshiki, if you are reading this, please feel free to fill us in. But it's cool if you are too busy.). All I know is that the cocktail version of the Baggy aesthetic tastes and smells like what the bartender promised it would: a car freshener. Peach. Sweet. Only the best kind of bad taste will go with this fried fish and Marlboro lights.

Shinjuku reels us back in for drinks in Golden Gai with Masaya Nakahara, AKA Violent Onsen Geisha. The morning back at Gera Gera Internet Café sees me back in the same pen they`ve put me in for the last three days. Snoozing salaryman in the confession booth next to me. I guess we have always lived in little booths like this.

geragrea sweets

He’s the perfect surly teenager. His basic type goes back to a biped carnivore circa One Million Years BC. His hair is cut short and is dyed Tweety Bird yellow. He looks like the lead character from a crap manga called Tough. He is Shibuya incarnate except for one detail, a lightening rod of individuality that makes everyone who notices him do a double take.

He’s wearing big white floppy 1/1 scale Mickey Mouse gloves  (As all Kingdom Hearts fans rejoice the new cutting edge of fashion, an advisory goes out warning that Disney is reclaming the anime no sekai).

The lanky gaijin who strolls past him is menacing in his own way: hung over, humid, wishing for a word for “jet lagged” that began with the letter “h” (barring that, he’ll settle for “hentai”).

With the last of my stamina, I’m limping towards Shibuya station. I’ve just taken “the walk” which begins in the ass end of Nishi Shinjuku, all bootleg CDs, smoke, and shoyu, and ends with the smell of crepes and overheated hair wax in the `buya.

Harajuku is still there, just down the street, if you’re looking to dress like an SNK fighting game character from 1995. The place is a tourist’s row now; what Carnaby Street must have been like in 1971. A few Goth-Loli wax statues and it would be complete: another Tokyo monument to the past.

Back in Shinjuku, I walk past the remains of the Showakan Theater, the fabled grindhouse movie palace of my dreams, gone demolished. The place is now called “K’s Cinema” and is currently playing Wonderland. Hopefully, the ghosts of old men haunt the housewives who go there now: harassing them with stinky feet and beery Bronx cheers with no point of origin.

Izumi once showed me a color picture of Shinjuku South Exit as it was in 1952, as her mother can still remember it. American servicemen sit on a single white bench covered by a large canopy where Japanese is dwarfed by the official English proclamation: Shinjuku Station. Around them is nothing but dirt. The world is flat. The ground is fertile.

There’s massive construction going on now at South Exit. And because blank space won’t do, the wooden walkway is painted with murals depicting Shinjuku’s black and white past. ‘Where were you in 82?` the signs ask, before briefly explaining what disco was. “Send us your Shinjuku memories,” some web address demands. But the best moments can never be sufficiently cataloged.

Like…Remember that time you pissed all over yourself in that karaoke box, and they had to carry you out like a corpse? Your face had the clearest expression of bliss I’d ever seen.

The riots. You briefly got a hold of a policeman’s baton and found yourself laughing as you struck back at any black-clad limb that didn’t belong to you.

Christmas. You stood outside of a porno theater on old ragged legs for a full seven minutes wondering which of the three films you wanted to see while passerby’s giggled at you.

Earthquake this morning. Sake swirling around in a bottle next to my table in the café. The television anchor, who looks like Shin Kishida, takes a break from soccer coverage to suggest that a giant being is moving underground.

I`m moving to Mitaka tomorrow.

Ureshi Rainapu

“See this building?” Yoshiki says, pointing to a standard issue Kabuki-cho edifice: porn shop on the ground floor, with six or more stories of massage parlors, pubs, and gambling dens stacked on top  like wobbly Jenga bricks. “A couple of months ago, this guy killed his co-worker. He was caught stealing money, so he stabbed him seventy times.”

And thus, Shinjuku hasn’t changed much since last I rotated into Tokyo.

Take that back. Maybe it has. It seems a tad calmer, less likely to explode into a V-Cinema about Nigerian pimps and poorly dressed hostess club scouts. But it could be because it’s only Tuesday, still early evening. Or maybe it’s still the Xanax working from the plane where I spent the last 4 hours blearily playing Punch Out on the in-flight Super Nintendo wondering what the odds were of that reporter from the Nichi Bei Times being on the same bird as me.

The next morning, I wake with the usuall hangover-jet-lag skull ache courtesy of the God of Travelers Who Should Know Better But Never Learn. My last memory  is watching Waksei Dai Senso (AKA The War in Space) on Yoshiki`s giant sized projection TV. I caught a cab back to the hakaba-hotel with new pal Asakusa, an events co-coordinator for anime seiyu. Voice actors. “Beautiful voice,” he says, winding up for the punch line. “Ugly face.”

9:45 AM. Wednesday. I skid back to Kabuki-cho like a true hen na gaijin for the Gera Gera Internet Café. Kingdom of Heaven is playing at the Shinjuku Koma Theater next door, but no one cares. Packs of youths wait in line, not for a movie, but for the pachinko parlors to open. Today’s attraction: Ultra Seven. Superheroes and silver balls. 

I think I`m sleepy. Hungry. I want to shop.

I need a cell phone.

  

Megane

At the airport. Wireless. ANA Flight 007. SFO to Narita.

At the boarding gate, super-sized Americans in shorts and sandals sit reading brand new Lonely Planet travel guides. A Joel Silver clone bangs on a laptop, pissing and moaning to some poor IT guy on his cell phone. A terrifying otaku teenage girl in a shirt reading “Meat Girl” plays with her PSP while her parents doze nearby. They all look looks desperate for the sun, like they think the plane is going to Hawaii. Man with a purple turban talks on the pay phone. Long pauses. No crying babies in the event horizon…yet. Britney Spears make-up at Duty Free for Junko and Maki. Airport chocolates for most others. My stomach full of Ass Ramen. It was either that or the Hamburger Special at the place next door. Time to get on the big bird. 11 hours of Xanax and Ohtaki Eiichi WAV files ahead of me. Dreading the desperate struggle out of Narita Immigration, the stumbling and tripping with suitcases until the Limousine bus (decidedly NOT a Limousine in shape or comfort), and the final crawl to the hotel to see if they got my reservation.

Luck.