An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla

Futsuka yoi towa ni

Middle-aged immigrant woman, dressed like a cartoon refuge - heavy black coat, mittens, grandma’s gray knitted scarf eclipsing her lower face - standing on the corner just across from East Exit.

Yeah. Shinjuku. Again.

Holding a green and red sign, wider than she is, advertising a pizza place in the basement of the Zara boutique. Above her, a photo mural: two delightful white people in repose, hands held to show off matching dazzling diamond bracelets.

EPSY has been hiring mostly foreigners these days, weird for an organization right wing, so traditionally. You are right in sensing a plot afoot. According to the babushka’s sign, the sauce on the pizza and pasta is made with “Majitsu Tomatoes,” modified so as not to stain your clothes with troublesome hard-to-wash-out red spots. This sort of thing really matters nowadays, ever since the price of ESPY-funded designer clothing has gone up sharply. They think of everything these days, those evil, but admirable, minds locked in unit-thought. And of course, there’s never a money trail for the robo keiji to catch. The mud people they employ. I bet they pay her off with jars of the stuff, polymer tomato paste, and it soon pours into hungry mouths in a Shin Okubo alley flat.

Now, absurd Mother Winter begins to shift from foot to foot, gently banging herself in the forehead with the pizza signpost. The first blow is for boredom, the second comes from animal frustration.  Gal du jour walks out of the Kawano Umomo store across the street. I put down my salad and turn into a Tex Avery wolf. She's a pink leopard print waistcoat, vertigo skirt, Momo Ranger boots barely tapping the ass-fault beneath. Onna bakuha. It’s not that the men are weak here, which is the common complaint, and given the dandies and otaku, fair enough. It’s the girls who are way too strong for anyone but themselves.

Earlier or later. I’m in the café Kateru in Kichijoji going over some pictures from the Gyaku-ESPY bowling party. 650 yen a game. Matching pairs of Kabuki-cho hosts and hostesses surround us in genuine blue and white Brunswick bowling shoes. The usual ashtray smell is briefly masked by the aerosol blasts of the deodorant-cleanser. If only they had a Wrestlemania coin-op...

In the café: just me and waitress Yuka-chan (bit of a hippie, short with sharp features), who is currently addicted to a ski-jump game for the PS2. Last week, she favored the one with the dolphin and giant crystals;  a new breed of hard to fathom female gamer. The kind that’s content to merely watch. When there are no customers but me, she sits in the corner staring at the loop of CGI people free falling and tumble.

Then: big meaty yakuza enters stage-front, more blue and white jogging suit than. Yuka-chan jumps up and becomes the pla-model maid of service. He’s barely in the wooden bench a Shimorenjaku minute before he’s on the sidewalk again, talking rough stuff into his cell phone. The ‘Engrish’ on the back of his jacket is a super-dimensional howler: “Dedicated to those with an individual personality like yours.”

I’m guessing that’s supposed to be stealth mode for a gangster.

A few minutes later, in slithers a businessman, stuffed into a skeletal tan suit. We sense seriously deep G.O.D. (Government of Darkness) connections on him. It’s in the way the barcode pattern on top of his head reads. Long, short, short, long. So this will be a meeting, then: to be classified under the most menacing of categories: urashakai.

The bad guys order some matching caramel lattes. Predictably, the yakuza is finicky with his caramel to milk content and begins badgering poor old Yuka, who has been trying to hide in the back slicing cabbage.

Seems there’s a major market not being catered to in the music biz: Yaki-imo carts (ala The Ice Cream Man, only if he dealt in baked potatoes, had his own theme song, sung by a toothless child). They have them everywhere: in Shibuya, at the entrance of the park, in front of the station.

The idea is to replace the traditional song typically broadcast from the loudspeaker on the carts exclusively with G.O.D. backed artists (boy bands mostly, malnourished hip-hop, with only one winner in the whole bunch: a sort-of Pink Lady tailored for the Taishomei-era called The Cookies).

The problem is, the yakuza has been given a disc of various MP3 samples, and something is wrong.

“I put it in the DVD player, and nothing happened, nothing” he complains, caramel syrup sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“It’s not that kind of DVD,” the suit explains bitterly, like he’s talking to a 'tard. One he might have fathered. “You need to put it in a computer.”

“Then what?”

“Then open up the files and listen to the music.”

“Look, I don’t have a computer that can play DVDs. I run a bunch of fucking yaki-imo carts. Why would I have something like that? Just give me some CDs. Unless you guys want to buy a fucking computer for every single cart so they can play your fucking DVDs, then that’s what we’re going to use anyways…”

While they work it out, amidst more cell phone calls (including one that places an order for 30,000 blank discs), and the sound of Yuka pounding away on a chopping block, I fiddle with notes for the novel for real…

A Golan-Globus dedication. Honda-san turns out to be Koga ninja with Bu-chan as his faithful animal familiar: Nyan-Mage. The iPod shuffle doubles as a throwing knife that never misses its mark. The coffee thermos contains secret scrolls: recipes for ninja tricks and sex magic. Then Honda-san sends over a message over from Mixi on the implant frequency 109khz. “If you write something like that, I’ll lose all respect for you.”

Ok, then…all change.

Kamen Easy Rider.

Evil organization Shocker, formed (as all schoolchildren know) from a remnant of Japan-German Axis collaboration, was the great and hidden hand behind the rise of the bubble economy…and man, was it ever great. Now, with a recession that refuses to end, they decide that what Japan really needs now are cyborg salarymen who can work harder than normal humans and thus, revive the nation’s economy.

For a test subject, they kidnap a bosozoku biker named Shin Takeda, and perform experimental surgery on him, naked except for his leather jacket. But before they can put the restraining silver cufflinks on him, Shin escapes from the laboratory, which doubles as a Denny’s, and hits the road on his hot steel hog.

Shin really has no place to go, but he figures he should maybe get around to delivering a rare soft-vinyl toy worth a billion yen to a collector in Hokkaido (who’s too nervous to have it mailed, in spite of the fact that Japan has the best postal service in the world). It’s not much of a plan, as plans go, but Shin’s cut of the deal would be enough to be able to open a freeway rest stop along with a ‘Rabbit Land’ petting zoo there, which would be kind of cool…

A long road filled with enemy kaijin sent by Shocker. If Shin won’t play the game, then he’s going to get the whammie.

First, he’s lured into a “Free Love Hotel” near Saitama, where he meets a hot chick who’s easy and up for it. 7 minutes and 10ccs later, he finds out she’s actually Shocker agent Winnona Kamen Ryder, sent to kill him. And the plan might have worked if only he didn’t punch a hole in her lower extremities, which causes her to have a mini-nuclear meltdown.

Next on the dance card is Ramen Rider, part of a plan to infest the world with Japanese cooking shows in the wake of Iron Chef becoming a big international hit. His theme is Born to Be Wild, but with the opening line changed from “Get your motor running,” to “Itsu mo ramen.”

He has been created to eat up all the ramen in Hokkaido, and his left eye doubles as a digital camera so he can film all the action as it goes down, robbing Japan of one of it’s national treasures in a cheap bid to get some foreign sales. Good for him, but our hero, Kamen Easy Rider, prevails in the butt-kicking contest.

(Something here about Kamen Easy Reader, played by Morgan Freeman, but then I figure, fuck it.)

Shin heads back out on that road, and he’s almost made it to Hokkaido when some Inaka driving a decora truck blows his head off with a shotgun. Cue Ohtaki Eiichi’s The Ballad of Kamen Easy Rider.

Everyone has some taco rice and about 27 beers. And when they get to the station, they inexplicably feel like picking up a yaki-imo and half a dozen CDs the next day. 

Yakimonki Baby

Currently in the kitchen cooking up some marvelous shit. Bought this miso only because Bunta Sugawara personally endorses it.

Unfortunately, it tastes nothing like Tattooed Hitman, but if you save up proof of purchase seals, he'll give you presents and stuff. Maybe some of that dog nabe he makes in Jingi Naki Tatakai...

Namida no Diary

Warning: sometimes the movie sucks.

Tokyo. 6am. Family Restaurant somewhere near Ookayama. Coming down after an Acid Panda Café all-nighter.

They seat us in the booth in the middle. Slasher orders his usual Satanic Breakfast: a steak “cho cho rare” and a draft beer. Make that three draft beers. Looks like I have to drink one too, or else risk being a rudie. Memories of Mitch, Pierson, and half a dozen teenage Hell Weeks pass as the croissant and omelets go down with a pint of suds.   

The table to our right: a young couple passed the fuck out, faces planted firmly down on the table. On the left, boy and girl yawn and get ready to get some kip as well. Talk about a cheap date. Cup of coffee and some z’s coming out of your head, solving the whole “what are we going to talk about” problem.

Me: “So I saw Kamen Rider, The First last week.”

Slasher: “So how was it?”

M: “It fucking sucked. It looked like it was shot in Super VHS. You could see video scan lines on the screen. I can’t believe they tried to pass this off as a ‘movie.’ It was more like a fan film. They should have spread for more optical effects. I mean, during the transformation scenes, they just showed a close up of the henshin belt, then boom, Kamen Rider is running around. The only cool thing was Shocker. They re-dubbed some old footage of Amamoto Eisei, so it was old school Doctor Death all the way. The other two Shocker leaders were a Roppongi-looking B-boy and some chick who looked like a Kabuki-cho hostess. It was funny in a what the fuck kind of way.”

S: “The people who made the movie must be so old and out of it that they think those kinds of people are evil. They need to get out more.”

M: “I should have known this was going to suck. What was I thinking? But I guess that’s the joy of going to see a Toei movie. Having them turn you upside down, shake the money out of your pants, and leave you standing there ripped off.”

S: “I think watching all those old Toei films has made you a masochist.”

Then he orders more beer, and another steak. Very, very rare.

The next thing I know, it’s 3pm the next day and I’m lying on Slasher’s leather sofa. It feels like I’ve been hit in the face with a fucking baseball bat…like my brain is going to shoot out of my head. First class hangover. That’s what you get for having beer for breakfast.

Do I enjoy it? No. I lie there squirming on the sofa for three hours, the human worm from Freaked, wondering if Kamen Rider, The Last will make me enjoy pain and suffering just a little bit more.

Then I took some Buffrin, ate some 0den, and listened to Honaloochie Boogie by Mott the Hoople and everything was cool again.

Shotengai junai monogatari

Stylish Avenue Koenji. “Since 2003,” the signs say. 1943 from the look of it. Every time someone grabs ass on the train or throws another yakitori on the grill, the wireless signal gets the blame. Murph saying something about a black woman with a labyrinth on her face trying to return something at a store she didn’t buy it from. America there. Spam and jalapeno pizza for banned gohan here. So weird it might be good. Fortifying myself before a wild weekend. Nostradamus no dai yogen: I will spend Sunday on sports drinks and vitans feeling like a battered child.

Yesterday. Akihabara. Escorting around NHK producer who promises me English lessons from Yumiko "Princess Blade" Shaku. And together, we will assault the Radio Kaikan and some junk shops, in early December. Good TV for you and your momma-san. To get permission to shoot, we have to go to the 8^th floor. Downstairs is the otaku inferno: trolls stocking up on Moe figures, air-soft armories, ero-dojin that could get you jail time in Canada, your next-door neighbor buying miniature cameras for the bathroom.

But the office on top is like heaven, or at least that Muji show house they have in Yurakucho: wood floors sending back your reflection, massive windows looking out over diamond day on Showa-dori. Not a touch of otaki anywhere. Not even a Future Boy Conan bottle-cap laying claim to a cluttered desktop.

Efficient and pretty OL run the place, a mad nerds dream. One of them brings on the green tea. Our motives and intents are carefully judged through eye contact. Permission granted. Just don’t shoot the outside of the building: which just so happens to be the most photogenic part. Such a big sexy yellow and red neon sign showing. But the old timers selling GPS devices and palm-sized TV sets might get pissy. So I guess we know where the real power lies now.

We’ll take what we can get, we tell them, and the angels of Akihabara show us the door.

Kage no Kuruma

Matt Alt lives forever, for he has shown me the way. I thought Matsumoto-Kiyoshi was just another drug store, good only for Lipovitan, earplugs, and cheap panyhose.

Turns out, they sell fucking absinthe in the basement. Pernod 68. Original recipe. Kind that makes you cut off your ear, pen decadent verse, and collect a million plastic model kits and never build them.

It’s been the Green Hour here since about 5pm. I’ve even invented a new cocktail, one that combines and reflects the best of the Meiji, Showa, and Taisho eras…

THE MEISHOTAI

1 part absinthe, 3 parts ice-cold Mitsuya Cider (CM by Ohtaki Eiichi). The color of the louche should match the cover of your Mecha Godzilla no Gyakushu Movie Comic.

Drink until you can read it. Out loud. Especially the sound effects.

mainichi ni Koenji e ikimasu

The Ebisu Dagashi Bar. After work. A circle of salarymen sit at a table, chugging back beers, nursing shots of whiskey. So far, so normal. Then several of the suits get up and grab little wicker baskets. They make for the end of the bar where storage bins and glass jars containing brightly colored items are kept. Hands reach out and come back with candy, junk food, dagashi. Pop Rocks, powdered soda, candy cigarettes, dried-squid-on-a-stick, and even little breasts made out of white chocolate.

The place is fairly new, but designed to look like a rickety post-war tin shack. Old ads for Bireley’s orange soda and Jubei Nimpocho movies hang on the walls. Pink Lady and Kenji Sawada songs play from hidden speakers. A kid would go wild in here because of the candy, the Dagashi Bar was made for discriminating adults, looking for some sweet tasting nostalgia.

The menu is the usual pub fare: curry rice, yakisoba, and salads. But you can kick things up a notch by paying extra for the “Dagashi System,” which means all you can eat candy and snacks. And if your stomach goes nutzoid from all the booze, junk food, and curry, you can go for some Roman Orgy style relief in the bathroom, where the ghost of Yujiro Ishihara watches your every move.

Here's looking at you...but you 'aint no kid.
So why the fuck you eat all that candy?

ichinose desu...nai

Ok. If we are going to be friends, then you must be able to recite the murder rap masterpiece Mind of a Lunatic by the Geto Boys verbatim and at the drop of a gangster hat. So download it here now. Memorize. Repeat till fade. From the opening, which samples a Batman book and record set I had as a kid, to the thrilling cinematic conclusion (drawn by Hideshi Hino) it may be the greatest thing done to the English language since…Viv Stanshall at the very least. Oh, and it’s funky as hell too. My only regret: we’re two weeks late to properly celebrate the day “a damn fool was born with the mind of a lunatic,” but maybe Slasher can be still convinced to spin it when he DJs at the Acid Panda Café this weekend…

Chonoroku hebi

Tonight, Koyuki is the most beautiful girl in Japan, and the world, even. She’s 19 years old, clad in a red kimono, and has big eyes anchored by tasty cheekbones. Right now, she is eating a snake, a real one, taking bites out of it like it was a licorice whip. The audience gasps, repulsed. A second later, they are screaming.

Koyuki has tossed out her half-eaten viper into the center of the crowd. But it’s only a rubber snake, a cheap gag. And the rubes fell for it, as they have for centuries. Koyuki smiles mischievously - only a little, mind you - and nods her head asking for our indulgence.

She goes back to eating her snake, the real one.

Sounds strange, but what she’s doing is situation-appropriate. It’s Wednesday night and there’s a festival at Hanazono temple, a Shinto shrine for business people, entertainers, pimps and con men too probably. After all, the temple is next to Shinjuku Kabuki-cho and when you have to take a whiz, they tell you to go use the public stalls in Golden Gai.

Outside, Yasukuni-dori is crowded with tekiya stalls selling yakitori, taco yaki, okonomiyaki, and that most traditional of festival beverages: overpriced beer. The latter can be had any night of the year, but the former never tastes better than during the festival. But we didn't come here for the booze and the chow. We want to get freaked out.

Outside the tent, the barker – an old woman looking like Takeshi Kitano with tits – eggs us on, selling up the New Face in the show. She’s a bijin! She’s even been in a newspaper and was photographed for Shonen Jump magazine! To out right is an enormous, glorious old painted mural of a woman in white, a hideous snake around her neck. She looks nothing like Koyuki, but that’s who it’s supposed to be. To the barker’s left is a tiny metal cage. A white poodle in a tutu lies on its stomach inside. Mondo Cane.

800 yen a peek. Pay after the show. We shuffle into the tent. Inside, a pair of old middle aged women are holding a mummified two-headed calf.

“Yeah, we saw that last year,” says Slasher, and indeed we did, but being the suckers we are, we keep coming back. It’s the same basic setup as before: stage with faded red curtain, audience standing on a rickety elevated piece of wood. What looks like the barker’s sister doing announcing duties inside.

Oh, and there are snakes. Handfuls of poisonous vipers, a colossal boa constrictor slithers across the floor, and dried scales are handed out for luck. Dinner is made out of at least one of them.

The grand finale: an old woman with drag queen makeup, a veteran of the freak scene and Koyuki’s sempai, puts a bib on. She wads up a dozen or so white candles in her hand and ignites the wicks until there’s a tiny inferno in her palm. Then she pours the hot wax into her mouth. No expression on her haggard corpse-like face. Then she places the candles in front of her mouth and blows. A Gene Simmons sized jet of flame erupts. It’s cold outside, but the force of the blast briefly cooks us.

Later, we sit at a yakitori stand and dig the real-time yakuza movie unfolding around us. Clouds of smoke and steam. Tall bottles of sake and beer. Tourists, old people, a crowd of hosts, couples, and an endless supply of yakuza. A festival in Shinjuku means the kuroshakai will crawl out of their bars, dens, and dives, and parade around the temple, pausing – along with the commoners - to throw money at the shrine.

A single security guard passes by. “Look at that loser,” says Slasher. “He knows he can’t do shit here.” Then he breaks it down.

Yakuza type A favors expensive suits, diamond watches, and sunglasses at night. Two fat cats, massive with an air of menace, sit behind us. As they enter the tent, the tekiya owner does his best bowing and mincing. Yakuza type B lives in a cheap jogging suit, like something you’d get at Mervyns. These are the tekiya mostly, the guys running the booths and stalls. Both types saunter around clutching little briefcases full of cash. I see at least one hand off go down for real, sense dozens more around me.

It’s a fucking gangster Sim City, but the V-Cinema cameras never come out. Everyone is on the best behavior. Much bowing and yelling ensues whenever members of different castes meet and greet each other.

“Goddamn, it’s a fucking yakuza zoo,” I say.

Slasher is quick to make corrections. “Hey, don’t call them that here…” Instead, we refer to them henceforth as They Who Must Not Be Named. Several cups of hot sake later, we have to let our hens out. Karaoke in Kabuki-cho. We stay until 6am, at which point Cage says he’s going to go get a massage.

It’s the usual long burn out ride back home, mouth like an ashtray, dreading the moment I’ll have to wake up: knowing it will feel like someone hit me in the face with a baseball bat. It’s pretty much like this every other night.

But Koyuki? She probably has it much worse. I mean, how many snakes do you have to eat exactly before your sempai is satisfied?

Motoharu Sano

Word just coming in from ESPY Intel on Overtone Frequency 109khz: We’re working out the sexy details now, but it looks like ima gunna bee on the NHK TV program Eigo de Shabera Night sometime real soon. Honda-san informs me that previous guests have included Paul Weller and Cameron Diaz, so I guess I should go to Neo-Muji and buy a Tanuki Mario suit in case Natsuki Kato does the interview. No idea as of yet what the heck they want me to do, or when the episode will tape and air, but the odds of me winding up in Akihabara getting thrown out of the Gatchapon Kaikan, as per usual, are high.

I guess we need a song to fit the mood. Here's Kanojo wa Delicate from 1982's Niagara Triangle Vol. 2 LP, a crown jewel of '80s J-pop. Production is by Eiichi Ohtaki, a key name to drop when you want people to think you are tragically uncool.

Rakee Imqukan

The world gets smaller or we get bigger...That's what happens after you get naked in Nikko with strangers in the public baths. My hot dog hanging out as God shakes his head at what a bunch of fucking pagans everyone are. Then someone starts washing my back down.

“This is Japanese style,” he says, and what I would pay to see my own facial expression at that moment. Nothing remotely like Bond and Tamba, I'm afraid. From there, I rest mostly in the sauna, which feels like hot morphine and a hamburger in my veins, but there’s also lots of sitting in the pool outside, over looking the river and wondering, hoping really, that a bunch of dirty little monkeys will jump out and attack.

It never happens.

Instead, we go to Tobu World Square, which is like…deep, deep strange. A Godzilla movies with no monsters. A collection of miniature replicas of world landmarks to gawk at. Lots of people in wheelchairs roll around, checking the scene. The pyramids of Egypt rest just behind the Eiffel Tower. The Chrysler building is next to the World Trade Center and the Empire State. And what seems like a million Inaka peer into a tiny Tokyo station. Maybe someday they’ll see the real thing. Ditto the Taj Mahal and me.

The devil is in the details. Here’s a little white guy doing the dirty “nampa” on some tight Japanese hoes in front of Tokyo Station. Afterwards, he has to buy them Vuitton bags, he makes them wear garter belts and rubber underwear, and everyone has ugly children.

I guess a 1/100 scale Nartia airport is kind of cool, only on the conceptual level…but the view is significantly improved when a giant oyaji enters the fray and starts shaking it for the camera.

The "Big" Apple...

NYC was tight and seemingly built by people who had only ever seen Lethal Weapon movies when they researched life over there. Dig the Thrilling Bank Robbery in progress. Behind those buildings on the right were…and I shit you not…a Super Dynamation-sized crack house. And that’s when my batteries ran out and/or I blacked out from lack of oxygen to the brain from laughing too hard.

The maintenance people were cool, were probably a bunch of pla-model otaku, and, based on the shit they made, possessed a sick sense of humor. The little people they surrounded the buildings with all tended to dress in hideous shades of green, blue, and yellow pastels. Especially the white folk.

If you really want to feel like you went around the world in 80 min., then pop on over to the World of Fast Food cafeteria. They got French Fries made from Idaho potatoes, Hot Dogs from Manhattan and Denmark, and wish-you-were-dead Ass Coffee afterwards from Hades.

I’m shaking my fist because evildoers will pay for the day they made America cry. In fact, I’m getting all choked up just typing this…

Punishments of the Olde Tymes

“Japanese history is nothing but torture, assassination, murder, and suicide,” says Slasher-san proudly as we dash about Nikko Edo Mura, AKA the Nikko Edo Wonderland theme park, gorging ourselves on cheap thrills.

Earlier, a van of us, going north. Pilgrims to a public bathhouse resort and various temples.  Human beehives of Kawaguchi and approving nods to the Saitama love hotels. They give way to hills full of fall leaves that hug us all weekend. Old women hobble about in the street clutching bags of vegetables, passing massive and abandoned pachinko parlors, or empty parking lots. Later, we all get naked and jump into hot tubs with complete strangers. But first...

Stop one. Nikko Edo Mura.

These are the gates. Pretty, but dull. It only gets better from here, folks.

Imagine Ren Faire, jidai-geki style. Costume performers stroll through the ersatz streets of old Japan. The family eats yakitori, and the kids beg for plastic swords, and you pay for it all in ryo. But stray off the main paths and it starts to get wacky.

Statue of a ninja sticking to the ceiling inside a funhouse. By the looks of him, he's been up there since at least the 17th century. Bonus points for having only one eye and being covered in dust.

As every student of Japanese history knows, the biggest problem during the old days were the hooded skeletons who ran around with strobe lights just below their rib cages. They kept one in the funhouse behind some chicken wire, one of the main design motifs of Edo Wonderland.

The cheerful Hell Temple welcomes vistors from around the world with a selection of oni torture instruments as seen in such movies as Jigoku (1961), Jigoku (1978), and Jigoku (1999).

Apparently, you die when you enter the hell temple. A big anamatronic Enma, the king of hell, then passes judgement on you. *Spoilers* He sentences you to hell. *End Spoilers*

One of the damned being having no fun at all in "the hell."

...and then this weird Venus Fly Trap looking-thing comes out, and...and...

...and then the Buddha comes out on a giant gold lotus and saves your dumb ass. I figured that had to be worth at least a beer run.

At the dark end of Edo Mura is the jailhouse. The families are nowhere in sight and the place really kicks into high gear. Here's a criminal being captured, probably for making noises in the middle of the night.

Two very good men appy heavy stone tablets to a very naughty woman's lap, while she sits on a slab of corrugated wood. Serves her right!

I am not making this up: tiny speakers play a funky music cue, you hear the sound effects of a woman getting whacked with a wooden stick, followed by her lavacious moans. Suddenly, you're in a Teruo Ishii movie.

DIY diagrams lie about the place so you can relive the fun and adventure at home.

The next stop: a replica of the house of a thousand corpses from Chushingura. Inside, men sit around giving and receiving head.

A lease-breaking party, Shinsengumi-style.

Damn. Homeboy's face...

Sorry this one isn't as gory as the others, but dig the totally menacing Mito Komon there in the middle, looking nothing like his cheerful TV show counterpart.

Too bad the Warring States era put an end to all the fun.

Afterwards, we cooled off at the ninja stage show. The guy on the right is Hattori Hanzo. He's about to get killed by his kohai on the left. Afterwards, a bunch of women mobbed the actors for autographs and pics. Ninja groupies.

Another reason why Edo Mura rules ok: when you use the crapper, Daigoro from Lone Wolf and Cub is there to watch over you.

Too bad they fucking hate foreigners, just like in the real Edo era. After this photo was taken, I was crucified, dismembered, and beaten about the ding dong with a pair of little sticks. Serves me right.

Ass Sashimi

The café ESPY (Extra Sensory Perception Youth) in Shimokitazawa. Nice name. Ugly painted walls in yellow, just like all the other franchises here. Potted plant dying across from me. Girl with a bandage and cotton ball taped to her face, dabbing at her cheeks with foundation. They try to pass it off as a deli, and I come in craving pastrami, but all they have is pasta and what’s not pizza – but they call it pizza anyways - on the menu. But I bitch too much. Saving graces and sweet imports on the menu: pints of them and for not too much scratch. Also, we’re near a nondescript apartment block, the best kind. Sure to be a wireless signal here somewhere. Secret acts within four walls. Sure enough, it gets me online. Praying the Bass hasn’t gone skunk before the garlic toast arrives. And it’s not until the second one that I realize it hasn’t happened. Matt Gray should appreciate this. They’re playing Hocus Pocus by Focus on the house stereo.

Two days ago, in a cushy Shibuya noodle shop leeching bandwidth, maybe yours. Light samba with ba-ba-ba vocals swirling around. Who says the kei is passé? Skinny ass Japanese answer to the Olsen twins planted next to me. Flashing Nano and the fake diamonds. Honda-san says over asa gohan: “If she says she wants a Vitton handbag, smack the bitch up.” Next, he explains the particle “de” to me by smashing a cup over my head.

Da Buya: tinkering the opening pages of the Goka Jyu-Pun Senso, a prologue by a happy-sad narrator set in the Meishotai jidai, after they turned Youna into a statue and the Government of Darkness is dealt with. The message comes in from Batty. There’s a Mighty Moguls concert tonight in Shimokitazawa, sharing stage with two other bands - The Neatbeats and The Privates - rounding out the bill.

By the time we get inside, the Mighty are seriously pounding it out. Three chord stupidity: the devil’s music with a wild caveman stomp. A lot of Japanese garage bands do it well enough technically, but tend to play up the vocals. Others merely skip around the edges of real peanut butter R&R. Soul wa ja nai. Not so with Moguls, who jump in wearing tiger print togas screaming, twisting the night away. Duck walk. Ass shaking. Inspirational as always. A trio of dull white guys stand in back, too lame to rock with the rock. Is there a frat nearby? The Animal House would be ashamed.

By two am, the bands are all played out. Time to mix it up. Goodbye Batty and Cherry-san. I’m going to the Prince All Night Dance Party at Loft Plus One. Every one looks at me like I’m nuts. Facial expressions reading, “Prince? You mean that skinny motherfucker with the high voice?”

You’d think people as into black music as they are would get it, but sadly, no. I mean, it should be a fairly short walk from Little Richard to Lovesexy, but turns out the cab from Shimokitazawa to Kabuki-cho is about 2500 yen.

am now too e-wasted to write anymore.

Back Brain Kick

They used Bu-Chan as the medium.

"Fuck your cold, " he begins, putting the cat toy down for half a second. "Be in Jimbocho around 4pm to make the pick-up. Use the book festival as cover. Order an 'M Fries' and pretend to sleep at the counter on the second floor of the McDonald’s on Yasukuni." 

That’s dear, sweet ESPY for you. Obscure and demanding. Jump through fruit loops for some pocket cash. But a trip to the Shitamachi means a chance to swing by Akihabara, yes, again, to buy a USB headset. I need to talk to Jay. I don’t talk to Jay nearly enough, and we must hasten the demise of NTT by making real phone calls as passé as possible.

Time to kill between the here and now. Retracing my footsteps from the other night when Watanabe, Yamazaki, and I were out chasing maid. You see, the massage was only a third of it. We did maid kissa and maid pasta and curry house well before we ever dropped the socks.

Turkey trot down Chuo dori. Make the first left on Hongo dori. Peep the first alley on your right, directly across from LAOX Computer. You’ll see two vending machines full of these...

Behold! Instant oden in a can, man! Being test marketed. Still don’t have the gumption to try it myself, but how bad can it be? A salaryman was happily slurping liquid out of the container just as I looked up...and then gazed into the cold heart of banal evil.

(Sinister chord)

Behind these happy vending machines is the building where the AUM cult used to have their retail shop.

Watanabe remembers, “they used to stand right here, handing out fliers to people walking by.” But they’re long gone, and the place is perfectly harmless now, folks. So here's to good eating in the event horizon of human tragedy.