Mondai ichi

November something.

And this is maid massage.

Her nametag reads Koma. Sleepy eyes in the Volks doll head. Low bangs hang just above them. 5 yen sized spots of talcum powder resting in a bunch all down the front of her black apron. Says she loves Zeta Gundam, Rose Maiden and that well-known children’s entertainer, Marilyn Manson. As if to prove it on the spot, planted in her bottom lower lip is a piercing, a silver ring erupting out of her lower jawline.

She says she’s…young. She looks the part, but has to be lying. Hasta be. Either way, Watanabe Denki is taken aback. “When I was growing up, none of the girls had piercing, or even tattoos. Now, it’s like they all do.”

Koma massages your feet and hands but it’s mostly your brain she works. Making you talk so much that you never realize how insane the situation really is until you stumble out on the Akihabara street below.

She throws tea and water at us before we pay. The name of the game now is Avoid Looking at the Next Customer Sitting Next to You, but we can’t help it. Koma’s next must weigh at least 350 lbs, stuffed into pleated navy-blue Super Men’s pants. “Jappa the Hutt.”

“I want to rescue her!” I tell Watanabe.

“You are MOE!”

Earlier, in the basement at Yamigawa-soft looking for the bathrooms. The trip takes us past the front of yet another newly opened maid cafe. A waiting line of sophistos stands in front, caught in various annoyed and impatient poses. The thousand cell phone stare. Second glance: all the customers are woman. Are the men all getting massages?

“They are probably media people,” speculates the visibly annoyed Watanabe, like a landlord who doesn’t like the color of the children being bussed in. “Reporters, TV people…”

In a shop, stone’s throw away from Akihabara station, there’s a wall of one-use-only sex toys. Thousands of foam vaginas packaged like beer cans. They go from 500 to 1100 yen a pop. Cheap. The cans are made out of all-plastic products. Recycle them on a Tuesday. On the front are lolicon anime and manga illustrations. Pastel colors. Stuffed animal nearby and tears everywhere. If that’s not your demographic, there are CGI beach bunnies, inspired by the Dead or Alive video game. A can of Kunoichi seems like the only concession to what we think of as anime. Looks like rejected character designs for Ninja Scroll on the wrapper. There’s the occasional porn star brand to be found, but for the most part, real women don’t figure into the product line.

Date Rape says, “that’s because Japanese men are afraid of real women. I want to kill them all.” Jay’s theory is that this is all a meme somehow. The world has decided that there is no more use for Japanese men. Thus, fragmented fantasy sex and declining birth rates.

On the way back to Draft One, up comes an Mp3 of an old Joseph Campbell lecture. He’s talking about “why it’s such a pleasure to be in Japan.” Apparently, this is where “the radiance trapped in the forms” comes through on a regular basis. He says it just as I walk by a smoky yakitori stand, one that’s been planted next to the shoe store. Stacks of limited edition Converse hi-tops cast sidewalk-shadows on November day.

Radiance means something different to all of us, I figure.

I wonder what Campbell would have made of Akihabara…and what the mythical interpretation of a maid massage parlor would be.

When I tell Honda-san what where I'd been and what I'd done that day, he came up with one on the fly for me.

"You're going to hell."

Comments

[Steve Harrison]

See...this is why I so enjoy reading your blog, Patrick...I always learn something new, even if it's so outside my experence I can only stand agog in wonder and confusion...then as I slowly absorb the data, I make connections and sometimes giggle in a clearly insane manner..

to wit, this quote:

"In a shop, stone’s throw away from Akihabara station, there’s a wall of one-use-only sex toys. Foam vaginas packaged like beer cans. "

That just blows my mind. This is something so TOTALLY and UTTERLY beyond what any average AmeriOtaku can even imagine...one shot...errrrr...use...sex toys, just sitting there...emblazoned with whatever rocks ones socks....pick up a sixer for the weekend...try the 24 bulk pack...for an extra 500 Yen get the vibrating sleeve that fits over the container like a rubber 'can cooler'...

I howl and gibber and gad about laughing. thank you.

[Denki]

Let's go to hell riding on SexToys! Woooooo!

[Carl Horn]

The cans themselves are recyclable, but, as Jay might observe, the seed itself will be consigned to waste. A prosthetic post Darwin, one might say, although, as Jay's, that is a male view of the situation—the falling birthrate a crisis where all depends upon the moves of that barnstorming sky father. Campbell is far too refined. Freud will suffice to explain the mythic spectacle of needledicks whizzing towards the crack that splits a round in two, hoping to be the one to send his load down the shaft—a folorn glance into the foam and a negative, negative, it didn't go in.

Rather, of course it is the case that male attitudes go hand-in-hand, as it were, with female attitudes. A woman's right to choose. If the world has no more use for Japanese semen, the Japanese woo-woo seems likewise hard to rent these days. There is no need for men there to be so self-centered on this; it's the same in several countries of Europe. It would be the same in America, too—our population would likewise peak out, were it not for the potency of our immigrants. I would mention to the Japanese media that most of these are Mexican. Say it almost but not quite casually.

[Steve Harrison]

Hmmmmm.....

All good points...it all ties to the '70s and Karate/Crazy, doesn't it? Without Sonny Chiba to make the ladies wet and willing for the heat seeking moisture missile of love, Japanese men resort to the quim in a can, chanting 'well, solve your little problem and let's light this candle!' only to have to pull the abort handle because the current DoA hottie isn't hot anymore..."MOE MOE MOE!" he moans......

(OK, that joke really doesn't work spoken, but in print, yeah...sorry...)

But...what if the clam in a can is a secret project, designed to collect DNA to make Uber Japper-knees?

I sense SPECTER in this....

[Carl Horn]

Back to Bond. Ya gotta remember to use the Anglo-French spelling: SPECTRE. A helpful way to remember it is to enunciate the words like Max Von Sydow: "The SPecial Excutive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion." Don't forget to roll the "r"s in "terrorism."

My father's favorite line from that film was "In matters of death, SPECTRE is strictly impartial." He had worked for, and I was therefore nurtured by, many companies in the news today: Halliburton, Brown & Root, Bechtel. Years before CLERKS, my dad observed that the Death Star under construction in RETURN OF THE JEDI should have had a big Bechtel logo on the side of it "because it's exactly the type of contract they would take."

[Steve Harrison]

I stand humbled and corrected. My brain is fried because the Suncoast I work at is closing, and frankly, soon the entire chain will die a horrid, screeching death...I'm a tad distracted...

I blame SPECTRE.

Isn't it funny how the new post-SBC merger the AT&T logo looks even more like the unfinished Death Star from RotJ? :)