The interracial couples are really out tonight. Wishing I had something nicer to wear. A Dashiki maybe. Wondering what’s in it for them, those that have to date or marry the club hook-up or the guy from the classified ads in the back of the free weekly. Having to explain everything over and over again. “This is a Starbucks. People come here to drink macha lattes.” “This is Kentucky Fried Chicken. Pop stars eat this on New Years Day.” They pace up and down the block leading up to Eigashira koen. Funny little cop trailing them for the next edition of Gaijin Crime File. Bonus cash in his pocket for a pic of a couple making out by the swan boats. Perfect little shoes, silver and glittery contrasted with bright white Nikes. The rich man’s fanny pack. A simple accessory makes the coordination come alive. And she makes noises like a squeaky toy being mauled by a Rotweiler when the mosaic breaks.
B.A.D. (Business and Death) eyeing up the arcades and pachinko parlors, all of them, wondering when to close them down and what to reopen in their place. Soft Bank takes over the TV Games place near the Inogashira line. Pachi-slot place one million is boarded up in a Koenji alley, which is incredible since the Chuo line is like Atlantic City for losers. Big gaps in the New Akiba now. Construction sites and men at work. You can tell who is real and who is faking it by the way they navigate the main drag. Real otaku dash forwards, either alone or in packs, eyes fixed forwards like spawning salmon. Everyone else looks up in awe and terror. Lost. Maybe someday the JR train goes flying off its tracks and straight into any number of buildings that deserves it. Yodobashi Akiba, the UDX building. Akiba is crying out for a disaster to match the mood of expectation, which is oddly reminiscent of an audience walking into a new movie theater, like that one they built in Shinjuku on top of the new Marui.
(“You know how the Japanese movie business works? It’s so dirty. The studio buys up all the advanced tickets so they can say that their film opened big. So you have all these ‘hit films’ playing to empty theaters.”)
So I go to Kabuki-cho and into some old cranky hole in the floor. Old white guy sits behind me, leaving a Stephen King-sized paperback on his seat when he makes for the lobby. I think he’s with another Westerner, because both of them laugh and snicker whenever it’s actually appropriate, whereas the rest of the audience acts like they are at a funeral. I was never sure which I liked better, the thick and obvious rock concert approach to film going in the states or The Bereavement in the Family feel of a Japanese theater. The snack bar only has popcorn and “boring chips.” Previews for a bunch of foreign fantasy films (the ultimate of which would probably be this very view outside of the Italian Tomato Cafe Jr. window) and movies based on TV shows starring ageless members of SMAP.
Even if everyone is inscrutable you can feel it in the air. It’s kind of weird when Harry kisses the Asian girl, not just because he probably got a boner (although there is that), but also because it almost didn’t seem like a movie anymore.
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