Crows crows crows screaming and cawking greeting sunny Musashi Koganei morning. I’m here on the floor of the new apartment, hereby christened Draft Two, feeling like part of me is still on some airplane shifting around, trying to fight turbulence with some of my own. We’re next to an elementary school, it seems, one where they play Imagine by Some Old Dead White Guy every day on the dot at 5pm, which will take getting used to. Google-mapping my conbini and crow’s nest options while a plushy of Gatchapin dressed as one of the Black Birds hangs from a curtain rod starring out into rising sun. Jet lag, hungry for dinner/breakfast, wanting to savor being on the ground before the wars begin. First salvo, as always, at Narita Immigration. Lines of red faced hakujin in cowboy hats, Asian exiles in barely-jeans who refuse to, or can’t figure out, how to fill out both sides of the entry form, that jrock guy from SFO with a patch that reads “Shock” sewn into his hoodie. A detail missed from before: he has a cloth English schoolboy’s book bag slung over his shoulder, customized with a patch depicting geisha and samurai and Mt. Fuji. I am not making this up. Nor the rickety wooden Suggestion Box that rests in a part of passport control that would be impossible to actually get to without being clubbed to death by agents of G.O.D., which gives the place an air of a roadside motel or a really ironic twist on jail.
They take one look at my passport, and as has always been the case since 2006, they need to put me in the “special room” for interrogation (a legacy of the Battle of Shinagawa). This is the real suggestion box, the real shit right here, with classic deportation slogans liked GO FUCK keyed into the walls and similar sentiments in Korean and Tagalong. They usually play nice and always let me through, but I’m usually required to do a bit of a song and dance to pass the audition. But this time, the migra obasan takes one look at me and says, “Oh, I think I remember you from Eigo De Shabera Night” and I’m out in seconds with a new world record presumably set free to dance in the streets of Akiba to celebrate the new era of Rozen Asao with the maids.
Crows and school kids I could handle but "Imagine"?
I don't know.
I'd slap on the headphones and crank up some Carol or Yokohama Ginbae as an antidote.
Posted by: | September 23, 2008 at 12:23 PM
Ha! I was listening to Ginbae on the walk home last night. On the hunt for some Downtown Boogie Woogie Band CDs this time out.
Posted by: Patrick Macias | September 23, 2008 at 06:24 PM