A handful of pretty cool Japanese hip hop acts:
DJ Krush -- Smooth, experimental. Lots of jazz samples. Would go well with scarlet carpets and clove cigarettes!
Teriyaki Boyz -- Best know for a song on the Tokyo Drift soundtrack but I prefer the song "Beef or Chicken" -- bilingual, uber-cute style, and good beats too!
M-flo -- Some of the same guys from Teriyaki Boyz -- very danceable -- all around good stuff.
Let me know what u think!
The potluck last night was good clean fun: more food than I've seen in ages! Curry mainly, smelled soooooo good, but most of it had meat so I contented myself with Nyree's vegi pasta, some garlic toast, and this cool potato thing.
There were many, many people in the lounge room and I grew overwhelmed, needed privacy: things came to a distressing zenith when N. read aloud erotica from some kind of anthology and I started raging about how truly awful the writer was and this idiot sitting next to me said, "What do you expect from a female writer?" -- joking, but such a goddamn trite joke; Nyree raised an eyebrow and said "Careful dude, you're saying that to a pretty excellent writer there," and I bolted off the couch, immature maybe but I couldn't hack it, spent the next little while smoking cigarettes with Bjorn in the hallway and meeting a really nice Canadian who agreed to accept my revisionist views of Paris Hilton and spun awesome tales of moving to Japan to escape his dreary life of studying Law at Uvic. Bjorn and I both got costumed up and ventured out into the mazes of Mukogaokayuen in pursuit of the Cookie Bar Halloween Party; got too drunk and had an awesome time.
Tomorrow I'm going to a chorus competition cuz my students are in it.
Another excellent writing session on Friday, 2 new members who were not only good writers but great-looking, so win-win! A brief stop back at HH and then the Urban Sage and I headed out to a house party near Inokishira Koen. Lots of Halloween imagery, and balloons, those long tube-y ones, prompting a deep-throating competition between me, the Urban Sage, and a gay dude (I won); gunplay in the back alley; a photographer with a collection of ten antique cameras, lovingly stored amid the nooks and crannies of a Woody Allen-esque bedroom; B-double-E-double-R-U-N, Beer Run, to Family Mart where we pose for photographic evidence with the hapless employees; Tompopo projected onto one wall of the living room; passing out with the Urban Sage in the Photographer's bedroom -- our first full-night Cuddle! -- wake up, hunt in vain for some paper to write messages but there's only maps and film stills so we opt instead to ambush the Photographer as he slept, shouting, Thank u! Thank u! -- sandwiches and onigiri from the combini and then a rather loud train ride home round about 7. Best pic:
That evening, Joy transforms into a 1960s pop starlet and arrives in Shibuya to a scene of madness: two hours of milling around near Hachiko with the crew, over a dozen in all, and posing for an endless array of photographs for the fascinated locals who don't celebrate Halloween and were intrigued by our costumes. Prince Harry and I spent at least an hour critiquing the looks of the men we saw and approaching those who met our approval. Met some interesting ones! Reeling thru the streets to Womb, the Urban Sage knows one of the doormen so we got in for half-price -- never thought I would feel lucky to pay *only* 20 bucks to get into a club, but there u have it -- spent most of the night snogging a cute Japanese guy and dancing to some of the best live house I've ever heard! Things grew jagged toward dawn, as they do, panicked calls between Jude the Obscure, who somehow showed up, and the Urban Sage; being shushed by doormen as I clattered thru the streets looking for them, met up, huddled on a curb for half an hour or so, began the long journey home.
Tonight I cook soup for a group dinner we're making in support of the all the Nova employees who have no money and are hungry.
Shibuya Crossing: one of the most vibrant places I have ever stood.
Usually when I'm in Shibuya it is late, late in the evening and I'm not really conscious of my surroundings, but a couple of days ago I found myself there in the afternoon on banking business. There is a hum in this place that widens your eyes a little, crystallizes the details, urges you to catalogue and retain every image: men with expensive hairstyles and glittering, urban eyes; women dressed better than most models shuffling through the masses talking curtly on tiny phones; thousands of people rushing across the 5-way intersection as trains trundle overhead; plus the million scents in the air, the million restaurants: curry and sushi and soba and hamburger and Chinese, Thai, Greek, Italian. The armies of salarymen in identical thousand-dollar suits smoking miserably on curbsides, the small dogs cool-eyed in designer carriers, the neon and concrete and overtop of it all the never-ending scream of advertisements from dozens of massive television screens mounted on the sides of skyscrapers.
The beauty of Japanese people can be intense. Last month, cross-legged on a vast leather couch in Free Factor with the Transport Analyst (dude, if you're reading this blog -- which you ought to be -- that's my pseudonym for you -- oblique I know) and being unable to speak, so caught up with the visual stimuli provided by a couple sitting at a nearby table calmly drinking coffee. "How long do you think it took him to get dressed?" whispered the Transport Analyst, awed. Hours and hours we supposed. Both of them. Hair and fingernail and shoe and accessory all excruciating mad-genius paintings.
A bit of an altercation with a station master last night -- back story -- James and I went to have beers with Rob on account of his being fucked due to the Nova situation, and Rob shows us something like 60 OUNCES of rye in a large, intimidating bottle, which in due course of time made its way into our tumblers of beer, flash forward, Rob defies the stereotype his character has created and behaves like a gentleman, walks the reeling, tripping Joy to the station, the ticket machine eats Joy's money and gives neither change nor ticket, Joy flounders and falls down, Rob confronts the station master, who doesn't believe the story for an instant, which in retrospect is fair though it WAS TRUE, Rob screams at the guy in Japanese that he is a "fucking asshole," I wind up with a ticket but no change, fall asleep on the train, get off at the wrong station, am out of cigarettes, angst my way around the tracks waiting for the next Express train, am helped by an innocent Japanese stranger who ensures I get off at Noborito. Made it to work somehow.
Met up with some Eastside Girls last night to try on dresses. K's bridesmaid's dress is beautiful and flatters her cleavage; my retro black number, on reserve for the Intimidating Function next month, and borrowed from Steph, is met with approval. Beers, crafts, discussions, cigarettes, house music, contemplation. Hearting Leonard Cohen lately.
Finally, I have my phone back! Five days with the Loan Phone was grueling ..... There was chaos today when I went to the au shop to pick it up; lots of flurry and misunderstandings and laughter and the guy repeating "Sorry, sorry!" which is what Japanese people do and me responding with "Sorry, sorry! God!" which is what I do and stunned patrons and random conversation with the shop guy, who was so nervous he was sweating.
Anyway, the definite highlight of my Monday. Haven't done much of anything else. Worked. Paid bills. Ate rice and salmon and salad for dinner. Laundry. Gossiped with various people about Nova's seemingly imminent demise. Cleaned my room. Bought a pen and socks. Read the paper. Ugh! Although I guess slightly productive ......
UPDATE: Watched James nearly drunkenly crash his bike and had a beer with some regulars at the Antique n Junk, so I guess some unproductivity has been restored. ;)
What should I be for Halloween? Generally I never dress up, but there's this party we're meant to go to and cover is free if you're in costume, so I'm considering Communist Goth. Thoughts?
From an evening in Shimokitazawa:
"We wanted to catch the geese ..... And kidnap them." [Hasty editorial scribbles: he actually said 'kebab' not 'kidnap.']
"Feck!" (said by a beautiful Scottish girl I changed into Russian and began calling Katya.]
Last night I went to meet someone at a very cool club with a terrible, terrible name. This name is a word that ranks second only to that WORD I CAN'T SAY in my list of words that appall and horrify me and fill me with self-loathing on a very physical level. Ugh ugh, okay -- arty-farty. The club is called Arty-Farty. Ugh ugh ugh ---
On my way to the turnstile I realized I would have to ask directions, which is fine, but then it hit me that I would have to say this word to strangers. It was like the time when I was still eating meat, and loved the pork butt at the Market on Yates, only it was so difficult for me to say "200 grams of pork butt please" to the beautiful deli boys that I rarely ever did so ....
I approached the station master, an honest, elderly type anxious to practice his English.
ME: Um. Well. Like ... Do you know where ... uh ... uh .... Arty-Farty is?
HIM: Arty-what?
ME: Um. Um. ARTY-FARTY.
HIM: One more time?
ME: ARTY-FARTY. It's, um, a club.
HIM: [pulling out a map as a line queues behind us] Do you know the address?
ME: No. It's, um, in the gay district.
HIM: The what district?
ME: The gay district.
HIM: Gay?
ME: Gay.
HIM: What is ...?
ME: Like, God, like, you know, two men, like, together, um --
HIM: Ah! GAY district! [points to the map with flourish] Look around here. Is busy place.
Off I go. There is a torrential downpour. My hair, which I actually cared to put product in, is soon completely soaked and dripping rabidly down my bar clothes. I look terrible! I find my way to the spot on the map and inquire within a convenience store. More of the same: "What?" "ARTY-FARTY." "Say again?" "God, God, ARTY-FARTY."
They give me directions to a police box. I burst in, dripping water everywhere. The young cop behind the counter takes out entire atlases and we peruse them together. I write ARTY-FARTY in large letters on an official police memo pad. He makes a call to his superiors. "She says it's called ARTY-FARTY." An older cop ambles in, opens telephone books, scratches his head.
At another convenience store. I scan the rows of men reading manga in the magazine aisle and approach the one with the most carefully styled hair. Bull's eye!
"Okay, yeah, okay, of course I know it, but directions, they are very difficult, there is zig-zag, okay, okay, I take you there."
Off we rush through the TYPHOON.
HIM: Are you gay?
ME: No.
HIM: I am.
ME: I know, that's why I asked you where Arty-Farty is.
HIM: [delighted] How did you know?
ME: Um, you're really well-groomed.
HIM: Well-groomed?
ME: Yeah, like, you have nice hair and your sideburns are really fashionable --
HIM: [a little disappointed] It's not because of my sun tan?
It turns out he's opening a new bar in Shinjuku next month, and he invited me to the grand opening.
ME: You're sure it's okay if I come?
HIM: Yeah, yeah, any day is okay, except Saturday, Saturday is men only.
!!
But damn and blast, I've forgotten the name of the place! Starts with an A.
(written last night at Kimbo's birthday party; line breaks added this morning at work.)
Noborito, the cat's eye
of yr neon
is staring at me again
I'm obsessed with u
and yr ponderous
bullshit nights
When I light cigarettes the smell of it sometimes reminds me of the scent in the air in the early 1980s, when my mum would plug in the iron prior to pressing a bunch of shirts: that damp, steamy, fabricated smell, the uselessness and ill-health of the action. No one should smoke; no one should iron. And yet there is this compulsion to do so. We want routine and stability. We want something to look forward to. Ether rising above our fingertips is necessary. And yet we brood, feel trapped in our compulsion.
Red ink on the back of a receipt dated July 13 2007 -- in my hand -- which I have no recollection writing --
Look at him and his Tropicanna. Judging us.
A kind of fascinating weekend ....
The best part about Friday night was that Mike, Nyree, and I finally launched our writing group! We met in the smoky, vast decadence of the Chat Noir Cafe. Wrote postcard stories. Drank coffee. A Japanese friend of Nyree's arrived to do his Accounting homework and applaud warmly after any of us read anything aloud. Most promising line I wrote: And Eric wanted to cry: insist that he was not a religious metaphor but a man. All hail the tragic writers of Noborito!
Saturday evening saw Nyree, myself, and a handful of incredibly good-looking gay men stumbling through Shinjuku to a gay club: the bartenders making out with each other in between pouring shots; no door on the men's washroom, etc. Most clubs in Tokyo require you to stay inside after paying cover -- they won't let you back in when you leave to prevent outside drinking-- but this place clearly had no such scruples and every hour we would walk down the block to Family Mart, buy canned chu-hi, drink it in the street, and return to the club for more dancing. A different fascinating person was met on every single one of these excursions .... I recall, faintly, some sort of trouble at Family Mart round about 3 a.m. -- the details are hazy, but there were about six of us and we met about six strangers and became instant friends near the refrigerated beer and then embroiled in a lengthy, aisles-obstructing group hug and shouting and dropping things and scattering change and suddenly there were police, and I believe after that we started buying drinks at the club. Britney Spears's new single Gimme More was played and, in a wild departure from character, I danced to it. Danced with all the heart-wrenchingly beautiful gay men and then with one who wasn't gay, which shocked me, and then he said, shocked also, "You mean you're not a lesbian? The red-head isn't your girlfriend?" A kind of terrible incident with me and a large painful wreath trying to be Bacchus, the photographic evidence having since been destroyed. Starry eyed drag queens with long sparkling wigs they let me run my fingers through and a stealthy bottle of vodka and billowing smoke machines and a crack in the screen of my mobile and the not-gay one buying me drinks and music and neon and shout.
Awoke, a little startled, in a lavish apartment in Meguro. Had a cigarette on the balcony. Contemplated for a while -- it was sunny, which was both good and bad -- and concluded that it had been unkind to abandon Nyree at the club and that I should return to Noborito posthaste. Inside, a nice goodbye, almost stayed, but instead found myself walking past wholesome parks and athletic people and longing for a bottle of water.
In complete defiance of logic, the stripper on the motorcycle is my favourite part.
Scattering her change in the giant vibrant supermarkets of the night she stops and stares into the eyes of a beautiful cashier: WE HAVE KINSHIP, she wants to shout; WE COULD BE. Buying cigarettes in the rain. Esoteric mumblings, banging her handbag against a row of bikes, knocking them all down. The definition of fiction, or memory, or expectation, fades: there is only this pavement, this scuffed invisible path from home to convenie to station to bar to coffeehouse to bar again.
He sees her by the train station, watches her sit in the rain, crush a cigarette on the side of the bench, drink a can of gold-label Kirin.
"What are you doing here? Are you going somewhere?"
"I'm not going anywhere. The politics of transit elude me."
"Why are you sitting outside the station?"
"I was writing earlier. With some friends. In a coffeehouse, near here. But then, they stopped writing. They left. To eat! All three of them went somewhere to eat instead of to write. And I was so baffled, so caught off guard, that I went to the supermarket for beer and then came and sat down here."
"But you're not writing."
"I was. The rain came down and blurred the ink in my notebook so I had to put it back in my handbag."
"Come back to my place."
"But the politics of transit elude me."
"There's a roof. No rain."
"But there'd still be politics and everything's elusive, even roofs, and I can't stand the thought of a mechanical Friday, can't stand the thought of touching the screen at the ticket booth and putting coins into the slot and taking my ticket and walking through the turnstile and trudging up the concrete nightmare steps and stumbling into the carriage and not having a seat and standing there for 20 minutes as the stations glitter past the window and everybody stares at me and the conductor howls out destinations and I weep without knowing what I'm weeping for."
"Okay. It's okay. We'll stay here."
Yesterday a Japanese acquaintance learned that I sometimes rove drunkenly through Kabukicho looking for trouble. He gave me a stern look and informed me of the Jatou.
"The meaning in English is 'Snake Head'," he said. "Chinese criminals. Far worse than the Yakuza! Dressed the same, but far, far worse. They are bad boys."
Best of today's Onion headlines:
Thousands March On Washington For A Little Fresh Air, Exercise
Karate Lessons Give Child Self-Confidence To Quit Karate
I now have the world's most awesome t-shirt! It's green, with a black and white photo of a Sad Hot Girl in a Revealing Bikini and Cowboy Hat on the front, and then everything is PLASTERED IN BIBLE VERSES. Too cool! "Enter ye in by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many be they that enter thereby." I got Bill to shout it aloud in his BBC voice, which was truly one of the highlights of my 26th year.
Nyree cooked dinner on Saturday night, a wonderful noodle and shrimp thing. I chopped a cabbage in order to contribute. A large cabbage. Too much cabbage. Some of the cabbage fell onto the floor (I was drunk, unsteady, wary of my large knife) and the Landlady barged in, raged and gnashed her teeth and insisted we clean up properly. Truly, she fascinates me! On a train, rushing toward Shibuya and ruin. Some sort of rugby match on a large TV, a spilled gin and tonic, a wild parade of characters. A mess getting home, don't even know where to start: a renegade cabbie who took me IN THE WRONG DIRECTION for 30 minutes, me frantically trying to throw myself out of the cab cuz I was convinced he was kidnapping me, only he had locked the doors and I couldn't escape. Rushing through streets in a town whose name I didn't know, cars weaving past like demons, another cab, fleeing this one also; a third cab, I break down and call a friend -- the hour ungodly -- and scared the shit out of him I think, all ranting and quoting obscure poetry and asking how to say certain things in Japanese -- he rescued me anyway, finally back in sweet home Noborito, have the presence of mind to buy more beer, go home.
Caught up with Nepal last night, a good evening. At the end of it, drinking beer on the stone steps near Shinjuku Station gazing up at images of Holland projected onto a massive white screen as neon glittered at the periphery and we both, staring at the mountains, had sudden sharp homesick pain. Moody and at a loss on the way home, I stare out the train windows and try to think of absolutely nothing. Walking home Bjorn appears on his bike and I get on the back, we go to Cookie Bar and drink too much, discuss emotional detachment and the positive aspect of cultural isolation.
Today I read tarot for four different people.
I've determined to stop embarrassing Nyree at Family Mart. And to write a short story about it.
My friend Joe had a bit of a rough week -- on top of two or three other things, his company (we all know which one) is CRASHING AND BURNING INTO RUIN, and they didn't pay the rent on Joe's apartment, so the people who own the apartment came over and evicted him and his roommates. They refused to leave the premises. The owners left. In Joe's words:
"Then we got drunk at 1pm. Went to a karaoke place and got the cops called on us. I puked everywhere and then my roommate and i wrestled down a flight of stairs. ATM I have 2 fucked up knees, about 1 million bruises and lots of cuts and scratches on my body."
The greatest part about this anecdote is that Joe-san is usually so mild-mannered .....
Yesterday started poorly, me leaping into the train as the doors closed; doors close on my legs, there's a brief struggle, then the doors close again on my backpack and two disgusted salarymen have to help me pry the automatic doors open and wrestle the bag back in. I start shouting God, God! which no one ever does in Japan, particularly not on a silent train at 6:30 in the morning. God.
Was restless in the evening, went to the Antique n Junk alone, intending to write; made friends instead with an older Japanese guy who taught me loads of kanji and bought us beer. I got into the usual drunken psuedo-arguments with Masta, only to have an ancient, fashionably dressed masseuse defend him .... Kim was there working, it was her first day. Possibly she tried to have me tossed out? No, no. I tried to have her tossed out. Sweet times. :)
Today I'm going to Harajuku to buy cool shirts and there are plans in place for a Tokyo adventure in the evening.
Ragged, that's how I feel – Noborito pm with cans of Kirin beer – when I was a child my father called me his raggamuffin, his beautiful little raggamuffin, and I've since learned this term refers to a kind of gamin, or gypsy child, but back then I thought it meant ragged muffin and the imagined visuals were intense: my mother worked in a muffin shop for a time, in the days when indoor smoking was still legalized: a health freak, she would come home sadly coughing; on many occasions I would sit in the shop after school and cut a muffin in half only to see smoke literally rise over it cuz the baker chain-smoked in the kitchen. And somehow due to this nickname I was a part of all this, not a cause but a detail. How to cope with being so detailed?
And I wonder to what extent I still, aged 26 and no longer appalled by ash trays, I wish the men in my life to view me as a gamin, a homeless or blind girl in a Charlie Chaplin film. To admire me and be startled at my woebegone appearance.
Been thinking about life in the margins lately, about marginalization, how these words have always brought to mind for me not oppression or injustice but rather that space at the edges of books, the languagelessness, the lack of words. I think I would like to live in the margins more than I already do: fantasies about the margins of sky glimpsed from 14th floor department stores in Shinjuku, how I want to jump into that space and hover there, not die. Had a fantasy today about collapsing in an Italian restaurant and being rushed to the emergency room by an Intellectual Man I know and then I'm in a coma and then I die: my heart stops for 5 minutes, and then I'm back in the coma and this man sleeps beside me on my hospital bed and in the middle of the night when all the doctors have gone home I gasp and lurch upright, can't breathe, the man wakes up and says What, what, and I say, I have seen God, I have seen Heaven, and both of them are language, like that bit in the Bible at the beginning of The Gospel of John when he says In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God and the Word was with God – I saw it, I say, the universe is constructed on nothing but Words and here I thought it was always Love. Have I become a patriarch?
Complicated dreams lately, and smoking too much.
Try to build a personal philosophy or at least a mysticism. Influences? The great unruly literature of 20th Century North America. (Some of the despair and alcoholism of Bukowski and Carver, dull bottles of gin and whiskey smashed open on the sidewalk. Kerouac's restless wide-eyed simplistic complexity, his notebooks in front pockets and cigarettes in mouths and belief in Buddha, belief in cheese sandwiches, in dogs and cats. Atwood and her cruel, precise eye for stupid women, genius women, infidelity and sexual politics and the forlorn, or lonely, nature of metaphor. Lorrie Moore's tan trench coats and 2nd-person rhapsody; Salinger's jagged, unkind, peaceful pretentions; Burroughs and Cohen and Lau and Munro and Gaston and all the rest.) The structure of urban landscape: the homeless junkies alongside organic bistros. Incongruity (but make it more concrete dammit). Concrete? Okay, mysticize the following: Chinese noodles, alleyways, portable ash trays, the turnstiles at the train station, angels, raggemuffins, gypsies, red-heads, bags of peanuts, green ink scribbles on cigarette packets, Converse sneakers, mounds of wasabi. .... See, maybe none of these things MEAN anything to me. I feel I'm faking it. What makes me happy? Okay. But what makes me write? (Well, the scribbles on the cigarette packets do.)
Listening to Allen Ginsberg's recitation of "America," remixed by Tom Waits against a background of symphony. Over and over and over. Looking at my face in the mirror: every day, that space below the eyes looks more and more like my father.
This morning in Mizonokuchi, clutching my head and trying not to think, I get onto the train and as the doors shut behind me step gingerly over a nattily-dressed salaryman sprawled full-length on the floor near the courtesy seats. Five minutes go by: he comes to, leans up a little, then gives up and collapses. Five minutes later he staggers to his feet -- he has the most beautiful shoes I have ever seen, also an amazing pinstriped suit, somehow not creased -- and sneers at everybody. Collapses again. Pulls out his mobile, starts dialing, then stares into space. Why am I so shy? Why didn't I grill him for information, take notes? I wanted details on every single moment of his evening.
A potluck last night. I read tarot for at least 6 different people. Exhausted. Miki read my palm and it seems I'm destined to marry a European. That and have children who support me, emotionally, in my old age. Confronted S. about his jackassery two evening previous to find he had no recollection. Kept saying, "Well, hey, *I'm* European." Spoke with something like *three* Canadians, which was awesome, but caught sight of a jock wearing a UBC hoodie and panicked suddenly, realized that geography is far more complex than I had thought and memory, nostalgia or some kind of seventh of eighth sense, is rarely reliable. Wanted only to hold someone's hand in Harajuku. New favourite band is the Stone Roses. "I want to be adored," et al. So sad.
