New Sentimentality

Day 4 in Tokyo (August 28th)

On day 4, we went to Kensuke's college, Waseda University, so he could go to his orientation session. The whole thing took about an hour (maybe?) and afterwards we wandered around in the general direction of the Waseda station, where we caught a train to Harajuku.

Harajuku may have, at one point, been a ward full of young Japanese looking to score some high-fashion swag for less-than-reasonable prices. Now, it appears to be the number one destination for white girls in their mid-teens and their chaperone parents/bag carriers. There were 3 Claire's(es) within a quarter mile of each other. There were a few shops catering to people not from New York and LA, which Kensuke and his friend (who met us from Ikebukuro) scoured for a jacket. The one redeeming part of the Harajuku trip was our gang meeting up with my close friend Yuka, who was in town from Nagoya for a job interview. Around dark, we wandered over into Shibuya to see the lights, sounds, and Sukuramburu Kossaten (sp?) 5-way intersection, as well as the enormous LCD screen overlooking it. The name "Scramble Crosswalk" is fitting; the place turns into a sea of pedestrians when traffic stops. From there, we got on the Shibuya line and rode to Roppongi.

Roppongi sucks. If Harajuku is where spoiled white girls go to pursue their Gwen Stefani fantasies, Roppongi is where their parents go to drink them away. Coincidentally, Roppongi is the only place in Japan that I've been to so far where I didn't feel totally safe. I don't quite know how to describe it except to say that the place is just really sketchy. But! There is an oasis of cool, and it comes in the form of the bar where Kensuke works - "Los Cabos." It's got this Tex-Mex decor going on in the basement of a Mexican restaurant. We split a bunch of appetizers, ordered some beers, and kicked back to darts and a light doze. Eventually we headed out to Shinjuku station, where Kensuke's friend and Yuka parted ways with us. Kensuke and I caught another train to... I don't know where we went! But we met up with his girlfriend Reina, who has yet to lose her title of Japan's Cutest Girl to anyone I've met since. From wherever it was we were, we caught ANOTHER TRAIN OH GOD NO MORE TRAINS PLEASE to

Shimo-Kitazawa. The coolest ward in Tokyo! Tiny streets, no gaps between buildings, little shops and apartment buildings crammed into parking space-sized parcels of land. It had this really cool starving artist vibe going on. We walked for about 10 minutes until reaching a set of stairs under an overhang, which Reina said was our destination. It turned out to be a small nightclub hosting an all-night house music marathon. 3000Y got us entry and a drink ticket, which we all immediately traded in for an ice cold water, of course. Eh heh... Anyway, the next 8 hours were a blur of intense house music, half-audible conversations in Engrish and Japanese with guys who insisted my name was Mikey, and thick cigarette smoke. Most of the DJs that played in turn opted for a more industrial sound, but one guy (DJ Nougu? Wasureta.) had a really enjoyable style that incorporated a lot of piano and classical sounding samples. For those of you who know Konami's in-house musicians pretty well, imagine a less intense DJ Taka stretched out over 2 hours.

Dancing in Japan is nothing at all like the sweaty hip-humping of high school dances in the US. Everyone has their own little bubble of space, and it's rare for anyone else to enter it. Even Kensuke and Reina spent most of the night dancing apart. It's just not done! The actual dancing is pretty different, too. Instead of awkward crowds of dateless guys watching circles of girls mimic the thrusts of procreation, everybody faces the DJ and does whatever they want. (Without entering someone else's space, of course.) Most people kinda wave and flail their arms and step around. Well, that sounds fairly awkward, but it's actually way more enjoyable than anything I ever did in high school gyms or Albany dive bars. Getting lost in the music, surrendering your body to it, and not giving two shits about who's watching is a great feeling.

Around 6:30am, we picked up our arms and legs from the floor and headed out of town. On the way, we stopped at a little fast food place where you buy a meal ticket from a machine at the front and give it to the employee at the counter, which they trade you for whatever it is you ordered. After being in the basement all night, the well-lit restaurant's aromas of rice and beef and Hayao Miyazaki film-esque background music made us wonder if we'd jumped from one heaven to another. We finished breakfast and got on the series of trains that would take us back to Saitama. Kensuke's mom picked us up at the station around 9am, and returning home, we brought 21 waking hours to a close.

Tom, if you were to redesign heaven, it wouldn't be too different from Shimo-Kitazawa.