Have a Nice Time

Goodbye to private karaoke booths
Goodbye to toilets that clean your bum with 5 pressure settings and two temperature settings
Goodbye to Japanese dogs
Goodbye to Jimmy in Japan
Goodbye to old men that refused me in their bars
Goodbye to young people that bought me drinks
Goodbye to yakuza that punched me in the chest
Goodbye to studios with Y300 an hour guitars for rent
Goodbye cherry blossoms
Goodbye safe city
Goodbye to clean city
Goodbye to leg city, even in grip of coldest winter
Goodbye to obasans walking slow in front of me, drunken salarymen weaving in front of me, or girls with pigeon toes moving in 6 inch heels, while my legs itch to go
Goodbye to sitting on Shinjuku platform in the grey dawn waiting 1 hour for the first train home with all the other exhausted all nighters
Goodbye to my bicycle 1 month ago when I got a flat
Goodbye to being confused with my taller, Scottish, bigger nosed, darker hair friend Andy
Goodbye to bureaucracy that never bends, my favourite instance being a bank that required me to order a custom stamp with my name on it (2-3 days) go to the city office and have it registered, then use it at the bank to open an account.
Goodbye to waiting in Mitaka station 100s of hours
Goodbye to being the worst dressed person on every occasion
Goodbye to getting a little excited every time my train from the suburbs gets close to Shinjuku
Goodbye to being a king of Japanese in bars and restaurants:
"Nama biru kudasai"
"Nani kore-ga des ka?"
"Nai nai, daijobu"
and a pauper everywhere else
Goodbye to my money
Goodbye to feeling the truth that Tokyo is the world's richest city when I go to Yurakucho at night and walk by its buildings of wealth and power
Goodbye to one boss that gets off on fear and another that stopped responding to my urgent requests
Goodbye to travelling 45 minutes to get condoms that fit right
Goodbye to speaking loudly about someone's style while they're ear is right up to my mouth
GOodbye to being bored to tears in some lessons that I've perfected 2 terrific ways to hide a yawn and 2 ridiculous ones (scratching, pretending my throat itches, fake coughing, and dropping a pen then yawning under the table)
Goodbye to communists and anarchists good fighting in the most capitalist entrenched city I could imagine
Goodbye to Tokyo night view from a boat in the harbour
Goodbye to fresh sashimi at 8 am
Goodbye to all the people of Big World, I see you and hear you every day
Goodbye to me and Caitlin's voice sounding nice together
Goodbye to great students like Naoki: "Hey Naoki, how was your week?" "I found a partner for my life. Would you come to our wedding party?"
Goodbye to my kids classes
Goodbye to singing "At the Beach"
Goodbye to kids that clean up and who try and those who clean up and dont try
Goodbye to teaching
Goodbye to Zen meditation
Goodbye to falling asleep on the man who fell asleep beside me on the train
Goodbye to "Do you like Japanese girl?" "Why did you come to Japan?" "You can use chopsticks?"
Goodbye to little kids alone on the train
Goodbye to never swimming
Goodbye to Robaya and its employees that invited me into their homes
Goodbye to students I had crushes on
Goodbye to Tommy Lee Jones staring down at me from the billboards
Goodbye to being pakt like sardines
Goodbye to being a quick sketcher and understandable hand actioner
Goodbye to half Japanese girls, you do it to me every time
Goodbye Tokyo, I hated you and loved you, give or take

Ja ne, mata ne,
Da-ni-e-ru

It's Official

I'm leaving Japan October 1st for India then Paris then New York City, and then home come November. In the light of leaving, Tokyo has become the greatest, sweetest, exciting, shining place and 5 more weeks doesnt feel like enough for a last romp with this gigantic ol' gal.

Burning Hands

In June, Andy, Caitlin and myself were barred from entering what in a previous post I called the best bar in Tokyo by a jingoistic owner. Luckily for us the owner was so bigoted that we ended up in Hiro, a blues bar where we talked about our love of '50s and '60s rock n roll and soul stuff, and BAM! Blazing Cranes were born (although possible names included Norio's Orioles, and Tender Loving Cranes). With the irrepressible Leo Chen, we've been booking studios from Tachikawa to Tachikawa and writing and recording these songs found here:

http://www.myspace.com/blazingcranes

More are a coming.

La Dolce Vita

Like 1920s aristocrats,

Andy, Jamie, and myself took a boat last Thursday night for Niijima, an island about 160 km south of Tokyo.














There were these things and you bet your ass there were acoustic guitars plunking to the sweet progressions of he and he for all the surfers, snorkelers, fishers and other tattooed pleasure seekers on that island (try and keep it a secret by the way).

It's Fun to Rap on Voice Recognition Software

Ventura hear the DNA to a sell narcotics U.S. aid me an apparent to me and Lorenzo Roman of bans all of the attitude was that for john R Reid goalies outside one if there's any outside is ask you will stall on any mother thought that if you fall to scoff of CBT, told itself I tell me you're young made on the warpath to one of the rest is gonna be a bloodbath of cops dive in La La dry gas on the set

Nine yen for
Who can n-
Ame the original rap.

Whole World 21

Its could be easy to generalize about Tokyo into these very reductive terms, to assume a monoculture pervading every twist down the narrow streets. It could be especially easy to do this as an English conversation teacher for stable, career-minded middle to upper class people, who generally fall into these patterns:

-Engineer
-Office Lady
-Salaryman
-Housewife
-University student working hard to become one of the above or a flight attendant (if they're women)

And who generally discuss these hobbies (in order):
-Working Over Time (and not in the cool BTO way, but in the worn out way*)
-Shopping
-watching DVDs
-listening to J-Pop
-sitting in cafes
-not dancing

Meaning when a student expresses something different, I hop all over it like an excited rabbit, talking out of my ass just to keep it going: "You love breakdancing? Me too!! Tell me lots of things about it."

Toss in the overbearing patriarchy, and when I'm at work I sometimes think of Tokyo as a technologically advanced version of the American 1950s or like Gotham City in Batman Returns.

(Based on the research I've been doing, its own 1950s was a lot wilder and stranger, right after the war with civil society developing rapidly to clamour for control: mass union strikes and passionate pacifist organizations fighting the elites who had been bowed back from their war loss.)

Anyway, what saves me from western myopic high handedness is living in Big World 21, a guest house that leads out onto an old execution ground from the Edo period.

Usually, after jet lag has blown away, the teachers my company sends here seek out new, cleaner, more private places to live. I stayed, and its here that has given me my most present, banal, ridiculous, and terrific experiences. Because my area is far from renowned and is west of west Tokyo's great working class neighbourhood (Koenji), and even Tokyo's hidden gem (Kichijoji), the people that come here are the weirdos, the poor, the unemployed, the underworked, the artistic and the expats. Its a fucked up mix and its great.

Here are some of the people in shorthand:

SATORU - late 20s, he ran away from his gang life in his hometown and became a fantastic chef here in Tokyo. He's about to follow his girlfriend Ruth to England.

MOTOI - drugs and graffiti and raves and one cooking job to another. He's the boyfriend of

KANAKO - 18 years old, she lives here far from her parents for mysterious reasons. For sometime after she arrived she was getting red faced drunk every night and was treated like an object by a lot of older guys here because she's really pretty. She cooks post-war meals like cabbage and lentil soup.

SHIN CHAN - mid 20s Dancing and DJing. When a group of us went to a dance club, he disappeared after an hour. We got worried when the club closed at 5am and I had to peek over every closed toilet stall to make sure he wasnt passed out in one. We finally got him on the phone and he was in the ecstatic at some party way down the street.

YUICHIRO - Awful guy in leather pants. He's a sleaze and boyfriend to

SOYOUNG - from South Korea, she's amazing and in my videos and I had a massive crush on her for months, but I've given up when I saw how much planning she put into Yuichiro's birthday. She's studying computer science and hates it.

KIYOTAKA - finally left. He works for a patent office, and was one of the oldest here, mid 30s. He described Big World as Neverland. He also goes to sex parties. Super great in his own way.

ARLENE - from the Phillipines and working various jobs. She stays up till 7 every morning, and came with me to translate at the doctor's when i cut the shit out of my hand. But she had to put on makeup first.

AKIKO - really nice and learning photography, but the closest thing to evil I've met - she works for the Stars & Stripes news outlet in Tokyo.

VIVIAN - in a metal band that's signed to a label in the UK and works in a warehouse. I forget her real name and am too embarrassed to ask again, but her stage name is Vivian Slaughter. When I asked her how her show went last week, she showed me the awful bruises on her arm and said, "Great!"

EIJI - one of those people that when I see them in a play or movie you think, 'I hate when writers put in someone so unrealistic. How can I believe a person like this exists?' He exists. He tried for years to get a job as a security guard for the U.S. army base, and when he finally passed the test, he had to quit because of a hip problem. He bought a red sports car and doesnt have a license. He takes pictures of foreign women who live in the Big World. And he makes terrible terrible jokes and gives advice on how to pick up women. "Ah, I see you are eating pineapple. Japanese people say, "pine". Do you like pine? Hahaha. If you see Phillipine girl, give her pineapple. Phillipine girl loves pineapple. They love it. Hahaha."

SHINEI – a wonderful cook, a man too polite, an artist working hard to become a children's book maker. He is also working as an english teacher, and studies idioms everyday. Because of this, his english sounds too perfect and polished, like a robot trying to pass off for human:
"Hey Shinei, the police took your bike away cause you parked it illegally? That sucks!"
"Well as you know, that is the way the cookie crumbles."
...but it costs like 5000Yen to get it back though right?"
"Yes, this will certainly burn a hole in my pocket and leave me without a penny to my name."

AI & YU - living in the same room. Its only funny if you pronounce their names right.

KIM PAN - a Korean baker who was in the special forces for the Korean army. He does 200 pushups in one sitting. I'm up to 48 now. We act like Marx brothers around each other because any other language but slapstick is too difficult between us.

MAYUMI – works in a hostess bar complimenting salarymen as she sits on their laps.

A 32 year old and his 16 year old girlfriend, nameless to me, started dating when he stopped a man from molesting her on the train.

SUSHIL – A Hindu who managed to abstain from drinking for about 2 days of moving here from India.

And many more!




*The most extreme case I've heard of...one of my students, Atsushi told me that he had to work 20 hours straight on a weekend. I asked him how he can possibly do that...coffee? "No no coffee...lots of Coke. And I dont eat." "You dont eat for 20 hours isnt that insane?" "It's very difficult."

Sleeping and Dreaming

Okay, so I'm back from Hokkaido where the G8 summit was carrying on, and I joined many activists and professors and media to shout and scream and carry on as much as we 3000 could against those 21 000 police.

I travelled there with Jon

from Haneda airport in Tokyo where we fell asleep

to Sapporo where we awoke in mid air.


We drank delicious Sapporo Classics

and tried to get oriented around the city centres where activists would congregate. We had bought a tent and sleeping bags but ended up sleeping at a media centre

and showering here.

We stayed for the biggest protest in Sapporo





where police smashed the window of a soundtrack blasting Bjork's "declare independence" for the fierce dancing crowd, and pulled out the driver and wrestled away the DJ for no fucking reason but to kill our spirits.

Later the police protected a soundtruck blasting right wing nationalist hate, and when I was filming them up close for the G8Media Network, I was privy to the exceptional fear of standing in front of a 100 police who suddenly all push down their face masks in one sudden action, and appear ready to charge. So I stepped back for this photo.

Other times the police were very funny, standing guard with intimidating faces all over the city, and then being exceptionally polite and helpful when I go up to ask them where the public bath is (3 days of that sink was too much).


Cleaned up, Jon and I and some new anarchist friends of ours hit the town for a punk club

where I promptly fell asleep amidst the din. In the morning light we headed back for the media centre where we were told there was going to be a police raid with fear of deportation.

Jon needing to come back to Japan some day for his lovely girlfriend Ai, and me to stay to keep working decided to wander back to the great park in the centre of town and sleep till

our bus for Hakodate








The next day we took a train for Onuma Quasi National Park, where we hiked and swam and Jon left and I slept in the dark worried about bears, hiding my food in a tree which was promptly eaten by squirrels.


And then Tokyo again.