Today’s soundtrack:
This was designed to make your spine in your back wind,
Grand Puba nice set-up for you every time.
Today at 10:02am: taking myself to a movie


I’m trying to love life, not hate it. You want to love it.

So listen, Life, I know this is going to sound kind of forward, but I...um....

I...

...feel very strongly about you.

But if it doesn’t work out, maybe we can just be friends.

I saw The Day After Tomorrow today. By tomorrow I will have seen it yesterday.

I guess if they make a sequel they’ll call it The Day After the Day After Tomorrow, or maybe just Two Days Hence.

They should make a follow-up where the weather gets really fucked up and call it Two Weeks From This Coming Thursday.

Whatever. Not feeling so good about things and I know, there’s nothing worse than a mopey blogger. I myself read those blogs where people just bitch and it’s like, I can’t close the window fast enough. They should have a feature where you push the button and the window explodes on-screen. BLAM.

That’s what I feel like right now. I’m not even sure why I’m writing. Close this window. BLAM.

Wait, I forgot to talk about the movie. Actors these days are so bland. The people in this movie have all the character of stick figures. I think Jake Gyllenhall is actually made out of wood. Like if he needed surgery, doctors would cut him open and find pine. But the effects are pretty good.

I don’t know if it’s the same if you live outside New York, but I love seeing the city on film, especially when it’s shot with the kind of sweeping cinematography required for a disaster flick. Big ideas, broad strokes, cheap thrills.

Movies used to be sharp and incisive, but these days they are blunt instruments. The studios pick them up and slam you over the head with them. They mow down entire crowds with them.

Maybe if I loved life I wouldn’t need to go to the movies. “This is the story of a writer who learned to love life.” Oh, that’s fucking rich. My blog is gonna turn into fucking Bridges of Madison County. I’ll post nothing but pictures of Meryl Streep crying.

I need to fix something. Wait that’s not true, some things can’t be fixed. I need to just wait. I would wait until the day after tomorrow, but that happened this morning.

I’m going to put headphones on and pump The Impressions.

Staying up all night worked; I slept through most of the flight back to New York.

Note to self: If I ever become rich, I must assemble a team of engineers to develop the technology for airplanes to take off and land while the seats are still fucking reclined. What’s the big deal? I think stewardesses just like having their little power trips.

Back in my apartment I discovered she’d e-mailed me a text message from her phone. Said she’d miss me. Attached was a photo she’d snapped with her cell:

There’s a profound time difference between here and Japan.

I can’t tell if this photo is a sunrise, or a sunset.

Hurray for symbolism.

Congratulations on making it to the final installment of the Tokyo trip!
I have a cheesy little video for you at the bottom of this entry.

If you’re going to meet a beautiful girl in a foreign city, it would be nice to meet her early into the trip so you’ve got some time to hang. But my luck, consistent as ever, dictates I meet her the night before my last one in town.

Well, it’s better than if we hadn’t met at all, right?

The whole point of traveling is to do shit you can’t do back home. Which is why, this whole time in Tokyo, I’ve been steady eating Japanese McDonald’s.

Before you dismiss me as a stupid American you must hear my twisted logic. I can already get good Japanese food back home; shit, when Yuka or Tommy Chops is cooking I can get good-ass homecooked Japanese food in the comfort of my own building.

What I can’t get back in New York is a McTeriyaki Burger. Or the Makkudonarudo wasabi mayonnaise bacon lettuce burger. Or Chicken McNuggets with a wasabi dipping sauce. Also, Japanese McDonald’s is way lighter than the American version, you don’t get that sick feeling afterwards, and it’s the cheapest meal in town.

I just thought of something--the “Mc” in “Chicken McNuggets” implies the chicken has some kind of Irish lineage. In Japan, shouldn’t they call it “Chicken Nugget-san?” Perhaps I’ll dash off a letter to marketing.

In Tokyo I see a lot of young single people eating by themselves. Japan is a lonely place to live.

Living in Japan was hard, psychologically. It was hard not being able to meaingfully communicate with anyone on a regular basis. After three months of living here I spent very little time on the phone but started buying gin with the groceries. After six months I was getting weird and writing a lot.

After nine months something in my psych profile switched categories, permanently. I’m not sure which column it was in, but I know the psychological clothes I used to wear don’t fit right anymore, and I can’t believe I ever thought they looked good on me.

“What are you doing tonight?” asks K/O. I’m in the hotel, talking to her on her cell. I still can’t believe I have this girl’s number. At any moment I’m going to wake up back in New York and hear raindrops hitting the roof, then I’ll groan and try to get back to sleep and re-insert myself in the middle of the same dream, but I’ll fuck it up and wind up in Iraq or the Bronx instead.

“No plans,” I say. I look over at L.A. Ad Man, and he’s good-to-go too. So now we’ve got dinner plans.

K/O picks a place in Shibuya. It starts to rain.

In the hotel room I laugh out loud at some of the pictures L.A. Ad Man took. He found this candy with a picture of two guys with their arms around each other; one guy is touching the other’s nipple and two old women are crying in the background. Apparently this candy makes you gay if you have conservative parents.

It’s weird, I normally travel alone. But this trip I was hanging out with L.A. and the NYC crew, and I actually had a really good time.

I never would have found half these restaurants or done half the stuff I’d done if I was alone. L.A. had done research and came to town with a stack of Tokyo-on-the-web printouts, so if it wasn’t for him I’da never gone on that boat ride to Odaiba.

Marz introduced me to Kay, who introduced me to K/O, who is one of those girls I pass on the street in a parallel universe and try to think of something to say while she gets in a waiting taxi and disappears.

I’m waiting outside when K/O calls to say she’s running fifteen minutes late for dinner. I would be disappointed (or back in New York, dismissive) but in my mind I can clearly see the parallel universe taxi receding in the distance, and suddenly fifteen minutes doesn’t seem like such a long time to wait.

With my transparent umbrella, I stand in the drizzle in front of a silver tower in Shibuya while sedate mobs of Japanese hipsters flow past in orderly fashion. I do not want to go back home tomorrow. I do not want to take the train to Narita and climb aboard my Boeing-constructed 777 repatriation device.

Maybe I should get myself arrested. Maybe Japanese jail is better than a New York apartment. And I’m pretty sure the food is free, though something tells me they ain’t serving sushi.

“Hi, sorry I’m late,” says K/O, strolling up with her umbrella deployed. I can practically hear a soundtrack as she approaches. (Jackie Gleason, “Days of Wine and Roses.”)

L.A. and Kenji join us a couple cigarettes later, and we’re off for the restaurant.

The restaurant, Gonpachi, is on top of a building on top of a hill, and the elevator ride is fucking amazing; it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever experienced. It’s glass and when you get in, the overhead light is bright. As the elevator ascends, the light gradually gets dimmer, so by the time you reach the top it’s pitch-black.

But the higher you go, the more the city lights of Tokyo reveal themselves, so it gets darker inside but brighter outside. Fucking beautiful. Didn’t hurt that I was riding it up with K/O.

This fucking rocks, man. It’s about 8am in New York right now. I’d ordinarily be dragging my feet on the way to the office while my coffee gets cold and taxis swerve around me. Instead I’m taking elevators to high floors in Tokyo with a beautiful girl. And I’m about to eat food I know will be delicious.

After dinner Kenji and L.A. break out--whether or not there was any engineering involved, I won’t say--and now it’s down to me and K/O. She takes me to a dark Goth place called Christon Café. It’s a cavernous underground church-themed café that serves booze.

The whole place is done up like a cross between a dungeon, a church and the Addams Family mansion, all hewn-stone with assloads of candles and religious iconography. There are a couple Japanese goths hanging out. It’s a weird place to drink sangria and saké, but this is what I love about Tokyo. (You know they got some joint here that’s jail-themed? I hear each table gets locked in a cell during the meal. I bet no one bats an eye.)

Our black-clad waitress flits about in the background, and in terms of skin tone it looks like she’s been dead for several weeks. K/O and I shoot the shit for a couple hours. Getting to know each other. Making each other laugh. Making each other feel better.

After the drinks are drained we call for the check.

I’m tired but ain’t planning on sleeping tonight, since I want to conk out for the flight tomorrow.

For my last night in Tokyo, I figure I’ve got three choices: I can see if K/O feels like hanging out all night, I can try to track Chie down and hang, or, the dark option, I can try to meet up with my ex. I guess the decision would be telling.


I made my choice.

Early Monday morning the sun is coming up as she and I walk through the deserted streets. We stayed up all night and now she’s got to get back home, before a certain someone wakes up. And me, I’ve got a plane to catch and a life to get back to. I’ve got the things I'm supposed to be doing. I’ve got a sure thing back in New York, and that sure thing is...rent.

But a movie kiss by a waiting taxi makes me wonder if I have a reason to come back. Or if this is just a fleeting travel incident, a lucky but temporary alignment of stars, a pilot the networks will never pick up on.

She gets into the taxi. I reach for the door to close it, but it’s Tokyo; the doors close automatically. The cab starts moving and I watch it recede into the distance.

A moment later the taxi’s gone, and a few hours later, so is my plane. And yeah, I’m on it. Sitting all the way in the back, which I’m grateful for.

‘Cause I don’t want to hear that CLACK when they shut the cabin door. That crisp and definitive sound that, quite literally, signifies closure and the end of something.

In Tokyo I shot some low-res video with the Canon. Strung the clips together in iMovie, added some saccharine J-pop and made a cheesy little mini-movie. You can download it here, it’s a “.mov” file:

Tokyo Movie

It’s about 14MB and there’s sound.

Sorry about the shaky shots. I don’t exactly have a steady hand; my tripod is Coffee.

anime burner in Shibuya

Saturday rolls around, and everyone takes off except me and L.A. Ad Man. The crew’s departure signals the end of massively coordinated group activities, and the two of us take solo treks through Tokyo.

I wind up at the observation deck of some building in Shinjuku, marveling at how much Tokyo resembles the Death Star. It’s all dense, sprawling, low-rise concrete, stretching to the horizon like the grandest plans a Dark Lord of the Sith could muster.

Actually “dense” isn’t the right word, “packed” is closer. You take one look at Tokyo from on-high and it becomes obvious why Godzilla came here first; there’s simply so much to destroy. If moneygrip landed in, say, San Francisco, he would’ve gotten bored in about fifteen minutes. He’d still be trampling cable cars and all, but you’d be able to tell his heart wasn’t really in it.

This part of the Death Star has really changed.
The rents have gone up and all the families are getting pushed out.

In an internet café I’m sucking down an ice coffee and checking e-mail. Force of habit, both of those things.

My ex- has sent me a terse e-mail. Maybe she wants to meet up, maybe she’s just being polite; I can’t tell. I send a reply but I ain’t holding my breath.

In the evening Chie invites me to another party, this one in Harajuku. When Chie speaks to me in Japanese, she doesn’t slow it down at all, so sometimes I can only catch bits and pieces. The parts of the code I managed to break this time around were “party,” “friend’s birthday,” “fashion” and “cool” (kakoi).

Party people in the ie.

I show up at the appointed hour to find the party just gaining traction. It’s a gathering of internationals, but a quick recon of the rapidly filling space confirms my worst fears: These are fashion-industry people. Blandly good-looking in the manner of a CG rendering and these motherjumpers won’t talk to you unless you’re attractive, exceedingly well-dressed or socially relevant.

I’m none of these things, and most of the time I’m dressed like I’m going to paint someone’s garage. So I stand there nursing a water and wishing I was invisible. If I concentrate hard enough maybe light rays will bend around my molecules. This water is delicious.

Chie spots me and pulls me over to a pretty girl for an introduction. The girl--I think her name was Yoko--speaks English fluently, but I feel that familiar sense of dread; she’s clearly in the fashion biz.

Sure enough, a couple pointed questions later I can see Yoko psychologically slipping my résumé into the paper shredder. So now my name is

R  a i  n   N  o    e  ,   w  r i t  e r  /  d  e s  i g  n   e  r.

I eventually decide I should be doing something else, since I can feel alienated at a party back in New York. A phone call and a short train ride later I’m getting out of the Kabuki-cho exit at Shinjuku Station, to re-up with L.A. Ad Man and his friend, Kenji, a local. Both of them were eventually supposed to meet me at the party but I figure I’ll save them the trouble.

Shinjuku. This is why you can’t take Japanese people
to see Times Square in New York. ‘Cause they see it
and they’re like “Um...yeah...it’s very nice.”

Unless you have GPS, meeting up with people in Tokyo is difficult; the addresses out here all look like locker combinations and half of the streets are unnamed. Also, buildings are numbered not in the order they appear, but in the order in which they were built, if you can believe that.

So Kenji meets me on the main street, to bring me back to the bar where he and L.A. Ad Man are busy putting the Sapporo family’s children through college.

Kabuki-cho is glitzy, ritzy and seedy, and street hawkers are soliciting us to come check out their titty bars and live sex shows (I think). A few blocks later we’re off the beaten path, away from the neon. We round a corner, and boom, we’ve been transported back in time about thirty years.

We’re in this narrow alleyway with doors on either side, every few feet. The doors open into fucking tiny storefront bars, some of them no wider than a Volkswagen. It almost looks like a set for a school play where they’re using a backdrop to simply represent the idea of bars.

Kenji pulls open a random door, and the stairs behind it are so steep it takes me a moment to register it’s not a wall. I follow him up the steps and at the top we enter a bar that is, no lie, smaller than some elevators I’ve been in. You could fit maybe seven people in here max, assuming they were good friends or conjoined twins.

And yet it is in fact a real bar, with a miniscule counter and a weary but grinning bartender standing behind it. Sitting against the wall (which is basically the same thing as sitting in the middle of the room) is L.A. Ad Man, nursing a beer.

Kenji and I squeeze around the lone table, and I’m still getting used to the dimensions of the place. This bar is so tiny that me, L.A., Kenji and the bartender could take turns slapping each other, and we’d each be able to slap all three of the others in one swing, like the Three Stooges.

There’s a practice called keepu in Japan whereby regulars are allowed to bring their own booze into a place like this, and leave it here against the wall for when they come back. They write their names on the bottle.

L.A. tells me he’s researched this particular bar on the internet, and that it’s the haunt of certain international film directors. Which explains why, behind Kenji, I see a bottle that says “Sofia Coppola” on it. And another that says “Anthony Minghella.” To my immediate left, “Zhang Yimou.” Holy shit.

A couple hours after the microbar we find ourselves in a microclub, in Minami-Aoyama, with Kay and a friend of hers. I love these places. Little basement joints with intimate dance floors, usually uncrowded enough to actually cut the rug, unlike the clubs I’ve been to here.

Back when I lived here my favorite place was a little joint called Fai, and I’m thrilled to see it’s still here, right across the street from where we’re at.

The beats are pretty good, Chie shows up, and everyone starts boozing.

Chie.

It’s not every night I get to talk to a knockout, but here I am shooting the shit with Kay’s friend, who is a) ridiculously beautiful, like model-beautiful, and b) an R&B singer. K/O also speaks dead-perfect English because she went to one of Tokyo’s international schools.

Kenji and Kay are this way too, to the point where I had trouble distinguishing where they were raised. No trace of an accent. In fact, given my dirty-ass New York English, Kenji speaks the language better than I do, and this is the only one I’ve got.

I later find out K/O was, in fact, a model, but gave it up to pursue her singing career. She was working as a jazz singer at a club in Roppongi when someone discovered her and signed her to a label. She put out an R&B CD.

Me? I, er...design little bags. And write, um, these pages on the internet. Anyways.

Afterwards the group is good and drunk--you simply cannot believe how many L.A. Ad Man can put away (“I’m designed for this,” he explains)--and we all go for late-night chow at an udon joint Kenji knows.

It’s my first chance to see K/O under direct light, and I find the dim club lighting didn’t lie--she’s a stunner. It’s my good luck to sit directly across from her at the table.

I’ve met (ex)models before, but this one is different; I can actually talk to her, and she’s funny. Over the course of some verbal sparring with L.A. Ad Man she assigns him the nickname “Sunshine,” which, if it sticks, is going to bar him and I from hanging out on a regular basis back in the ‘States.

Now I like L.A. Ad Man, particularly because he’s one of those guys that can use an old-fashioned word like “dagnabbit” in a sentence and pull it off, but there is no way in hell, given my name, that I'm hanging out with someone named “Sunshine.”

Picture it: Two Korean guys, one tall, one short, named “Sunshine” and “Rain” like the Rob Base track. I think not.

At the end of the night, in the taxi I’m half-worried L.A. Ad Man will throw up, just based on the amount of booze he’s consumed, but he appears totally fine.

I watch the nighttime traffic slip past and reflect on K/O’s parting words. “I know tomorrow’s your last day here, so give me a call if you’re bored,” she’d said. I figure she’s drunk, or simply being polite.

At the corner of Meiji-Dori and Don’t Walk.

Buildings admiring their own reflection.

Better than TV, two.

lorring...lorring...lorring on a liver

To get from my apartment in Manhattan to the spot where I’m standing in the middle of Tokyo on Day Five, I took a car, a subway, a monorail, a plane and a train. Now I’m rounding out the vehicular experience by stepping onto a boat.

I’m good with trains, but my experience with boats is limited to occasional jaunts on the Staten Island Ferry, which carries weary commuters home when it’s not busy slamming into piers and killing them.

When the crew (Kay, Marz, Miguel, E.J., Anthony, L.A. Ad Man, myself) first bought tickets for the Sumida River Line, I got excited ‘cause I saw this poster

and thought that was the boat we’d be riding. But that poster is just hype for the next-generation boat. The one we got on resembled...a flatter version of the Staten Island ferry. And they served beer. Japan is different.

Nondescript passenger trawler that it is, it’s still technically a pleasure craft, designed to seat a maximum of picture-snapping tourists in reclined comfort. (I like that term, “pleasure craft.” Tough to use in a sentence though.)

Like many American corporations, the boat had a glass ceiling. Through it we can occasionally spot the sun, which is up today but has been mostly hanging out behind clouds, IM’ing the moon or whatever it does when it’s not working.

After a leisurely cruise down the river, the boat stopped at Hamarikyu Gardens. We were some of the only people to get off the boat.

I thought they were dropping us off on this island and we’d just be fucked, like they would leave us here and it would turn into Battle Royale. Then someone showed me a map and explained the garden wasn’t an island at all. Pssh...like it matters.

I wanted to stay on the cruise but Miguel, who’s apparently a nature-head, was itching to see something park-like. Me, I usually have a good time only when there’s large amounts of concrete around me. I can’t quite say the charms of nature are totally lost on me, but they’re definitely misplaced.

In the park we saw this creature, it’s either a duck or a goose:

‘Scuse me.

Pardon me.

Comin’ through.

Earlier in the day we’d been to Asakusa, checking out the temple. Well, I didn’t check it out so much as I just snapped flicks, watched people and grew mesmerized by some ponytails. I’m not much for tourist attractions.

Then we came to this park, and the next planned stop was the Sega Joypolis--a massive arcade, or “Game Center” on Odaiba.

Temple, park, arcade.

Culture, nature, danger.

After our little park tour, during which I learned many useful and interesting facts and gained an insight into the beauty of nature (I’m reading this off a cue-card), we went back to the dock and jumped on another boat, this one bound for our final destination, Odaiba.

The second boat was cooool! You could stand up on the roof. The sun wasn’t too hot and the breeze was perfect. In fact the sun was probably typing stuff like :)

Gaijin-tachi.

After five minutes I called Chiharu, to see if she’d be up for tonight’s party. Then the boat began to drift aimlessly, and it even pulled a couple U-turns before coming to a dead halt--in the middle of the river. I pictured a slow motion fight going on in the cockpit, two Japanese captains choking each other half-heartedly while the steering wheel spun slowly left and right.

Someone eventually won the fight, and the boat resumed course for Odaiba.

Chicks who ride motorcycles are cool, and Chie’s probably the coolest. She’s a friend of mine from Tokyo who works as a motorcycle designer, and she does illustration and photography as well. She’s super-talented and a total social hub. Walk into one end of a party with her, and you’ll walk out the other end with a stack of business cards and more phone numbers than you know what to do with.

Did you know phone numbers in Japan are eight digits? That’s a lot of goddamn people that you need eight digits to cover them all.

Back in New York, I always wished I could strike a special deal with the phone company so I could have a one-digit phone number. It would be so cool. People would be like “What’s your number?” and I’d be like, all nonchalant, “Four.”

Anyways I haven’t seen Chie in a couple years, and we re-upped for the first time Friday night. She and I both look exactly the same, I think.

(CPF photo courtesy Anthony)

Chie brought me and the crew to a party in Aoyama. Elevators open on the eighth floor and you find yourself in this tidy gallery space filled with Tokyo hipsters, Japanese chatter and experimental music.

The place was called “Camel Pleasure Factory,” and I soon found out why; it was sponsored by Camel Cigarettes. There were free cigarettes and lighters everywhere. Lately I’m having mixed feelings about smoking--I really do need to quit--but I couldn’t help but avail myself of the free product. Smokes are eight bucks a pack back in 212.

Chie immediately began introducing me to people--creatives, business types, guys, chicks, Japanese-British, Japanese-Australian, Japanese-Japanese--and I did my best to keep the names straight. She even wingmanned for Miguel! Chie’s the coolest.

While the people were all chill, the music was something else. It was “experimental,” meaning it sounded like someone throwing an A.M. radio down a staircase. One of the DJs played twenty minutes of excruciating and apparently intentional static samples. This guy clearly makes the CDs they sell at the gift shop in Hell. And while I didn’t buy any of his music, I definitely paid for it. Culture, nature, torture.

Out on the balcony I knocked out a cigarette and looked out on darkened Tokyo. Although I had another two days here, most of the crew would be leaving tomorrow.

After the party the group of us was in the alleyway downstairs, ready to scare up some chow. Chie planned to meet us mid-meal; she had to jet off to meet a friend. Her motorcycle was parked out front, a superbike.

Still wearing heels, she pulled her helmet on, closed the visor and kickstarted her Suzuki. Every guy in attendance turned to stare.

“Jya ne,” she waved, and rocketed off.

The hottest whip in town.

Transportation I can afford.

In Japan anyone can drive the subway
as long as they ask politely enough.
Here I am flooring this bitch.

Better than TV.

jinja

mo’ jinja

jinja ale

It’s like the George Washington Bridge without the Camaros.

You need to drive over this bridge listening to Jimmy Cliff singing “Many Rivers To Cross.”

Late-night chowing: Me, Marz, an obscured jeffstaple.
(Photo courtesy Anthony)

Chie.

Minami-Aoyama.

Tsukiji Fish Market is enormous, filled with rows and rows of stalls, crates and boxes. If cops or gangsters or Bugs Bunny was chasing you you’d totally run into here and hide in the hundreds of aisles of seafood. And cobble some weapons together out of frozen fish.

Surprisingly, the smell is actually not that bad, maybe because most of the fish is flash-frozen. I mean I’ve smelled people worse than this on the New York subway. Chinatown smells worse than this in the summer.

Three-thirty in the morning and it’s bustling. There’s beeping forklifts, people running around carrying boxes, dudes slicing fish up with power saws.

Then there are the fishmobiles zipping throughout. All the fishmongers drive around in these cool little vehicles that look like R2-D2 with a trailer hitch. Like if R2-D2 came in a pickup-truck version or something. There’s basically this cylindrical “droid” part at the front with a tiny little flatbed attached to the droid’s base. The driver stands on the flatbed and works a steering wheel on top of the droid’s head.

R2-Fish2

The mongers drive ‘em fast too, all swerving in and out, whipping these things around like they got an awesome deal on the insurance. Seriously I’m surprised we didn’t see any accidents. Or maybe the R2 units are programmed for collision avoidance.

With an hour ‘til the auction starts, we stop at an all-night sushi restaurant. We end up eating affordable sushi so fresh I’ve simply ruined sushi for me for the rest of my life; I’ll never get it this good again.

(SushiZanmai Photo courtesy L.A. Ad Man)

Stomachs full, the crew--Anthony, Chiharu, Jeff, L.A. Ad Man, Marz, Miguel, and myself--wander through Tsukiji snapping photos.

Champthony

When walking through dense Shibuya we’re forced to form a relatively tight unit to avoid getting separated. But here in the fish market there’s plenty of wiggle room, so we fan out like commandos.

Maybe it’s a New York thing, but when moving around in a dispersed group we all subconsciously keep each other in our lines of sight, or at least I do. Every few minutes I just kind of glance around to see who’s got point and who’s bringing up the rear.

So I’m surprised when I eventually notice, after the auctions, that L.A. Ad Man is missing. (Insert dramatic music here)

I figure if we wait a few minutes he’ll eventually stick his head out from behind some crates, or crawl out of one of the tuna carcasses. “Sorry, guys,” he’d say. “Just wanted to see if I could fit.”

In case I didn’t mention it, the tuna are fucking huge. Word up if you were swimming in the ocean and one of these came up to you you’d be all “OHH SHIT! GAAAHHHHH, MOTHERFUCKER! GAAAHHHHH! GET THE BOAT! GET THE BOAT! GAAHHHHHH!”

I could easily fit in one of these tuna. In fact if I ever do move back to Japan and I happen to die there, my last wish will be that I am buried in a tuna. But I want it open-casket, so my face would have to be where they cut the hole out for the gills. I’ll be dead and have this really solemn expression on my face but it’ll be surrounded by this huge fish. And people will say “He looks so peaceful...” then six pallbearers will carry my tuna to the hole and lower it in with a net.

L.A. Ad Man never shows, and since I’m the only one who knows him, now I have to make an executive decision. Do I move the unit, or deploy scouts to look for him? The fish market is huge, so we could be waiting here all day, and I have to think of the platoon first.

The sun is well up by now and everyone’s ready to return, so we move. I figure L.A. Guy is a city boy and has traveled extensively, so he should be able to find the subway and eventually re-up with us at the hotel. I feel kinda bad since it’s his first day here, but you have to have faith in your troops.

We’re several blocks away by the subway station when one of us stops to take a picture of something. Suddenly...L.A. Ad Man strolls up, like he’d been shadowing us the whole time. I debate greeting him by pointing the “peace” sign at my own eyeballs and making a series of weird hand gestures like they do in military movies. Then we all get on the train.

Back at the hotel I grab ninety minutes of shuteye, but I’m up again at 9:30am because the free breakfast ends at ten. I might be tired, but I’ll be needing those eggs and sausage and croissants, and saving on a meal in Tokyo is like making good stock picks back home.

I take the day “off,” so to speak--taking a vacation from my vacation--and spend it traipsing around Shibuya by myself, snapping photos and intentionally getting myself lost.

In the distance I spy a high-up, gargantuan terrace filled with people having coffee. It’s a big white building, looking like some hospital from the future. It looks nice and I’m guessing the view from there will be good. But after I make my way to the building the guy at the door won’t let me in, because they’re having, get this, a fucking Amway convention inside. Only Amway people are allowed up to the café.

To commemorate the sense of frustration I took a picture of the huge mirrored sphere out front.

I wonder how they clean this bitch.

Later I treat myself to a long-awaited purchase. Back in November the foam covers started to rip on my headphones. I told myself I could either drop twenty in New York and get the same shits, or drop thirty in Tokyo and get some next-generation shit. So I waited the six months. By March my headphones looked like they’d been dragged behind a moving car for two weeks but still I waited.

So today I go to Tokyu Hands Department Store and buy a cool-looking pair of folding headphones. Probably won’t have these in the ‘States for at least a year.

Unfortunately, after buying them I discover a) the bass isn’t very good and b) the plastic part bites into the top of my gigantic ears, making them painful to wear for more than ten minutes.

Oh well. Fits in perfectly with my theory that anticipation is nearly always wrong; nothing is ever as good, or as bad, as you think it’s going to be. Studies show that humans are terrible predictors of happiness and unhappiness.

I don’t know why I just wrote “humans,” it’s not like apes or marsupials are any better at this shit.

In the evening the crew re-ups in Shibuya and we meet up with Kay, a bilingual Tokyo local (Tok-yocal) and friend of Marz’ girlfriend. Kay takes us to this nice-ass top-of-a-building izakaya where we get a private room (so, so civilized) and drink high-quality sake--so much better than the shit in New York--and smoke between courses. God I’ve missed this country.

(Izakaya photo courtesy Anthony)

Tomorrow is our “culture” day, meaning instead of taking photos of shopping districts and fish we’ll be taking photos of the temple in Asakusa. I’m looking forward to it, though I try to remind myself it probably won’t be as good as I think. And by the same logic, falling into an open manhole and breaking my leg might actually be an okay experience.

As much uni as you want.

One fish, two fish, red fish, dead fish.

Scene from the popular fish horror movie Silence of the Mackerels

Flash-frozen fish. The way they catch the fish is
by telling them they’re going to be cryogenically
suspended and resuscitated during an era when fish
rule the earth. (A tunagarchy.)

Clowning around with Chiharu afterwards on the subway.

Unlike in the New York subways, I think somebody
actually cleans these handles. Can you imagine?

baiku, Shibuya ni

A scene from my childhood.

The (overexposed) view from the hotel.

Waking up in a Japanese hotel is wayyyy better than waking up in my bed in New York. Even if it is 4:30 in the Japanese morning.

Today is the last day I’ll be spending in a single; from tonight I’ll be sharing a room with someone. It would be nice if that someone was a hot woman, but instead it’s L.A. Ad Guy, who’s flying in in the afternoon. We’re splitting a double.

Around 5am in Tokyo they turn the trains on, and shortly thereafter I hop the Yamanote-sen to Shinjuku (Tokyo’s Grand Central Station) to shoot some flicks of rush hour.

I know it seems crazy to be on vacation and get up early to go to a train station and take pictures of other people’s workday commutes, but it’s my goddamn vacation and I’ll spend it how I like.

Sometimes I wish I was a sociologist or an anthropologist. Other times I wish I was a badly-behaved, megalomaniacal and filthy stinking rich CEO. Neither fantasy ever makes it past the morning coffee.

This is what I wrote in my journal after first moving here in 1998:

...At Shinjuku station during rush hour, a train pulls in every 90 seconds, each train ten cars long, with 300 people per car. So each one is carrying around 3,000 passengers. It looks like a tidal wave made out of Japanese people has crashed over the station. The atmosphere is hurried, but somehow--I’ll never understand this as a New Yorker--very calm.

The trains run precisely on time. An 8:47 train leaves at 8:47. Occasionally, someone commits suicide at Shinjuku by jumping in front of a train. Cleaning up the body takes eight minutes, which sets the trains back. As a deterrent, the train company bills the family for the inconvenience.

If the train has been delayed for some reason, the train company hands out little white notes to everyone at the exit turnstiles. You turn the notes in when you get to the office; they are a printed notice apologetically explaining to your superiors why you were late....

Not much has changed, Shinjuku station is jammed like a nightclub. Inside the station proper I couldn’t get any really good shots of the density, because to shoot a crowd properly you need a long shot, and there’s no room to take a long shot when the bodies are pressed around you like fucking packing peanuts. I think if everyone in this building were to fart at the same time the whole building would go up in flames. You’d be thirty blocks away and you’d just hear this BOOOOOMMMM.

I did, however, manage to squeeze a couple off on the platform. (Photographs, not farts.)

Back inside the station I tried raising the camera above my head to shoot a portion of the crowd, figuring a narrow shot would be better than no shot at all, but they came out looking like crap. My camera’s field of focus is like a virgin’s vagina, frustratingly small.

I must’ve pulled the trigger twenty or thirty times, but for all that trouble I only got a couple decent shots. The rest were simply crap-tastic.

After rush hour(s) was over I raced back to the hotel to get my free breakfast. There are two restaurants servicing the hotel, Beck’s Coffee Shop and China Kei-Lin. The previous morning I’d gone to Beck’s but they had awful coffee and sandwiches that tasted like they were made in North Korea.

So on this morning I went to China Kei-Lin, even though the last thing I want to eat in Japan is Chinese food (I live near Chinatown back in NYC). But, surprise! They had a buffet-style western breakfast! It looked like this:

I vowed to take a picture before each and every seemingly delicious meal I’d eat in Japan. Then I started eating the eggs and forgot I’d ever made that vow, so that’s the first, last and only food picture I took on the entire trip. (Sorry, Cia. You food pornographer you.)

Around noon I got in touch with the rest of the crew at the other hotel and took them to see Harajuku (which is more mainstream hip, as opposed to Daikanyama’s hip hip). Me, Anthony, Marz, Miguel and E.J. walked up and down tree-lined Omotesando (Tokyo’s Champs-Elysees, they say). Again I’m not much for shopping but I futzed around with the camera some and stared at lots of ponytails while the fellas spread our weak American dollars around.

In Harajuku I was crushed, devastated, to see one of my favorite cafés had gone the way of all things. Café Aux Bacchanales, a replica Parisian sidewalk café--accurate right down to the bathroom fixtures and crappy service--was gone, gone, gone. Years ago I spent many a Sunday here at one of the outside tables filling notebooks, ashtrays and my stomach (not with all the same things, of course).

I brought friends here. I brought dates here. I brought friends’ dates here. I brought dates’ friends here. Oh, you get the picture. But what I don’t get is my café au lait. ‘Cause the goddamn place is closed like Alcatraz.

Afterwards we headed into Aoyama, which is upscale hip. I feel like every neighborhood in Tokyo is hip. Here’s the breakdown, from what I can remember:


Shinjuku - Sleazy hip
Shibuya - In-your-face hip, or maybe hip hop hip
Daikanyama - Hip hip (hooray)
Akihabara - microchip hip
Harajuku - tree-lined hip
Ginza - Glitzy and totally out-of-reach hip
Aoyama - Upscale and just-out-of-reach hip


Anyways Aoyama is where you can see Rei Kawakubo’s boutique and Idee and Rem Koolhaas’ wet dream project, the Prada store.

Ordinarily the only reason I’d go into Prada would be if I’d been shot in the torso and needed immediate assistance (but not if I was going to die--I don’t want to die in Prada), but in this case the architecture was interesting so we stepped inside to have a look.

It’s nice inside. Alienatingly nice. They don’t let you take pictures though.

Chiharu (the interpreter/project coordinator) called my cell. “Hey, you guys wanna go to Tsukiji tonight?”

Tsukiji’s the huge fish market in Tokyo, and if you go at like four in the morning you can see the fish auctions and eat the freshest sushi you will ever have in your life. It’s famous and everyone I know who’s lived in Japan has gone there, except me. I could never bring myself to get up at that hour, but this time I really wanted to. The fellas were down so we all agreed to meet up with Chiharu at their hotel around 2am.

In the evening L.A. Ad Man rolled into town and we linked up. Then the fellas talked me into seeing a movie called “Casshern.” I’m wary of seeing movies in Japan ‘cause they cost almost twenty dollars. But the fellas swore it was some cutting-edge anime-plus-C.G.-plus-live-action joint that I just had to see, so I agreed.

Well, this was without a doubt the worst movie and the biggest waste of two hours I’d ever spent in my entire life, even counting the time in college when I stared at a wall for two hours because I felt bad about blowing it with this girl. Anyways I ended up walking out early (at the two hour mark, the movie was still going) and afterwards the fellas offered to pitch in for my ticket.

“Ah, don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s not like you guys wrote and directed it.” Then I went home to get some shuteye before the Tsukiji trip.

The crew of designers is assembled in front of the hotel by 10am, and there are three black taxis waiting to whisk us to the gallery. See, this is how I want to live.

Despite having a common destination, the taxis all take different routes, reach the gallery at different times and the fares are different. Even stranger, each cab approaches the gallery from a different direction. The roads are confusing in Tokyo.

“The interview questions are gonna be either elementary-school-style or straight-up weird,” Jeff warns us, prepping us for the typical Japanese magazine Q&A. “Shit like ‘What’s your favorite color?’ or ‘What’s your concept for life?’”

Me, my favorite color is Rugburn and my concept for life is, Get some fun in before they put your body in the ground. I’m typically more profane than profound, but I have twenty minutes to come up with something that sounds better.

Some of the other designers I already know, others I’m meeting for the first time. Some of the ones I do know are “Midnight Friends,” people I’ve only seen at bars in parties in downtown Manhattan between the hours of 12am-4am. This is the first time I’m seeing ‘em under sunlight.

Here’s the list of designers:

My name is only at the top because it is, like me, the shortest.

Jeffstaple’s the creative director, the guy who set this whole project up on the NYC side.

Marz is one half of the crimefighting, beer-drinking duo that is Marz and Handsome Dan.

Cia’s the girl behind GenerationRice, though she couldn’t make it out for the trip.

Miguel is one half of the design team Infornographic. His design partner E.J. is also along for the ride.

(E.J. has his own shit.)

Out of the whole group, Anthony’s the guy I’ve known longest and he’s in town for the ride, just hanging out. Mac Wiz Anthony knows more about Apples than Steve Jobs.

Some of the crew, from left to right: Roger, Dennis, Malcolm,
Marz, Anthony, Miguel’s back, Chiharu, the left side of Shinji.
Not pictured: Jennifer, Jeffstaple, E.J., me.

I’ve heard that if you take any group of people it will invariably split into factions, and true to the theory I find myself mostly hanging out with Anthony, Marz, Miguel and E.J.

The good news is one of my bag designs was made, in two variants. The bad news is they’re all sold-out. The reason I say this is bad news is because I don’t think they’re sold-out due to overwhelming popularity; I think they made like, twelve of them before shit-canning it in favor of next year’s line.

The only surviving copies of my bags are three samples of each variant. The samples are given to me, though I’m told I will have to pay for them later. In the design world food chain, I’m something above a cockroach but below a ferret.

I try one of the bags on, and it “fits” well. I look inside for the tag that’s got Komichi’s name on it, but it’s nowhere to be found. Also, some of the bag details are different from the original design. I guess at some point, some guy named Hiro or Taki went over my designs with an eraser and a budget sheet.

The interviews go okay. Chiharu, the bilingual project coordinator, serves as interpreter, giving me an extra barrier in case I say something stupid.

During a break in the afternoon, the lot of us take a stroll through Daikanyama, which is something like NoLita or what SoHo used to be back in New York. I’m not much of a shopper but I did see this interesting looking demon-dog:

Around 7p the event begins, and people start filling up Space Force Gallery. The crowd is hip but well-heeled Japanese, ranging in age from their twenties to their forties. Cigarettes are lit and a cloud of smoke develops in the top half of the room. I’m a smoker and even I had a tough time with the air in there.

Komichi doesn’t show for the gallery event. In preparation for this eventuality I walked around Tokyo this morning wearing headphones and listening to Brenda Lee’s “Break It To Me Gently.” She’s great for when you need something a notch below Patsy Cline.

All of our drawings were hanging on the wall. Of the people who looked at my design drawings, these are some of the faces they made:

You’ll forgive me for re-enacting the faces myself, but I couldn’t very well take pictures of them, now could I. COULD I.

After the event I’m back at the hotel. “Is there someplace I can get on the internet?” I ask the countergirl, who speaks limited English. She directs me to a nearby internet café called Shibuya Underpass Society, located underneath a train bridge.

At the café I’m checking e-mail and sitting next to a girl I failed to look closely at when I sat. After a few moments her cell phone rings, and she begins speaking in English. “What’s up, babe,” she says into her phone. I look over to see a blonde Caucasian girl.

“I’ve got good news,” she continues. “Darla’s coming in on Thursday, and guess what! They’re sending a limo and they’re going to put her up at the Four Seasons. So she said she’ll send the limo to come get us and we can all crash there.

“Also I booked something for Thursday,” she says. “It looks like I’m gonna make about $2,000, which is good because I’m way behind on my rent.” She laughs a Los Angeles laugh.

She’s either a hooker or a model. She’s not really good-looking by American standards, although she is blonde and does have enormous, pendulous breasts.

I’m behind on my rent too, but two-thousand dollars is more than I’ve made on this entire project, including the flight and hotel. Plus the five designs I cranked out took me a little more than a Thursday.

Well, it’s not a competition, right? ‘Cause if it is, I’m losing.

Enormous, pendulous breasts.

You always need a reason to come back. To a town you left, I mean. We all leave for a reason, right?

I left Tokyo in 1999 ostensibly because my contract was up. I said goodbye to a crappy job, a great girlfriend and a potential future wildly different than the one waiting for me back in Manhattan.

I’m not really sure why I left. I guess because it was in the script and I no longer had the energy to improv.

Now I’m back with a reason, and that reason is work. Ostensibly. A gallery showing in Tokyo’s Naka-Meguro and a string of magazine interviews. It would take no more than a day but I decided to stay for eight.

After clearing customs at Narita, I take the escalator downstairs, where the Narita Express is waiting to whip me into Shinjuku. It’s funny how familiar it all seems; I still know where everything is.

He’s white, so I figure I’ll try English. “You know what time this gets to Shinjuku by?”

“I think an hour and ten minutes,” he says.

On the train I strike up a conversation with the older white guy sitting next to me. He’s an interpreter, been living here since the eighties, dead fluent in both languages. He’s also something of a dork. Not that I have anything against dorks; indeed the largest difference between he and I is that he appears well-compensated for what he does.

As to why he’s moved here, I can only guess. Perhaps it’s love of the culture, although it’s no secret that American dorks do well in Japan with the ladies. Well...most of the time.

Since we’re both fairly familiar with the Tokyo transit system, we shit-shoot about the best way to get to Sangenjaya, where I’ll be staying, in a relatively inexpensive rented flat. As long as I can make it there before 6pm, which is when the desk closes.

After we discuss the necessary transfers and I do some painful American math in my head, I can see I’ve miscalculated; there’s no way I’m making Sangenjaya by six. Translator Man gets off the train at the Tokyo station and we exchange trite well-wishes without exchanging names. I ride ‘til Shibuya.

At Shibuya I step off the train towing my carry-on, unsure of where I’ll be sleeping tonight. The crowds are typical Tokyo, meaning it’s more dense than Times Square at New Year’s. Except here no one’s trying to pick your pocket; your yen goes unmolested.

Reflexively I look for the “Hachiko” exit to the station, which leads out into one of Tokyo’s busiest intersections, but then I spot a sign that wasn’t there three years ago when I last came back: It says “New South Exit.” No one seems to head for it, so I do.

A few uncrowded escalators later I find myself at the New South Exit, opposite two glass doors that say “Hotel Mets Shibuya.” Imagine that, a hotel right in the station.

Studying the name of the hotel, which has nothing to do with baseball, I remember this is the hotel I’m supposed to meet my friend L.A. Ad Man at in three days.

I approach the doors and they slide to the side, silently. No one has said hello to me but the motion sensors seem more than pleased to make my acquaintance.

Two elevator rides and some good luck later, I’m unpacking in a single on the sixth floor. It’s about 6:30pm.

First order of business is to link up with the rest of my unit. I’m here as part of a group gallery show, so there are another eight designers, plus the firm’s principal, Jeffstaple, all crashing together at a hotel ten minutes from here. I call the hotel, no dice; everyone’s out. I call Jeff’s Japanese cell, no dice; I think the Japanese female recording is telling me the number’s been disconnected.

So I step out into Shibuya to get my own cell reconnected. In Japan if you know what you’re doing you can get a cheap cell phone for about ten bucks, and you can get it hooked up at any convenience store in a matter of minutes. I’d bought mine in ’99 and it still seemed more high-tech than anything I could get in the ‘States.

Shibuya’s the same as it ever was. Swarming crowds of teens and twentysomethings, weird fashions, blaring Japanese announcements, ambient J-pop, more neon than Vegas. Shibuya Crossing makes Blade Runner look like Poughkeepsie. (Nighttime photo of Shibuya Crossing/Hachiko Exit on L.A. Ad Man’s page.)

After reactivating my mobile at a Lawson’s I hop the subway to Naka-Meguro, surprised my pathetic Japanese is still good enough to ask the train guy how to get there. I get the usual strange stares when I first ask if the guy can speak English. (Imagine a white guy in America coming up to you in the street and asking you, in Japanese, if you can speak Japanese.)

In Naka-Meguro is a gallery called “Space Force,” where tomorrow’s show will be at. I figure the rest of the group will be hanging out there.

I’m wrong, of course. Space Force is empty save for a few Tokyo hipsters painting the walls white, probably in preparation for the show.

Unable to reach anyone, I head back to the hotel and review the plans that were e-mailed to me. Tomorrow morning at 9:30am the group is meeting at their hotel. We’re to arrive at the gallery by 10am, then the magazine interviews start.

In the hotel room I sit alone and laugh myself silly at some Japanese TV shows. They have the best fucking variety shows in the world. For tonight’s episode they have a bunch of comedians who have to reenact scenes from famous Samurai movies--specifically, they have to act out the parts of all the footsoldiers getting killed in the background by skilled swordsmen. I can’t describe to you why it’s funny, but it’s the first time I’ve laughed ‘til water came out of my eyes in a long time. Soon I’m asleep.

Jetlag is the best alarm clock, although there’s no snooze button or little buttons with arrows that let you adjust the time. My eyes pop open at 4:30am, and I find myself pulling my shoes on before I know what I’m doing.

Outside the hotel, I’m surprised to see the sun is already up; in Japan, even the sun gets up earlier.

Shibuya is dead at 4:45 in the morning. The only times I’ve seen it like this was when I’d stumbled out of a club dead drunk with late ‘90s hip hop or house still ringing in my ears. Back then I had a camera that recorded pictures on something called film, which cost money. This time I had a Canon SD-10 so I took an assload of pictures.

Lexington Avenue, after the Asia Society reading.

Manhattan, 1:30am. Not wearing a respirator was a bad idea; after putting the third coat of paint on the floor, I got dizzy, as if I’d been poisoned. The smell of chemicals was so strong I wondered how anyone could do this for a living.

With the apartment now uninhabitable, I grabbed my suitcase and headed downstairs. Irene offered to let me crash her place in Queens, and she was coming to pick me up in her little Honda.

In the morning an airplane would take me away from all this and to Japan, where I’d once lived, when everything was different. Only five years ago but I felt like everything was different.

Believe it or not, I wasn’t looking forward to going to Tokyo at all. To attend a gallery event of which I was a part and to be interviewed by Japanese magazines suddenly felt, not so interesting. Lately I’ve become like everyone else, spoiled by cell phones and e-mail into making decisions at the last possible moment; to follow-through on a schedule I’d planned months earlier seemed too...mature for me.

Irene’s apartment is super-comfortable, she’s quite the homemaker. Plus she’s got color sense; the place looks like it was designed by Wong Kar-Wai. In her kitchen she whipped up some dumplings while we caught up over cigarettes.

Around 5:30am I finally lay down in her spare bedroom, which until recently had been inhabited by a male roommate. The comforter and sheets still smelled like him. Too much like him, in fact; I couldn’t sleep. The smell of a strange woman’s perfume or shampoo is easy to fall asleep with, but the strong odor of a guy who apparently took his showers in the mornings was too much for me to nod off to.

After trying for five, I cursed and pulled my shoes on. Flight wasn’t until 11:40am, but I could get to the airport early. This’d give me a good opportunity to see what it was like getting to JFK by subway.

Ate breakfast at the 24-hour Dunkin’ Donuts on Broadway, in Elmhurst. Me and this Dunkin’ Donuts have a little history together. I used to date a girl who lived a few blocks off. She was a real piece of work, a bona fide head case, and I’d come here at three in the morning after she’d either kicked me out or I found her constant nagging unbearable.

As dawn broke over Queens I stood outside with my coffee, and it suddenly occurred to me this wasn’t the only institution on Broadway I had some history with. Not three blocks away was Elmhurst Hospital, where I was born. In thirty-two years I’d gone three blocks.

It’s always weird for me to see the building I was born in. It’s the one building I never went into, but I came out of.

The subway ride to JFK was uneventful. You take the E to Sutphin Boulevard and transfer to the new Air Train, a pilotless, elevated monorail. There’s not a lot of people up at that hour so the trains were good and empty.

“Sumimasen,” (“Excuse me,”) says the white girl on the airplane, squishing past me to get into the seat next to me. It’s already happening. Every time I go to Asia, people think I’m Japanese. Mom and Pop have strong Korean features but there is something decidedly Japanese (or perhaps adopted) about my face. I’m the only one in my family who gets this.

As the plane readies for takeoff, me and the white girl strike up a conversation. Turns out she’s a quarter Japanese and was raised in Japan. College student studying in DC.

“How about you, where do you go to school?” she says, in flawless English.

“Me? Oh, I’m a little...older,” I say.

She ventures a guess. “You’re what, twenty-two, twenty-three?”

“Give or take ten years,” I say.

The girl has a hard time believing my age, and after studying my face has an even harder time believing I’m not Japanese.

Well, I’d better get used to this for my trip. In a world where people judge by appearances, I’m not what I seem at all, and nowhere is this more true than in Japan.

I ask the stewardess to awaken me for the meals, then I inflate my blow-up travel horseshoe-pillow and start to conk out.

Eyes closed, I take a deep breath. I can’t smell College Girl’s perfume, but I can’t smell any male body odor either, so it’s all good.

Dawn breaks over Queens.

This is what the E looks like at 6:32am on a Saturday.
It’s also what No Fun looks like.

The view from the Sky Train.
Really looks like you’re going someplace, yeah?

The Sky Train renders me magically light-absorbent.
I think this picture would be good if the shape of my head was the logo for the Sky Train.

John F. Kerry--excuse me, Kennedy--International Airport.

Today’s soundtrack: Hit the bill, ring the bell, never spill a sip
Today at 8:02pm: Checking out the second half of the A.S. gig (it was killer)


Well, I’m off for Tokyo. If that sounds dashing or glamorous, you should know that I had coffee for breakfast and Subway for dinner, for like the third night in a row. And the worst part was...I really enjoyed it. My upwardly mobile parents would probably be disappointed to see how their son’s palate has “evolved” now that I’m in my thirties. It’s just economics, Ma.

Will come back with lots of photos for you all. Last time I was in Tokyo I took some really crappy flicks, I don’t know why but I find it an eminently unphotographable city. Though I’m game to try again. So like I said I’ll come back with lots of photos, but be prepared in case they (capital S) Suck.

As per my usual travel policy I’m posting my “happy” picture here, in case something happens to me and this is the last post I ever get to leave. I actually have this silly, paranoid feeling a certain dictator will have me kidnapped while I’m overseas.

So, please note! I fully plan on coming back. If you don’t hear from me in a week it’s not because I’ve joined a monastery (though I’ve already got the haircut), it’s because something’s gone awry. Anyone with any friends at the State Department, please note that I will pay handsomely for my own rescue. And by “handsomely” I mean I’ll pay you in tortured poems I scratched out while languishing in a North Korean labor camp.

Hmmm...what rhymes with “Gulag?”

Hold me thrill me, kiss me, kill me.
Or send me to Jasper, Canada for your reading amusement.

Today’s soundtrack: To find a job, is like a haystack needle
Today at 8:02pm: nervous pacing

I can make your dreams come true. (Assuming your dreams are to read about a short Korean guy with bad skin hanging out in the Canadian Rockies.)

I am soooooo glad the reading is over. The pressure’s off. For the last three days or so it’s been killing me. The worst was last night, because I went to bed without knowing exactly what I’d read on stage, and I just cobbled some bits and pieces together this afternoon.

I hate to admit this but I’m better in the clutch. I’d much rather be one of those people who can plan well in advance and finish a piece two weeks before having to read it, but I suck at that. I just have to wait and wait and things don’t come together until literally hours before I have to deliver them.

It usually works but it’s hell on my nerves--you only have to bomb once or twice (and I’ve bombed more than that) to have that fear climb on top of your shoulders and stay there like a heroin monkey.

I gotta lighten up. (Or “Tighten Up,” by Archie Bell & The Drells.)

I was nervous before the show, and got even more nervous after I arrived because I found out they were putting me on dead last, to close the show. And you can’t end it on a lukewarm note. But as the night wore on I got too tired to be constantly nervous so it just came in manageable waves. There were seventeen acts tonight so it took quite a while.

One of the women who got up there was named Cobi Narita, she’s this clear-eyed woman of 78 who was so beautifully soft-spoken and placid it really struck me. She runs a jazz joint on the west side. I hate the west side of Manhattan but I’m definitely going to go check this place out. She produced New York’s first “Salute to Women in Jazz,” google it if you want more info.

SuChin Pak got up there and read her ex-boyfriend’s drunken e-mails. I have to say they were pretty goddamn funny, though I was totally wincing as she read them.

Sara Tanaka read a story she’d written about her dual life, which was pretty goddamn fascinating. She lived in Rhode Island but was commuting to New York for auditions and working at a hospital in Boston. She’s gonna be a doctor! Anyways she talked about how she’d be taking the train to New York after having just woken up, and she’d be applying makeup to suit whatever audition she had that day, so she’d go into the train looking like a sleepy college student but come out looking like a ready-to-roll actress.

I like the idea of leading dual or triple lives. Very appealing. I’d lead four or five if I had the means and wits to pull it off.

During the intermission I went out to take a cigarette break. There was this Town Car sitting by the curb waiting for someone.

SuChin Pak came out and walked past me. I said goodbye to her but I think she didn’t hear me. Anyways she got in the car and it took off. Must be a nice life.

Back inside, getting ready. The worst is the three minutes before you’re going to go on, because they lead you to this area behind the rear stage curtain. The handler drops you off and leaves.

It’s this pitch-dark, freezing cold and narrow space behind the curtain, off to the side. You can hear the current act performing and you just stand there by yourself in the dark for three minutes, trying to keep your chest from pounding.

Then you hear applause, signalling the current act is finished, so you take a deep breath and walk out and the spotlight is blinding. It feels like you’re moving in slow-motion as you walk up to the front and fumble with the mic stand. The house was packed but luckily the spotlight prevents you from seeing it.

The set went pretty well, and I felt so relieved afterwards. It’s like the monkey just jumps off your back and scrambles into the corner and starts eating bananas contentedly.

Now I’m back at the apartment. Tomorrow I’ve got to paint it, and pack, and tomorrow night I’ve gotta find a place to sleep ‘cause the fumes in here will render it inhospitable to say the least. I sleep poorly enough as it is and the nasty shit they put in paint is sure to take years off my life.

And then, Sunday I’ll get on the plane to Japan. Fourteen hours in close quarters with dozens of coughing, hacking, germ-spewing fellow travelers. Well, maybe I’ll get to sleep then. Fourteen hours is a long time to sit still, yeah?

Airplanes go all the way around the world, following the curvature of the planet. Wouldn’t it be faster if they just dug a hole directly from the U.S. to Japan, so you could travel in a straight line? They could make, like, an underground bullet train.

I’m going to add this to my List of Ideas along with conveyor-belt-style sheets. (The sheets go around the top and bottom of the mattress in a continuous loop, so if you’re sharing the bed with someone they can’t hog all the sheets.) Maybe my ideas are stupid, or maybe they’re just fabulously ahead of their time. Maybe someday an archaeologist will dig up my book and be like “Man this guy was like DaVinci Part II!”

Did you know Leonardo DaVinci invented (in his sketchbook) an armored car? Which is fascinating. Because they didn’t even invent bank robbers until hundreds of years later.

Check out these dogs I saw after the show! I love big dogs.

Today’s soundtrack: I speak very very um, fluent Spanish
Today at 8:02pm: me, a mop and some Mr. Clean


This is why doing business with Japanese clients can occasionally be a pain in the ass. Today I’m on the phone with the design firm I did the bag project through:


ME: So will I be getting copies of the bags? And I’ve got some friends already interested in ordering some.

DESIGN FIRM GUY: Uh, I’m not sure. I’m not sure which ones are in production anymore.

ME: “Anymore?” I thought the product launch wasn’t until next week.

DFG: No, this is just the gallery event. They started making the bags last year.

ME: Last year! Why didn’t--wait, so why am I going out there?

DFG: The client is flying you out there for the gallery event and the magazine interviews because that was part of the contract.

ME: Well, did my bags at least sell well?

DFG: Um, I’m not sure which ones were actually made.

ME: What?

DFG: One of the other designers on the project, J____, handed in some really conceptual designs, and they didn’t even make it past the prototype stage. The manufacturer looked at them and was like “These are too bugged out, we can’t sell these.” So none of his stuff made it into stores.

ME: Did my bags get made?

DFG: I don’t know.

ME: Listen...is there a chance I’m going to fly all the way to Japan and find out not a single one of my bags even saw production?

DFG: Um...I don’t know. Let me e-mail the client and find out. But the gallery show should still be cool, all of your design sketches will be blown up and displayed on the walls....

Fucking A, man. If they started making the bags last year, why didn’t the client send me a goddamn e-mail saying so?

A year is a long time, and in terms of Japanese product cycles it’s an eternity. More than enough time has gone by for my bag to have hit the racks, perhaps caught on and become trendy, then flamed out completely. The worst part is the not knowing.

Wait a sec, that’s not true. The worst part is I told Komichi I had something to show her. If she actually shows and those bags ain’t there, what the hell am I gonna pull out of my ass? A card trick?


ME: And...tada! The Ace of Spades! Sugoi ne.

SHE: Er...Kenji and I should be going.

KENJI: Your ex-boyfriend flew all the way here from New York to show you the Ace of Spades?

SHE: I told you he was weird. Let’s go, honey.

Well, this certainly puts a different spin on the trip. Here I am thinking I’m attending a product launch--I totally planned on hanging out in the store and stealthily observing customers checking out the bags--and now I find out they might not even have been made.

Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t complaining; crossing an ocean for any reason is good. And I cranked out five designs, so at least a couple of them have to have been made. I hope.

I tried looking at the client’s website to see if they had product listings, but the whole thing was in Japanese, and Yuka’s out tonight. (If anyone out there can read Japanese and is bored enough to check, their site is: http://www.unifa.jp/ and the NYC company I did the project through is Staple Design. The gallery event--what I thought was going to be the product launch--is on Tuesday, May 11th at a Tokyo gallery called “Space Force.”)

Figured out the first part of what I’m going to read Friday, now I have to cook or re-heat the second half. I’ve only got five minutes on stage so I want to make it good. I’ve been going through old journal entries trying to find something I like that will fit the time-frame.

I’m really looking forward to the gig because the pressure’s distributed. Even if I blow it, there are 29 other cats who are bound to bring it.

I’m still seeking donations for the Canada trip, but THANK YOU to everyone who already took the time and effort to donate! I’m probably 30-40% of the way towards paying for the second half of it. I think. I don’t know how much Canadian taxes and food costs are so I’ve just estimated.

Some donations are still coming in, though it’s dropped off dramatically; I’m not sure if that means I’m out of donors or if I have to “advertise” more. I don’t want to beat people over the head with it, you know?

Anyways I spent a couple hours today trying to map out different options for the trip, which is a little trickier than I thought. Will post news and maybe some kind of graphic once I get it together. I’m also thinking of re-posting some older trips so newcomers could see them.

Gotta hit the sack, I’ve got a full plate tomorrow. Tonight in my dreams I’m going to be wearing five familiar bags on a train moving through unfamiliar territory. And out of all the girls I meet, none of them have rings on their fingers.

Today’s soundtrack: Hora ashimoto wo mite
Today at 4:48am: digging up this 1998 Kiroro track I don’t want to listen to but have to


Dammit! Been so preoccupied with the apartment, forgot I have to whip up a story for a reading this Friday. The gig is a large one, I’m just one guy out of thirty. Here’s the flyer they e-mailed me:

Sorry the image is so goddamn big. For such a purportedly big event I can’t believe how ghetto the flyer looks. They typo’d the sponsor, for chrissakes. Well, whaddaya gonna do.

I’m just excited ‘cause they put my flick next to Sara Tanaka a/k/a Margaret Yang from Rushmore. I go through periods where I want to date Margaret Yang because I feel like she’s too emotionally withdrawn to flip out on me, and yet there still might be something freaky (in a good way) behind those glasses.

Hey...don’t judge me.

Well, maybe I’ll get to meet Ms. Tanaka at the reading. Or maybe I’ll just sit in the corner and avoid eye contact with people like I do at every reading because my social skills are going to pot and I find the discomfort unbearable. But perhaps there will be free punch.

And maybe, just maybe I’ll sit there by myself in the corner quaffing my free punch and I’ll look so cool that she’ll think “Who is this mysterious man, I must approach him...I must have him” and then....

(If I was dreaming this in a car, this is the part where I’d drive off a cliff.)

Also been so preoccupied with making this Canadian Rockies thing happen, I totally forgot--I’m leaving for Tokyo this Sunday. This trip, paid for and taken care of.

Last year I designed some bags for a Japanese client for an obscenely low fee, because they promised to fly me out there for the product launch, and now it’s upon me. I have no idea what “product launch” entails. I’m guessing it’s not like a ship where I get to smash a bottle of champagne across the bow.

I think I’ll be sitting in a room with some stern-faced Japanese executives wearing grey suits and dour expressions. Maybe I’ll break it up by breaking a bottle of champagne against the side of a desk and screaming “I’ll cut you, bitch!”

...Nah.

I’m nervous about seeing my ex-girlfriend when I get to Japan, ‘cause she recently got married. I’m not even sure she’ll meet up with me because we’ve never been anything but lovers. It might be hard.

She’s the only girl where we didn’t break up because of irreconcilable differences; it was, after I’d moved back to New York, the geography that made our relationship untenable. There was no cool-down period, no arguing over stupid shit, no grim-faced exchange of each other’s things. When I left for the last time she cried a river, it was awful. We didn’t say anything, I just watched her cry and we knew everything.

I hope she does meet up with me, because I have something to show her.

When I was designing the bags, the design director explained that my signature would be sewn onto a tag inside the bag as a hidden design element.

So instead of submitting my signature, I wrote Komichi’s name in frenetic script and handed it in. No one blinked.

I designed five different bags. If they actually sell, then hanging off the shoulders of assorted Tokyo hipsters will be these bags. Moving all throughout the city, swinging and hanging. These innocuous little bags bearing an interior label branded with the name of a girl who married someone else.

Today’s soundtrack: be rash. just hold onto your friends

Today at 8:02pm: dinner on-the-fly at Subway. I love that place


Caught up with my old roommate today. His reaction, the first time he’d seen the apartment after the demo:


RM: Wow, there’s no walls.

ME: Just like our relationship.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about sleep, probably because I never get enough. And what little shuteye I manage to grab is always low-quality; I sleep like a war criminal with a conscience. Lots of tossing and turning, restless moaning, waking up in a cold sweat, the whole nine.

And the nightmares, oh my nightmares. Terror has a new name, and it’s Rain’s Nightmares. Dante Alighieri would watch them and be like “Man this shit is scary.”

Waking up is hard to do (and I know that makes me sound like Neil Sedaka with a speech impediment). I once had a habit of eating right before going to bed, and it took me years to realize there’s a correlation between waking up groggy and having chowed late.

Did you know waking up is really bad for you? By alarm clock, anyway. Sleep is when the body repairs itself. Being suddenly jolted awake by a piercing alarm is a biologically traumatic event, and having it happen to you every day shaves years off your life.

So I’ve been seeking a more natural way to wake up. The latest thing I’d tried was drinking lots of water before I went to bed, so my bladder would be in charge of reveille, but those things are tricky to time. Last time I tried I had to pee after three hours, and then I had a problem getting back to sleep.

Another thing I tried was garlic. Actually that one happened by accident. A couple nights in a row I ate meals with heavy garlic and I noticed I woke up bright and early on the following mornings--because I had slight heartburn and hadn’t slept heavy. And anyways waking up on time isn’t worth it if your breath is gonna be fucked up all day.

Couple years ago I had to research alarm clocks for an article I was writing. There’s a company called Bio-Brite that makes an alarm clock for deaf people. It wakes you up with a light that gradually ramps up and eventually becomes super-bright.

I think they call it a “dawn simulator” or something, it’s basically supposed to mimic the sun. But instead of being a gaseous ball of light that gives life to everything on our planet, it’s an incandescent bulb that helps you make it to the office on time. Imitating nature never works.

I think the alarm clock of the future should be a glass of water and a machine that x-rays your stomach right before you go to bed. The machine figures out how much food is in your gullet and of what density, then calculates exactly how much water you’d have to drink to activate your bladder by whatever time you want to get up.

I’m sure my body would find a snooze button, though. I’d probably just wet the bed and continue sleeping.

Other Alarm Clock Ideas

Clock-based:

- an alarm clock with a snooze button shaped like the Rubik’s Cube (you have to solve it to shut it off)
- an alarm clock on robot legs (you have to chase it around the apartment to turn it off)
- an alarm clock that releases pepper spray when you hit the snooze button (“Unnnnh...what time izzit...GAAAAAHHHHH!”)

Bed-based:

- a bed that slowly tilts to a full vertical position
- a freon-laced bed that gets really cold
- a bed that starts vibrating, like those old motel beds
- a waterbed filled with sleeping piranhas. But at 6am a silent alarm awakens them

Con-based:

- someone’s overgrown cellmate from Rikers comes to stay with you every night, and he climbs into your bed at 6am on the dot

Well, Dean Kamen I ain’t.

Trying to go from this...

...to this.

Today’s soundtrack: the chestnut tree, the wishing well
Today at 9:42am: On line at the post office.


I hooked up a P.O. Box and a Paypal link! Time to see if this donation thing’ll work.

The Idea: If I could do anything in the world, it would be to travel and write about it.

I can think of two ways to do this: One, write a travel book and get it published. (Easier said than done.) Two, try to utilize the number of people on the internet, in the form of small-amount donations. I figure if a bunch of people are willing to kick in a buck or some small amount they won’t feel, that could add up to enough for me to take some trips and write about them on here.

If you’d like to donate using Paypal or a credit card, or if you and I have a blood oath because I saved your life, please click here:



Paypal donation for trip!


If you’d like to snail-mail a check(*) or cash(**) donation, please mail it to:

N. Rain Noe
P.O. Box 1212
New York, NY 10013

* (Please make check payable to N. Rain Noe or my nickname, Cashier S. Check.)

** (If you’re going to mail cash, to prevent tampering please wrap it in something innocuous like a piece of paper, magazine page or sharp-smelling powdery substance.)

If you donate, please include an e-mail address so I can send you a proper thank you. (Am also considering on-the-fly e-mailed road updates but I don’t know if it’s possible yet.) Thanks!

The Travel Plan:

- Take a cross-country train from New York City to Seattle, Washington.
- From Seattle, rent a car and drive to Vancouver for friend’s wedding.
- From Vancouver, somehow head through the Canadian Rockies to Jasper. (By train, bus or car, haven’t figured out what’s best yet.)
- Get to someplace where I can fly back home.

The Additional Travel Plan, time permitting:

- Travel from town to town, solving crimes and mysteries
- Meet, fall in love with and marry a Mountain Woman
- Have bitter divorce with Mountain Woman
- Enlist and become a Canadian Mountie
- Engage in frequent Mountie gun battles with outlaws in the northern frontiers
- Learn valuable life lessons that can be easily recreated in a family-friendly one-hour television format

I’m planning on putting the first and second parts of the trip (NYC to Vancouver) on credit, unless donations miraculously pour in; it’s the third and fourth parts of the trip I really need help with. Also, if enough people want me to check out Seattle and post about it and if it fits in the budget I can add that as well, time permitting.

If you don’t want to donate or simply can’t spare the dough, don’t worry, I’m not going to be locking this journal or privatizing it or anything. I don’t mind writing for free as long as my rent and stuff is taken care of; I’m just trying to get out of debt right now, which is why I don’t take more trips and put them on credit.

Basically, if I was rich I’d go all over the world and post everything. Then again if I was rich I’d also have butlers I would occasionally slap, and I don’t think anyone wants to read about that. So maybe it’s better this way.


JEEVES: Your tea, sir.

ME: Is it precisely 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit, Jeeves? Where’s the thermometer?

JEEVES: It’s in the cup, sir.

ME: 99.4. Hmmm.... Say, Jeeves, come here for a second.

JEEVES: Yes?

ME: Closer!