Odds & Ends

My bike was impounded yesterday. I suppose it had to happen sometime, law of averages and everything. I was really steaming mad, too - I had parked where I parked almost every time I came to the station. Why this time? Why???

To get from the south side (my side) of the station to the north side requires (I am not exaggerating here) taking five sets of stairs. This didn't improve my mood, but between the third and fourth I saw a man and a woman staring out the window. "You can see Mt. Fuji!" they told another person. I took a look myself.

Against the primal red of the setting sun, one could see the graceful silhouette of Mt. Fuji, the sun sinking behind it like a pebble in the ocean. The perfection of the slopes leading to Fuji's peak could be seen even from where we were, many miles away.

Mad as I pretended to be, seeing something so utterly magnificent (there's no other way to describe it) puts the impounded bike in enough perspective to float a tanker on.


But still... WHY ME??? I marched over to the impounded bike lot (quite far, considering most people going there don't, uh...have bikes). A kindly old man in a uniform fit for a submarine commander asked me when my bike had been taken, and had me pick it out of a bicycle lineup as if I were some kind of important eye-witness. He told me in very grandfatherly Japanese that I should really be careful, Wednesday mornings they clean the streets and I can't park there and will I be alright going home at this hour when it's already dark?

The man behind the counter, another older man (every bicycle parking attendant is between 75 and 85 and wears a hat) asked me if it's alright if I pay the fine ($25) and then gave me a receipt (?) and a packet of tissues with a cartoon on the cover depicting three people yelling out "Dang!" "My bike was taken!" and "I didn't know!" respectively. How could anyone possibly still be mad after that?

But still...


Last of the Autumn Leaves at School






Yokohama







My main activity Wednesday, other than getting my bike back (grrr) was a day trip to Yokohama, Japan's second largest city which is actually really for all intents and purposes an extension of Tokyo. It was a gorgeous day and I felt the travel juices flowing within me.

I learned before going that Yokohama is a sister city of San Diego, which made me very excited indeed. Not that I expected preferential treatment or anything.

I'm not sure if all sister cities are like this, but the areas of Yokohama I explored really did remind me of my hometown. Yokohama is a harbor town but also a bustling convention center. I explored harbor-side parks overlooking spectacular bridges and walked along a gorgeous autumnally colored avenue lined with old hotels modestly hiding their vintage interiors.

Yokohama is also home to Japan's largest Chinatown, where I heard some Chinese spoken and saw many tourists (Whether this title applies to me is debatable. You can guess which side I take.). Climbing a nearby hill, I saw the foreign cemetery (Yokohama was a very popular residential area for foreign dignitaries), and some small French-type bakeries and cake shops. It was Wednesday morning and the pace of life was slow; it was a leisurely stroll to Tokyo's constant sprint.

The unexpected highlight of the day, however, came on the long boardwalk that follows the harbor. A group of elementary school students were behind me, and I heard a few little girls commenting on the foreigner that was walking in front of them. I turned around to give them a quick look. "He looked at you!" one of them squealed.

I waited a few more moments before turning around again and playfully saying "I can understand what you're saying, you know." I walked away too quickly to take in their faces, but what I heard was a fit of giggling that would have surely sunk any of the old ships in the harbor.


I'm headed to Hong Kong on Tuesday to meet my dad (!) and won't be back until December (!!), so until then： じゃあまた。

Still can't actually believe this happened...

I have a friend named Zare (short for Cesare). He is 27 and from
Brazil, and he is innately cool in a way that makes me feel
genetically inferior. Come to think of it, certain countries just seem
to have a knack for producing such people. Australia comes to mind,
for example.

In any case, I was at a museum with Zare on Saturday when a young
Japanese woman came up to him and asked if he was the Zare, from TV?
You see, Zare is on TV. He doesn't like to gloat about it, but he is.
Yes, he said. It's me. The woman told him how much she enjoyed his
comments on the show, and asked for a preview of the next show, to
which he obliged. All I could do was shake my head – that would never
happen to me. If only I was Brazilian…

Not 24 hours later, I was biking to my favorite Indian restaurant in
town for dinner, when I get a call from Zare. A hint of urgency
flavors his usual accent, which sounds like his native Portugese (an
intoxicatingly beautiful language to listen to) taking his English
salsa dancing. "David – I'm at the TV studio. We need other gaijin
(foreigners). Can you make it here by 5:30?"

On the trip there, which takes about an hour, I am on and off the
phone with the show's producer, telling me where to go, what taxi to
take, and mentioning multiple times that they'll pay for my cab.
OK!

I take a cab from Tamata station to Keio University, where NHK (the
government-run television station of Japan) has a small studio. The
producer is waiting for me at the front gate, nearly jumping into the
taxi in order to get things moving quicker. "This your friend?" the
driver asks. "Um," I say.

Wearing a worn forest green hoodless sweater, his hair is unkempt, as
if he had been running his fingers through it nervously for hours.
"Have you ever seen the show?"
"Um," I say.
This was not the correct answer.
"Can you write your major study in Japanese?"
"Yes."
"You're American?"
"Yes."
We go up and down a few elevators. Someone hands me a name card with
my name and nationality in Japanese flanked by a mini American flag.
"Put this on."
"OK."

This might be a good time to mention that I have NO idea what kind of
show this is. I am shown to a room full of wrapped sandwiches and a
big board with a messy schedule written on it. Peeking through the
glass doors, I see the studio.

The show is called "Cool Japan."
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtwD9ri_sDA) Hosted by a comedian, a
professor and a very attractive, very non-Japanese looking lady, Cool
Japan brings 50 foreigners into a room along with some Japanese
college students. Each show has a different theme on the topic of
Japan, and videos and speakers are shown and heard, and the foreigners
are asked (In Japanese. Everyone is given a mini radio that has a
simultaneous translation heard through an earphone) whether they think
the given topic is "cool or not cool." Or, in Japanese, "koo-roo o-ru
notto koo-roo?" There are a number of votes throughout the show.

The producer came over and tapped my shoulder. "You're going to be
famous," he whispered.
"Um."
Waiting with a French student who smells of cigarettes to go on set,
I come to the following conclusion: "What the hell am I doing here?"
Before adequate time was given to answer this, I was taken on the set
to sit down next to my French companion, who did nothing to improve
the French stereotype I carry.

This show's topic, apparently, was about college and job-finding. I
found most of the material presented notto koo-roo. Participants are
encouraged to stand up and talk about how whatever is talked about is
different in their country, but as I have a hard enough time
generalizing people in one city, and many other Americans had no
problem lumping all of America into one convenient package, I kept
quiet.
The taping went on for a good while. I still didn't really believe
what was happening. I yawned. Someone said that if you leave something
on a bench in America it will be stolen within 5 minutes. A guy from
Greece talked about Japanese architecture. I looked at the host. No
way she's Japanese. But she speaks perfectly…
After the taping finished and they took my picture (for the
tabloids…?) one of the producers came up to thank me. "You did really
well!"
"But I just sat there and said nothing."
There's no business like it.

Yasukuni, Asakusa, Shimo-Kitazawa. Oh my.

At the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. The shrine houses, according to Shinto practice, all of those who have died in the name of the Emperor (read: Kamikaze pilots, those who organized the Rape of Nanking, Unit 731 and the Comfort women, etc etc). Former Prime Minister Koizumi angered China and Korea by visiting the shrine numerous times. The shrine museum's version of history, especially of World War II, can be most politely described as "creative."








A festival in Asakusa, one of the older, more traditional parts of Tokyo (it was the center of everything back when Tokyo was called Edo), whose theme escapes me.







Shimo-kitazawa is a very "hip" area that survived (for the most part) the rapid development of the rest of the city, by which I mean that its a collection of alleyways with no major roads or tall buildings, and just a few chain stores (There was a Starbucks. I pretended not to see.).

One of the main reasons for my trip there was to find the quintessential Jazzkissa, or Jazz Cafe (kissa is short for kissaten [key-sa-ten], which means coffee shop) in Tokyo. Jazzkissas are places to sit quietly, read a magazine or a light novel, drink sour, slightly overpriced coffee, and listen to jazz records (sometimes CDs, mostly vinyl) for hours and hours. They're all independent places, and they're all about the atmosphere.

Well, for me, this sounded like heaven, so online I went to find out more. By all accounts, the best preserved Jazzkissa, that is, from their heyday in the 60s and 70s, is in Shimo-Kitazawa, a little place tucked away on a side street called Masako. Many others have gone out of business, or presumably become soulless Starbucks.

Masako was as advertised, down to the taste of the drink (I had milk tea, possibly for the last time). The lights were dim, the music soft enough to relax to but loud enough to declare that this particular cafe is about listening and not talking. It might have been Lou Donaldson playing when I walked in, but I wasn't sure.

Forcing myself to finish my milk tea, I finished the Kawabata Yasunari novel I had brought with me and looked at all the old jazz-themed posters on the wall. Two guys with long hair and tight black jeans who had come in with guitar bags smoked cigarettes in the corner, talking quietly. A man, his teacup empty, looked asleep. Ella Fitzgerald's voice filled the room with soul, lingered for a moment, and evaporated. Someone coughed, and I got up to pay the bill.





Masako