Seeing GOD in Shinjuku
I unexpectedly went out with Macky last night, a Thursday, a school night. Shell Rockets were playing at a small bar in Shinjuku and Jeff couldn't go out for work reasons. As I hadn't seen a band other than Mooney at the BC in months, and I hadn't really been out with Macky much, I said what the heck.
It was a small bar, very cool, in Shinjuku ni-chome (i.e., "Gay Town"). There were only a dozen or so people there, but the Shell Rockets were great. Tsuyoshi and his wife Azusa are the best-looking rock couple in Japan, I have decided. Tsuyoshi always has a fun hat and sunglasses on, and Azusa always wears a beret and some vintage-style dress. So cute.
The other band was just OK. The singer, who apparently stole Aki from Sachiya, looks a bit like a mad blond monkey. I don't get it. The bass-player was good, tho, and I noted that it's OK for men in Japan to have butterflies and flowers in their tattoos.
In any case, we left before the second band finished and went to King Biscuit.
King Biscuit is a small, very dark bar with a blues soundtrack, where I had the pleasure of meeting the manager-bartender, a master blues-harpist called Hiroki. After he showed me his homemade harmonica-holster and played a tune for us (a patron paid him to play), Macky told me I could call him HiroKING.
Yeah, damn straight. I guessed correctly that he was unmarried, and speculated that any woman would feel inferior after seeing how he made love to that harp. A wife would always play second, uh, fiddle.
After a couple whiskey-sodas, we wandered back downstairs and ran into Tsuyoshi and Azusa. Tsuyoshi said he wants to have a band with me and Jeff. OK by us.
Hiroki came out on the balcony and reverse-serenaded us, and this time, I had the camera set to video. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHYlJVLG7fM
Jay called, and we drove around for awhile looking for him. Macky kept asking him, "OK, what are you seeing?" We eventually found him in the company of his girlfriend Geri (sp?) and two kind RAB-looking girls from Canada, Sara and her sister Melissa (Jay had met them online and desperately wanted to be saved from them). This was Melissa's last night and somehow we convinced Macky to take us to a karaoke-box place (tho he insisted karaoke was totally uncool and he would never do it. But he later confessed he caved because he had never done it with gaijin and was used to all the bad J-pop that is usually done). It was a bizarre and funny experience. Pretty decent English song collection, and they kept the grapefruit sours coming. Jay didn't like me for the moment (?) because my first song was an Aztec Camera song and he said singer Roddy Frame was the only musician he had ever heckled. It was last year and he made him cry. Anyway, now I can say I've done the karaoke thing properly, like out of Lost in Translation.
After this, Macky put them all in a cab and gave the driver vague directions to the smallest bar in Tokyo (he was driving the little pickup, which only has 2 seats and the dozens of cops in Tokyo wouldn't tolerate back-riders). Jay was convinced that we were ditching them. We did lose them for a while, because we couldn't find where the cab had dropped them off and Macky's phone was dead due to non-payment. We did eventually think of calling him from my phone and we found them at last, after more "what are you seeing?"
The smallest bar in Tokyo really is. There's a bar that seats about 8, and the wall is directly behind the stools. The walls slide, because in order to go from one end of the bar to the other, you have to literally slide the wall open, go outside, and slide the wall the other way to get in. Once inside, you slide it shut again. The bar is very cool, tho, and I liked the bartender-mgr Ebi-chan (funny name, ebi means shrimp). The bar has been featured in an article on rock and roll drinking and dining establishments in the premier issue of Rolling Stone Japan, just out this month. The picture if the bar in the magazine makes it look a lot bigger than it is.
I was ready to go after one beer, as it was nearing 4 am and Sara was next to me, telling me her life story, with all the details about her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend, her divorced parents, her 46-yr-old roommate who is lying about her age to her fiancee, etc.
Ugh, I got home at 5 am, and had to somehow get up at 7 to get the kids off to school. Then I went directly back to bed. Gotta rest up so I can meet the folks at the BC tonight.
The boys' friend Kumi came over after school. She is one of my favorite kids at Horizon. She has joined the ranks of people being picked on by a small group of veteran 4th-grade girls. Apparently so have I, though I have been nothing but nice to them. They say I "smell." They actually ran away from me as I was approaching their bus stop on the way to pick up the boys at school. When I got to school, I found M comforting Kumi, who was crying because those girls were being mean to her. They had been mean to both my boys, too, on various occasions. One of those girls was, a few weeks ago, M's "girlfriend," but she had stopped talking to him apparently because of some rumor started by the school bully. I do believe that little girls are among the cruellest creatures on earth. So I took the three of them to a combini and bought them treats. Sometimes I forget how hard it is to be a kid. I want to wring the little necks of those girls, or at least give them a good telling off. But I probably won't, because that kind of response only tends to make matters worse for the kids being picked on. I hope they feel guilty some day. I do, from the one time Debbie and I ganged up on Monica for one day, for no reason, and made her cry. I bet she doesn't even remember that, but I do.
Oh, yeah, and the seeing GOD thing:
It was a small bar, very cool, in Shinjuku ni-chome (i.e., "Gay Town"). There were only a dozen or so people there, but the Shell Rockets were great. Tsuyoshi and his wife Azusa are the best-looking rock couple in Japan, I have decided. Tsuyoshi always has a fun hat and sunglasses on, and Azusa always wears a beret and some vintage-style dress. So cute.
The other band was just OK. The singer, who apparently stole Aki from Sachiya, looks a bit like a mad blond monkey. I don't get it. The bass-player was good, tho, and I noted that it's OK for men in Japan to have butterflies and flowers in their tattoos.
In any case, we left before the second band finished and went to King Biscuit.
King Biscuit is a small, very dark bar with a blues soundtrack, where I had the pleasure of meeting the manager-bartender, a master blues-harpist called Hiroki. After he showed me his homemade harmonica-holster and played a tune for us (a patron paid him to play), Macky told me I could call him HiroKING.
Yeah, damn straight. I guessed correctly that he was unmarried, and speculated that any woman would feel inferior after seeing how he made love to that harp. A wife would always play second, uh, fiddle.
After a couple whiskey-sodas, we wandered back downstairs and ran into Tsuyoshi and Azusa. Tsuyoshi said he wants to have a band with me and Jeff. OK by us.
Hiroki came out on the balcony and reverse-serenaded us, and this time, I had the camera set to video. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHYlJVLG7fM
Jay called, and we drove around for awhile looking for him. Macky kept asking him, "OK, what are you seeing?" We eventually found him in the company of his girlfriend Geri (sp?) and two kind RAB-looking girls from Canada, Sara and her sister Melissa (Jay had met them online and desperately wanted to be saved from them). This was Melissa's last night and somehow we convinced Macky to take us to a karaoke-box place (tho he insisted karaoke was totally uncool and he would never do it. But he later confessed he caved because he had never done it with gaijin and was used to all the bad J-pop that is usually done). It was a bizarre and funny experience. Pretty decent English song collection, and they kept the grapefruit sours coming. Jay didn't like me for the moment (?) because my first song was an Aztec Camera song and he said singer Roddy Frame was the only musician he had ever heckled. It was last year and he made him cry. Anyway, now I can say I've done the karaoke thing properly, like out of Lost in Translation.
After this, Macky put them all in a cab and gave the driver vague directions to the smallest bar in Tokyo (he was driving the little pickup, which only has 2 seats and the dozens of cops in Tokyo wouldn't tolerate back-riders). Jay was convinced that we were ditching them. We did lose them for a while, because we couldn't find where the cab had dropped them off and Macky's phone was dead due to non-payment. We did eventually think of calling him from my phone and we found them at last, after more "what are you seeing?"
The smallest bar in Tokyo really is. There's a bar that seats about 8, and the wall is directly behind the stools. The walls slide, because in order to go from one end of the bar to the other, you have to literally slide the wall open, go outside, and slide the wall the other way to get in. Once inside, you slide it shut again. The bar is very cool, tho, and I liked the bartender-mgr Ebi-chan (funny name, ebi means shrimp). The bar has been featured in an article on rock and roll drinking and dining establishments in the premier issue of Rolling Stone Japan, just out this month. The picture if the bar in the magazine makes it look a lot bigger than it is.
I was ready to go after one beer, as it was nearing 4 am and Sara was next to me, telling me her life story, with all the details about her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend, her divorced parents, her 46-yr-old roommate who is lying about her age to her fiancee, etc.
Ugh, I got home at 5 am, and had to somehow get up at 7 to get the kids off to school. Then I went directly back to bed. Gotta rest up so I can meet the folks at the BC tonight.
The boys' friend Kumi came over after school. She is one of my favorite kids at Horizon. She has joined the ranks of people being picked on by a small group of veteran 4th-grade girls. Apparently so have I, though I have been nothing but nice to them. They say I "smell." They actually ran away from me as I was approaching their bus stop on the way to pick up the boys at school. When I got to school, I found M comforting Kumi, who was crying because those girls were being mean to her. They had been mean to both my boys, too, on various occasions. One of those girls was, a few weeks ago, M's "girlfriend," but she had stopped talking to him apparently because of some rumor started by the school bully. I do believe that little girls are among the cruellest creatures on earth. So I took the three of them to a combini and bought them treats. Sometimes I forget how hard it is to be a kid. I want to wring the little necks of those girls, or at least give them a good telling off. But I probably won't, because that kind of response only tends to make matters worse for the kids being picked on. I hope they feel guilty some day. I do, from the one time Debbie and I ganged up on Monica for one day, for no reason, and made her cry. I bet she doesn't even remember that, but I do.
Oh, yeah, and the seeing GOD thing:
posted by Sandi at 6:16 PM
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