They Really Wear Silver Jumpsuits!

Here is my account of my trip to Tokyo last Saturday (as I remember it.) Good times.

1:30 PM- I arrive in Tokyo. Within about 3 seconds, I see a girl in a silver jumpsuit, goggle sunglasses, silver shoes, and a mirrored silver backpack. Either she has a prominent role in a live-action production of “The Jetsons,” or the future has arrived in Tokyo.

1:40- I meet Mike outside of the train station. This isn’t an especially noteworthy event, except that it’s a great time to mention that when in a large crowd here, I feel like an absolute giant. And it feels great.

2:30- I’m drunk.

5:00- I start to feel like sitting in an apartment getting smashed may not be the best way to spend my first Saturday afternoon in Tokyo. We head over to harajuku, which has a bunch of crazy shops and about ten million people wandering the streets. Everyone moves to the left to avoid running into each other here, so between my drunkenness and my American sense of moving to the right, I probably get into about 100 collisions in twenty minutes.

6:00-We get to the intersection that is featured in Lost in Translation. It’s like Time Square crossed with Vegas, but eerily clean, like Disneyland. To be honest, I was kinda freaked out.

6:15-We meet Mike’s friend Dirt (a very appropriate nickname), Dirt’s wife, and four of Mike’s friends from Singapore (that he has never met, which for some reason doesn’t seem that odd to me) for dinner.

6:45- The Singaporians (that can’t be right), here for the Madonna concert because Madonna is banned from Singapore, are absolutely insane. They teach me some highly insulting phrases in Chinese that they promise will get me assaulted in any Chinese-speaking country. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

10:00-DJ Munoz has to go home, because he is spinning at an after hours event beginning at 5:30 AM. I decide to stay out with Dirt, Dirt’s wife, and a new arrival named Jeff. We take the cleanest, safest, most boring taxi ride ever over to Rappongi to meet some other guy.

10:05-We meet the other guy, Adam, who promises to “fuck my mind” by the end of the night. Judging by the size of his pupils, I’m guessing that he’s simply trying to pay it forward.

10:30-We head to a Mexican bar in Rappongi, which is not Mexican at all. It does make me furious that I haven’t eaten Las Barcas in over a month, but other than that it seems nice.

11:00-Dirt’s Wife tells me that she likes Mos Burger (a Japanese chain.) I flip out, ending my tirade with “I would slit someone’s throat for some In-N-Out right now!” Luckily, everyone thought it was funny. I was legitimately upset.
(From this point forward, all times are very loose guesses.)

12:00-We leave the bar to head over to the club that Mike will be spinning at. Again, the cab is clean, safe, and boring as hell. The driver doesn’t even claim to have been struck by lightning.

12:15-We get to the club. It is a far cry from the Beach Front.

12:30-I see a woman with a tourniquet on her arm and a very dazed look in her eye. And with that, I decide to see what else Tokyo has to offer.

12:45-Kentucky Fried Chicken. Beautiful.

12:50-A crowd of Japanese people convince me to go play pool and darts with them, and since none of them appear to be doing heroin, I decide to join them.

4:00-I wake up on a bench in the pool hall. My new friends are gone. I walk out of the pool hall, and then realize that I have no idea where I am. I start to ask a nice young woman if she knows where the Ruby Room is until I realize that she is at work. Initiating conversations with prostitutes…real classy.

4:01-I am now both very embarrassed and very lost. At least I can’t read any of the signs or understand what anyone is saying.

4:30-I find the KFC that brought me so much joy earlier. From there, I have a good idea of where the Ruby Room is.

4:45-I get back to the Ruby Room, where a bald, fat, white guy with a mesh t-shirt on has apparently cloned himself fifty times. I receive one of the warmest receptions I've ever gotten upon entering a building. Either I made a spectacular impression the first time I was in the club, or everyone was on E. Either way, I felt loved and appreciated.

5:30-DJ Munoz shows up and mans the turntables. For my money, he’s the best goddamn house DJ I’ve ever seen. But seriously, things definitely picked up once he took over the room.

5:45-Am I drunk or hungover?

5:50-Somehow I have a very clear picture of my mom saying, "Michael! This is drug music!" Sure is Mom...sure is.

6:15-It is not possible to listen to house music at 6:15 in the morning without being on drugs. I am telling you right now: try it sometime. Your head will feel like it’s going to explode, and you’ll be trapped in some kind of haze halfway between sleep and homicidal rage. Needless to say, I break at this point. I stumble out of the Ruby Room, onto a train, and then into Mike’s apartment, still hearing the pounding bass of that one house song with the pounding bass.

7:00-Sleep. Easily one of the best moments of my life.

Surreal Moment of the Week

Last night after work, I stepped into the Windansea diner across the street from my apartment. It uses the same logo as the Windansea brand in Southern California, so I figured it was worth checking out. Turns out, the menu has a map of San Diego that prominently features the streets of Del Mar and there are a few posters of Huntington Beach surf contests on the wall. When the waitress asked where I was from, I pointed at one of the posters...and within thirty seconds I was seated at the bar with Hiro, Koumi, and Mr. George, telling stories about Surf City, USA.
The married couple that owns the diner have been dreaming about going to Huntington Beach for their honeymoon since they were married five years ago. Unbelievable. Anyway, Hiro and Mr. George were each working on a bottle of whiskey (unfortunately, it was not a Suntory) and as they got deeper in, they insisted that I try all of the Windansea's takes on American foods. The highlight: guacamole with shrimp in it (delicious.) The lowlight? The fish egg that they told me was dried fruit. Although I have to admit, having drunk Japanese people play a practical joke on me was pretty entertaining. They also insisted that I drink Miller Genuine Draft with them to celebrate America. Or something like that. I eventually convinced them that Corona was Huntington Beach's beer of choice, so a couple of those came my way as well.
Once we all had the Asian-Glow, the conversation turned to race relations in the USA. I believe the best question was from Mr. George: "So, you have a black basketball team and a black track team, but no black swimming or hockey? Are they not allowed?" I didn't really know where to begin with that one. Eventually, I had to stumble out of there so I could actually make it to work this morning. I thanked my new friends for the free food and drink and then I may or may not have agreed to sing English songs at Mr. George's night club next weekend. Overall, I learned a lot about the way Japanese people think about some things. Or, more accurately, how two absolutely smashed Japanese guys and one smashed Japanese woman think about some things, when they're smashed.
So that's the best story I've got for the week. I hope to top it when I go to Tokyo this weekend. I wish I had photo documentation of last night, but my camera is currently being repaired after a tragic karaoke accident.
And yes, I heard about Monday night's Dodger game. I don't really know how to react, and if this kind of magic continues I seriously don't know what I will do. I am pretty happy that Mike Piazza was at least in the stadium for the biggest win since they traded him.