Simple and Honest
Last night, my friend and co-worker, Mike, held the opening night of his art exhibition at a bar in Asagaya. He's been going over the various preparations for this with me during the past few months, particularly bouncing off ideas for the book which accompanied the exhibition. So, I was quite chuffed last night to find he'd credited myself and another friend as "layout consultants". This is the first time my name has been on anything printed since...2006, I think.
At a Thanksgiving party last weekend I was talking to one of my fellow Englishmen about the preconcieved ideas you have of anywhere in Tokyo before you get there. At the time we were in Minami Rinkan, which I'd actually spent little time trying to imagine in my head. It's just a commuter town conveniently linked up with Yokohama and Tokyo through the train system. Oddly, walking along tight little roads lined with compact walled gardens and occasionally punctuated by small vegetable fields, our host pointed out to us a stable in which he said were cows. I could certainly smell cow, which was quite pleasantly nostalgic, though I was unable to see them in the dusk.
Perhaps the biggest oddity in this rather unremarkable place was what we found in the supermarket: Tesco brand wine and food. I walked into the supermarket to find Tesco brand muesli and "maple pecan crunch" sitting on the shelves. Tesco brand wine priced remarkably cheaply. Tesco milk. Tesco bourbon creams and chocolate chip cookies. Despite my not having been much of a Tesco shopper in England (I preferred Sainsbury's) I found this all quite exciting because Tesco labels their food as vegetarian friendly or not - so I could actually buy something without worrying about what was in it. Though to be fair, I bought muesli and a bottle of wine, so one can't go too far wrong with those.
Anyway, I was talking about preconceived images of places. Last night was the first time I had been to Asagaya, so the picture of it in my head was entirely formed by what other people had told me. Mike is the second person I've known to speak fondly of Asagaya - from the atmosphere to the nightlife etc - so I had this rather Shibuya-like, neon party town in my head. So, I was, as usual impressed to find it to be not like that at all. Radiating off of the train station is a warren of small streets lined with shops, bars and restaurants, which can be a little confusing. I particularly liked how small the streets were. As we walked back to the station this morning, we had to take a detour down a side street because the rubbish lorry took up the entire street ahead of us.
The party itself was in a second floor bar (that's 1st floor to the English readers), and yet again was not what I expected, yet met every criteria of a Tokyo bar (small, cramped, dark, cute bar-tender) and then proceeded to better that by having rooms upstairs for DJs and crashing out in (as one reader of this blog did).
It was a great night, mostly because it was a pleasing mix of familiar and new faces. Some Yokohama students made the trek out to see the show, though all went home before last train, leaving us plenty of opportunity to mingle with all the new faces there. I chatted to a DJ dressed as Julius Ceasar who comes from Bath but has lived in Japan for 25 years; a guy called Hide who seemed to be wearing leather, though I'm sure that was probably the lighting; then a DJ called Satoru who was trying to convince me to like his plinky-plonky techno music (on the basis that we both love Aphex Twin), before Google-Earthing my parents house on his iPhone. I compared tattoos with the bar owner, who told me the rather gruesome details of tattooing himself (20 years ago) with a pot of Japanese shodo (calligraphy) ink and an adapted electric toothbrush prong. My other coworker brought along his cute housemate and his cute friend, so I chatted to them about Supernatural and heavy metal. A really drunk guy showed me the 3 LPs he'd bought that day - Depeche Mode, Debbie Harry, and Japan, and then wouldn't let me go home but insisted on slurring into my ear until one of the aforementioned cuties distracted him for me.
It's such a relief to get away from having the common ground of working for the same company as everyone else. Conversation has a tendency to whirlpool around the same miserable work plughole, so not having that is quite liberating. I took my Holga with me and was messing about with multiple exposures and multi-coloured flashes, so we'll have to see how that all turns out...
I got home at 8am after a miserably long train ride home (I took 4 different train lines) and then had weird repetitive dreams until about 1pm.
Now, I should do a but more studying. My Japanese exam is next Sunday, but I think I've hit burnout. My Japanese class on Friday morning was terrible, as what I was thinking bore little relation to what came out of my mouth. At one point I tried to talk about my favourite something-or-other but ended up saying the word for "birthday" instead.
Gambatte me.