Guzen/Serendipity

A lot of my better experiences in Kochi have been more the result of happy accident than careful planning. Last night, Tuesday, was a case in point. After dinner in town, Yoko and her mom and sister were ready to go home and crash. I was not, so I bid them farewell and took off down a random drinking street. I had a plan, originally, but I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm for it, so I kept on walking. After a number of random turns, I decided to look up one of my old haunts, a tiny hole-in-the-wall called WipeOut. I found it, and yet, for some reason, I just couldn't go in; the mood just wasn't there for me. So I turned around and surveyed the other options on the street. Let's see: classic Izakaya, chain Izakaya, Snack, Snack, Snack, and... an unattractive doorway leading to stairs heading down into, well, something. Posted next to the doorway were three over-photocopied posters advertising either Death Metal or an S&M club. Just then, a dozen punks clad in black streamed out of the place to smoke. Hell, why not, I thought, and I headed down the stairs.

Downstairs was a tiny record store-cum-club. They'd literally rolled the racks of merchandise out of the way so as to make room for the bands. I was about to grab a beer when a tall, thin Japanese punk with streaked hair grabbed my shoulder. "Erikku!" he shouted, and I recognized him as Hiroshi, a guy I used to hang out with ten years ago. We exchanged greetings, recent history, quick talk, then he ran outside to smoke. Hiroshi was in a Hardcore band with my buddies Doi and Soichi back in the day; their band, Insane Youth, played the kind of Thrash/Noise Metal that split eardrums and induced seizures. If Hiroshi was here, I knew I was in for a treat. I went to the back of the room (you know, about ten feet from the stage, if that) and leaned against a merch storage cabinet. After a bit, who popped up on stage but Hiroshi and a new band. They ran through the sound checks, then it was "Hey! Heeey!" and the music kicked off.

(.3gp video, 1.7mb, no sound)

I only stuck around for Hiroshi's 3 or 4 song set (it gets hard to tell when they've switched songs), and then I moved off into the night. On my way out, I got this picture with a random German dude whose Hardcore band was touring the rest of urban Japan and somehow ended up in Kochi:



I wandered on to a place called:

American Casual Bar
BOSTON CAFE



I'd never been in before, but it seemed like the night for it. Inside, the space is small; there's a bar and just enough room left over for a couple of tables. Let's face it, if the Red Sox came to party, there wouldn't be enough room left over for the Yankees to join them, and that's okay, because the owner is a huge Red Sox fan and not inclined to let the Yankees in anyway. Boston Cafe embodies the difference between a Kochi bar and a Tokyo bar: the former is a single human being's dream brought to life in wood and booze and held together through good times and bad by a stubborn refusal to accept that as a business, bars are not a good bet; the latter usually starts out as the same expression of a dream but fails when the owner fails to muster the kind of stubbornness that Kochi praises as a homegrown virtue. I asked the owner if he'd ever been to Boston or a Red Sox game, and he sighed and said, No, but I want to.

Let me repeat that: he's never even been to one of their games, but he built a bar based on his love for them.

I had a drink and chatted some more, and then a rather obnoxious old fart and his young girlfriend came in, and I knew it was time to move on. I wandered toward home and stopped in at one more bar along the way: Fancy Labo Ring, owned and run since 1995 by a guy I've been buying drinks from since the first week I was in Kochi (in 1993), Hiroshi Taniai. Hiroshi's a jolly little rotund fellow with a heart bigger than a house and a love for jazz that's only matched by his love of the drinking business. He told me that August is slow for live gigs, but he packs them in from September on. It's a big place, and the beers are cold. What more do you want, really?