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?

Ego

Came to Japan on 8/5 and stopped shaving soon after.



(Yes, I'm wearing the same shirt in all four of those pictures. I've done laundry, really.)

Tomorrow, I have an appointment with the venerable Mr. Yasmashita, Sr. Yamashita-san runs a barber shop in Kami-machi, 1-chome, and while he's not averse to using scissors, his specialty is the straight razor. The man is amazing and hugely experienced, and it's an honor to be able to sit down in his chair and put my throat (and life) in his hands. I've been visiting Mr. Yamashita since 1995; I would have used him for my wedding haircut, but he was out of town at the time.

There's a certain comfort in being able to visit a place years later and recognize people (and have them recognize me). I think a lot of people take this sort of thing for granted: in fact, for many people, that sense of familiarity can be a little suffocating, which is why so many people visit their hometowns only occasionally. I grew up moving around, however, so Kochi is as close to a hometown as I have; perhaps my fondness is greater for this place because I established my roots here as an adult.

Or perhaps I'm just waxing melodramatic because it's hot outside. Regardless, I've got a good haircut and shave on my horizon.

A Hot Day

There's hot, and then there's Kochi hot: 1:30 in the afternoon, stuck in the sun, 37 degrees C, humidity in the ridiculous numbers. But of course, there's a story in that, and, like many stories, it begins before the fun.

A lot of my faithful readers will already be familiar with so-called "wasei-eigo," or Engrish, particularly those forms of the art having to do with t-shirts or the spontaneous poetry that adorns drink containers and candy boxes. So it will come as no surprise that at least one of my friends requested a t-shirt with such on it as omiyage. Easily done, I thought, but I was wrong, see, because I failed to take into account that truly fashionable young Japanese folks would much rather have authentic t-shirts from America than designs from J-corporations trying to cash in on a trend. As a result, the anti-fashion fashionable street of Kochi is a mecca of recycled t-shirts from the States. Ever wonder where your Junior High School softball team's excess shirts ended up? Try CHAOS, a veritable storehouse of yesteryear's promotional t-shirts. Want an authentic Red Hot Chili Peppers or Harley Davidson t-shirt? Can't swing a dead hipster on Obi-san Road without hitting at least one store stocked to the brim.

This in the same town where I once saw, prominently displayed in place of pride in a store's window, a t-shirt that read, "Have you ever seen a grown man naked?" You can now truly appreciate my surprise.

Despairing, I turned to a friend (over sake and cigars whose origins I'm not at liberty to disclose) and asked, where's a man to find his ridiculous misuses of English these days? He nodded sagely and told me to get me hence to Aoyama, a men's fashion boutique (and chain store) out on the Tosa Doro (a kind of main artery for traffic avoiding downtown).

And so, on Friday, I set off on a borrowed mama-chari (a grandma-style bicycle with a basket on the front) for Aoyama on Tosa Doro. Along the way, it being hotter than I really care to repeat, I stopped in at a supermarket to buy a bottle of water. Turns out they were selling cases of the stuff (six bottles to a case) as a bargain, so I put six liters of water in the basket and rode my way down the road. I was over a bridge and coming down on Tosa Doro rather quickly when I realized that my back tire was flat. Well, now, Aoyama was just around the corner, so I pushed the bicycle on.

Thing is, I couldn't see an Aoyama. I did, however, see a store called Ookii Size (Big Size); it seemed a promising substitute, so I went in. Turns out, it really is a store for the plus-sized Japanese man, which means that nothing there is smaller than the equivalent of an American XL (in Japanese: 3L). As a seven-footer with a 40-inch waist, I assure you, if this store had been around when I was in Kochi, I'd've bought everything there. As it was, I saw some great "wasei-eigo" samples, but the person I was shopping for is, at best, an L, not a 3L. No luck.

Back out into the heat. Apart from being a place of questionable fashions, the other distinguishing characteristic of Japan is that you usually can't spit without hitting a bicycle repair shop. This is understandable, since the lowly bicycle is the single most popular form of mechanical transport in Japan. And so I had great hopes that I'd be a mere five minutes in the sun before finding somewhere to fill my tire and move on. Within three, I found a scooter shop, that oddball cousin of the bicycle shop. The propietor had a hand pump he was more than happy to lend me, but he pointed out that the entire tire was old, cracked, and probably not suitable for its original intended use any further. He also helpfully pointed out that there was a bicycle shop a kilometer down the road.

And so I pushed that bicycle, and the still-heavy six liters of water, down the road, around the corner, and always, always under the beating, merciless sun. I paused to get a bottle of Pocarri Sweat (look, this isn't the time to ask), and you may be able to appreciate that I had to take pictures of the following to make sure I wasn't hallucinating:





Back in the sun, I pushed on, until I came to the entrance to a temple. Hot, sweaty, tired, I told myself I'd be back to take pictures, but excuses like that don't sit well when you're honest with yourself, and I knew then that if I didn't go in, I'd not come back. So I parked the useless bicycle on the side of the road, the box of bottles of water still in the basket, and I went on in. I didn't even bother to lock the bicycle; no need, and no real point.




I left the temple grounds much cooler and much more centered, and my bicycle was just where I left it. I pushed on a little more, and sure enough, there was the bicycle repair shop. I negotiated a fee for replacing the tire entirely, then sat down with my box of water bottles by the edge of the river, in the shade, and watched the parade of life ride by, including this fellow:



Will you forgive me, dear readers, for humming the theme from CHiPs as he went by?