For those of you who know me well this will be merely a reiteration of a theme that, if you still communicate with me, you must enjoy. I have a sort of penchant for the random, which, I am beginning to realize is why travel and especially Japan seem to offer me up the world of my dreams on a silver platter. Carving out a little niche in my own little corner of subtropical metropolitan jungle, the number of times my awareness is centered by the purely abstract and absurd is a gift.
Necessarily In nonsensical chronological disorder, the recounting of May 22nd-24th is only possible due to a series of random tape recordings, ala the style of the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I white’d in (the opposite of blacking out, although to be fair, it was more like a graying-in) next to an Indian elephant. This matriarchal mammalian mastodon, was moated (the verb form of the noun moat) into a flattened desert plateau merely twice her body size. It was a great way to reenter awareness because the contrast of our two lives could not be more vivid. Although it sounds a bit lacking in compassion, which I assure you is not true, seeing this beaten and hopeless shell of a great beast was energizing; I am free and they ain’t broke me yet! Elephant stories always seem to be sad ones.
A unified “Ha!” followed by a short round of clapping drew me into the woods. A line of pre-pubescent boys, standing in an open faced dojo, were shooting arrows into targets 25 meters away as two girls were clapping and collecting the spent arrows. A glimpse of a white tower standing over the trees acted as the next gravitational force. Inside the castle were various specimens of hardened steel and ferocious Samurai masks and battle armor from the shogun era. Naginata, long poles with belly-blending blades at their ends, were especially vivid to imagine in use. I was drawn into contemplation of the outcome of a battle between feudal Japanese and feudal Western armies. The style, the whole mind behind the machine, is of such a different constitution that it would be the closest thing of an interstellar war between two alien species.
The quiet of the freshly moped concrete made my presence uniquely outstanding. Using my cheap 2nd hand umbrella, I received my first kendo lesson on a train platform awaiting the train to who-knows-where from a veteran kendo fighter and very friendly neighbor. His spiritual explanation of the matter, the idea of gauging force and ability through the slightest contact of swords, of defeating the mind, made my suspicion even more concrete: I and they think even less alike than a suspicious person would think (chew on that). Although I was easily twice his mass he would have whipped my ass up and down the train platform with his umbrella. I received the nickname “Buffalo Beef”.
I white’d in on a beach far from home, the end of the line, the beginning of a new
region of the island; a place where black sands and the white hair of weather beaten fisherman blend in a dance with the blue of the Pacific. Fisherman cast their poles into the shallow waters near the breakers as a contented homeless man worked on his rusty old bike. I slept on the oil-sand beach until my face burnt into a panda-eyed mask and the tide washed my backside. David Byrne sang “same as it ever was” as I poked my head into a market selling alien sea-pods; I couldn’t have found his comment less accurate.The red lights of Roppongi lit the dark black skin of the Nigerian hustlers as I stumbled through the timeless hours of a bottle of souchu and a mega-vitamin B (8000% DV). Clubs lit by flashlight wielding hostesses had dancers on every bar had me standing in some Coyote Ugly Asiana edition audition. Strong-7 beers from the 7-11 paved the road towards the beacon of the Tokyo tower. On the morning train I got off at the wrong stop because my travelling companion woke up and, startled, woke me up and we got off the train with no reason to think it was the proper city. After a 20 minute split screen story, both of us somehow winding our way back to the terminal, I popped in through closing doors right before the train left the station.
A massive sushi-go-round shot toy prizes out of a tube if you won the video game challenge match. I know. It was this random for me too so I am trying to give you a fair treatment. They serve blended crab brains.
Breaching the last step of a stone-shod mountain path a massive iron kettle of incense filled the air with a purple smoke. A chorus of chanting echoed in the acoustic halls of a Buddhist temple. Monkeys clamored in a nearby cage as my favorite tree species, the Japanese maple, showed its full watermelon-colored array of leaves. Behind the temple stood a simply marked path leading up a wooden stairway into the woods. I climbed these stairs for 30 minutes. The violent winds atop the meditative mountain whipped the thin paper ribbons into a flutter as the steel dragon spat spring water into an opaque pool. A neon jogger in full spandex buzzed by.
In the foothills, I checked into one of my beloved onsen resorts. The sulfurous hot pools felt good on my leech wounds. As I scrubbed myself clean before entering the tub I noticed the little bloodsuckers all over my feet and between my toes. It was a blood bath, literally, as I smashed and pulverized the resilient parasites so gorged on my blood. It was out of some horror film as the little monsters edged quickly towards me over the sudsy tile floor after been flicked off. After liquefying them with my shampoo bottle I was surrounded in bright red pools of my own blood. Time for a bath. Totally naked except for my silver ring, it too was transformed by these remarkable waters. Emerging from the spring fed tub my silver band had turned a luminous red-gold; I just kept staring at it and hoping (a hope bordering on prayer) that it would start to show bright red Elvish writing.
I awoke to write this as four men in a Honda minivan pulled over a sign advertising the local massage parlor and sent smashed glass into an otherwise peaceful 3:30am.
There is a café that is full of cats as the theme. There is a cartoon porno section in the newsstand. What the hell am I doing standing between them?
