29 VI 07
knuckle up and behold these works. it's gonna be a ride. [Clay - this constitutes the wraparound. haha]
Part One: The Parable of the Hamster.
this fabulous junket to Japan marks the third consecutive year in which i have scrambled off - at some length - to exotic and spiced corners of the world. until now, and most critically in those sovereign lands devoid of the harsh English tongue, i studiously shirked one critical and intimidating task. at great peril to my person, estate and sanity, i melded with the shadows lurking around the corner from Responsibility. i had to escape. the humid air sang in awe as my blade limned an artfully desperate arc through the night. Propriety and her elder consort baffled, i careened away through the haunted woods.
as you have doubtlessly divined, i am speaking, of course... of getting a haircut.
imagine, if you will, the terror inherent in attempting to direct the cruel steel of a Pelage Artisan with naught but the broken baton of stilted Japanese, mad gesticulations, and a sense of humor. know that 99.999% of the mammals to have ever sat in your chair bore fine, straight, black hair. now compound your malaise by realizing that you are indeed the rare species - in my case, exhibiting some impossible and random collection of hairs in all possible hues, textures, and contours.
i am the Library of Babel for hair.
there are no less than six potential establishments for haircuttery near my lab. several are immediately discarded upon the heap for apparently catering to kings and oil barons alone. i staked out the others for two or three days after crossing the final threshold of revulsion with my hair. understand that it was very high indeed.
i rolled up to one and, half inventing the conversation that may or may not have followed, made an appointment to return after lunch. when i did, crawling in as would a condemned man, i removed my Astros cap and observed what must have been an extremely polite, Japanese variant of Shock and Terror. their canvas was long, irregularly curled, half-matted from extensive retreat under a baseball icon. i was a gross gaijin.
over the next hour, two people attacked my head with the enthusiasm and cool calculation of a well-trained battalion. a funny young man in a jaunty hat served as a shampooing lieutenant to the master of ceremonies, a kind female captain. she spoke zero English. i did my best, having cheated and learned certain phrases beforehand, but when she produced images from Japanese fashion magazines of young men with outlandish haircuts i knew i was in for a treat.
i instruct her to excise 3cm of hair. she cuts. and cuts. the hair rains to the earth in wooly bales, sheaves and chaff and the whole nine. by this point i have no idea what's going on, but i am sufficiently shamed by being unable to understand anything she says thanks in large part to the whisper of a jet engine / blow dryer across the room. when it shuts off, we make small talk in Japanese about fish, booze, and the weather in America. i think the only word she knows in English is "dolphin." an odd choice.
my image begins to transform.
by the end, i am smiling in shell-shock under an improbable Nippon-hip, manga-ish, fractally spiky construct of hair. the fellow in the cap skips over and applies styling wax. looking at this goofy guy's face, i start to think that things are alright. when i first trudged into the place with my foreign-devil-hair, he did not appear pleased. now, he looks so excited i'm afraid that he's either going to piss himself or, enraptured, vibrate so quickly that he disintegrates at the molecular level. managing to lever his mandible away from a Cheshire grin, he says that my hair looks Japanese. then he deftly manipulates tufts and waves of hair with the wax and steps back. one sentence filters through my brain and elicits laughter from way, deep down.
i look like a razorback hamster.
and with that i'm back off to the sink, where most of the abstract damage is reversed and i leave with an honestly pretty damned good haircut. it's much shorter (although this is half an illusion, much of its length is masked by curls), and has unkempt sprays of hair plotted under a scheme that probably qualifies as a statistically random distribution. i have seen much the same in the trendier areas of town.
now let's go find some oneichan.
and no, smartass, of course that's not really a parable. i just really wanted to type the title. you don't often chance upon such an opportunity.
Part Two: Tale of Street Beer and Siren Songs -or- karaoke-monogatari.
hit up Ikebukuro on Wednesday night with key members of my crew: Lane, Sisi, and "Other Neil". every time Other Neil and i shake hands we roll the dice and hope that, like matter and antimatter, our meeting will not result in mutual annihilation and a tremendous explosion of ionizing radiation.
beer was on our minds, and in lieu of sitting at a reputable joint we went to a convenience store off a minor street/alley and loaded up. we idly speculated on the legality (or otherwise) of strolling around drinking a beer, and i suggested that while probably okay it would be tremendously uncouth. oh, not that it's beer. the Japanese apparently find it a grotesque breach of etiquette to move one's legs in any fashion while consuming food or drink. if you buy something at the combini (conv store), you plant yourself like a flag and eat it by the door.
so, naturally, we loitered like true degenerates. awesome.
went back to the station to meet up with Lane's friend Miles, who was briefly in Tokyo before heading on to Thailand. his field of study (law), interests and avocations (...Thailand, etc) made him an impossibly suitable mentor for Clay. i have so arranged it.
went on to a legitimate and expensive bar for one round of stronger drinks, and i got to put my polished Japanese to work in a perfect display of ordering a double whiskey. no, no ice thank you, straight. the crew was amused.
finally proceeded, sans Miles, to kara-friggin'-oke. the trains stop running at an absurdly early time in Tokyo, something just after midnight, so we only had an hour and change. we got a "karaoke bokkusu" (box), as seen on Lost in Translation, another round, and cranked up the volume. it was among the most fun things i've yet done in Japan.
now, ordinarily i am intensely shy about singing. i hate musical theater and cringe uncomfortably when people near me randomly leap into a melody (haha, sorry Erin). after i stopped singing on tv for God - those who know me and were unaware of that fact are probably gasping like beached fish- i restricted this taboo form of performance to the car and shower.
that is not to say that i had not been practicing for true Japanese karaoke. oh yes.
i was second up, eagerly belting out some gravelly Johnny Cash to the surprising approval of my crew. it was all over after that. we had two microphones and a Tokyo Business/Residence Pages-sized catalog of songs. most of my favorites were there, although song choices were often odd. Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins (have to be buzzed to try Billy Corgan, i'm telling you), even really recent stuff. i sang Rolling Stones with Other Neil, duets with Sisi, and a wild and rolling "Hey Jude" with everyone.
prepare to learn how ridiculous we were. in a fit of madness, i launched into a solo performance of a Notorious B.I.G. masterpiece. the displayed bouncing-ball lyrics were, early on, decidedly watered down. it came as a surprise when the portion of the song toward the end - the one unparalleled in its lewdness - was wholly uncensored. i had to stop rapping twice, i was laughing so hard.
Part Three: The Part Commonly Called, In Hushed Tones By Dark And Elite Circles, "The Third Part".
i'll keep this one short. it's been a long day for you here at Gaijin Apocalypse.
my official welcoming party was last night. i knew it was going to be a serious affair when the designated tax collector went around extorting princely sums from everyone. it did not disappoint: prodigious arrays of Japanese and Indonesian food (a particularly funny lab member, Davin, is Indonesian). extravagant liquors distilled in arcane and far-flung lands, transported by unicorn-mounted pygmy tribes (now extinct) and dragon-assisted airlift. some vessel of blue aqua regia strongly resembling perfume. a stately phalanx of unagi, barbecued eel and one of the finest foods to ever grace a palate.
the lab's about 95% male, so we all caroused and laughed about baseball, beer, and Japanese women. some of them spoke exquisite English - the only sobering moment of the night, in any sense of the word, was realizing as i have a million times before how sheltered we are as Americans.
get out there and learn, people. that's an order.
