At Home with John and Debbie

Did I mention I was in Tokyo? This follows a sequence of exchanges with my management chain which, if I were to personify a bunch of managers as once voice, could be paraphrased thus:

Management: Hey John, there’s a possibility you might be needed in Japan in the next couple of months. Would that me OK?
Me: Yes, give me a few weeks’ warning and it’ll be fine
(later)
Management: That Japan thing, don’t worry about it. It’s definitely not happening any more.
Me: OK.
(later still)
Management: Remember how we said the Japan thing was definitely off? Well there’s been a change of plan. Can you go next week?

But that’s OK. If they want to pay the vast late-notice air fair, that’s no skin off my nose. Although the weekdays involve little but working, eating, and flopping in a hotel room, I get a weekend in the middle to explore Tokyo, it’s generally a pleasant and interesting place to be, and Skype is allowing me to keep in touch with Debbie pretty well.

I arrived on Monday afternoon, and my sleep patterns didn’t stabilise until Saturday morning, when I finally woke at 8am from an uninterrupted ten hour slumber. This meant I didn’t capitalise on a free Friday night in Tokyo.

On Saturday, I took the Metro to Akasuka. Debbie and I had been there before, but this time I was on a mission to find her a Yukata (a Japanese dressing gown, basically). My colleagues had advised me that this was the place to go, and sure enough in the long row of market stalls leading to the temple, I found my quarry.

In the temple surrounds, I indulged in street food: okonomiyake in a plastic tray. It was good and filling, but not cordon bleu — no more than you would expect to get a gourmet burger at a fairground burger van.

It did give me the opportunity to get called a foreigner as if I wasn’t there, as in “Please may I have a can of orange drink” - “Oi, this foreigner wants some orange”.

In the afternoon, I went to Shibuya, where I replenished my English reading supplies with Paul Auster’s “The Brooklyn Follies”, from Tower Records’ bookshop. I had ulterior motives in going to Tower; hoping to find flyers for music events in the evening. I should have learned at my last visit — they’re not there.

When it got late enough, I stowed by coat and my shopping in a Metro station locker, and made a beeline for La Mama, a music venue I’d enjoyed before. They opened later than usual, as it turned out, so I killed time by walking the streets. When they finally opened at seven, I went in and waited with a beer.

In the past, every Tokyo venue I’ve been to has presented around four bands over the course of an evening. Tonight there was just one band - アンãƒ?ノイズ, which I read as “anchinoizu”, and couldn’t really work out; I thought perhaps it was a stab at “Ingenues” . Later, looking for clues on their web site, I found that it’s actually “Antinoise”.

They were three pretty boys who seemed to be completing a nationwide tour, judging by the song accompanying an opening video of tour bus footage: “Tokyo kara Hiroshima; Hokkaido, Nansei made”.

The tinny EQ on the guitar made the songs very bass-driven. They played very tightly for two hours, breaking it up with a bit of banter, only really breaking out the rockier songs towards the end. It didn’t live up to my last visit to La Mama, but it was definitely a good evening out.

I retrieved my coat and shopping, and returned to the hotel, for a room-service sandwich, and a read. I soon realised that if I wasn’t careful, Paul Auster wasn’t going to last me for the rest of my stay.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 3rd, 2007 at 04:16 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.