Tune in Tokio

working. He is dressed in the standard blue Tsutaya collared T-shirt and carrying a stack of videos, on the top of which I see What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? We have a very difficult discussion, me speaking in my broken Japanese, him in his broken English and, I think, bits of his imaginary language:

“Why do we not meet anymore for play our song?” I ask in Japanese.

“

You no can tell…we don’t have never think to be indygooten,” is his mysterious multilingual reply.

“Ummmm. Yeah, so Nabe did not to call me very much,” I say, again in Japanese, trying to keep the conversation monolingual.

“

playing guitar

…cannot to be showing faces to phsnraaaanksu…”

I nod, smile, put a friendly hand on his shoulder, and say softly in my mother tongue, “I have no idea what the hell you just said.”

He seems distracted and uncomfortable around me. I wonder if I have at some point committed a social offence I wasn’t aware of. Should I not have left in the middle of Yu’s performance to shop around? Do I sweat too much during my drum solos? Am I just too tall? Or-oh shit-did they somehow find out about my history of manic pole-smoking?

Kawano smiles and indicates by picking up Baby Jane and angling his head towards the American Classics section that he needs to get back to work.

I wave, bow slightly, say goodbye, and exit the store.

A few weeks later I’m sitting in Morgan Cafe chatting with a friend of a friend of one of the owners, telling her that the bassist in one of her favorite bands, Superchunk, is a friend of a friend of mine.

“

??” she says. “Really??”

“

!” I answer. “Yes, really!”

“

.” “Cool.”

While I’m basking in the afterglow of convincing someone that I know someone I don’t, I look over and see Yu walking in carrying a stack of orange papers.

“

!” “Hey Yu! Long time no see!”

“

!?” she says, surprised. “Oh, Timsan, hey! Doing OK?”

Yu has brought flyers for her next show. This will be a more low-key affair. Just some of her drawings and watercolors. The flyer shows an impeccable drawing of a kitchen fire. I tell her I’ll definitely be there. Then I ask if she’s seen Nabe, and she shakes her head.

So, my rock and roll dreams have come to a frustratingly abrupt end, for now at least. Yes, there were problems, among them no communication within the band, no coherent plan of operation, no songs. Sure, we were unable to understand each other without an interpreter present, but we could have made it work. The language barrier disappears if you’re grooving to the right beat, man. We were going to take over the island of Honshu!

But I guess it’s time for me to take a break from the drums for a while and pick up that viola again. Brahms is calling, and there’s sheet music to be deciphered. I’m not saying my pelvis-thrusting, bass-drum-thumping, slave- to-the-rhythm days are over. Thighbone Trumpet Ikiru may yet rise again, phoenix-like, to play on a street corner or a surprise party somewhere in the Tokyo suburbs. I just need to mellow out for a while, you know? There’s more to life than being a pinup.

Perhaps David Lee Roth would agree.

# of times I’ve told my students I’m diabetic and been laughed at: 11

# of times I’ve had to explain to students that just because I’m diabetic that doesn’t mean I used to be a big fatty: 11

6

Our hero is not afraid of vaginas.

They don’t scare him or make him the least bit uncomfortable.

What? They don’t, for real.

(Shut up.)

“It’s a mate of mine who’s throwing the party, so we can get in cheap,” my friend and fellow teacher Grant says by way of convincing me that we should spend our Saturday evening in ooky Roppongi at a club party.

Roppongi, even more so than the sin-city of Shinjuku, is the district of Tokyo historically known for being a popular hangout for the Japanese mafia. It is also the hangout of choice for foreigners and the Japanese people who love them. It abounds with hostess bars; hostess bars that are actually sex clubs; dance clubs; dance clubs that are actually a cover for underground gambling rings and money laundering operations; and Western-themed places that in the U.S. would be called sports bars, the advertisements for which show busty non-Asian girlies all hugging on each other and probably saying something like, “Who wants a titty shot?” while drunk Western jarheads look on admiringly. Roppongi boasts more Westerners per block than any city in America. It’s dirty, loud, sleazy (in a bad way), and it makes me want to wash my hands every five minutes when I’m there. It’s like the world’s biggest frat party, minus the free beer. If a person (me, for instance) ever wants a quick reminder of why he is glad to be away from his home country (America, say), this is the place to visit.

Amazingly, Roppongi wasn’t always Nasty Town. Rick Kennedy, in his 1988 book Home Sweet Tokyo, describes Roppongi as “a quiet suburb.” Yes, Roppongi was once a pretty respectable neighborhood where the upper echelon of expatriates-many of them ambassadors working at one of the many embassies in the area-hung out to talk politics and capitalism and maybe receive the odd lap dance. One such meeting place was Nick’s Pizza, owned by Japan’s most infamous non-Japanese Japanese citizen, American flunky Nick Zappetti, who coincidentally is buried in my old neighborhood, Fujisawa.

Then the libidinous aliens landed, and now Roppongi looks more like a futuristic neon heap of horny humanity than a place where you go to see and be seen. One fun game to play while standing and waiting for your friends in front of the Almond Cafe at Roppongi Crossing (allegedly the most crowded meeting place in the world) and checking out the lovely ladies in your field of vision is to try and guess who is a) a prostitute, b) a hostess, c) just a girl out for a good time, and d) a dude. You’ll never determine the answer, but that’s half the fun!

Roppongi as the fun-for-the-whole-family neighborhood is a thing of the past, and a laughable concept in this day and age. The Yakuza seem to like it, but I’d sooner eat fungus than spend an evening there.

As it turns out, I will have the chance to do both, since Mr. Grant has some pretty potent magic mushrooms on him, and before you can say, “God, these taste like shit,” I am with Grant, Rachel, and Josephine (another teacher at Lane), and two of our party-loving students, Shunsuke and Tatsuya, in a pair of taxis heading towards Roppongi, ready to see funky colors and dance with them.

The club is tucked away on a back street, and we circle around for ages looking for it, weaving through the