HOW TO LIVE THE DREAM, part 4; or, 気分転換

the bicycle races. i had every intention of writing about them tonight. i really did. but i also needed to eat. and after paying the 620 yen to get onto the observation deck at sunshine city to take a picture of the docomo tower as one of my thirty-six views (no offense, hokusai, but my series looks stopped at thirty-two), i was too tired to search for anywhere other than somewhere i'd been.

i visited japan last november for a good friend's wedding, and the restaurant i visited for dinner tonight was the place that my good friend and i were able to share a meal after the frenzy of the festivities died down and before, that night, we met up with a group of mutual friends for festivities of a different sort. the japanese are wonderful at justifying all-out gatherings, and (as would be proved once again tonight) they do it with careful nomenclature and cultural aplomb.

so i had dinner again tonight -- a late one, it was verging on ten -- at nami, a teppan-yaki style restaurant that specializes in okonomiyaki and monjayaki, which are batter based griddle dishes representative of osaka and tokyo, respectively. the place is nothing like the images that most would conjure from the "japanese steak house" implication of teppan-yaki in america, which then i complicate myself by saying because nami ("wave," although not written with the character that designates that word) is subtly surfer themed. by going so far as to say that, however, i complicate myself further, because i can't imagine any way to explain why there are dozens of vuitton scarves on hand to be laid over customers' bags and jackets once those things are settled in the baskets provided for them next to each set of seats. (rather, i've no way of explanation beyond that nami is in japan, and especially in tokyo.)

so that's the scene. it was set nicely and quietly, and although i felt somewhat awkward about eating alone at a place where the menu had been written on the assumption of parties of at least two (it's the nature of the food), i had no trouble both cooking my dinner for one and reading my copy of roland barthes' incidents at the same time. it was delightful, actually. you wouldn't believe the music selection: all american, but with no discernible pattern from one song to the next.

then the unexpected. in japanese they call them "happenings" too. they really did look like a bunch of yakuza, which is what the senior waiter lamented when the group of six came in, at least twenty minutes past when she'd given me the chance to make my last food order. i made haste to finish the last of my post-meal beer and kimchi when they were sat four to my left and two to my right at the counter around the prep area.

"how rude. don't talk to him when he's reading."

i didn't care. i was only thinking about the fastest way out of an uncomfortable situation. but i let them know that they could have my seat in just a minute, which was also letting them know that i could speak japanese.

you can have more, i promise, if you want it. ask and i'll give you all the gory details. but i have a plane to catch in the morning, and several coded, in other words, completely useless, souvenirs to buy before that. they were coming from a funeral. for a friend's daughter. a stranger couldn't possible express appropriate sympathy. luckily, they'd already been drinking. and luckily, one of them was the owner.

"oregon," he said (feel free to make up the interim conversation yourselves), "you need to do something about the guns. and then all the warring." then he tried to give me his daughter and that senior member of his staff. it would seem that i was all luck tonight, because i had a recently established anecdote ready when he jokingly mentioned a certain japanese author.

"he's drunk! don't worry about paying any attention." but i was more than happy to. you talk and remember why it is you travel alone. maybe it was all good fortune, or maybe it was the mood of incidents, or maybe (probably) it was these hott new boots. i was more than happy, even before they picked up my check. tokyo, i might miss you more than i thought.

HOW TO LIVE THE DREAM, part 3; or, 微妙極まる

『乙女の密告』, winner of the most recent akutagawa prize, is about kyoto, language acquisition, memory and meaning construction, and idle gossip. of course, you don't get all of that from the jacket copy, but the book just somehow shouted out to be read -- despite tepid reactions from three trusted opinions (though none of the three had read it). reading it has so far paid off: sometimes things do make sense, even if the sense they make is to aver that things don't.

"i dreamed a dream" didn't make much sense within the rest of tonight's program at the basement bar in shinjuku ni-chome where the rally was held, but also it did. it was one of the few numbers that was sung straight (so to speak), and, for all its diva camp, managed to edge its way around the overly melodramatic. those are the kind of lyrics you sing to yourself in the bathtub. and you never needed a soak more than after having to buy a plunger at a 24 hour multistory discount retailer on the edge of kabuki-cho at eleven p.m. on a saturday (and then carry it home through the throngs).

bath yourself to that song and you won't care to wonder whether the cake or the probiotics were a better placebo.

HOW TO LIVE THE DREAM, part 2; or, 治りかけ

it's record time, i think. 45 minutes from ikebukuro to kita-shinjuku on foot; if only because no one walks it, let alone after midnight, let alone in the rain. safe in my self-diagnosis of food poisoning, i gambled on a cold for another day. after all, i come from a city of rain...although, again, dear portland, i know you're right now smitten with snow. another kick in the face: the clothes i wore on my walk will dry more quickly in my room than the ones i left to dry on the veranda before the rain.

i ask this group of friends for book recommendations -- i've only a few days to hit the bookstore before i leave -- and, sadly, haruki murakami's 1Q84 (don't worry, america, you'll have it after not too long) comes up first. the saving grace: one of them remembers that i prefer murakami ryu, and suggests the singing whale (『歌うクジラ』), which i'm sure, unfortunately, you'll never get to read in english. again unfortunately, that book was printed in two volumes and is only now available in hardcover, which means it would replace one other book as weight to carry home. japan excels at first world problems.

what's a girl to do? especially when her stomach is revolting again. make plans to cancel plans for tomorrow. roland barthes is on your side.

HOW TO LIVE THE DREAM; or, 体調崩し

the bike races here find a way to be spectacular in one way or another, and both ways will get their due treatment (also here). but an early headache, that headache's resilience in its confrontation with food and water, and then a split heel and a full body ache made today a different bet. probably, it's just a real estate up sell on tokyo's part. a decent bathtub is an absolute prerequisite for gambling here. as for tomorrow, all signs point to going to wake up with a cold.

ON TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

the tale of the heike, much less famous than the tale of genji, should be better known. it chronicles the struggle for power between the minamoto and taira clans during the late 12th century, and is one of the prime literary examples of the foreboding sense of universal impermanence that pervaded japanese artistic sensibilities during that time (and into the present). the taira had ascended, but only two decades later the arrogance and shortsightedness of that house sowed the seeds of its own destruction. the taira's was a decadence of the truest sense, and its fall marked the end of japan's rule by a self-indulgent "cult of beauty" (the embodiment of genji) and the introduction of an austere, military power structure that defined japanese politics until its imperial restoration in 1869.

heike opens (and in a nutshell):

the sound of the gion shōja bells [they sounded when the historical buddha attained nirvana] echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sāla flowers [they bloomed on the same occasion] reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. the proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.

in other words, the taira got what was coming to them. how silly of us not to have heeded time tested advice.

it's strange and confusing, trying to find a voice at all, but then trying to find one in another language. they'll tell you it's wonderful, but they also won't shy away from pointing out the gaps, which means is all well and good enough, but not enough; and it's criticizable for the same reason it's laudable: because it's almost there. but that's also where confidence flags, and on the spot it gets spotty.

just let me be, tonight. yes, i'm afraid, but i won't say so. i'm sitting across from the woman responsible for inspiring japan to flamenco, and i don't want to second guess. i want to freely make mistakes and not wonder if she's laughing with me at what i said or because she couldn't help laughing at how i said it.

of course i know my way. i've lived here, and i'm living here now for all intents (my own, of course), but then i mistake the direction from which we've come out of the underground. i'm fine walking. i live in a place where it rains all the time. anyway, there's no quicker way on the subway. i can walk the underground passage to the metropolitan government building and then head north above ground from there. i would have found and read the signs to the west exit of the station without your help, but because you ask i'm given pause and pause.

it's the challenge of exposure, to anything, that time enough puts you face to face with that most difficult hurdle: knowing enough is enough to know how much further you still have to go. tonight, i still had to get from the metropolitan government building to home.

i was soaked, but my hat was decent enough not to let me feel it. tonight (although it's daytime there), portland is expecting snow. tonight, tokyo got the rain. i get it. i've been gone too long, and clear skies couldn't last forever. as for you, portland, you've been too long without a master. "there's no point in running away. never run away, all you find is yourself. there's nothing else to find."

there's not a bit of this in what i wanted to say. so, it would seem that i heeded that advice after all. the tale of the heike. it'll only hurt for a second.

FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH

"how horrible it is when crucial moments in our lives can only be expressed in words so banal that they in turn, make the moments themselves banal."

you were warned.

(and that comma is [sic].)

i read that passage of the traveler trying finally to finish that book at a cafe somewhere between sendagaya and yoyogi, and, well, to be sure. i'd wanted to sit down for a glass of wine in the early afternoon at a cafe called bowls on the outskirts of shinjuku ni-chome and on the road that runs east-west along the northern edge of the shinjuku imperial gardens. unfortunately, bowls was full when i arrived (it was, after all, a saturday afternoon), but the handwritten chalkboard menu outside didn't make any indication of wine on offer, so i let myself move on without too much regret. i didn't want to walk much further without sitting down to finish a certain letter, but i walked on anyway.

to ochanomizu, i thought. i haven't spent much time in central tokyo, and i remembered having once been to an older establishment under a railway or highway bridge that served denki buran (electric brandy), a spirit that originated in tokyo during the meiji period (1869~1914) when alcoholic drinks in japan weren't yet on par with their european counterparts as far as alcohol content. (the mouthfeel of a higher proof spirit was compared to the sensation of an electrical current, and the drink was so named.) per my recollection, the place i had in mind served theirs mixed with beer, and although there's no comparison to make with the taste or service of that and a glass of wine, i was able to equate the two on the level of sitting down for experience.

however, once i passed the eastern edge of the gardens i was able to see the jinguu kyuujo, home of the yakult swallows (tokyo's lesser professional baseball team), and was seduced by nostalgia for an evening i spent cheering for the underdog in a box that my host father from high school maintains despite having never gone up to the capital since we were introduced eleven years ago. my warm memory was ravaged by the crowds under the ginkgo trees along the perimeter of the stadium: reality, as is necessary and appropriate, quickly gave the lie to the shallowness of nostalgia. those same crowds should also have been sufficient warning of what i'd find when i proceeded onto aoyama doori, into which the road that runs south along the stadium intersects at a perpendicular.

aoyama gives its name to one of tokyo's six elite universities, the university famous for producing models. that's no surprise when you know that aoyama is at the east end of omotesandou, home of the world's major fashion houses' tokyo flagship stores. the more finely curated stores are actually east of where omotesandou intersects aoyama doori, and i thought i still had the energy to head there and make my afternoon in the fitting rooms of comme des garçons. it turned out i didn't. this season's theme is color, and the inside of the store looked as fun as that sounds; but one snap of the camera at the doorway and i was done with the weekend shoppers as well as with all of my unwealthy tourist compatriots. issey miyake has three stores across the street (and a pop-up down the street opening on the 26th), and prada's five story bubbled glass phantasmagoria of shoes is next door. surely they'll all be less crowded on monday, and their staffs kinder to visitors with no intention to buy.

what a disaster. dear tom's shoes: if the stuff you're giving to those children in need is as painful to walk in as what they sell at nordstrom, i have to say that your mission might need a new guide. all of the food/drink establishments around omotesandou were either full, not right or, in the case of the south asian styled tea room that i decided i wouldn't have wanted to go to anyway, overpopulated with non-japanese that must have been either aging models or young advertising executives who gave me dubiously encouraging eyes when i passed by.

the new plan was to get me out of there, but the new plan was ironically more difficult the further away i got because it was executed on an increasingly aggravating empty stomach. get out of my way. (how can a city like this operate on people who move so lackadaisically?) oh yeah. h&m. congratulations portland, and that lanvin collabo comes out on the 23rd. this one (intersection of omotesandou and meiji doori) or the one in shibuya? that's a decision for tuesday morning.

tokyo can make you forget that there was ever a quiet moment in the world. and then it can also remind you how to relax. it's the difference between night and day -- though, for sure, it was now solidly dark -- being on or just off of omotesandou and walking a couple of hundred meters from harajuku station where omotesandou dead ends at the meiji shrine.

the cafe was only a ten minute walk away. it was splendid. tas yard. look it up if you're in the city. i had some food and my glass of wine, over which i was given pause in ordering because the place served coedo beer, a craft brew made in kawagoe near where i went to high school. there were a couple of young men sitting behind me to my right that seemed the epitome of tokyo creative style. i would have taken a photo if i could have shot them without getting any of this month's art exhibit (no pictures of that, understandably). but the cafe was just an overdue waylay, and besides, i wasn't there for long.

i had to race back to the apartment to change my shirt and grab a gift. i'd made my apologies for dinner and asked that i be allowed to join the party for desert. sweating, i had half an hour to get to the station, buy my ticket, ride three stops and find the restaurant. in my imagination, it was a formal affair, something that nearly made me spend the afternoon alone in my room with panic. really, though, for a ten year old's birthday? but maybe you can only think that once you're there and given the most gratifyingly warm welcome, a welcome that you'd should expect from friends -- near family -- that makes you think, "for shame..." at not having more graciously accepted the invitation to arrive earlier. when did looking good in pants come to mean being so guarded and mistrustful.

tuesday, it turns out, is a national holiday, so we'll have time to have lunch before the races start at three. then we'll bet and make a day of it. what an embarrassing relief. and what a pity to have to say so.

TOKYO BIKE SCENE THIS JUST IN

that's a post i'm going to write when i finally make it into a bike shop -- that is to say, a bike shop that's coolly japanese enough to impress the sensibilities of my countrywomen in the already saturated-in-japanese-cool state of cascadia. and that's not even to mention the recognized ascendancy [don't you prefer ascendance, too?] of our homegrown bicycle industry. this is why we procrastinate...and make things up. if the storied annals of 'looking good in pants' teach you one thing, it should be that journalism's greatest success lies in its colorful (i.e. debauched, if you don't understand japanese) relationship with fact.

i'm hoping to garner a lead during a lunch meeting i've got today, and i'm guessing i'll be sent somewhere in shibuya; but then again, the friend i'm meeting is more of a roadie than a commuter or a fixster or any in-the-middle urban rider sort, so i can't really be sure. but ultimately, i imagine myself walking into some designed-out little boutique store where i'll nonchalantly let my sleeve draw back to show my spoke bracelet, whereupon the staff will ask me where i'm from, and we'll all love that i'm there to represent portland. i don't know how many takes it's going to be to get it right, but if you can't be real, you should at least be perfect.

i do regret not taking pictures of the two riders i saw stopped the other day at an intersection on waseda doori between nakano and kōenji. one was on a fixed gear, headed north, balanced up on his bike by the aid of holding on to a telephone pole or a fence or something. he was wearing rolled up jeans and canvas sneakers, but the triple layered combination that he was wearing above the waist was so perfectly styled and color matched as to be impossible outside of japan. the other rider was stopped in traffic headed east. he was riding a production model giant road bike, anything but special, but his all black commuting ensemble would put the best of us in portland to shame. head to toe rapha (well, i suppose not his shoes), including a pair of those newly designed three-quarter lenghts. man, he looked sharp. unlike his fixed gear counterpart, the man on the giant was wearing a helmet, less, i'm sure, because he was riding with traffic and was therefore more safety conscious than because it was part of the package.

on tuesday, i'm going to a keirin race with the same friend as i'm almost late to meet for lunch. i know. keirin is so three years ago...but i'm excited anyway. i mean, they made it up here, so even if it already crested on the american trend wave, seeing it here is still an important cultural and historical experience. plus, those dudes are stacked. and apparently they get to retire at 35 to a public pension. the scene at the track moves from a distraught closeup to a building excitement to a wide shot of me hanging over the rail frantically waving the billet that just won me tens of thousands of yen. then there's a snapshot montage. i'll be able to afford myself a cup of coffee on wednesday morning.