“Do you mind if I drink with you while I wait for my friends? I really hate drinking alone.”
I look at her and then look around the empty bar, think about something for a moment, then I reply.
“Yeah sure, I’m outta here in twenty but feel free to pull up a stool.”
She lets out a sigh of relief and then slides off the stool, actually getting shorter as she reaches the floor; can’t be taller than one hundred and fifty centimeters max with shoulder length dyed light brown hair and a very tight top showing off her cleavage, which unless I am losing touch with things, is enhanced. Then she picks up the bag the bar provides, full of her stuff and comes over to the big round table I’m standing at in the corner under the ceiling mounted flat screen showing Rugby highlights.
She might be half Japanese, half Philippina or Latina. She might also be a prostitute.
“Well, I’m Umi, you know…like the sea.” She says and holds out a tiny hand and I shake it.
“Gaijinass. Nice to meet you Umi. Cheers.” I say and we both pick up our respective drinks, me a double gin tonic with two wedges of lime and her’s, I think, a rum and coke. The glasses lightly clink together.
“So, yeah I hate drinking alone. I guess I’ve been spending too much time outside of Japan. I just can’t sit in a bar alone and drink, even if I’m waiting to meet someone. Feel like a loser, you know?”
She lights a cigarette after I offer her a Cohiba club which she turns down, and I notice some tattoos on her right wrist. I nod at them and ask her. “What’s the deal with those?”
“What do you mean?”
“No. I mean what does it say?”
“Fuerza De Voluntad.” She pulls up the sleeve to her white top and holds up her wrist for me to see. Then, realizes something. “Do you speak Spanish?”
“No. What’s it mean?”
“It means willpower. I got it in rehab. I was in rehab. I used to have a major problem with some serious drugs, like serious ones and well, yeah anyway I got it in rehab and this one…” She pulls her sleeve up more and shows me another tattoo that appears to be a chain of beads running around her arm.
“…and this one is of Japanese beads, like, from Shinto or something?”
I pull up my sleeve and show her the beads I’m wearing. And I ask her what she is up to tonight.
“Yeah, I’m supposed to meet my friend, a girl, and I wanted to get her to meet me here but she’s in Ginza with a client, and she’s a prostitute, not that there is anything wrong with that you know, I’m just saying…”
“Sure, yeah, no problem.”
“…but I think I’m going to meet a client of mine at seven-thirty and then meet her later. Maybe around mid night. What about you? What are you doing? You’re meeting someone right?”
I tell her that I’m meeting up with two friends here and then we are going to FACE club in Kabukichou to see another friend’s Professional Wrestling debut.
“FACE club? Yeah I know that. See actually, I do Muay Thai kickboxing and I’ve seen some friends from my gym fight there. It’s really near by.”
I tell her that’s cool and that I kickbox and I have trained people who have fought at FACE before. She tells me about some of the fighters she knows, none of whom I recognize, and then I mention my gym and some of the people I know and she doesn’t know them either. Then I ask her if she has ever fought.
“Me? No. I do the training fighting, with all the protective stuff on. What’s that called?”
“Sparring.”
“Yeah, sprawling, I do that. I just do it for exercise. I mean, I will do whatever comes down the pipe: Pilates, Yoga, Muay Thai Kickboxing, Jogging or whatever. I just like to stay fit and keep my figure which is, really, not too hard for me because of my implants. So, I just have to worry about my stomach. It’s way easier.”
I nod knowingly.
Then I bring up what to me seems to be the only possible next question.
“Well, is that safe? What with your implants and all?”
She then cups her hands underneath her breasts and lifts up and together slightly.
“Yeah it’s totally safe.”
“Really? What if you get kicked hard in one? Is that not a problem? I would just assume…”
“No it’s totally fine. The way they are, it’s like a watermelon I guess. If you crack it, nothing comes out. They aren’t like…”
“Water balloons?”
“Exactly! They aren’t like that. It’s all basically foam. So it’s really safe.”
“So, the technology is there these days?”
“Totally there. Actually I got implants a few years ago, then got a reduction because they were too big and killing my back.”
Just then Kenji and Casey show up and I introduce them. They each go to the bar to get drinks and Umi excuses herself and goes to the toilet.
I put another Cohiba club between my lips and light it. The smoke is copious and a Japanese guy in a bright red T-shirt, who had been sitting behind the girl earlier, gives me a dirty look. I just stare at him blankly for a moment and he goes back to his smart phone.
Umi comes out of the toilet and the boys come back to the table with their drinks and a refresher for me. Then Umi, looking uncomfortable, extends her little hand to me again.
“OK guys well, I better get going to meet my friends. It was cool to meet you. Hope you have fun at the wrestling.” I shake her hand lightly. It’s ice-cold and trembling a little.
Kenji looks at her and at me and asks, “What? You’re not going?”
I explain that I just met Umi there at the bar and she doesn’t know LionKing or me for that matter. Casey then looks at her, and then at me and raises an eyebrow.
“Yeah I really have to get going. I mean, I totally would love to go, really, but I have to go.” She says as she reaches into the bag and grabs her coat.
I tell her it’s all good and the tickets are all reserved anyway.
“Yeah but I think I could get in if I wanted.” And she pulls on her coat and shoulders her bag.
A brief yet potently awkward moment passes between the four of us and I finally say, “Well, take it easy Umi. Have a good night. See you around.”
And she waves, smiles bizarrely and leaves the bar through the rear exit.
I turn and Casey and Kenji are both looking at me and I shrug.
Later at the wrestling event I spill a rum and coke zero all over some important documents in my bag but get home at a decent hour despite it all.
It isn’t all mystery hookers and off the top rope:
I have this habit of forgetting that I’m not, in fact, John Wayne.
Nor am I Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood or Sonny Chiba. I am not an action star and I’m not a super hero. I’m just a guy that has traveled around, run his mouth, and continually has forgotten that he is not blessed with anything that will allow him to saunter into an altercation with the odds stacked staggeringly against him and walk out unscathed. It must be some kind of chemical imbalance.
“Clinically referred to as -I don’t give a fuck-”
So, this is why I can’t be surprised that things went so terribly south during one particular evening in 2003.
I ended up, through an acquaintance at the gym I was boxing at and working at part time, Tommy’s gym, accepting a security gig at a bar down the street. The occasion that warranted the security was a special TSOL concert. The lead vocalist, Jack Grisham, had decided to run for governor of California, and the show was part of his efforts to “drum up support.”
At this point, it would be a fitting maneuver to explain a little about TSOL and Grisham for those of you who don’t know, because without any knowledge, the need for security won’t make sense and the idea of Jack Grisham running for governor won’t be nearly as entertaining.
TSOL stands for True Sounds Of Liberty and had its genesis during the ’80′s hardcore-punk explosion in Los Angles alongside other well-known hardcore staples such as Black Flag, The Circle Jerks and punk mainstay Social Distortion.
Henry Rollins once said, on his paramount and fantastic Spoken Word Album Get in the Van, that what Black Flag had created was a soundtrack for a full-blown riot; TSOL is little different.
Some concerns should have set of alarm bells in my mind. I was working five nights a week at a big nightclub, The Shark Club, in Orange County and we had trouble regularly. I had worked at clubs all over Palm Springs, L.A. and O.C. but despite this experience, I walked into a very volatile situation like I was going to a picnic with my Grandma. Perhaps it was the 50 dollars I really needed so that I could eat. Or perhaps it was the chance to see TSOL live, or maybe it was both. But I learned quickly that when one adds TSOL, a load of ex-convict skin heads, Da Hui guys and Dennis Rodman, things can go well array.
“Eddie Rothman, one of Da Hui’s founders.”
The place was packed. I had arrived shortly before 1800 to help out and check things out and now, at 1845 it was already packed. Working the door with “Mark”, the guy masquerading as the security manager and who, a few months later, would violate his parole for possession and domestic disturbance, I was checking people out as they came in and was pleasantly surprised; lots of blondes, lots of beach bodies, lots of mellow looking cool people. With a proximity so near to New Port beach, this seemed to fit.
We weren’t doing pat downs like we did at my normal club because the owner of the bar had said it wasn’t necessary, and Mark clearly wasn’t taking this too seriously. I had already seen him put down three beers in the space of fifteen minutes. I convinced myself that this wasn’t something to worry about. Personally, I never drink when I work security or protection. It’s just a bad idea and it’s unprofessional. This isn’t as much of a hard and fast rule as one might think however, not with other bouncers and bodyguards I have discovered. Mark was proving that right in front of me by crushing another Budweiser can and tossing it into the bin near the front door.
The atmosphere started to shift, and clearly, at around 1910 when the skin heads started to arrive. They showed up in packs of five or six and were what you might expect with lot’s of tattoos, lots of grizzled faces and generally unpleasant expressions. They assaulted the bar immediately, although it was clear most of them had been drinking before they showed up. Their long jean shorts, wife beaters, wallet chains and the occasional swastika tattooed on deltoids or a bicep contrasted starkly with the fake palm trees and mellow cabana lighting inside the bar.
These guys raised my alert levels and I made a mental note of my fellow security guys. Mark was across from me shaking hands and letting people in and the Brit, “Scott”, an amateur boxer with a nearly impenetrable cockney accent, was floating around near the toilets smiling at the collection of tanned and beach blonde women mulling around.
Later, when all hell broke loose, Scott would actually be in the toilet with one of those bleach blonde women and hence, of no help at all.
Fairly dark thoughts were forming based on our lack of experience together and no real SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures) in case of a throw down and I was about to step across the entry way and speak to Mark when the focus of the entire place shifted sharply and I turned and saw Dennis Rodman standing in the doorway.
I’m a big man, but Rodman dwarfs me. This wasn’t the first time I had met him though. I had spoken to him briefly at The Shark club six months early and we had talked about Mixed Martial Arts for fifteen minutes and he was a fairly regular fixture in the area. He lived in Newport beach, really just down the road, and his reputation and propensity for trying to “Keep in real” meant that he showed up at all sorts of shit he really had no business at.
Here I have to shake my head in disappointment at myself. I let Rodman and his wife showing up on that ridiculous moped distract me from what were the early warning signs of a storm brewing over by the bar. Bottles of beer being passed out and consumed. Narrow eyes looking passed thick lids just scanning the territory. A lot of scar tissue and calcified knuckles.
Shortly after Rodman and his lady moved into the bar is when the third part of this chemical explosion showed up; Eddie Rothman and the Da Hui boys.
Rothman came in and immediately gave a business card, and fifty bucks each, to myself and to Mark. I had no idea who he was, but I had heard of Da Hui, a team of pro surfers that travel the world essentially carving waves and getting in fights. He was well-built and was followed into the bar by between 5 to seven guys, all of whom were big, heavily tanned and muscular.
The tension between the skins and the Da Hui guys was immediate, but within ten minutes the show started.
“Surely this man would never incite a riot.”
TSOL was immediately and intensely off the chain. They rocked. Hard. It was a really heavy show and they were going for it. Grisham’s vocals were awesome and the entire bar was alive in a huge, huge way.
In the center of the floor, in front of the small stage that was set up, a mosh pit had quickly formed. The action inside was rough but nothing over the top. I’ve been in some brutal pits over the years, the worst ones back in small town no-where-land when cranked out skins were literally head butting chicks in the face and then brutally kicking the shit out of their boyfriends when they tried to step up and on their way out they would smash car windows; just because. This pit was rough but contained, and in retrospect this should have clued me in. This wasn’t an MXPX concert, and skin heads don’t come to these for exercise and networking. They come to fuck shit up. The fact that they hadn’t yet was disturbing.
The skin heads were going round and round, but weren’t physically making much contact with other people. It was like they were just ramping up their vibration for an onslaught and there was a clear and unmistakable hum of menace to the entire place. This all went nuclear when TSOL finally played Code Blue.
Within thirty seconds of the songs initial cords it was like the skin head guys had decided to let the battle begin and the mosh put doubled in size and everyone was getting crunched. Girls, guys, big people, little people. Didn’t matter. The entire bar was beginning to get razed. Rodman grabbed his wife and they were out within a minute. It looked that bad.
Mark and I tried, truly in vain, to get these guys to calm down but we might as well have hopped into the Gorilla inclosure at the zoo and asked the boys there to let us just “hang out here for a while.”
I had to grab two girls that got planted by the rotation and current of the pit and I pulled them toward the door. It was right about when I reached the door and saw Mark gesturing for people to go through, most of the “normal” patrons had decided to call it a night, that the band said “Thank you, we’re fucking out.” And on hearing that, Mark and Iwent outside to try to clear a path for all the other patrons to exit.
Rodman was standing out there and we all started talking to him. He was on fire. “Holy shit those motherfuckers aren’t kidding!” And we were all laughs and joking until this very petite little blonde woman came up to me and asked, “Uh, are you guys like, the security?”
We all stared at her and Mark and I both said together. “Yeah.”
“Well, they’re fucking destroying that place in there.”
We looked at each other for a second and then both took off for the door and into the bar.
Inside it was absolute and utter bedlam.
There was no longer “a bar”. Within the space of 3 or 4 minutes, they had completely torn the bar out of the floor. Two windows at the back of the place were shattered. No table remained standing. Someone had lit a fake palm tree on fire. I had five seconds or so to take in the scene and it was fights wall to wall. A massively built, brown Da Hui guy effortlessly slammed some skin heads face directly into the pool table to my left with such velocity that the guy bounced off it and landed completely motionless on the floor.
Then, across the room I saw it; a group of guys, at least six of them, surrounding one body that was in the corner, on the floor between the wall and the stage, and they were completely kicking the shit out of him. I grabbed Mark’s T-shirt and yelled “Stay on my back!” and I bound forward across the club. I would later learn that Mark, who had spent a couple of years in prison, had extreme survival instincts, took one look at the situation and said “Fuck this,” and had turned around and walked out. Thanks.
Well, I reached the group just as some other guy, neither a skin head nor a surfer grabbed my neck, as if to shove me, and I simply smashed my forehead into his face and chucked his head toward the opposite side of the room and he went flying into some turned over tables.
I stepped up to the group and could see nothing but boots flying into the prone body on the floor. I dropped my right hand low and shot a hook into the kidney area of the guy closest to me. I hit him really hard and this stood him up straight and I grabbed his chin with one hand and covered his eyes with the other and snapped his head back sending him slamming heavily into the ground. The next guy in the group I just fish hooked, turned him and then bodily shoved him away. Amazingly, the group had somehow cleared and I saw the guy on the ground, his face covered in blood and I moved to kneel down to help him up when I got rocked.
Whatever hit me felt like it was a lead pipe. It propelled me six feet to my left and turned my body 45 degrees. I must have blacked out on my feet for a moment, because the next thing I remember is that I was leaning, my hands holding me up, against the low stage, looking up I saw two really attractive girls, one blonde and one brunette on the stage, holding each other, terrified. In the next moment I felt my head bobbing forward and realized that someone was punching me.
I spun around in time to get a fist directly in my mouth. Then another in my shoulder, one in my head, another in my collar-bone area. Three skin heads were standing in front of me having a workout. The visual woke me up and I started swinging wildly, still getting hit, and mostly hitting them in areas that didn’t feel important but I knew that if I went down I’d be sleeping in the hospital that night. This wild barrage gave me enough space to roll up onto the stage, pick up the mic stand and drill the heavy base directly into the lead guys teeth. I was dizzy and the entire right side of my face felt wrong. The blonde that was on the stage grabbed me and screamed, all sense of culture or control or civility now gone “Get us the FUCK OUT OF HERE!” She had a crazed, dangerous look in her eye’s and spit and drool was coming out of her mouth.
I took in the scene again while trying to ward off two angry skin heads from on top of the stage. The room a swarm of violence. Several prone, motionless bodies on the dark floor. Music equipment all over. Just then some little guy came dashing toward the stage, past the skin heads and leapt, head first over the stage and out a back door that I hadn’t realized was behind me, that was blocked by sound equipment.
The girls and I moved to the far end of the stage and in the process lost the remaining skin heads, jumped down and pushed through the crowds to the front door and out into the parking lot. The parking lot was no better. People were all over, two fighting between two cars to my right. I grabbed the brunette girl and asked her, roughly “Look at my eye, is it OK?” She was sobbing. “What do you mean?” I lost it. ” I mean is it in my fucking skull or hanging out of it?!” I screeched at her and she just sobbed uncontrollably. I couldn’t see out of my right eye, and I couldn’t feel anything on that side of my face and had assumed the worst.
I then saw Mark by the front door and just then a girl, stereotypically blonde, cute, wearing a tight white t-shirt showing off her 24-hour fitness body with little jean shorts came stumbling out of the bar covered in blood. Her nose was clearly broken and gushing crimson and she had a wicked black eye.
I then went completely mad, walked back into the bar. Mark tried to grab me and I shoved him back, I picked up a pool cue off the table, took a step forward and hit the first skin head type that I saw, some guy who was actually trying to leave the bar, squarely in the face. A second later Mark, and a few other people were dragging me out of the bar and I was screaming and cussing and completely losing it.
A few minutes later I had calmed down and saw across the street, four police cruises parked, engines idling. The cops had been called by the owner of the bar, and they came, but they decided not to do anything. Fights went on for a quarter-mile in both directions up and down the street.
Forty Five minutes later, the Da Hui guys were gone having escaped in some piece of shit little sky-blue van someone had. Rodman was gone; he and his wife had taken off on their bedazzled huge white moped. TSOL had been the first to split when they realized that this show to drum up support for a bid at governor hadn’t worked out as planned, and finally the cops came strolling in.
I was sitting on the pool table by the door, a bag of ice over the right side of my face when the worst case scenario came waddling up to me; a short, offensively fat cop, balding, stupid mustache, white as a ghost and then said with a snarky little laugh “So, what happened to you there, buddy?” I tried to say nothing and failed horribly. “Just doing your job officer.”
His smile vanished. “What did you say?” I removed the ice from my face and looked at him. “I said, good work officer.” He was now a shade of red. “Watch it son, you really need to watch—” I cut him off. “You’re a real fucking hero. Thanks for the help.” And with this totally unnecessary jab, I got off the table, went and found the owner, who was in bad shape and totally distraught about everything and told him to give me my money because I was leaving.
“Jesus, can you drive? I think you need to go to the hospital.”
I sighed. “Just pay me man. I’m outta here.” I lightly touched the swollen, misshapen right side of my face and said, nearly a whisper. “I am totally fucking out of here.”
And he did. Actually he gave me 100 dollars, double what we were supposed to be paid. Then I walked down the street to the gym in the dark where I had parked my truck, got in and with a high level of difficulty drove home.
When I got to the apartment in Dartmouth Court, right next to the UCI campus, I walked in passing the big pool glowing yellow and gold and blue in the center of the attractive apartment community, got out my keys, went inside, ignored my girlfriend, drank a half a bottle of NyQuil, took several Ibuprofen, put a bag of frozen peas over my face and passed out for 13 hours.
Long night, but at least I made 150 bucks. Less than six months later I would be getting off the bus from Narita Airport at the West Exit of Shinjuku station knowing nobody, with two bags and a thousand dollars to my name and I’ll never forget what the city looked like. Different.
Anything, it could be a bomb, a fire, an earthquake or just a kitten on the train tracks causing the conductor to apply the emergency brake and that’s it, people die.
I’m on the Yamanote line at, I can’t see my watch but it’s about 7:40 in the morning, and this car is so packed, far beyond “capacity”, that certain doom seems to be a physical thing. It hangs out above all our heads in the only free space left in this cattle car of death.
Doom relaxes and looks down at us snickering.
Certain Doom has a cappuccino and has lit a cigarette.
The Yamanote line services 3.7 million people per day. That’s an incredible amount and it was never designed to do this. In a country obsessed with safety, at least on the surface, it’s clear to me, at this moment, that in fact safety takes a back seat to getting asses injected into this already absurdly filled train car.
Station hands pushing passengers into the car so the doors can slide shut; I’ve seen this before. Station hands having to physically rip the doors open when the train arrives because there’s too much pressure against the glass inside the car; a novelty. Tokyo keeps coming up with ways to terrify and impress me.
Both my hands are raised up, holding onto one of the steel bars cris-crossing the ceiling of the car. Every time the train accelerates away from the previous station, my arms shake as I fight to maintain my grip. The 80% of commuters who are holding on to nothing sway with the mass of everyone and I feel as though I’m supporting the entire weight of the car. It’s a physical and natural force. I’m reminded of the ocean.
I detest commuters that don’t hold on.
As the train reaches it’s cruising speed, the weight shifts off of me and I can breath again. I can’t move, at all, but I can breath. I look down and in front of me, pressed into me, is a girl. She must be fourteen years old and she’s wearing a dark blue sailor suit and has a black leather school bag draped over a shoulder. The top of her head reaches up to my chest.
The train rocks and rolls and continues it’s journey.
The girl in front of me slowly lays her head on my chest. She doesn’t look up at me but she only lays her head slowly on my chest and even if I wanted to, there would be no way for me to push her off.
Another station, Takadanobaba; Station staff tear the door open, people spew forth. People get packed on. Positions shift slightly. I can see the young girl now, still in front of me, literally cheek to cheek due to the angles, with a sixty year old business man who is the same height as her and he’s deeply tanned with distinguished white hair and a dated but impeccably maintained dark blue suit that matches the girls school uniform.
What is it like to be this man? How many times has he ridden this train? How many office meetings has he gone to? How many times has he yelled at his wife or caressed his child’s hair late at night, in the dark? How many affairs has he had and when was the last time he was on this train and smiling, talking to a woman that smiled back at him?
And what’s it like growing up on these trains? I see children everyday in the crowd. Just little kids. What’s it like being an year old girl crushed between bodies that are connected to faces you can’t even see? What does it do to her when she finally realizes that the man was pushing himself against her in a strange way? Does she realize?
Who was that man anyway and where did his life go?
At Shinjuku, finally, and the doors are pulled open by the sentinels and a mass exodus occurs. People come streaming forward shuffling in baby steps onto a platform clogged with other people. Nobody is really moving. The speaker system is repeating commands to stay calm and move slowly and to clear the stairs but the stairs are solidly blocked with people just standing there, waiting to come onto the platform.
A woman two bodies in front of me gets pushed and loses her balance. She falls, catching herself in a very awkward position, one hand on the ground, the other clutching her bag, her ass in the air. She seems unable to get up and everyone is bumping her and shuffling and people are becoming mean.
People are losing their disguises.
I shove someone out of the way and reach the woman just at the top of the stairs and I simply, from behind, wrap my right arm around her waist and lift her up, carrying her down the stairs with me one little step at a time. She’s very light, not much more than the weight of a child. Her body feels tiny and useless, like there is no core to speak of; nothing solid. I can’t imagine existing this way but something tells me that she doesn’t wake up at night in cold sweats after long conversations with dead people.
At the bottom I set her down on her own feet and she looks at me for only a moment and her eyes are red from tears that were filling and she’s in her late 20′s and an utter wallflower. She says “Argatou Gozaimasu. Sumimasen Deshita.” As if it was her fault she couldn’t survive in the mosh pit with the angry salary men and nihilistic 17 year old high school boys and the jaded construction workers and the drunk party girls going home and the foreigner. So, I just walk away from her and pass by the long full line of people waiting to get onto the Yamanote line.
I notice then as I climb the Chuo line stairs toward the platform that it’s largely empty and nobody seems to be around.
If I’m training in the morning before work, I am up at 0350 and out the door by 0400. But, on the days I decide to train after work, I get up at the leisurely, cake eating time of 0530.
I wake up and I shower, shave, groom, etc. Then, I have coffee. Then, I have another coffee. And finally I have another coffee. I sip these, generally, while sitting at my writing desk which faces big sliding glass doors looking out on West Ikebukuro. The view isn’t much; general urban sprawl and crows.
Ikebukuro is home to many, many crows.
Crows that sit on the railing of my balcony and scowl at me.
Crows that know my secrets.
Crows that smugly look away and defecate onto my balcony; into my running shoes.
More scowling.
I leave home at about 0650. I don’t need to be at work until 0830 and the commute is only 45 minutes all told door to door, a very reasonable commute by Tokyo standards, but I heartily despise being rushed.
Frankly speaking, I really enjoy taking my motherfucking sweet ass time.
I like to stroll to the train station. The walk is only 7 minutes when one is stepping it out, but in the morning I make that 15 minutes. This pimp likes to smell the roses. He enjoys looking up at the blue sky and the clouds. He inspects the spring foliage and he listens to the birds chirping their spring song. He stops at the little park down the street and watches while 15 police have trouble arresting one insane drunk covered in what looks a lot like blood. This pimp takes it all in, and then he buys a cappuccino.
The thing about this stroll to Ikebukuro station isn’t the cosmopolitan sites or the juxtaposition of man and nature, but rather it’s the fact that during this entire 15 minutes I don’t hear a lick of the Japanese language.
Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, Hakka and then the smattering of Korean, Russian and Urdu. Then, finally, I might here a couple drunken, filthy Kiwi’s talking about Rugby. My point?
I am an American, living in Japan, living in Tokyo, living in Chinatown. And I think this is utterly absurd and totally fitting.
“Welcome to the Jungle”
If you ask someone that “knows” Tokyo where Chinatown is, inevitably whomever you asked will most likely say “Well, in Yokohama.” In a sense this is correct, but in another sense it’s bullshit.
The fact is, Toshima Ku, the district in which Ikebukuro is located has the highest percentage of Chinese immigrants found anywhere in Japan and just about all of them live next door to me.
The West Exit at Ikebukuro station, the second busiest station in Tokyo, has since the 1980′s gradually changed from a half assed “center for the arts” into a hub for university parties, Ramon shops, fuzoku (prostitution) and the Chinese. Chinese restaurants, groceries, second-hand shops and particularly Chinese people are absolutely everywhere. This is WHY there are SO many Ramon shops. It’s also why the Toshima Ku government has invested so much money in trying to beautifie the West exit. It’s also why there are so many female police officers at work in Ikebukuro; when the cops raid a burlesque house, female officers are needed for, well, a variety of activities.
“A variety of activities indeed.”
Despite living 5 minutes from a notorious and bustling red light district, my own block is oddly peaceful. Just across the street is Ikebukuro Elementary school with its chimes and morning music blasting for all to hear, and next door to that is a Christian Church and kindergarten. The street, and ONLY this street, has rows of big, green trees that are full and lush and hang deeply over the main thoroughfare and side walks. Cafes are everywhere; out door tables all full (mostly with Chinese) and kids can be seen playing and horsing around as kids do while a tricked out SUV full of gangsters glides by. It’s just a nutting part of the city and I love it.
The point today is this my friends: Yokohama can blow me. The real Chinatown in Tokyo is located right outside my front door.
