Late Breaking News: New Yorkers Invade Tokyo!

Birthday Serenade for Melanie

In the lobby of a comfortingly cheesy hotel in Ikebukuro, we sang Happy Birthday to Melanie, who sensibly chose not to be captured on film...

Predictably, in the past months, enthusiasm for regular and detailed updates to the blog has noticeably decreased. I'm considering taking the lazy way out and simply posting a series of "photo essays" capturing some highlights of this past summer, but it may take a while to get my act together now that my uploading program inconveniently displays everything in Japanese!

Here’s what y’all missed:

All was going along smoothly (teaching, teaching, karaoke, teaching, studying Japanese, karaoke, teaching…) until mid-May, when Melanie and a couple of friends from New York came up to Tokyo for a quick and dirty two-day explorathon.

Foreigners…particularly New Yorkers… tend to stick out here and I suddenly realized that my characteristically loud and flamboyant manners have been tempered after nearly two years of living amongst the generally meek and congenitally apologetic. Not so the ladies of Manhattan….

It became painfully clear to me within five minutes of meeting up with the “terrible trio” that simply actions – such as choosing where to go and when – would inevitably devolve into raucous, internecine squabbling. “Raucous” in fact aptly describes the combined energies of our foursome as we made our way to Shinjuku, where after stopping by DUG (a little jazz bar that I've since learnt was/is? a favourite haunt of one of my favourite Japanese writers -- Haruki Murakami) we enjoyed some fantasic ramen, and then wandered around Kabukicho – the slightly seedy (But oh! So much fun!) neon-suffused izekaya/karaoke/restaurant/red-light district adjacent to Shinjuku.

The evening ended with a brief foray into a karaoke box (the huge Godzilla-like mascot sitting astride the entrance was simply impossible to resist). What started out as reluctance to handle the mike soon became a jockeying for position and a kind of twisted American Idol-like (But wait! American Idol IS twisted!) belt it out with all your heart enthusiasm. Angela surprised us all by displaying a set of pipes that belie her otherwise diminutive physical stature, and inspired by shochu and other spirits, my friends confirmed that I should give up teaching and blogging for good, and embark on a long overdue career as a third-rate lounge singer of jazz standards.

The following day, we visited the “African-Remix: Contemporary Art from the Continent” exhibition at the Mori Arts Centre in Roppongi Hills. It may seem strange – coming to Japan and taking in contemporary African art – but it was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The sheer power, beauty, joy, anger, sorrow and irony of the art on display was truly amazing. So illuminating to finally see representations of African art that weren’t dug up from some fly-besieged archaological dig circa 1800. Drunk on art, I took out a membership, which also turned out to be an occasion to meet a very congenial Japanese woman who’d studied art at Cooper Union in NYC. We’ve emailed each other a couple of times – someday, we may even hang out together….

High-brow became low-brow as we skulked around Roppongi trying to find a nice restaurant for dinner. Our first choice (recommended by one of about 5000 mini guides to Tokyo that I was toting around) turned out to be a little too expensive. In need of refreshment and a place to regroup and bicker, we wandered into a salsa bar owned by a sexy( – at least in his own mind) Brazilian who invited us to come in and have drinks even though his establishment was still an hour or so away from officially being open for business. All I can say is: dancers do have nice butts!

Dinner ended up being at a great little izekaya which, alas!, I may never be able to find again thanks to my poor biological gps. It was Melanie’s birthday and the food was fantabulicious daaahhlingggg – as well as pretty damned inexpensive.

We then wondered around Roppongi – fending off the Nigerians hanging out on every corner in the hopes of enticing us into some bar/disco/club. After a couple of tactical errors, wound up at sweet little jazz bar (Alfie’s) where we caught the last set and marveled at the pics of Art Blakey (his daughter, Evelyn Blakey -- a good friend of the NY 3 – was then on tour in Osaka and was in fact the real reason for the NY 3’s visit to the Japan).

I spent 2 nights in Ikebukoro (wow...sounds so exotic!) before saying ta ta to the Ladies of Manhattan and giving them a push in the direction of Ueno. I heard later that they loved the museum and even made it down to the Oriental Bazaar in Omotesando before hopping the bullet train back to Kyoto. ..I think they're planning on moving here permanently sometime next year ;-)