Tim Anderson - Tune in Tokio

When Yu is satisfied that she’s proven her point, she picks up another guitar, which is wrapped in a leather jacket and fastened with a black electrical cord, unwraps it, kicks the drum machine back on, barks three times, and starts over.

I take a break and walk around, checking out the merchandise. There’s a lot of local art, zines, self-released CDs, and photographs, plus locally made clothing, shoes, hats, scarves, and washi paper. I pick up a few things that look interesting-a yellow sticker with a radiation symbol on it that says “BIG DRUNK PIG” and a homemade manga graphic novel with a picture of a young guy on a subway reading the newspaper dressed only in tight underwear-pay, and make it back to the other room just in time to see Yu commence the destruction of some of her own giant woodblock prints.

“Damn, I would have bought that one,” I think as she jumps repeatedly on top of a print depicting two lovers making out in front of a towering inferno and then picks it up and throws it out the window.

So much destruction. A metaphor for something. But what? Is it a symbolic breaking out of the box that Japanese society has put her in as a woman with an asymmetrical haircut? A tirade against the sociocultural stoicism she sees around her? A bold, tragic statement on the ephemeral nature of art? Is she just a good old-fashioned psychotic deconstructionist? What?

The next week I have to cancel a practice at the last minute, and then the week after Kawano is a no-show. I don’t hear from Nabe about when the next practice is. I e-mail and call him several times, but he never gets back in contact with me. He has disappeared.

About a month later I run into Kawano-san at the Tsutaya video shop in Shinjuku where he appears to now be 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 Café 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

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.