Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.

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Japan, day Four

aka: Hello Kitty says jump.

aka: Sunday in the park with George the Goth

A new habit of mine is leaving things randomly around the house and forgetting where I have put them. Cd cases, car keys, the glass of orange juice I had in my hands a minute ago, have all been misplaced. It's not something I am doing intentionally. This not relevant to the following entry, but it is on my mind because I've just realized I have no freaking idea where my wallet is.

Anyhow, back to Japan.

Sunday 07/01/01:

The plan was simple. Beth was going to stay home and take care of business and Carlos and young Mr. Jacob would take John and me to the Togo Shrine, the flea market surrounding the shrine, Meji-jingu shrine and score some eats along the way. What the planners(ie: us) did not take into consideration was the weather. It was hot. Exceedingly hot. Murderously hot. It was also humid. Exceedingly... well, you get the picture. It did end up being the hottest day of our visit. Luckily, it didn't rain like it had the day before. I probably would have melted if it been any more humid.

The path up to Togo Shrine is converted into a flea market on Sundays. Assorted guide books mention the flea market as an interesting, out of the way destination that few tourists go to. Which is probably why the place was packed to the gills with tourists. All meandering about, looking for something nontouristy to do.

The flea market wasn't super interesting and everything was kind of pricey. I guess I was just being my usual cheapskate self. Part my disinterest may have been due to the weather. Did I mention that it really was freaking hot and ucky that day?

Togo shrine itself is kind of small and nondescript. I wasn't overly impressed with it, but I also have to admit, that by that point I was more interested in finding one of the omnipresent soda machines to get a cool drink, then I was in playing tourist.

Carlos rather wisely decided that it was too warm to have Jacob out and took him back home while John and I continued the day. The poor kid was starting to turn red which wasn't good considering he takes after his mom and is rather fair skinned.

John and I went back to Harujuku and wasted a couple hours hanging out in the Kiddieland toy store. Our official excuse was that we wanted to get into an air-conditioned building, but of course the real reason was that it was a five story toy store filled with lots of funky stuff. A fun place once you get past all the dopey gag gifts on the first floor.

Given the toy selection, it would seem that kids in Tokyo are into anything Disney, Hello Kitty, Totorro (sp?), or Gundam Wing. As long as the product name is plastered ALL OVER the item in question that is.

After a while, John decided that he wanted to leave, so he went over to a cashier to pay for some gifts. I was waiting for him in the exceedingly cute mascoty toy section (ie: hello kitty, afro ken, weird poo colored and shaped people that I don't know the name off, some ticked off constipated penguin that I also don't know the name of, etc...) when I looked up an saw a kids program on a TV monitor. Young children were lined up in formation, exercising to some song I couldn't hear. Leading the exercise routine were two perky young Japanese women.

It took a couple of minutes before I realized that the perky young women weren't leading the exercises, it was actually someone dressed as Hello Kitty wearing a navy style, girls school uniform. There was also someone dressed as Hello Kitty wearing male drag/some kind army uniform as well.

I stood there for a while watching kids jumping up and down in unison to two perky, wholesome women who were in turn jumping up and down in unison to two people of unknown gender dressed up as giant, anthropomorphic cats in military drag who were jumping up and down as best they could, considering that they were in large ungainly costumes. That's when I decided John was right. It was time to leave the store.

After walking a mere half block, we decided that lunch and more air-conditioning would be a good idea. We ended up at a touristy pizza place where Johnny had a potato pizza and I had a rather nice salad nicoise (sans anchovies).

I guess that I could mention that there are only four choices when it comes to napkins in restaurants in Tokyo. Well, only four choices that we came across anyway. They are:

1. One small, cloth napkin (a sign that you are in a "nice place", ie: expensive)

2. One small, little, paper wet nap

3. One small, little, cheap cellophane looking piece of paper

4. Nothing, zip, nada.

The pizza restaurant was a one wet nap kind of place.

Now fortified and rested, we finally walked over to Meji-jingu Shrine. The grounds and gardens were very peaceful and with all the trees blocking the views of and muffling the sounds of the city, it was easy to imagine that we weren't in the middle of a huge, metropolitan city. The trees also had the added benefit of cooling down the area around the shrine as well.

The shrine itself was large and very ornate. It was also filled with camera'd tourists swarming all over the place like mad ants. There were two weddings while we were there. It was a strange site, casually dressed tourists of all races photographing formally dressed Japanese wedding parties as they walked slowly and carefully across the Shrine's courtyard. Sloppy vs. elegance. Beast vs. Beauty.

The idea that your place of worship would be tourist attraction stuck me as kind of unusual. I was raised Catholic (big surprise) and I know that many cathedrals are tourist traps, but we went to the local smallish church, not a big honking cathedral for mass.

The funky teenagers who hang out near the entrance to the shrine grounds were out in force that day. Goths, punks, rockabilly guys, fake nurses, business suited drag kings, glam gals, kids in dog costumes, kids in silver painted rubber suit looking things and kids in outfits I'm not even sure how to describe were hanging out that day. It seemed to be a gathering point for friends to meet and socialize and most importantly, to be seen looking good. Mostly anyway, the goth girls were to busy looking good and being utterly bored by all existence to bother gossiping with their friends.

As I mentioned earlier, Sunday was miserably hot and sticky and I felt even hotter just looking at some of the dressed up teens. They were definitely suffering for the sake of fashion. Although, truth be told, I am most likely just projecting. None of the goth gals and boys seemed to be overly bothered by the heat, despite the full white face makeup and the being covered from head to toe in all black bit. Thinking about it now, the punk boys were the only ones who seemed to bothered by the heat.

John and I were heading back to the subway, when we got caught in a crowd watching a fashion show/performance art/art happening/ art piece/store promotion/thing. Meaning that there were several groups of nearly identically dressed young women circling some trees. I think they were supposed to look artistic and stoic, but some off them looked a more nervous than anything else. About the only thing differentiating the women, was that they were all sporting body paint on their arms and legs and the patterns varied a little from person to person. Music was playing loudly and there was a large crowd of people standing 'round taking photos and waiting to see what would happen next.

Eventually, all the women left the trees and walked along a carefully choreographed route into a nearby store. By the time the last of the women walked into the place, the first of the women walked out again in new outfits. They then arranged themselves on nearby pedestrian bridges. Once everyone was out again a man and a woman left the store as well, the man holding a balloon. After standing there silently for a few minutes, he let go of the balloon, bowed, then walked back into the store.

The applause was very, very loud and neither John nor I had any idea what the heck we had just seen.

When we described the event to first Carlos and Beth, then later to Lisa and Joe during the dinner they kindly made for us that evening, the only explanation any of them had was it was Harujuku.

More later

nico

[note: I know that the word isn't in it's dictionary, but is it significant that spell check thinks Totorro should be spelled Torture? ]

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