And I've Ten Lays

Another charming anagram of 'Valentine's Day'. Tokyo does still feel like an anagram of sorts; it's taken lots of things I know reasonably well - coffee, shopping, fashion, roads, etiquette, umbrellas, weather - and jumbled them up and mixed them around until there's only that sneaking suspicion left that these if you broke them down into their component parts, you could spot something you know. But as it, it's just nonsensically brilliant.

Last Friday night: underground (in all its senses) gig with Miila and the Geeks - sort of like CSS if they were Japanese and enjoyed feedback. They're on MySpace (still), and they're a saxophone, a drum machine, and a godawfully pretty girl with a bass guitar and a mic. Found the tiny bar they were playing at after a half hour of browsing online for s/thing to do, and coupled with the almost-Sapphic anime film (replete with English subs) projected onto the whitewashed/smoke-stained walls, was a top eve. The tipsied-munchies in MacD's afterwards didn't hurt matters, although my asking for a ヲッパ may have hurt the unfailingly polite till girl's feelings.

Still trying out the comedy scene (Eng.-speaking, course), and headed down to the Pink Cow for a stand-up night on Sat., and took Ronnie (♀, but then that feels Pokédexed) along on Sun. evening for an uptown event. Found some London Pride, which was a charming addition to the gaijin feel - much nicer chilled. Not looking forward to British tendency to only chill road, middle of, lagers. Also not looking forward to abandoning my Japanese peanut butter - or peanut cream, technically. As if it had been mixed with honey, and oh so good.  Must cut down on the toast.

After a rather complicated internship dilemma, should finally start work tomorrow. My two-week trial pass at the gym also expires tomorrow, so I'll find out whether they want me to get a bank account or if I can simply hand over some more large wodges of yen to keep going. Seem to keep spending said wodges quite easily - dropped what was actually only about a twenty-pound note the other night over a beer, entry, chips, and then udon, but felt like plenty more. That was with my new-found Japanese amigos - they all love to adopt a gringo or two, as I've found my housemates particularly enjoy (esp. the whole cultural issue of lavish gift-giving), although that hasn't really come into play for yours truly yet. Chopsticks crossed.

One Week's Worth

Arrived in Japan a week ago, but feels like months since I met Enrico the Italian at passport control, and think I'm not so much turning Japanese ('I think I'm turning Japanese') as living in a magical-land-on-steroids [Hyphens incl. to avoid accusations of drug abuse], straight out of a  C. S. Lewis/Aldous Huxley crossover project gone wonderfully wrong. Found myself brushing my trainers with a toothbrush a few days ago, just to make sure they were clean enough for the Japanese (via Venice Beach) gym I now haunt. Had my first muttered 'Hello' from another gym hare today - not quite as exciting as Saturday night, when hipster #1 asked hipster #2 (numbers are hitting triple figures round here) to check out 'that cool cat' as I walked by. Now reads like I was simply in the same vicinity as a nice looking feline, but boosted my ego sufficiently for that night.

Spent the rest of the evening wandering round Shibuya before, after careful consideration and deliberate pavement hopping, walking right into a crowd of Australians set on celebrating their football team's assured victory over the Japanese in the final of the Asian Cup that evening. After much Jap-lish (Engl-nese?) taunting and beery cheering, the Japanese won 1-0.  We retreated behind the Golden Arches©, only to end up following a huge Japanese chap who was just as beer-y as he was bear-y across the street to the club he owned. Cue much foreigner-as-celebrity welcoming, with London having the edge over Melbourne that particular evening. London especially carries a certain cachet, although the clued-up hipsters are rather impressed by Brighton connections.

Have passed two evenings (Tues and Wed, just to count it out) touring Tokyo's English-speaking comedy scene, Skyping (Sun), poring over Infinite Jest (around the four-hundred page mark out of a thousand, thanks to daily visits), meeting a rather entertaining OW journalist in the Foreign Correspondents' Club (Thurs) and tonight (Fri) may venture out for my first free gig in the city of cities. (I can't account for Mon -  must have stayed in?) I have yet to find a full routine to make sure I can keep track of days/make surethey all blend into one another, but this morning I may have found the café to establish myself as a regular in, and finally plucked up the courage to enter the gym's sauna. All of a sudden rather conscious of the colour of my skin and all that entails, incl. the (urban) legendary endowment of Western males.  See Charisma Man comic strip for more details.

NEXT WEEK:

I start work, have an interview, do laundry, revise Japanese vocab, and plan a trip to Cuba...