tango en tokyo
my housemate E said last night that probably if you advertised an event or workshop on – he looked around for something mundane and obscure – crushing beer cans, for example, there would be people in tokyo to sign up. he didn't mean to imply that they've nothing better to do, but that they'd come out of curiosity: what's beer-can crushing all about? let's find out!
he said this as we sat at a small, round, metal table with spindly legs, sitting in pastel-colored lucite chairs, drinking asahi beer out of cans as we watched pairs of tango dancers whirl by across a blond wood floor. because YES, i found tango in tokyo and was hell-bent on attending at least one milonga.
in the kitchen a couple weeks ago, E and i discovered a mutual obsession with tango – he with the music, which he and his brothers have been collecting for several years, and me with the dance, which i began studying more than a year ago. he's a story in himself, a twentysomething mexican-parisian painter fluent in five languages and nearly so in two others. but in today's tale he's just my tango date (watch me flatten him out to two-dimensionality).
after finding the right metro line and the right station exit, we oriented ourselves on the street. walking and talking, turning my hand-drawn map upside down and sideways, we found the spot. and... nothing. closed-up buildings, convenience stores, hole-in-the-wall restaurants.
tokyo addresses are infamously difficult to find, as the address numbers don't follow a logical order and thus do not clearly indicate exact locations. none of the people we asked had even heard of the district we were looking for and i thought maybe i'd copied it down wrong, but in our circular journey we'd actually noticed a sign pointing us towards the not-imaginary district. we followed the arrow on the sign but it took us into twilight-zone nowhere, so we came back around later and attempted to deconstruct the sign's design in an effort to find out whether we'd misinterpreted it somehow (it was just a simple sign, with big arrows).
we walked around the main street and through little alleys, up hills, down hills, into art galleries and onto a bus looking for this place and asking people if they knew where the address was. we were getting so hungry for a sign that we got all excited when we spotted a mexican restaurant in an alley, but this building had no crucial fourth floor. then we came upon some 'international forum' ground-floor gallery space serving colombian (!) coffee and having an exhibit of latin-american (!!) painters. nope. so then E suggested he retrace our steps down the main road while i call the place to get directions.
when i called, i got specific-sounding but ultimately vague directions: 'do you see convenience store A? OK. from that store, walk towards roppongi. if you keep walking, you will see convenience store B. we are between convenience stores A and B. there's a sign that says "tango argentino" out on the street.' *
E and i reconvened and walked from convenience store A towards roppongi. no tango sign, no convenience store B. but... there was a wiry, ponytailed caucasian guy rolling an amp up the sidewalk.
'excuse me, do you speak spanish?' E asked in english.
'uh, yes...' said the guy, eyeballing us. and then we realized we recognized his rather striking face from the tango website. he rolled the amp up to the door, half an hour late to teach the lesson – perfect timing for us.
we small-talked in spanish in the elevator, then walked into a well-lit, wood-floored room with windows along one entire wall and a mirror across another. opposite the window was a well-stocked bar, and lining the edges of the room were small tables and chairs. a few minutes later, the lovely progression of a bandoneon's introductory notes rolled out from the speakers, setting my heart aflutter in anticipation, and the lesson began.
E joined the group for the uninitiated, and i joined the very well-dressed and serious-looking beginners and intermediates. the men looked polished in dark colors and chic pants, and all the women had on proper tango shoes. i started to get intimidated but pretended i wasn't (as is my way of getting through life – via judiciously applied denial and self-delusion) and after the one-hour lesson i turned to see E's face glowing with a huge smile. hooked.
then the milonga started and we got our first beers and snagged one of the tables to rest our weary feet for a song or two. even if you're not dancing, it's so entrancing to just watch people's legs move as they circle by, or the dispassionate intimacy of people in the close embrace.
but it's so much more fun to dance, and this we did until around midnight before catching the last train home. it was an all-night milonga going till 5am... but we'd had a long night already.
the end!
[contents by volume: 75% marginally-entertaining journey, 20% general miscellaneous, 5% tango]
* the distance between convenience stores A and B was about half a mile. and the sign: it was a sandwich board standing in a recessed doorway and was about 1' x 2' (a finger sandwich board?) and painted BLACK (to draw attention at nighttime!).
he said this as we sat at a small, round, metal table with spindly legs, sitting in pastel-colored lucite chairs, drinking asahi beer out of cans as we watched pairs of tango dancers whirl by across a blond wood floor. because YES, i found tango in tokyo and was hell-bent on attending at least one milonga.
in the kitchen a couple weeks ago, E and i discovered a mutual obsession with tango – he with the music, which he and his brothers have been collecting for several years, and me with the dance, which i began studying more than a year ago. he's a story in himself, a twentysomething mexican-parisian painter fluent in five languages and nearly so in two others. but in today's tale he's just my tango date (watch me flatten him out to two-dimensionality).
after finding the right metro line and the right station exit, we oriented ourselves on the street. walking and talking, turning my hand-drawn map upside down and sideways, we found the spot. and... nothing. closed-up buildings, convenience stores, hole-in-the-wall restaurants.
tokyo addresses are infamously difficult to find, as the address numbers don't follow a logical order and thus do not clearly indicate exact locations. none of the people we asked had even heard of the district we were looking for and i thought maybe i'd copied it down wrong, but in our circular journey we'd actually noticed a sign pointing us towards the not-imaginary district. we followed the arrow on the sign but it took us into twilight-zone nowhere, so we came back around later and attempted to deconstruct the sign's design in an effort to find out whether we'd misinterpreted it somehow (it was just a simple sign, with big arrows).
we walked around the main street and through little alleys, up hills, down hills, into art galleries and onto a bus looking for this place and asking people if they knew where the address was. we were getting so hungry for a sign that we got all excited when we spotted a mexican restaurant in an alley, but this building had no crucial fourth floor. then we came upon some 'international forum' ground-floor gallery space serving colombian (!) coffee and having an exhibit of latin-american (!!) painters. nope. so then E suggested he retrace our steps down the main road while i call the place to get directions.
when i called, i got specific-sounding but ultimately vague directions: 'do you see convenience store A? OK. from that store, walk towards roppongi. if you keep walking, you will see convenience store B. we are between convenience stores A and B. there's a sign that says "tango argentino" out on the street.' *
E and i reconvened and walked from convenience store A towards roppongi. no tango sign, no convenience store B. but... there was a wiry, ponytailed caucasian guy rolling an amp up the sidewalk.
'excuse me, do you speak spanish?' E asked in english.
'uh, yes...' said the guy, eyeballing us. and then we realized we recognized his rather striking face from the tango website. he rolled the amp up to the door, half an hour late to teach the lesson – perfect timing for us.
we small-talked in spanish in the elevator, then walked into a well-lit, wood-floored room with windows along one entire wall and a mirror across another. opposite the window was a well-stocked bar, and lining the edges of the room were small tables and chairs. a few minutes later, the lovely progression of a bandoneon's introductory notes rolled out from the speakers, setting my heart aflutter in anticipation, and the lesson began.
E joined the group for the uninitiated, and i joined the very well-dressed and serious-looking beginners and intermediates. the men looked polished in dark colors and chic pants, and all the women had on proper tango shoes. i started to get intimidated but pretended i wasn't (as is my way of getting through life – via judiciously applied denial and self-delusion) and after the one-hour lesson i turned to see E's face glowing with a huge smile. hooked.
then the milonga started and we got our first beers and snagged one of the tables to rest our weary feet for a song or two. even if you're not dancing, it's so entrancing to just watch people's legs move as they circle by, or the dispassionate intimacy of people in the close embrace.
but it's so much more fun to dance, and this we did until around midnight before catching the last train home. it was an all-night milonga going till 5am... but we'd had a long night already.
the end!
[contents by volume: 75% marginally-entertaining journey, 20% general miscellaneous, 5% tango]
* the distance between convenience stores A and B was about half a mile. and the sign: it was a sandwich board standing in a recessed doorway and was about 1' x 2' (a finger sandwich board?) and painted BLACK (to draw attention at nighttime!).
posted by a wandering eye at 5:51 PM
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