tokyo random walk

there's a bookshop called 'tokyo random walk' whose name cracks me up because that is what people do here. the tokyo random walk. girls in their stupid, stupid shoes – which are not made for, ya know, walking – totter or shuffle or mince slowly up the street; disaffected, yellow-spiky-haired punkabilly boys charge on by looking disgusted with this pathetic existence; salarymen in business suits continue their serious conversations; high school girls gossip and giggle; old folks somehow manage to carry their groceries home; EVERYONE text-messages away on their pastel-colored, sparkly, jingly phones and NO ONE no one noone walks in a straight line.

tokyoites never seem to bump into each other. meanwhile i've tried everything from being extra careful and trying to predict where people are heading (um: impossible) to barreling ahead with daggers shooting out my eyes, and yet i am always the one confusing people by being in their way. my conclusion is that there are magnets under the street controlling the steering of these people, perhaps run by the bureau of transportation. maybe you get one implanted when you receive your alien registration card? i only have a tourist visa, so. this tokyo random walk, it drives me insane. (but what doesn't?)

so today i honor this phenomenon with the tokyo random post. watch out, i will change directions when you least expect it! no magnets!

you know you've got it bad when you're dreaming about work. i wake up with fabulously wrought sentences on the brain but then realize upon waking that they make no sense. i write in invented grammar and language. or i dream that i'm typing words upon my screen and they begin to rearrange themselves and float off the screen completely. these dreams are frustrating.

t-shirt of the day, from a couple of days ago: EVERY JACK HAS HIS GILL

i have a korean housemate who, everyone living here agrees, is crazy in the best way. she speaks extremely little english but having lived in japan for about ten years, her japanese is excellent. so because there are a few people who are here to study university-level japanese, and a few who speak almost none at all, and one (OK, me) who speaks like i have lived in a cave since the age of three, she uses a lot of facial expression and physical gesture to communicate, all the while speaking bera bera bera bera* in japanese. she has made almost everyone in the house take bites of the chilis she eats every morning, dipped in a little miso. they have produced flames on the tongues of every person who has bravely tried them, and i know when she's ignited another victim because i can hear them in the kitchen making loud hyperventilating noises for about ten minutes while laugh-crying. i've eaten some hot chilis in my day, but ow. she is hilarious and makes friends everywhere she goes and i wish i could have deeper conversations with her – but am limited by the sad extent of my language skills.

weekend after next i'm going to visit my aunt, who lives near the base of mt fuji. her four two-year-old grandchild died suddenly two years ago from some type of meningitis, i think, from how my mom explained it to me and how the big R diagnosed it from that story. my cousin who lost this son bore her second son recently, and the weekend i'm visiting i will meet him for the first time and commemorate the passing of his older brother (whom i never met), on the second anniversary of his death. this cousin was unable to come to tokyo last year when my family surprised me by meeting for dinner en masse. so despite the sort of complicated circumstances, i'm looking forward to seeing her for the first time in several years.

tonight i had a macrobiotic japanese dinner at a place where STEVIE WONDER has dined. afterwards he played the piano for an hour. they still talk about it in the neighborhood, says the owner.

oh, and soy ice cream: blech.



* japanese onomatopeaia for talking a lot, really fast.