day three in japan. if you just want the part about gay bars, you canskip past the part that says ANYWAYS, since the rest is weird ramblings.
sunday was all about being a burden to the hotel staff. i’ve never beenone to ask the concierge or reception clerk to do anything for me, norhas it ever been my habit to even have the bell captain summon someoneto take my bags. but something about business trips, and expensereports, and the hustle and bustle of travelling for work makes me atotal hotel diva. on sunday, not only did i ask the bell captain tocheck in my tote bag while i was gone for the morning, i also went backlater with a bag of food and asked him to deliver it to my room for me,and also dispose of a separate bag of trash. (regarding the trash, haveyou ever tried to find a trash can in japan? impossible. and even whenyou do, you’ve gotta figure out if your trash is combustible or not.)my room was on the 30th floor, and i didn’t want to keep riding theelevator up and down, so i figured, why not just have someone else doit for me?
sunday also marked the day that emaiwould be in tokyo on his whirlwind tour of japan. since i couldn’texpense report the rental of a cell phone for the trip, i was largelyleft incommunicado to the outside world, with the exception of my hotelroom phone. i hadn’t heard from him by that afternoon, and i was goingto be out attending the tokyo anime fair and watchin puffy perform forthe rest of the day, so i decided i might as well bother the receptioneven more by going up to the guy and being all like “if someone namederic calls for my room, could you please ask him to call this othernumber? (my coworker’s cell phone)” he didn’t seem to have a protocolfor this, but he did his best to accomodate me. i was nonethelessdubious over whether this would actually work.
mirabile dictu, it fucking worked!
emai called while i was eating okonomiyaki, and we decided to find thehomo places to be. i took the train over to shinkjuku to meet, and wetook a taxi over to the place where all the bars are. (my coworker hadwritten me a script for the taxi just in case: shinjuku nichome onegaishimasu.)
navigating the little streets in tokyo is impossible. the system ofnumbers and dashes (like, Shinjuku 2-3-14) are as indeciferable asdolphin clicking to me. of course, this was made even harder by thefact that it started raining as soon as we left the hotel.
our choice of umbrellas was limited: there were extremely compactpastel ones (lavender and pink) and then more cumbersome clear ones. asevery gay knows, when going out, excess bulk of items (wallet,cellphone, keys etc.) is to be kept at a minimum because, well, it justisn’t cute. i was already carrying my manbag and an extra jacket, so wedecided to go with the compact lavender one.
this proved to be the wrong logic for the streets of tokyo. apparentlythey greatly prefer the cumbersome clear ones. i felt like we wereattracting stares wandering the streets huddling underneath a littlepuple umbrella, like everyone was thinking “clear and cumbersome is SOthe NEW lavender and compact.” the other advantage of the cumbersomeumbrellas is that they are apparently more sturdy as well, since oursseemed to want to invert quite frequently.
ANYWAYS.
here is a brief synopsis of emai and anyonebagel’s wild ride through shinjuku nichome:
ARTY FARTY: this place was in the guidebook. this translates asHEY FOREIGNERS, GO HERE TO HOOK UP WITH GROSS JAPANESE DUDES. theatmosphere was kind of nice, and they had a whole series of hpnotiqcocktails, but OMG THE PEOPLE THERE WERE SO WEIRD LOOKING. like, iain’t hating on the white people or nothing, but holy crap where didthose guys come from? had they not purchased any clothing sincemontgomery wards went out of business? it’s just like, floodwater taperpants, ill fitting sweatshirts with brand names i’ve never seenembroidered across the front, and flobee haircuts. watching this whitedude with a perm and a waify japanese dude go at it on the couch andthen do some embarrassing dancing on the dance floor was enough. wepeaced out.
WORD UP BAR: a sign with a picture of a japanese dude in a speedo luredus into this one. it also had a sign outside the door that said PLEASENOTE THIS BAR IS FOR ASIAN AND JAPANESE ONLY. holla for the absolutelack of any civil rights or anti-discrimination laws, especially whenit works out in my favor! i think they were kind of put off that ericdidn’t speak japanese, and well, i’m the japanese helen keller, so thevibe was very standoffish, and the drinks were weak to boot. later,word up bar.
PAPI CHULO: man, i thought that the other bars had been small, but thisone took the cake. the thing you have to realize about all these barsis that they’re in really narrow buildings, and most of them aren’t onthe first floor, so you either take the stairs or elevator up and areimmediately thrown into the bar. it’s very hard to scope places out orget any kind of feel for what they are like prior to stepping insideand being assaulted by IRASSHAIMASE!!!!!!! seven billion times.
we had passed papi chulo several times while walking around, which wason the eighth floor of this tiny building with a smoke shop calledCHEECH AND CHONG on the ground floor. i finally admitted that i wantedto see what it was all about, because um, IT’S CALLED PAPI CHULO AND ISIN THE MIDDLE OF TOKYO.
we took the elevator up and emerged into the SMALLEST BAR I HAVE EVERSEEN. smaller than my bedroom probably. a small bar with three or fourbarstools, a couch and little table behind it, and a stairway upto an even smaller loft, oh, and like a bartender and one customer.
surprisingly, this ended up being the most enjoyable place. thebartender was pretty cute, and very talkative, and introduced me to theCUNTINI, which is perhaps the best drink i have had all year. they alsohad these little maps of the area with a lot of the bars highlighted. iapparently was drunk to have a conversation in japanese that ididn’t realize until eric was like “wow, i’m impressed, i didn’tunderstand a single thing you were just saying” and i was like, “iwasn’t speaking english?”
we left there because i needed some fresh air.
at this point, the streets were really starting to clear out, and weweren’t even sure that a lot of the places were still open because itwas sunday night. there was a place called “Boy’s Massage Bar” (single,unmarried, and students 18-25 welcome!!!!) that we decided to skip, andwe ended up having to pee and walking into this bar that i don’teven remember the name of.
the host was like “irasshaimase (welcome)” and i was like “where’s thetoilet” and he said something to me, and i was like oh ok…as we tooka seat at a table, eric was like, where is the bathroom and i’m like, ithink he just said something really dirty to me…then the host cameback up to us and was like, oh the bathroom’s in back, and i was like,oh, i understand, we’ll use it later…
he took our drink orders and went away and i turned to eric and waslike, “i think he said to go into the back on pull on his dick?”
anyway, i had to pee real bad, so i went in back to see what all thiswas about. i was just starting to question my japanese comprehensionwhen i got to the bathroom door and realized the the handle on the doorwas a HUGE WOODEN COCK.
whew.
after all that, we finished our drinks and it was time to call it anight. crashed at eric’s hotel and returned to my hotel the nextmorning.
