Day Nine: Yoyogi

days like today go on forever and seem so perfect for stories to eventually tell your own kids.

i start with a little trip back to shinjuku to scope out potential spots to play for a bit, it seems to me like everywhere decent has already been taken by the tokyo musical scenesters. one band was called scattered sheep or something along those lines.

i promptly left, it was too crowded for my feelings at the moment.

i head heard from a friend i met in shibuya that he plays guitar in yoyogi park on saturdays.

yoyogi park has nothing to do with how to greet a bear from jellystone park or his friend booboo. it is a huge park in the center of tokyo between the shinjuku and shibuya wards. i went there looking for tetsu.

the park was huge and loaded with people. hundreds of folks were out and about, playing music, drinking with friends, playing sports, all types of assorted nosh.

i didn’t find tetsu, but what i did eventually find was like gold.

i sat down next to a small pond after a deep sense of being lonely came to me. i had just started writing a song when all of the sudden, three japanese lesbians walked up to me, cigs and beers in hand. one of them sat down next to me and kept trying to touch me and asking me to play songs for her, eventually she took the guitar and also started playing music.

in an uncomfortable way it was so comforting.

they were the lost children of some new generation of tokyo hipsters. lost in being genuine and true to themselves while everyone else seems so fake, constantly trying to emulate the fashion and lifestyle of pop icons and rock stars.

the girl next to me kept asking me to play sad songs, because i felt sad. it was funny to me that this kid wouldn’t speak japanese to me even though i told her i could understand everything she said. she just kept hugging and kissing the guitar and all the while, asking me to play sad songs to express the feeling of loneliness.

eventually the incidents described earlier took place, and she and the kids were gone. it was dark outside now, i had been hanging out with them for almost an hour.

i got up and walked towards where i could hear loud music, like an outdoor concert.

As it turns out, It was a rastafarian festival in harajuku. I walked around a bit, took in some of the night air. Meantime the scent of rum and tobacco burned my nostrils, and I went on my merry way towards shibuya--I was interested in meeting more folks.

So I played there for about two hours, I talked to about five large groups of people, one of them was a group of late teen-somethings heading to some kind of weird slumber party. One of the kids gave me 500 yen, the first cash moneys I have received so far during my trip.

Another was a Japanese man that asked me lots of in-depth questions about how to win the heart of an American girl. He said he really liked a girl he knew that worked here as an English teacher. What could I tell him?

I told him the truth.

To win the heart of an American girl, you take her to mcdonalds, buy her a six piece chicken nugget meal, maybe a side salad with light dressing, tell her you like the movie “the notebook” or any other movie adapted from a nicholas sparks book and then feed her the chicken nuggets while telling her you love her, all in the same night.

Easy as pie, and you don’t even have to buy flowers.

And if youre mormon, tell them how much you enjoyed the five sessions of the last general conference, throw in that youre an rm even if you arent.

Also use a jack weyland movie instead of a nicholas sparks one.

Tomorrow will be a balloon fashion statement in harajuku.

New balloon styles fused with goth-lolita and neo new wave?

More havoc to come.