Welcome to the fold, my dear reader, you scion of justice, you magistrate of love, you amplifier of vibes, you. We are now in the groove, shrugging off the lag and thrusting forth into the ether of possibility. Clearing the sleep from the corners of the windows to our collective soul, aura full-glow, divinity so close to the enamel of our cut teeth. Fully comfortable mixing metaphors, talking to strangers. Using the subway system without an app! Ordering off the non-English menu with confidence! Our new camo pants have cargo pockets, dear reader, and we can put all our chargers and back-up batteries and wifi transmitters in there! No backpack at all!
I remember the first time I read Joe Sacco, who is in this case a journalist who writes and draws award winning comic books, and not a former NHL player and coach. I have shared with some, and possibly you yourself, dear reader, that I would like to meet hockey Joe Sacco someday and tell him that he is not even my favourite Joe Sacco, but I digress. The way Sacco would implant himself into the greater narratives of war-torn Sarajevo or the suffocated hillside villages of Palestine was a great inspiration to me as a younger man and still is. So perhaps I can insert myself here into a greater narrative about the world preparing itself for what might be a global pandemic, or, what we hope might be both an effort of preventative and sober caution and simultaneously an overblown it-girl moment for the 24-hour news cycle.
My scholarship on virology is lacking, to say the least, dear reader. But I can say this: COVID-19 is fucking up my vacation. Perhaps I will not be able to channel Sacco in this moment. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to the point where I must. Yesterday was to be the day that I visited the Studio Ghibli museum, a monument to animation swathed in secrecy. No phones or cameras are allowed inside, and the only thing that I know about its relative quality as an attraction is that tickets sell out year round, months in advance. This has to do with their comically byzantine ticket purchasing and scheduling structure, but also speaks to the popularity of the franchise. I bought my chance to visit this house of wonders back in November, but was informed by email a few days ago that I would in fact not be pouring over cells of Nausicaa and Ashitaka and Chihiro, because they had closed the attraction due to fears of spreading the current iteration of Coronavirus by way of large groups in small places. While I was disappointed, I have been having so much fun that I was not greatly put off, and of course if you’ve been reading along, you’ll know that I soothed myself with a lovely shopping adventure instead. I responded by email to the people at Ghibli Museum that I would be back in Tokyo toward the end of March, and could I exchange my ticket for then, when they had scheduled to re-open, but I was thwarted. It would not be fair to the others who already had purchased tickets for those days, I was told. No matter.
Next came more news yesterday, pertaining to the activity I had planned for today, which was perhaps the thing I was most excited about in Tokyo, The Mori Digital Art Gallery. Touted by some as the most exciting art gallery currently operating in the entire world, I had purchased my ticket for this in December. With only a day’s notice, I was informed that they too were shuttering doors for a week, starting on the day of my attendance. This is perhaps even more disappointing but comes with the caveat that I may have a chance to visit in late March if they reopen. Gods I hope they do, the new exhibit is said to be their best yet.
With this information sizzling across the medium-heat of my non-stick brainpan, I figured I had best check on the status of the Yayoi Kusama Gallery, perhaps the next-most exciting art exhibition in Japan, for which I have tickets on March 28th. They too are closed for now, with hope to reopen in 8 days. What (I was afraid to entertain the notion) would this mean for Nippon Professional Baseball spring training schedule? Well in fact, it would mean that all spring training contests would be played completely closed to the public. The entire schedule is shut to the public. So that’s out as well. No cheering on the Hanshin Tigers, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp, the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. As well, my friend Mikki, who worked with us at the Bedford and lives now in her hometown of Yokohama informed me that she was not allowed to travel due to her work policy regarding the virus. Sadly, I won’t be seeing her either.
Somewhat dejected, I emerged from Lightning Hotel Asusaka into the cool morning sun feeling a little rudderless for the first time since rubber met tarmac in Narita, and listlessly flitted down to the 7-11 for a bottle of cold Boss coffee, then simply got on the Ginza-line train with no idea where I was going. Of course, the Ginza-line passes through Ginza, the up-market shopping Mecca of Tokyo, so I thought getting out there would be as good an idea as any. It was not. The status-obsessed wealth flaunting on display was too much, dear reader, for even cynical amusement. The passersby leered with side-eyes at your partly-kempt protagonist. The price tags dangling from tennis bracelets and monogrammed leather bags were eye-popping. Not even Les Champs Elysée could compare. The finest shops in Yorktown would blush, the prettiest boutiques on Robson would turn away in shame.
I lumbered back onto the metro and carried on to Shibuya to take part in the scramble, burrowing my head in YouTube commentary on the state of American politics on the way. A familiar distraction, a flaccid resistance. But when I scrambled out of the underground again to the light, I could not despair any longer. Tokyo is, even with her citizenry masked, electric and vital. If anything, there were more mouths and noses than before. More bravery against the scare of this tiny menace. Shibuya was alive, it’s metal fingers rising to the heavens as if to proclaim, “we are here, and this is what we have made”. I ate a rice-filled omelette, and after drank a coffee on the steps of a glistening blue office tower in the sun, interrupting a model shooting a promotion for her agency’s instragram by the force of my difference of appearance, and in fact made my way into the informal shoot itself. Dear reader, those girls were fucking baaaaabes and I felt cool as hell.
With a renewed sense of purpose, I made my way across the empty grounds of the Yoyogi National Gymnasium to Yoyogi park, and strolled the grounds with a peaceful disposition, bumping Wu-Tan and rapping my own freestyles to myself intermittently, silent except for the movements of my hands which have their own needs and cannot stay still when I’m freeing a beat. I then walked further on to the Meiji-Jingu shrine, a grand monument to the greatness of Emporer Meiji who modernised Japan with a socialist’s compassion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I hung an Ema, a prayer, for Bernie Sanders around a great 100-year-old camphor tree. There were other camphors planted in 1920 across the main square of the Shinto shrine grounds that had been planted together and were linked by a great old braided rope. These trees, it was said, were married, and their divinity could bless your union with love, luck and dedication. I found the notion beautiful.
And I found that, in the thrall of this beautiful afternoon, that this would be a fine evening to partake in some debauchery in the famous alleys of Golden Gai, or, as it is known because of the drunken urination that takes place here, “Piss Alley”.
As the sun set over Shinkjuku, I went from tiny bar to tiny bar, meeting many tourists and Japanese alike. Brendon from LA was a delight, and a big fan of Victoria. Kevin and Orla from Galway and I had a nice chat over sochu about our travels across the globe, and the best bar I went to was shared with a group of five raucous Germans who I won over when I said how sorry I was for eavesdropping on their conversation about how Canadians always say sorry. I do understand a little bit of German, if I’m given long enough. Although I could tell that Nikolas was uncomfortable with how much attention Stephanie was paying to me, so I did not ask to join them when they moved on to their next location. I also met a couple from Vancouver there, who I told could have their first round free at Churchill when they next visited Victoria. I told them it was better than the Bard and Banker. Sorry Vic Pub Co., one man’s opinion. My final stop was at a bar where I was alone with the bartender until her friends showed up. Those friends were bad news and kept disappearing into the tiny bathroom, and I wanted to have a fun night, not a long night of talking about nothing for no reason so I could wake up feeling like shit. I stopped at the 7-11 and ate an entire box of Ritz crackers in my hotel room before I dreamt of scaling a mountain.
It’s almost 10:30, dear reader. It’s time to get on the metro and see where it leads me again, if not to galleries and reunions and baseball games, then perhaps to something else. And while barriers are appearing everywhere, this city is too much, the milieu too kaleidoscopic for despair.
Two final notes: I upgraded to a private room for the final four nights in Tokyo, part one, for the low price of $25 a night. I wish I had thought of that sooner, as I am much more comfortable if for no other reason than having a private shower and no one to see me vape. Also, I am positively mercing these jive-turkeys in my hockey pools. It feels just as good on the other side of the Pacific.
