There is a gap in this town between culture and the masses of people who need culture to survive. Many people know me to be a man of passion; fiercely dedicated to ideals and to visible improvement and growth in the world around me. What does it matter if I go to school and learn and develop myself to be an informed and actively engaged member of society if the world I live in and the communities I have the most affinity for do not come along with me? This is how I feel. I feel like I was sent to sunday school and the boy scouts and advance work classes and it made me an outsider on the playground and in the locker room. I followed the American ideal path of school, job, carreer and it makes me an exception to the rule in many of my chosen social circles. I know the response from many will be, " Just change your social circles." . If you react that way you should take a real hard look at Boston's demographic census data; I just did and it is scary.

Never one to simply complain without planning and creating actionable steps to correct the situation I am always scheming and plotting events and institutions to get the ball rolling at least. My computers and hard drives and ZIP Disks (remember them?) are full of outlines and proposals and plans; almost as full as they are of images. In fact one reason I often give for not really considering myself a "artist" is that I commit almost more time thinking of how to get an audience for my work as I do working. This phenomenon only got worse once I started grad school and eventually teaching. Something about planning lessons and units was like planning events and vice versa.

This orientation to art and culture led me to scheme up this thing I called HAVEN (www.haven.com) eventually. It was a long time in planning. My best friend Chris told me back in Mass Art that you should always have a five year plan in place. It made sense and I had a loose one. I tightened it up and even drew plans for what it was I realized I wanted to
do. From then til now it's been almost fifteen years and I've checked off a lot of goals. I've collected information, skills and experiences to figure out how to make things happen. This is not meant to sound like a complaint or crying over spilled milk mind you. I give my life only as an example to help frame my point.

This gap that exists in this city is not one that is a permanent aspect of what Boston is. It is not a birth defect or a flaw in our character as citizens of Boston. We are in a cultural Mecca and a hot bed of new ideas. We are surrounded by brilliant pioneers in many fields. We open our arms and embrace folks from all parts of the world and all walks of life. We are often the first to speak up and change culture nationally and globally. Yet we are stuck with the label of being backwater and parochial. In the early days of HIP HOP we were saddled with the dubious and unwanted description of living in the shadow of New York. Yesterday at a conference held by "Greatest Minds" we were asked by a Boston musicologist, " What is Boston's 'Sound' ?". My immediate response was that other towns have venues and outlets to practice their craft at and develop a local sound. The same is true for artists although it can be said that there are far more opportunities for Boston's visual artists to exhibit and be shown locally. But to my point, the homegrown talent in the inner-city rarely has that exposure and the audience is not built up of our moms and dads and neighbors to the degree that it should be. If I make art about black people or about real folks and situations I encounter in my life ( picture paintings about Packy's) who will spend time in front of them thinking about the content much less buy them? And don't go saying, " I love art!" Or " People love your work B!" because I have tried to give work away for free and still only got lip service.
People need to be exposed and educated about art more; not so they can be collectors so much as so they can understand and appreciate and eventually engage in artists lives. The chances that they end up with an artist for a child is high. Their children being on the outside of the art world unable to engage in that world is a matter of power. Trust me when I say that those in power understand the value of owning art physically and culturally. Look at the curriculum for any good school. It is what informed parents want for their children's lives.

Boston has a wealth of large institutions that offer a way in for all to have access but the initial sense of ownership is not there. For many it is because there is no real representation of their life in what they will see in these institutions. For others there may be a language issue. There are some people in this and other cities who never leave their block. Many go out only to go to work. Their market and their church are right down the street. Their museum is not. Their gallery is not. Their music comes to them. Television brings them their theatre. Where do they dance like their father taught them? Or sing in a circle their songs ? Where do they point to their children and say, "Look there. That is what your great-grandma was like."?

We are no longer creating things and places and opportunities to hold onto our cultures and even to advance our collective mono-culture by enriching it with newer more well informed ideas. We are slipping as a generation into the mold of our parents and I hear us saying again and again "Back in the day this... When we were kids that...". We are the ones who create the funk. We are the ones with the experience and the fire enough to make things happen. We have the networks and connections and skills and knowledge. We have the memories of how it was and the vision for how it should be. We are the cool kids and we should run this place.

Right now we are all feeling the twinge at best and the stiff kick to the teeth at worst. The economy is bad. We have survived worst. We tell jokes about koolaid sammiches or sleep for dinner. We are industrious and we will survive this. My question is this, what will we have learned? The people we trust to provide us with structure, with safety, with entertainment and all the other things that used to be an offshoot of culture are reeling too. They won't admit it but their structure is faulty at best. When do we learn to look to ourselves and each other as a community to support and strengthen and to sustain our lives? That is the real benefit of culture; like the juke joint was a different kind of church, Like the speak-easy arose out of necessity or like Japanese people sitting in bombed out empty lots watching someone turn huge drawings one by one.

A big wig in the arts told me yesterday that it will simply be our passion that allows us to thrive in the vacuum of support for the arts that we are seeing from the audience and the would be patrons. Wow. My response was "wow".

When I questioned the Musicologist about how to keep the new energies and things we create authentic he said to educate people. I can appreciate that but I thought," Really? it's that simple? That's the best you got?". I knew he had more to say but time is short.

A voice in the crowd shouted that we needed to unify.
Some one said we should cross-collaborate between artforms.
Someone said ownership.
ON and On and Blah and Blah...
I could have written this as a script ten minutes before and I would have been hailed as a psychic or more probably just as an asshole.

My point is this. If our passion for creativity and culture and unity and social justice and for education and the bright new world of promise is so important and the answers are so readily available why don't we act? Why is it ok to just talk about the same things over and over? Why do we complain about the quality of arts and entertainment? About our image in the public eye? About choices? About being broke? Why do we balk at the opportunity to do something instead of letting the ball fly and trusting our skills? Is it because we are fearful or because we actually don't want these things that badly? It would make sense for me if people would be honest and come clean about the things they value.
The degree that you love or appreciate culture is made manifest by the degree that you participate and follow up on things. It is not based on what meetings you attend or how often you go to the theatre. Artists, it is not based on how long you have been doing what you have been doing. It is about how you have grown in what you do. If you find yourself without an audience like I have and we all have- grind harder, smarter, better and make better more provocative work. Take a cue from all of these powerful grassroots organizations around town who galvanize thousands of people to do walks. Look at small non-profits who fill theatres for a teen night or a film screening.

Let's start making the connections we need to. Let's start being about it and letting our work talk for us. The big wigs are not going to help us until they see what we are doing for ourselves under our own steam. If our work at this level is strong enough we will attract their attention and they will come crawling. So let's keep doing shows in cafe's and clubs and schools and churches and wherever they will let us in. Let's make them better and funkier and keep the buzz strong like dancehall bass. Let's hold on to our work as precious bits of our soul until we learn how to play the big kids game. And when we sell our work let's do it knowing that it grew too big for them to control or water down or spin. Most importantly let's not approach each other with wishy-washy, half sincere, half baked ideas about working together and doing big things. I promise to step to you real if you do the same. When we do what we say we will blow people out of the water. I have seen it happen time and time again.

If you actually had the patience to read this disjointed rant I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Tokyo Day one

We arrive all of a sudden after a thirteen hour flight, a two and a half hour lay over, a two hour flight from boston after two hours waiting in airport lines and having made the brilliant plan to not sleep but get hopped up on red bull at the E Room in central square as a send off/ final briefing on what to expect. The all of a sudden part refers to the fact that we were in partial denial about what we were doing. Dana kept saying he was calling his auntie or grandma in atlanta to have dinner ready for us. The joke got old but I got the point. It was hard to believe that I was traveling around the world to research things I love on someone else's dime. I mean Me? Get real. I barely know how to get around massachusetts.

The joke persisted even when I told this dude beside me that we were twenty minutes away according to the graphic flight path projected on our personal flat screen TVs. When we were obviously done with our final approach and were descending through the clouds it happened. Like a flash in a moment of clarity I saw them. Hills. Not like any landscape I'd seen from Maine to San Francisco. Short narrow hills that looked more like thick green cornrows with trees growing off of them. The only frame of reference I had for this landscape was art. The art of japanese scroll paintings that describe this hauntingly beautiful world emerging from the fog that I had just dropped out of. I was in a brilliant azure panorama with soft mountains of cotton beneath me mere moments ago.

Although it was clear that this was a busy travel season for Japanese living abroad and coming home ( the 747 was filled with about 98% of the people on board looking japanese) I still felt as if somehow all these people were different from real Japanese people. The authentic experience would be on the ground. My mission was to see what was really up with japanese people and society. Why were they so accepting of an art form that most americans sneer at? The ex-patriots and emigrants on this plane were probably tainted by the Western world. This isn't what I was thinking in any form. But on reflection it was what I was feeling. I realize this because I now find myself wondering what took me so long to talk to the young japanese woman who sat right beside me for the entire trip from Chicago? I know part of it was my obsessive compulsion to not be a bother to other people ( some of you reading this are laughing aloud and saying "What?"). Another reason was because I was obviously trying to be internal and stay positive while extremely uncomfortable in that cramped little economy seat. What should have occurred to me was that I was surrounded by resources. People all around me may have been able to enrich my trip if I would only engage them. You can't always just be nice and hope that people will approach you. But at least it is a start.

Being polite and non intrusive was my entry point into the conversation as we were about to leave the plane. At one point on a stretching break I asked her to excuse me first in English then noticing her accent I said," Sumimasen.". She giggled and was only a little embarrassed. So when Dana and I were trying to decide what time it really was now after resetting my watch in Chicago and then when we crossed the international date line I turned to her and asked her the correct time. She was very friendly and not shy at all. She grabbed my wrist to turn the watch to an angle that she could see. I was warned as a last word by my friend Grant that in general japanese people are not touchy. He thought that Dana and I both were. This woman completely comfortable around me read my watch and did the mental math to tell me that my time was right although about ten minutes fast. But that's how I like it. She asked us where we were going and we fumbled with the map. She took it from us and showed us where we were going and how far it was from where I thought it was. The easiest thing in the world. My worries about being a big black man perceived as a monster from a savage land were somewhat appeased.

The airport still felt like an international no man's land. Not surprising. I feel like I own the whole city of Boston but at Logan I feel like I'm in a neutral zone. Narita was like this. Although the majority of the people were asian it felt weird to look around and see English text and signage so readily available. I was not exotically impressed. The need to make yourself accessible to travelers from different backgrounds felt a little like a sellout. I came here for culture dammit! Make it tougher. I want to get Lost in Translation. After passport check, baggage claim, and customs were so easy to navigate I figured getting to the hotel should be an ordeal to put my social navigation skills to the test. I mean Dana didn't bring the confirmation number or any other hotel information so this was going to be it. We found an internet Kiosk booth and D went to work webbin it out. He was thinking subway as the first adventure but I was sore, tired and the bag I had had no wheels. I said cab. How much could it cost?

We got the hotel address and went out to get a cab. Looking for a cab and trying to read the sign for directions to Suidobashi must have made us stick out like an easy mark. A man in a dress shirt slacks and a tie came over and asked us where we were going while we stumbled over the directions he simply nodded and told us he could get us there for 22,000 Yen. I'm doing the math and try not to look amazed. It's 200 dollars. I swallow it, said " Hai." and he walked us toward his minivan. He packed us up and we were off to Tokyo from Narita which I hadn't even realized was a separate city. On the seventy minute drive the driver chatted us up and was surprised at my having studied the basic japanese words and expressions. He seemed genuinely impressed and kept giving me new words and terms and easier ways to say things. This was it. All my trepidation around being an unwanted tourist vanished. Sure, some people would not dig my style and be charmed by my sincerest efforts. But so what? Some people would. This cab driver was speaking my language. Laughter. He didn't think I was a foreigner coming to exploit their land and their women. When I told Dana that we were "chiroi gaigen " or Brown Foreigners the driver corrected me and told me to say "tourists". When we asked him how to say good, he told us that "ii-ne" is how we should react to beautiful women. He told us how to flirt and how to swear - of course.

My hang ups are my hang ups. They come from me being overly sensitive. And they come from me being hyper-cognizant of past and present injustices. This two week immersion will hopefully help me shake those hang ups so I can be a better teacher and a better artist.



Day two

Sing me a song love
sing it with your body love
sing it in my ear

beautiful struggle
eating ramen and cold fish
in a far away city

akihabara
a vibrant district for nerds
we are all now nerds

I see no niggas
I do not see white people
and the world still turns

have I come this far
just to find a reflection
in japanese faces?


I never really woke up that morning. I never really went to sleep. I took a long nap when we got in but a four hour sleep cycle was all I could handle. i was up and amped up at 12:00. By two I found Brad Pitt on TV and Watched the back half of "Meet Joe Black". Unfortunately it wasn't bad enough to put me to sleep. By 4:00 am I called Dana to see if he was up. OOPS! He was knocked out but answered the phone. I told him I was starving and about to go to the 7 eleven across the street for some grub. He went back to sleep for about a minute before he was calling me back saying he'd meet me downstairs.

The only thing familiar about the 7 eleven was the logo and corporate look. Here we were half way around the world baffled at what was safe to eat. We saw something marked "burrito" but wouldn't have messed with that back on Huntington Ave. I picked fish and D picked a chicken (?) salad with noodles. This was our second time trying to use money and although a bit clumsy we managed. The late night clerks did not seem flustered by two black men at 4 am. They were polite enough when I asked, " Sumimasen ga... Nan desu ka? Torniku?" Just cuz it looks like chicken don't mean it is. I was game but I wanted to know what I was getting into. He checked the label and confirmed it . I think.

We stepped out side and got hit by another wave of elation. After eating, Dana went back to his room. I sat up drinking a Sapporo watching TV, a Dave Chappelle DVD, and started writing this journal. At ten I woke D's jet lagged ass up to go get breakfast. We both wanted to see what they served for breakfast. The hotel restaurant offered a traditional breakfast of soup, rice, salmon, tofu, sweet potatoe and various condiments like seaweed and dried shredded mackerel. Break fast reminded me of Jamaica. Where the distinction of what to eat when was not as hard and fast. But the presentation here was immaculate and a visual feast in and of it self. The aesthetic experience was humbling and forced onto us a respectful restraint.

Not wanting to insult by not knowing customs of etiquette too well we probably looked silly to the wait staff who we could hear chittering around laughing. Our collective self consciousness was no doubt worthy entertainment for a staff on a slow morning. I had already established my clumsiness with the language when trying to order in japanese. They seemed to laugh at it good-naturedly. I can only hope I came off as cute and not pretentious.

We took off from here to Akihabara, the fabled Electric Town of Tokyo. Here Dana could get his techie fix and I could see this newly arising "Ghetto of the Geeks" that I read about in the Boston Globe. Supposedly nerds had taken over the district and developed it into a haven for comic, animation and video game lovers. What we found was impressive on the surface for a while. It had the look of a super clean Times Square. After awhile we saw the same old crap over and over. The shops we entered were on street level, so I wonder what went on in these huge high rises. One manga shop we entered had multiple levels and was pretty impressive for what it was. The first floor was all comics with a lot of hentai (porn comics) right in the open. Dana was uninitiated to the fact that there was such hard core stuff out there in comics. The second floor had Anime and music. Here I resumed my search for the famous new anime just coming to the states via Cartoon Network, "Samurai Champloo". To my initial joy I found it. Two other shops that morning had sold out of it. I was sure I could find it here in Tokyo. This shop had multiple floors but after the window shopping on the first two my road dawg started hintng at being tired. Wait he didn't hint. He straight up told me he needed a nap. Fine to me a nap means an hour or two and we could still catch Tokyo at night. Right? Wrong! This dude knocked out till the next day. Once again I'm salted but it gave me time to write all this and read travel guides and an Elmore Leonard novel. Day two was like a scrimage.

Day three was the official introduction to Tokyo. It will be a day I will never forget no matter how many days I am blessed with. After Dana caught up on his sleep we got up early saturday morning to hit the breakfast. D couldn't get the salmon and rice out of his mind. We got downstairs by about 8am but found they were sold out of the Japanese style breakfast. The western style was ham and eggs and neither of us really eat ham to much ( thanks to the influence of Islam on urban black youth ). We went for a walk in a direction we hadn't gone in yet. Right next door was a very nice bakery selling cute little pastries and sandwhiches. We stopped there and got something light because Dana was hungry. I had shrewdly stocked up on cups and bowls of noodles and roasted fish from 7 eleven. We sat at high soft chairs around a round table and listened to Sam Cooke sing "Chain Gang". There often seemed to be american music piping softly somewhere in the background no matter where we were. Even while watchin a japanese cooking show we could hear Whitney and Mariah. From here we walked through Idabashi and Suido and Suidobashi checking out the scene this time trying to identify restaraunts, bars and clubs for future reference. We were impressed at the evident ability to balance progressive pursuit of the new and modern with the traditional and old right alongside.

We were expecting a visit from Dana's freind Denitta who was teaching english in Nagoya at eleven so we got back to the hotel and sat in the restaraunt and had a beer at 10 am. We caught it as we were about to "Kompai!". We justified it by saying it was 10 pm to our bodies and daylight was just an inconvenience. A tall smiling member of the waitstaff came to our table and humbly bowed and fumbled with his english asking us our room number. He was trying to tell us that Dana had a phone call. I guess it was a good thing we left a message for Denitta at the front desk. She was going to be late. We now had till 1:00. I went upstairs after polishing off my Asahi and Dana went to get something from 7 eleven either a notebook or cups of noodles.

From the time we met Denitta it was on. Quiet and pleasant in her demeanor with a beautiful, happy spirit she brought some very welcome feminine energy to our alpha-male and alpha-male dynamic. She has been here in Japan for almost two years and has a grasp on the culture, traditions, language, locales and transportation systems. She was an invaluable connection for us and showed us so much in one day that I now feel comfortable wandering around on my own.

First we ate sushi under a train track in Kanda. She told us about the different types of fish and the saying "itadakimasu" or "I will recieve it" said with hands together as if one is saying grace. While I savored my newfound love for sushi, Dana stuck to tempura trying a taste of the eel which Denitta told him was cooked. I was amazed when I payed the bill and saw how cheap it was. There was no tip to calculate. That made me feel a little weird. How could I truly show my appreciation for a meal without giving more money?

Denitta decided to show us Asakusa and Shinjuku by train. If you have ever seen a japanese train map and not been daunted by it you are a linear - directional savant. I saw it as a hyper exaggeration of a city that could not exist rationally. It dwarves Boston and would engulf New York. My mind checks out when there are too many calculations to do. So as she went over the map trying to find the path with Dana over her shoulder and the two of them eventually went to ask a transit official for help I just looked around absorbing the faces and styles in all directions. The look of the "typical" japanese person was hard to nail down. It ranged from women in kimonos to punk rock to goth to blond goth-like to hip- hop and feathered big haired New Jersey rockers. The majority of the young women were simply style mavens dipped in the epitome of Rodeo Drive style. Surprisingly I saw no midrifts, no backs or cleavage (until Shinjuku that is).

We rode the Orange line or the Chuo line and took the number 8 train, I think, to Asakusa. If Akihabara looked like Times Square Asakusa by day felt more like San Francisco. The point of going to Asakusa was to see a shrine. Once there and letting the newness wash over us we put on our big " Hey look! I'm a tourist!" signs and pulled out the maps and guidebooks trying to suss out the direction. I wanted to practice my speaking and listening to japanese so I stopped a man who looked japanese and asked, "Sumimasen ga... Jinja wa doko desu ka?". He looked puzzled. Man! I thought I had said it perfectly. Salted. Then I saw him going into his bag and pull out a map of his own. He spoke english fairly well and understood what we were asking him but didn't know. He decided to send us over the bridge and to the left. Just as we thanked him and he walked off a nother man on a bike rode up to us sensing our confusion and asked us where we wanted to go as if he already knew. He pointed out that we were going in the wrong direction and that the shrine was only a few blocks to the left. He rescued us from a harrowing trip in the wrong direction.

The front gate of the shrine was on a busy thoroughfare with trongs of people, many tourists, coming in and out of it. The front gate alone was monumental enough to be a site worth visiting. Outside the gate were young happy looking men and women soliciting riders for their rickshaw business. They immediately spoke to us in eigo. Feeling strange about human powered transportation ( humans as a beast of burden, even a willing one, doesn't sit well with me.) I declined for all of us with a polite," Chotto..." , which literally means "little" but also, "I'm afraid..." as in "I'm afraid I can't." I learned that there really isn't one direct way to say no in japanese because they avoid it as it may offend. They would lose their mind where I'm from. The first time they heard someone say "Hells No! Mother Effa!"

I hadn't realized where we were even when we got there. I forgot we were going to a shrine as soon as we went through the gates. Inside the gate was an open air market of sorts with shops carrying all sorts of crafts and goods. Usually I hate this onslaught of commercialism. I'm the worst and cheapest shopper in the world unless it is for art supplies or books or music. But here everything was exotic and different to me. Much different from Akihabara where everything was based around electronics and such. These shops carried hand made chocalates and katanas and silks and toys I thought were long gone from the world of men. There were things I have not seen since my child hood that I didn't even know were japanese in origin back then like "Monchichis". I didn't see knock offs or chain stores or garish signs just lots of great gift ideas and treasures specifically japanese.

I knew I liked Denitta from the start but when she suggested we stop and get a drink her coolness ratio went through the roof! We looked around for signs of a drinking establishment and it was my homegirl who spotted an Izakaya or a traditional japanese pub- style restaraunt where we sat on tatami mats and drank Asahi biru and shared tempura. I think they were disapointed that we ordered so little. We are used to popping into a bar and getting one or two drinks. Here it seemed like drinking always accompanied a big event. Every bar or restaraunt has a theme or tradition. I guess if you really just want a beer you can get one from any vending machine on the street and drink it in public. Why would you waste time to find a bar?

After hopping from one stall to the next and meandering down the central path we looked up and there it was. In the distance about 700 to 800 feet away was the Asakusa Shrine. It was magnificent. the gate by comparison looked like a carnival entrance. To the right were stations to buy prayers to leave tied to the wire racks. In front of us was a well like structure with incense smoke rising from it. People gathered around waving the smoke onto themselves. I recalled to my friends that I was once in ceremony with sage offered by a native american medicine woman. Dana went over to bath in it and asked me to get a picture of him doing it. I would have felt strange doing that without knowing more about the background of the practice. I wouldn't have gotten up and taken communion at a catholic mass either. I don't even say grace at a meal. No one seemed to mind. Who's to say a black man can't be a Buddhist?

I did however throw coins into the structure at the top of the stairs. I felt I knew more about the intention of that ritual. Giving money is giving money.

The enourmous and lavish altar of the shrine was breathtaking. The ceiling murals had the intended effect. I was transported to another realm while staring up. I looked up until I got a crick in my neck then remembered my camera. The altar was an overwhelming display of the power of gold concentrated on one idea. The structure's architectural design made it possible for one to forget the daylight in this pavillion with three open walls. The darkness of the altar was illuminated quietly and peacefully by the lit candles. The hushing effect this had on all of us was profound. I was brought to near vexation wanting to be alone in this crowd. Then I realized the power of us all experiencing this together even if at different levels. It was now a part of us all. If anything were to happen to it we would all be moved.

In my romanticized haze I said something that felt poetic but probably sounded corny. I had to leave this place now or I would never escape its grasp. So Denitta decided we should get flavored ice. At that booth we were served by an older woman with a T-shirt with a 1970's style african woman illustrated on it. I had to compliment her style even though she didn't get it right away and her husband seemed a bit disturbed by my gesture of admiration. I wanted to say, " Take it easy pops! Just the T-shirt. Not your wife!" Instead I just took off sipping my strawberry Icee.

We saw a snow monkey performing tricks for the crowd. The sad looking monkey was climbing and walking on 15 foot stilts. The crowd loved it. I was impressed but it reminded me of the desire to see them in their natural habitat. Perhaps bathing in a hot spring. Animals in captivity depress me. I think it was Denitta who first expressed pity for this sad little mokey on a rope. Don't worry animal lovers. One day primates will put us in our places. Keep reading the papers in western asia for signs of the revolution.

We walked back through the concourse and did more window shopping. This time through I saw a Hirohima Carps baseball cap and almost lost my mind. This is not my normal style but lately I've been into baseball gear and I have been into the city of Hiroshima as a reminder of mankind's evil and survival and dedication to peace for a while now. My initial grant was to study animation in Hiroshima at a bi-annual conference in the international city of peace. Unfortunately they only had the hat and not the jersey or even t-shirt. I needed the outfit to be truly gully. I wanted cats in Roxbury to stop me and ask me where I got my gear so I could tell them about Tokyo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki and everything else.

After leaving the shrine grounds we decided to find a park and sit for a while and talk. We found one by a quiet river and sat on the stone fence talking about the differences between the cleanlines of Tokyo compared to Boston. We agreed that change would only come through mass conversion. I revealed my plan for recalibrating our value system. We passionately discussed the difficulty in breaking the cycle of unhealthy parenting in the black community. We shared our personal stories from family and profession. Dana and I both worked at the Mc Kinley and laughed and sighed as we talked about kids we loved and the ways that we found to get through to them. The sighs came from the resignatinon we saw in the school system that is fighting a losing battle in a bigger system of neglect and outright abuse of people it is supposed to be serving. We talked like this till it got dark.

Now we were thirsty again. Determined to find a bar and none of us able to read the Kanji, we wandered through Asakusa's main streets till we were tired, sore, and getting grumpy. As we were about to give up we decide to hit the side streets. Here we found signs in Romanji, or Roman letters. With a little more pressing on our wishes were granted and we came across a Dart's Bar. You guessed it. A bar for dart's enthusiasts. Electronic darst's games with multiple variations and electronic scoring. This place rocked! DUDE! They had Heineken! They had Jack Daniels! It was like being home at Packy's except there were no thugs or big butts. They even had hip hop and r&b playing in the background. While Dana and Denitta competed at darts going back and forth I sat with a perma-grin and got out my sketchbook. This is my true sign of happiness when at a bar. I started some graf one liners and throws then went to characters and settled into sketch this guy who sat beside us with his date. I never worried if this was considered rude. I quit worrying about that a long time ago. Even though I tried to be discreet I got the sense he may have caught me and became uncomfortable. Well at least I wasn't drawing his koibito (his girlfriend).

Denitta had been trying to contact her girlfriend Mia who lives in Tokyo since she met up with us. All day while we walked she had her phone out texting back and forth to an unseen and unheard caller. It was getting close to party time and she was trying her best to show us the best time possible. Mia's boyfriend was a DJ and had all kinds of VIP connections. It seemed however Mia was feeling the effects of the night before and was unsure of if she was coming out. She nevertheless gave us directions and a name to drop at a house club in Shinjuku. House Music is my favorite music to dance to. Maybe because it connects so many aspects of my past and present life; Hip Hop culture, gospel influence, African rythms, flowing free spirited vibes. I was at my favorite House spot the sunday before we left home and said to my friend Chip as we watched some japanese B-Boys getting busy to break beats," Yo, I hope I can find a house spot as nice as this in Tokyo!". Chip said he was coming to sleep on our floors. He would have loved Fabrique.

Fabrique was like almost everything else NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND!!!!!!! We had maps and directions on text message screens and we asked residents of the Shinjuku area who were promoting events ( a bald white guy from California and a dreadlocked black man from the Ivory Coast who have a comedy routine on japanese TV called "Salt and Pepper" but the white guy is the pepper....???). Salt went inside the venue and asked someone for directions to Fabrique. We got them down and went back where we came from till we saw what we came to find. A club in the basement of what looked like a department store. IT WAS TINY! And it was thirty bucks! I didn't think of it til later after the initial shock of being in a club in Tokyo started to dissipate. Then the true Boston Hateration started to rear it's ugly head. I thought about what I just paid to party in a basement, looked around for the B-boys or house hedz, saw none and went straight to the bar. I ORDERED A ROUND OF DRINKS FOR MY CREW AND DECIDED THEN AND THERE THAT IT WAS ABOUT TO BE ON!!!! We were gonna have a good time and represent for the chiroi gaigen!

The rest my friends is history and you simply would have had to be there. We spread love like wasabi and burned the place down till 6 am. We met people and had people coming up to us and coming on to us all night. It was a good thing my boy Chip wasn't there though. If I was the wild one, the main attraction, soulman for the night Chip-fu would have made the place " Fuki Nuki Yatai". He would have blown away the roof! I kept tryin to not bump into people but there is a dance awareness and etiquette that I'm not sure has reached them yet. There was no circle as there were no "professionals" or house headz to show off or compete. In house circles when everyone knows the song you kind of know what to expect from the crowd in terms of dance moves. Everyone moves in harmony somewhat. Here the people just seemed to be having fun shaking pelvises and limbs like Muppets in the dark. They were having so much fun with music they didn't understand that I found it charming.

I am far from a true house head. I don't know the artists or songs by names very well if at all. I don't buy it ( DJ Bruno is my supplier keeping me lifted). But I know I love it when I want to dance and feel free. Just like I love Hip Hop when I feel grimy, or Reggae when my roots are calling me. But to find truly good house music in a basement in trendy assed Tokyo says something for their willingnes to try anything.

When we left there in the daylight watching massive crowds exit from side streets I felt hopped up on endorphins and soaked down by my own personal hurricane. As the movement stopped or slowed down at least my bones and tendons gave up their temporary limberness and returned to their 34 year old default state of stiffness. We got to the main square and the magnitude of the situation smacked me square in the face. All the crowds from all the side streets were pouring out towards Shinjuku Station. It was like 5 pm in Times Square almost. So many people in so many styles representing so many cultural influences were all around me that if not for the homogeneous racial nature of the crowd this would have been the greatest example of cultural harmony this planet has ever witnessed. We saw a few westerners and a few africans and a few african americans. We even saw a group of pacific islanders. But the foreigners looked boring in comparison to the japanese. When the japanese were trying to look Hip Hop there was no mistaking their look they had it down to the doo rag and the Timberlands. When they were going goth.... Whoa! Their costume always seemed very well researched. but it always seemed like a costume.

From there we dragged our sorry butts to ward Harajuku on the train two stops from Shinjuku. We hiked through the town following Denitta as she knew this spot called "Fujimama" that served pancakes and in defference to our western biases, There is nothing better than a pancake breakfast when you run yourself ragged after a night of clubbin. When we finally found it of course it was closed. We decided to wait for it to ope because it was 5 minutes to 7am. A five minute wait didn't seem bad. I ignored the fact that common sense was telling me that if it was going to open at 7 there would be people in there setting up. Instead I just shut up and dug into my energy reserves. My back was begining to tighten up. Dana was knocked out with his head in his lap. Denitta was alert and relatively spirited as we watched a garbage man very meticulously sort and dispose garbage at the shop across the street from us. The shop owner ( (I'm guessng he was...) came out and looked at us with a mix of pity and incredulity. I gather that he asked us where we were from and what we wanted. When we told him we were waiting for the shop to open in 5 minutes he told us, " IIe, juni." He held up six fingers which I guess meant six hours. So we woke Dana up and promised him salmon and rice by the time we got back to the hotel.

Luckily there was a place called "Jonathan's" right at the corner. Guess what they served. You got it. PANCAKES! We sat on soft benches and ate little pancakes perfect for our tired little bodies. Denitta had a sqid salad that looked very good. From Jonathan's we were just a train ride and a short walk home to much needed rest and dryness. I couldn't stand myself but the experience was well worth it. As we dragged ourselves into the hotel the clerk had the keys waiting for us. At the tenth floor we all got out and parted ways I gave Denitta a kiss on the cheek trying not to get any sweat on her. I kept my head down ( the cieling are about six feet six and there are portices that i kept bumping my head on on day one) and went straight to 128 to wash off the grime and hand wash my clothes before crashing.

The next time I woke up it was to a phone call from Dana telling me they were coming to clean the rooms. Then sure enough the front desk called and I stumbled through a polite decline. Next thing I knew it was eleven o'clock pm. I don't know what woke me. Maybe it was a dream. But I slept the whole day away on sunday. I've been up typing this since then. It's now 6:00 monday morning and I haven't heard from either one of those two.

Day three was so off the hook it obliterated my day four.

So then was monday day four or day five? All day long we walked around thinking it was sunday. We were so lost from a night of partying and trooping around the city that all sense of time was gone now. It was soooooo far beyond jet lag. We usually now found ourselves in a cycle of jacked up sleeping for a few hours in the evening and then being up all night as a result. It really is aggravating to feel like you're losing out on precious hours of night life. But what are you gonna do? The days are so rich with experiences that we can't really complain. Besides, the more time I spend awake and out and about the more en I spend. And day five was a whoppa.

So here's how it started.

Rememeber I told you I hadn't seen those two for a whole day? Well according to them they stayed in bed (sleeping) all day as well. At about 6 am Dana called to see what was what. Claiming he intended to not miss his salmon and rice this morning. We all met at 7 and went down and had a very nice breakfast. We picked Denitta's brain some more for etiquette tips and watche a little toddler next to us have his way with his father's ham and eggs.

We decided to walk Denitta to the train station and then head to Ueno by the JR line. After a little confusion around how to get there we were on a very short jaunt to Ueno. This city that looks so daunting on the map is not as overwhelming as it first seems. It is however packed with interesting things to do in any section. Ueno Park being just one more of those. My initial response to Tokyo as we came from the airport at Narita was that it was an impressive looking metropolis. Boston is my main frame of reference. The thing I love about Boston is how green it is and how civilized and domestic it feels (aesthetically that is). I look for that in other cities. This is what Ueno park provided me with.

This big green spot on the map northeast of Akihabara is home to several of Tokyo's major museums, the Zoo, Gardens and outdoor baazars. It was a welcome respite from the concrete jungle. At the Tokyo Museum of Western Art there was a Dresden show. Now if I was back home I would have been all over that right away. Instead I had a singular focus and mission. Point me straight at the National Museum's collection of scroll paintings and Ukiyo-e.

This was the promised land for me. It was absolutely vital for me to see the original objects hand painted by members of the royal courts as their traditional training and practice of nobility. What?!!!? A culture that says to it's nobility " Prove yourself noble by learning the arts. Not as an observer or patron but as a practioner."? This is how and why Manga and anime have sustained not achieved status as high art. They started out that way. When I saw the work of these eastern masters up close and in its original form I could see the techniques painstaking as they were to hide them. Dedication to an art form at that level creates an appreciation that is not only personal but also cultural in that the powerful can now say to the masses "Here is my work. My labor. My view. Is it worthy?" They became the standard bearers for excellence in practice. The necessity for a leader to have merit and evidence of discipline and study is implicit in times and situations where the leadership is not unilaterally decided upon.

Whoa! What was that? I digressed too much even by my standards.

We started off by looking at the architectural styles of the three buildings that make up the museum. Straight ahead was what looked like an ancient traditional japanese castle. To the right was a very modern looking structure that seemed to reference the central building and the edifice to the left of the castle like building. The building to the left was designed in the style of 19th century american architecture, I think? Federalist? Jeffersonian? It looked like it belonged in Washington DC with its gilded dome and columns. I confess my not knowing anymore the difference between Doric and Ionic columns. Do you really care? Look it up if you do. That's what I do.
The building to the left housed the work from the asian collections, with the exception of the japanese works which wer housed in the castle. The decidedly misfitted building no doubt housed the western art. I skipped this one. I know. I know it sounds like predjudice. It isn't. It's bias. And that's fine. Trust me. I didn't come here to eat at KFC. That's a last resort for when I've seen bunraku and noh and kabuki and sumo and a tea ceremony, all of which I probably won't get to or afford. Still the west can take a back seat right now.

Like I said I was on a mission. When I go to museums it's a lot like when I go shopping. Everything isn't interesting to ome and I don't want to pretend as if it is. That just takes time away from what I want to see and how I want to see it. Dana wanted to walk through top to bottom. He's wide eyed and into everything and takes his time to enjoy every detail of every Iranian tapestry. Now who am I to complain about that? That is how people should experience art. Unfortunately I am an uncouth bastard who only wants to prove my point to the world...

Illustration and sequential art as a popular culture medium has deep rooted history, validity and a persuasive power to communicate many types of messages to the masses.

This museum had an impressive variety of artifacts from Asia. Many if not all of the major asian nations were represented. They showcased a collection of Buddahs from countries like China, India and Pakistan. I addmittedly cut this visit short cuz I was itchin to be out.

The central building was more like it. It presented us with Japanese art from as early as 6th century to as late as the 20th. The only thing kind of sad is that I didn't see any modern work , "post modern" work or contemporary work. I am curious to see what persistant influence manga (literally translated "irresponsible pictures" and originating in some of these scrolls I have been salivating over) has on contemporary art here in Japan. I have seen exhibits and heard of artist in the states who use this influence as subject matter and as a technical point of departure.

The sword display blew us away. The ceramics made me take a seat. The traditional Ainu robes left me breathless. The calligraphy made me want to cry. The ukiyo-e humbled me in its calm precise power and delicate balance of understated craft to make an image look simple and effortless.

My camera had no batteries and I refused to stop to buy some. This simply means that I have to return before I leave. The giftshop could have easily left me broke had I not pulled myself away thinking that I was keeping Dana waiting upstairs ( Yeah right! That brother is always making me wait. ). I went back to the agreed upon spot half knowing he would be somewhere else. I was right so I sat and enjoyed the moment of reflection in a beautiful lounge area looking out on a breathtaking view of pastoral beauty that looked like it could only have been manufactured in a dream. I opened my sketchbook and began to get my groove back.

I hadn't had the time or mind set to make art for a long time. The complications were to numerous to name. This grant was to serve the purpose of allowing art teachers to do exactly what I was now doing. My art was being re-invigorated in a way that nothing else could have done. Nihon had re awakened my hunger to make art and not just talk about making it. The evidence is that I simply sat and did something that is usually so natural for me but I am never alone enough lately to do. I drew. Time alone to draw is precious and hard to find. I did not even bother to show Dana how to get to the gift shop when he eventually found me. I knew he'd find it eventually and the time it took would give me more to draw. The time for him to window shop and look at architecture books would allow me to render. So I soaked it up.

I know myself and the two things I can't do without are space and time to myself. How else will this big project get done? I can be very internally selfish but I have a tough time expressing selfishness not wanting to offend. I need to study more japanese to learn the myriad ways they have to politely refuse and avoid without being rude. Because afterall, my work is about people and their interactions with one another. I can't tell their stories from their perspectives if I haven't lived with them richly and closely. I can't push people away all the time. And I can't let myself be pulled into everything and be there fore everyone. Like the three japanese girls at Fabrique that night.


... ( Sorry about the continuity jump. I have no idea. I assume it was from either Fabrique or GAS PANIC.)
As soon as one saw me smiling aand laughing with another she came and stood infront of me dancing. Then another saw it and joined in. Both danced in my space with their backs to me just close enough to make it obvious and far enough to be safe. MAN! I'm not stupid I'm the dancehall king! Game recognise game. The little cute nerdy one I would have danced with got bruhed out of the picture by her aggressive friends who got no play anyway. If I would have just walked away from the tall manly looking one and the old looking 1980s style one I could have talked some more with the nerdling. But mister nice guy didn't want to be rude. Sometimes you gotta say," Chotto... I gotta go do my thing over there. Hold it down till I get back baby!"

The moral to the story is sometimes you have to be direct and say what you want to do and let people do without you once in a while. This is not for your benefit of course, but for mine.

We got back from Ueno and ate some 7 eleven crap had a couple 7 eleven beers and talked extensively and indefinitely about going out later on. The truth was obvious. We weren't doing squat. Here it was only monday and money was getting low. We were still pretty exhausted. Our one real connection for nightlife was in another city waiting for friday to come. We felt the night's promise pulsing beyond our windows but still couldn't get around enough to just wander into a regular spot to get a drink and socialize. In the states or in the west it would have been easy. It 's not just the language barrier. The fact that we cant read Kanji is a problem but there is always some speciality or protocol to every establishment. We ned to find a host in this area.

That is the next mission. I'll keep you posted.

Ok so you think you have something down cold after a while and you get cocky. Five days in Tokyo had me thinking I was a pro. I could count, make change, buy stuff, order food, ask for directions, and I thought I could get around on the train. Well guess what? You really got to pay attention on the train.

After five days we didn't feel like regular tourists. We had coffee at the evil empire in the morning and took off for Mitaka, where the Ghibli Museum was located. I noticed it was on the chuo line when Denitta took us to Shibuya ( earlier reffered to as Shinjuku). I was estatic. The main part of the trip was going to be a simple train ride away. Could it be that easy? Yah ! Right! We got on and were sure we were on the right track. We watched the first few stops. Mitaka was supposed to be at the end. The last stop. So we settled in for the ride reading, drawing, taking notes. A short time after hearing Shinjuku called Dana asked me curiously,
" Hey, B. What stop did we get on at?".
" Ochanomizu. Why?" I asked seeing the puzzlement in his face.
"Cuz I think that's the next stop." He said with a smirk, anticipating my reaction.
"Huh? What? How? We just passed Shinjuku. What happened to Mitaka?"
"We must have missed it...."
What followed must have been a sitcom for anyone around. We finally guessed that the last stop was more like a pause. We got back on eventually and tried it again. This time getting off and reconnecting and taking a local line. We eventually made it to Mitaka and took a scenic walk in a lush suburb with a small town feel. It was very comfortable and had lots of aerchitecture for Dana to obsess over.

The museum was about a mile away and was tucked inside a park. It meshed perfectly with its surroundings because of its organic design pastel colouring and landscaping which included a rooftop garden that helped hide its profile in the surrounding park. There seemed to be no one there and that was ok. I rwally wanted to find it and get tickets. We asked an elderly workman in our best phrasebook Nihongo. He answered as best he could in simple Nihongo and gestures. He sent us down the street and to the right. We decided to try a Lawsons Station, a chain convenience store that was in the general direction of his gesture. He said the english word "company" so... . Just like that we went in and the cute clerk under stood and took us to a kiosk that sold tickets to Ghibli. Her english was better and she was eager to practice. As I took out my money to get my ticket Dana gave me back my money and said he wanted to pay for mine as a gift. That, ladies and gentlemen is my dawg.

That being done we got some drinks to slake our thirst. In the back aisle I was approached by a japanese man who also wantes to practice his english. He asked me if I had traveled abroad before and told me he had lived in New Zealand. After a short conversation he was out and so were we. We took our drinks to sit in the park just outside Ghibli. There we sat and had a one of our long deep conversations about existence and living. A bike rider approached us and stopped. It was Nari, the man from the store wearing a different shirt. I had initially thought he was marking his territory because I was flirting with the clerk. Turns out he just wanted conversation with someone who spoke english. We talked about what we did and how we felt about life and about his feeling that japanese people were unhappy and mentally/spiritually unwell due to their moving from buddhism toward a secular commercial life in which things are easily accessible. His study of clinical psychology led him to investigate this question. It was a great conversation we could have kept it up till night. I gave him a copy of my comic book and business card as agesture more than anything else.

We stopped at KFC to use the toire and to eat some fruit we bought next door. We heard eating on the street was frowned upon. Dana scarfed his $10.00 apple and a couple of the juiciest plums I've had. After that we were back on the train the intial plan was to go shopping in Ginza. Time was short and we decided to get food instead. The ride home was direct and quick comparitively.

After some Cup o Noodles, roasted fish and a beer I watched some TV and went for a solo walk in Akihabara. I wanted to see this "Ghetto of the Geeks" for myself some more. It was lit up like the Vegas Strip at night. This piqued my curiosity. What was going on this late? The crowds were gone. I could hear voices and music and the sounds of carnival like games. I looked for an opening and listened for sounds and picked the first ones I found. I went up and you know what I found? Grown men and teen age boys chain smoking and playing video games. At nine o'clock at night. I thought. "HMMM. This is interesting. These geeks couldn't just sit home and play PS3?". So I went on looking in these huge buildings marked SEGA, Club SEGA, TAITO, etc. One after the other had the same thing some had Pachinko games others had DVD, video games, music stores. A few sold electronics.It soon dawned on me this was a social scene! This is what geeks do to chill in Tokyo. I'm kinda geeky so let's see if I could chill like this. After walking around a while I remembered something. I don't play video games. They look cool but feel like a big waste of time. I'd rather watch a movie, draw, read I don't know, pick my nose. Anything. So let's see. If this is a social scene that means there must be girls around. I was on the case. I saw a few on the street. Upstairs was like an XY fest. The only girls up there were digital and they were getting beat up while their breasts bounced and their skirts flew up. There were a few standing around waiting for their boyfriends patiently. For the most part there were just dudes. Then it hit me " Oh yeah! These were Geeks! If they had girls they would'nt be here, would they?". Anyway, they looked happy enough. It didn't have to be my thing. You couldn't get that many guys together back home without a fight breaking out if there weren't girls around. "Jillian's" tried it and gave it up for bowling instead.

Dejected, I went to a store and bought a $40.00 copy of "AKIRA" to make the trip worthwhile. I wanted "Samurai Champloo Vol. 1" but again they were out. Salted. When I got back I realized it didn't even have subtitles. Salted again. Damn these Geeks! $40.00 for a DVD and a building full of Geeks with coins? I'm in the wrong buisness. I'm gonna start an arcade/ comic book / video store with Kung Fu hotties as security when I get home.


Wednesday, Day Seven we went to the Ghibli Museum. Words escape me right now. I need a moment.

Aaaaight. So there's this guy named Haiyo Miyazaki (sp?). He's an incredible visionary and an amazing artist working mainly in the world of animation. His work has been an incredible inspiration for me. It's beauty and universality and poetry are resilient pieces of evidence bearing witness to the power of art to reach out and give you pause. He works out of a studio he put together called Studio Ghibli. In Mitaka there is a museum devoted to the work of his studio. This was the main impetus for the journey to Japan. When we got there we were greeted and given a brief into to the museum. What looked like a cramped little house eventually turned out to be an enormous and well designed experience perfect for wandering and discovering. At the entrance to the left was the first "feature". It was a room full of incredible variations on zoescopes and thaumatropes. Some operated on very simple mechanisms others were complex and intricate. Rotating plexi-glass layers, spinning disks, stop motion figurines rotating with strobe lights, layered cell boxes,film strips running in all directions with small light tables under certain areas, it was off the hook!

Even the toilets seemed to fit perfectly with the work. I think it just because his art aesthetic comes out of his life and bleeds together. Small subtle things gave the place a whimsical, random- assed, magical feel. Tiny doorways that really led nowhere in particular made the place a wonderland for small children and big wanna-be kids. Upstairs there were spaces recreated from his early work "Heidi". Many development sketches were on display loosely pinned to the walls as were original reference photos. Hallways between exhibit rooms were lit by light streaming in through stained glass windows showing characters and scenes from his movies. The first room of the galleries was an installation loosely looking like a cross between an animation studio and someone's home study. There were books on Muybridge's work, on DaVinci, on trains, faces etc. There were large reproductions of Muybridge's racing dogs on the wall and a film looped and projected of horses running on another wall. In the same room was an animation stand that one could work and see a cell travel across a plate. There were examples illustrating the color process on the wall and a rack of colors meticulously arranged.

The next room showed development sketches in every stage covering nearly every inch of wall space. I can't tell you how humbling it was to be breathing on the sketches for "Princess Mononoke", "My Neighbor Totoro", "Spirited Away " and " Howl's Moving Castle". The whole environment had relics and objects that looked like they were collected as curious reference items from which these wondrous worlds were sculpted and assembled.
The next room left me speechless. Pinned up on the walls of this 10 x 7 foot @ room were the actual plates used in "Howl's Moving Castle" and I think some from "Spirited Away". If you have seen these films you KNOW how richly rendered the backgrounds are. They were right there in front of me. Not under glass. Not roped off. Just as if they were still in process complete with tools and supplies out as if the artists just stepped out. The thing that made me want to get right to work right then was the fact that they weren't monumental in scale in order to make the detail tighter from the distance. They were maybe 9 x 12. The details of reflections and trim on furniture and moldings was so tight it would give you a head ache looking at it for too long. The thing that really got me was that each back ground might last for maybe 30 seconds max of screen time. I know, 30 seconds of animation is like an eternity but still.... c'mon! If you could imagine the amount of work I'm talking about you'd be gushing right along with me.

There was also a reading room and children's book store, a big soft sculpture for kids to climb, patios, a birdcage like spiral staircase that went to a roof garden that looked unkept but was immaculately planned to be so, a cafe and other features I'm sure I missed. By the time we saw the special feature film created just for the museum I was overloaded. The gift shop was packed to the gills with four non- stop cashiers politely but expeditiously ringing up the orders. It was so packed that I wasn't able to really spend time getting gifts for everyone. I wanted to bring back a piece of this experience for everybody. I'm lucky I made it out with any cash left over.

We made it back to the hotel with plans to go out but my boy was feeling sick. Just as well I guess. I watched baseball and fell asleep.

The next day we went to Ginza and Harajuku to shop. Ginza is MADDDDDD HOITY TOITY! Crazy richness and refinery all around you. Like if Madison Avenue took steroids for years and grew Newbury Streets as every side street. Impressive display of high end capitalism and commercialized decadence at work. Boy did I feel poor. Harajuku is more reasonable. Its like Newbury Street on acid and steroids. Harajuku shops are way funkier and trendier at first glance. Then you realize they are ALL selling variations of the same two things for the most part. Sneakers. Recycled American T-Shirts. True though it is that there is crazy variety if you love non-sensical T-shirts, There is only so much a brother can take. Once in a while I saw some one truly original dressed in a costume for no real reason. I mean a real costume like Little Bo Peep all in pink. I thought that was mad original until I saw it again and again.

Some people were really trying to be original but it was obvious they were just combining trendy clothes made to look second hand. That was weird. What art-freaks here do to be original with odds and ends from here and there they go to a specialty shop that will sell used clothes from the U.S. for crazy prices. Again, I'M IN THE WRONG BUSINESS!!! They just want to look like the Americans they see on TV. And they crave affirmation. A few times people caught me admiring their style and it lit up their day. Usually the T-shirts only had to have english on it to be cool. How dumb is that? That's like getting a Hiragana tattoo and not knowing what it means. I saw a few cool kids representing some real style but the majority were posers. In the whole area of Harajuku which was still pretty damn cool just on volume alone I found almost no trace of japanese products or merchandise. Not even hybridized styles. I wanted to find some japanese Hip Hop gear. I was salted. They are on the U.S.'s tip hardcore.

Dana was on a mission to find some sneakers he couldn't find in the U.S. That was an adventure. They have the shoe industry thriving. Their prices are ridiculous. Even I almost got sucked in. The only thing that saved me were my big ass feet. Everyone I asked for size 13 just looked at me and laughed politely. One asked, " Thirteen U.S.?". One gave an obligatory look and came back and said he had tens. This little spot in an alley selling just sneakers out in front of their door claimed they had thirteens but they didn't have the PUMAs I wanted.

In those back alleys in Harajuku is where one finds the real funky stuff. Like everywhere the side streets and back roads of a shopping district are where the interesting stuff is. The funkiest art space I have ever seen in my life is in Harajuku. A two or three story building that is painted and sculpted on the exterior to look like an explosion of art school freaky work and a carnival fun house. Inside has tiny rooms that serve as artist space. They seemed to be working galleries for experimental exhibitions and projects. The aesthetic was unpolished and unashamed. The quality of the work varied. The most impressive thing was that the whole place had a continuity and flow although the spaces were tiny. They were just F'in doin it! I was so amped to make work I couldn't contain it.

In the mix we met an african american woman named Iona. She was living in japan for the last six months as an artist studying Ukiyo-e as well. She was here on a fellowship and promised to send me her information. We were just walking to get me some noodles when we saw her and black folks look for black folks in situations like this. We spoke as we passed and called each other back to stop and talk a bit. She told us about a couple events happening and promised to stay in touch. She's returning to D.C. next week or so. We'll get at her stateside.

After a few adventures in mass transit we made it home to shower rest type and get ready for Ikebukuru tonight. Let's see how that turns out.


Ok I'm back . And yo, TOKYO, Roppongo specifically, gots madddddddd HUSTLE!!!
I'm tellin you so you won't be fooled. All I can say is every woman I met turned out to be a "hostess". Brazilian. Ethiopian. Southeast Asian. Japanese. Czech. Aussie. Korean. All within the space of a few hours between 2 am and 7 am. Some were literally climbing all over me and up in my mouth like a dentist. Some bargained others away from me. Some were just doing their job. It just so happens that disclosure is not a part of the job description. They were all very free and touchy feely until they realized I wasn't paying for sex. I guess spending all my money on drinks wasn't enough.

I have had a whole lot of freaky fun in my life. This is right at the top of the list. I mean I had a B-Boy battle with a drunken asian kid who kept following me around the club wanting to dance. Some of the exploits I 'll not commit to writing. Suffice it to say that I wouldn't do a lot of this stuff in many places. Although I felt like the hustle was on the minute the cab door opened in Roppongi I never felt unsafe.

Came back to hotel around 9 or ten the next morning ( I rode the Metro from Roppongi by myself. I feel proud.) As I was waiting to go up the elevator it opened up and out came Dana. He hadn't yet gone to sleep, even though he left me a good three hours earlier and took a taxi. He came up later so we could recap the highlights of one of our craziest nights ever. We talked four hours and realized the cleaning crew was already on our floor. It was now about 12 noon. I kicked him out so I could get some shut eye. Yet again a whole day was going to be sacrificed to recovery.

At around 8 or nine we took of to catch the Shinkansen, or bullet train, to Nagoya. This was to be a big deal. The fastest train on the planet, clocking speeds of 180 mph. We got our tickets at the station for the next one out to Nagoya. Stumbling through the language barrier, we felt accomplished once again. We didn't notice we were not given seat numbers. When the train arrived we got help figuring out which car to get on, sort of. We tried to get on the non-smoking car but it was reserved. All of the other cars were full as well. What the hell was this? How could the train be full if we had tickets? I noticed what other riders were doing. They were standing in between the cars. This seemed backwards and unfitting for the most advanced public transportation vehicle in the world. I was mildly annoyed to have to stand for an hour after paying $100. Dana was more accepting. I put on my Ipod and sank into meditation with some good old american Neo Soul. After a few songs I was placid. Dana marveled at the speed But I had no sense of relativity and was not impressed. I would later realize the significance when Danitta told me it would be a 8 hour bus ride.

Danitta met us at the station and walked us to her neighborhood two blocks away. I immediately noticed a huge difference between the city of Nagoya and that of Tokyo. When we got out of the train station it looked much like Tokyo with its lights and buzzing commerce but after a second glance I noticed it was decidedly less grand than the capitol. After walking a half of a block I noticed several construction projects underway. This gave the mini metropolis somewhat of a more industrial edge. It felt more like a gotham city than a metropolis. After the two blocks brought us to Danitta's neighborhood. I was overcome with a sense of home. Here was the thing I was missing. A ghetto. Not really, but yeah kinda. Realize that I don't mean that in any disparaging way. I had just been looking for some real working class people who had the look of the grind on them. This is what I'm used to at home. This is my audience at home. This is who I wanted to meet. Not the stressed out hyper urban, overly chic people of Akihabara or Ginza. Here I saw cooks not chefs. Construction workers not engineers. No one hustling but everybody grinding. I saw abandoned buildings and huge ten story apartment buildings that would be considered projects back home. Now the story was getting good.

We ate at a low budget mom and pop establishment that was the equivalent of a burger joint except of course this joint had great food that to me was still exotic and well presented. We were joined by some of Danitta's friends. Her roommates Asuka and Minaka and fellow Eigo teachers Erica and Sophie. Once Sophie and Erica got there we became the loud ass gaigin table. An Aussie, a Canuck, three Bostonians and two giggly Nagoyans. Minaka was the "genki" ( happy bubbly?) Nagoyan while Asuka was more reserved. Erica was the genki Australian while Sophie was only milder by comparison to Erica. The conversation was great and went on late into the night as we were the last patrons left. Erica's perspective on Japan was truly enlightening and served to highlight the cultural differences between the east and the west, the New World in particular. The transition for her seemed to be difficult even though she was well traveled and culturally well rounded. I think she just likes having things her way. I like that.

Unfortunately for me, Mr Party Guy, That was the end of the night. I had to keep telling myself that that was not why I came. Old habits die hard. It is, after all, my summer vacation. After winding down and idle chit chat Denitta rolled out a futon for me. Not a futon like the one I sleep on at home. This is slightly denser quilt. No complaints though. I pride myself on being able to sleep on a rock if I'm tired enough.

The next morning I got up early and waited for Sleeping Beauties one and two to get up. Danitta made us break fast and we were off by about 11:30. She made plans to meet some of her former students who were now her friends. I had no idea of her plans just that we were going to a traditional fishing town festival. Whenwe got to the station we were greeted by her two students. They were two ladies in their fifties. Not the co-ed hotties I would have expected if I had any expectations. They took us to a small quaint restaurant that served fresh natural foods in traditional style. It looked like a cabin in Vermont on the inside. The food was great and we were careful to take notes on etiquette from the ladies who although they were not old fogies were significantly older and commanded automatic respect as such. We talked about everything from food to baseball (our hosts were somewhat knowledgeable in both american and japanese baseball) even to girlfriends. They wanted to know which one of us was Danitta's boyfriend.

They drove us from there two Taimatsuri(?) where the annual festival was being held. Once we found parking we walked along a fishy smelling pier right on the edge to get over to the festival area. We crossed a ridiculously rusted out iron foot bridge over a dried out stream bed to the back end of the festival grounds. There sat around lots of men young and old grungy as hell surrounded by beer cans and dressed festively in their hapi, a short robe decorously adorned for this occasion. What blew me away were the main attractions. Four fish about twenty feet high and about forty feet long made of fabric stretched over bamboo frameworks with wooden bases. The teams of hapi clad men were meant to carry the fish around the area in traditional dances while singing and performing for a group of elders clad in mostly white kimonos under a shrine. The festival is meant as a ritual to bring them a good season. Young boys with Mohawks and designs cut into their hair ran and sang next to older more seasoned men who had probably been fishing all their lives. This ceremony and atmosphere left me so grateful and humbled and impressed and jealous that I could barely find words when some one asked me if I was enjoying myself. I wanted to take a million pictures and hours of video. This was it. This was more than ghetto. This was Yard. Like back in Jamaica. Country folks who worked hard and loved life and came together to celebrate and participate in rituals that connected them to one another and to the past. I know I may be romanticizing it but that is what I felt. Leave me with my romantic notions.


I was so moved because perhaps for the first time people actually reacted to me instead of trying to ignore me when they were caught staring. People saw a six foot three black man in Red sox gear taking pictures and they offered to be in them with me and asked me to take some with me. Posed with me and shook my hand. Gave the peace sign like a true dawg from around the way. They embraced me and laughed at my japanese surprised I knew any. I wasn't a star really just a welcomed feature in a day already full of special sights. I hammed it up and soaked it in. I could finally breathe easily.

Our hosts knew some VIPs and got us closer to the pavillion where the festival organizers and dignitaries and invited guests sat. One of the organizers began to chat up Dana and Danitta once introduced. I know he saw me but he almost blatantly ignored me preferring to talk to Danitta, maybe because her japanese was better and he was impressed but probably because she was a pretty woman. Dana can engage anyone in conversation and since I would rather watch than talk I simply, happily kept my eye on the ceremony. At some point Dana must have been explaining why he was here and mentioned my name gesturing to me as an invitation to join the conversation and get an introduction. I heard him talking about my grant and the project so I reached for a business card remembering the tradition. When I presented the card to this gentleman everything changed like magic. All of a sudden I was somebody. In clumsy japanese I tried to explain why I was here and what I did, " Atisuto desu. Atisuto Kyoshi. Boston" He "Ahhhed" and "Ohhhed" and mentioned the link between Nagoya and Boston's Museum of Fine Art. I told him of my interests in Ukiyo -e and he asked if I was interested in the Edo period and in the Tokugawa dynasty. Knowing Tokugawa was a local and national hero I of course said yes.

Soon after we were invited to a barbeque. He was throwing a party there by the water at four and invited us. When the festivities petered out our hosts whisked us away to drive two minutes down the dockside road to a modest little building. When I entered I couldn't believe my eyes. Out of the blue with no forewarning I was in a ceramics studio. Complete with at least two gas kilns and a wood kiln. As I asked if could take pictures everyone seemed to be amazed by my interest in something so ordinary or industrial looking. The gentleman who invited us called one of the artists who worked there and he introduced us. They opened up an adjoining room and BAM! Some of the nicest ceramic work I had seen. I immediately recognized techniques and principals inherent to Japanese ceramics specifically. The japanese have taught the world much about ceramics and the aesthetics that can be both applied to and derived from everyday objects. My jaw dropped time and time again as piece after piece left me trying to explain the beauty of the forms and the glazes and the originality of the functions. A ceramic barbeque grill? A ceramic liquor decanter with a spiggot? When I got up the nerve to ask how much some of the work cost he told me that all of the work wasn't his. It seems the best work was his teacher's. I was a little embarrassed that I was gushing so hard over work that wasn't his. But it WAS the bomb! Eventually out of respect and admiration for all that was going on that day I bought what I could afford in moderation. I had to bum some cash to even do that.

They fed us and kept us with beer or sake in our hands and made us try exotic foods like octopus and kante. More people showed up and soon it was a real party with us as special guests for the moment. We felt like royalty. They kept introducing new people to us who were eager to practice their english. Learning english is a big thing in Japan. It provides lots of people with a good job just because they are native speakers. People who study it in school or special programs or private tutors are always looking for someone to practice it with. I don't fully get it. Probably because I'm a spoiled monolinguistic american.

Later on came the Romanian delegation. They were special guests here for Japan's world Expo held in Nagoya. They seemed very nice but the young man who we talked to the most seem to be having a tough time adapting to the climate and the food and the culture. Much like my new friend Erica he seemed to want things here to be more like what he was used to. Although he wasn't being rude he seemed a bit sullen and tired of the place I sensed he was homesick for Romanian cooking and conversation. We had a great conversation as they brought in some very good romanian beer and wine. All of a sudden we had Romanians, Americans and Japanese people sitting around a table eating barbequed vegetables and fish and meats and drinking and talking about beer with 11 to 19% alcohol content and ways to mix Guiness with milk and eggs for a protein and iron filled breakfast.

Soon though our hosts whisked us away to drop us of at the station to go back to Nagoya. After a peaceful ride through the japanese countryside we were back in Nagoya and ready to meet Danitta's friends for drinks. We walked through an enormous mall at the train station to meet her group. It turned out to be a huge group of mostly foreigner english teachers and their mates and friends. We had a lively bunch in a posh restaurant about twenty stories up looking out on an impressive view of the neon logo- flecked skyline. We all shared stories and drank and laughed at each other. It was shaping up to be a promising night for Mr. Party Guy.

When we were all done we went down to the lobby and people lingered around talking for a bit. I was almost propositioned by an unattractive latino prostitute, I think. That gave everyone a good laugh as I broke out in an instant replay for those who missed it. Just as we were getting started, I thought, EVERYONE PUNKED OUT AND WENT HOME TO SLEEP. I was no doubt the oldest one in the group and these lightweights were acting like they worked on a farm. Disgusting. That left four of us to go do Kareoke, which they all assured me was going to be the time of my life.

Well I have always held the belief that it's not what you do but whom you do it with that makes for a good time. Dana, Danitta, Erica and myself make for quite the potential ruckus. We walked to the Joy Joy Club and went up, signed up, payed up and got assigned a private room with our own set up. A big screen TV, high tech karaeoke machine, sound system with two mics. Oh yeah. Free drinks. They were weak and watery but hey! Whatever! Danitta and Erica went right at it picking songs from the pop- charts that were vaguely familiar. We sang along and botched things until the song choice got better. When we picked songs we thought we knew we realized how hard it was. None of us could rap like Jay Z or Biggie even though we knew most of the words. A few drinks and a few songs later we were having a blast. I realized how much rock music I knew through osmosis.

After the second hour they turned the system off on us and watered our drinks down to, well to water. I got the hint and we hit the road. I guess we were right down the block from their home. Danitta, Erica and Sophie all live in the same building. We stopped at a convenience store along the way and Dana and I were once again losing our minds over a suped- up scooter we saw. The ladies got ice cream cones and we continued on our way home. Five minutes later we were there and parted ways. Another night ended far too soon. It seems like only in Roppongi or Shibuya was there any action worthy of Mr. Party Guy's stamina.

Sunday started like saturday with breakfast at noon with CNN. We took off for another festival. The plan that tempted me and got me to stick around was to go and see Sumo wrestling at the Castle at Kokuozan. This was on my list of dream things to see in Japan along with Kabuki and a tea ceremony. I had no idea how to set it up though and the cost it seemed would be prohibitive. When we got to the festival it seemed like a simple neighbor hood street festival with booths of arts and crafts and what not. "Oh. This is cute.", I thought. And it was. But it was so much more as well. I saw crafts that were so original and artful. This was like a Mass Art Spring Sale. All of these artists and crafts people and merchants who were mostly young were vending their life's work. I hate shopping and it made me want to shop for everyone I know. Towards the end of the street a familiar sound was coming down to us. Dana alerted me to it. I stopped and cocked my ear to it. It was Reggae music. Good Reggae at that. Lover's rock from the eighties. It was coming from this bar in a skinny ass building with a red spiral staircase almost as wide as the building itself. What sealed the deal for me was a sign that read GUINNESS. That was all I needed to know. I suggested we stop in for a drink. Dana wanted food first and went off wandering. Dennitta had called in her wingman Amanda to keep me occupied.

I went up and sat at the bar and asked for a guinness . The DJ was a slender little cutie who really knew her stuff but who I would find out later spoke no english much less Patois. The space had room for a bar some stools and about two feet behind them. There was a table with seating for four at the far end beside the bathroom. Dana of course was in love with it. He has been on this small space thing since we've been here. The music was good and so were the drinks. The patrons were having a blast. We fit right in. My DJ got off the tables leaving a transitional record on and the new one got on ready to spin rock. He was just as good and had the place off the meter. Soon Sophie showed up. Then Erica And by that time it was a real party. Our favorite DJ got back on and spun us some wickedly mellow Lover's Rock. We tried our best to make her feel like the Queen of the Turntable yelling out "Ichiban Dj!", and "Pullllll uuuuuuupppp Selecta!" By the time she threw on the reggae version of John Legend's " Baby When I Used to Love You" she had us in the palm of her hand. At this point we had left the women to talk amongst themselves. We were in a groove. And when I really get in a groove like that I want to draw. I had to capture a bit of this for posterity and the digital camera just wasn't gonna cut it. I had left my bag at home so I was gonna have to punt. They didn't have napkins. Most places we went to in Japan didn't. They usually gave you a heated wet towel. I pulled out a business card and quickly caught the gesture of the DJ. I incorporated some symbolic background elements and refined the pencil with a green marker. Just as I was finishing it up she had packed her bag and was leaving again amid cheers and applause. This was amazing to me. There was no hype man or special event going on really. This is just what they did. Came through. Spun. Bounced. For the love not the money or the fame. When she walked by me people practically grabbed the card out of my hand to show her. She loved it and gave me a big hug and a kiss. I was in love. We hung around for a bit more but folks were getting hungry and were getting up to leave. As I walked out there she was on the staricase smiling and waving at me. I tried to tell her I was Jamaican and really loved the way she spun my music. She seemed to understand and grabbed my hands and squeezed them. In my mind we were on our honey moon already. Then I realized she was speaking to me in japanese. And as usual I couldn't understand a word. Bust my bubble. If this were week one I could have learned the proper way to proposed to her. I think it involves me debasing myself in a formal ritual in front of her father. Either way.... Maybe she'll get famous and do a US tour that brings her to Boston and she looks me up. By then I'll have mastered the language enough at least to say "Hey I think your hot! Don't say another word. Just nod if you want to marry me.".

From there we wandered around on a mission to find fried chicken. Erica got us all hooked on the idea. It started to get dark and some of us stopped to watch these japanese cats doing african drumming and dancing. They were NOOOOOOO JOOOOOKE! It was dope to see all of these japanese people really, truly, respectfully digging african culture at a festival focusing on their culture. While we stopped to dance. Erica and Sophie went looking for food. When I found them and pulled them back we all decided on a spot in Nagoya. They said they would meet us there. We got some alcohol for the train ride and were off after watching a beautiful traditional festival dance which was started off by elders and joined eventually by hundreds of festival goers. I had intended to leave that night but Danitta wanted "us" to stay. She had been so sweet and so helpful and had really set us up with some great experiences soooooo....... I caved in. I guess I could sleep on the floor one more night.

We met the ladies this time two more friends, Cat and Kaiyomi (sp), also, came through. We ate and killed bottle after bottle of sake. More intoxicated by one another than the sake or wine, Dana claimed sake was making him more sober, we quickly became "that group of raucous Gaigin" again. The food was not filling us up so we kept ordering more. The drinks were not making us sloppy or tired so we kept ordering more. The conversation wasn't getting us in trouble so it kept getting racier. Kaiyomi at one point reminded us that certain words like PENIS were the same in japanese. Some of us at the table kept saying it as if it were just a regular word. Eventually they needed to close and asked us to leave.

I convinced everyone to buy me a drink at another place. The other place was another " Yamachan" a half of a block down the road. There were three within the same block. We had a few there and took off. Sophie and Erica let us ride their bikes. We didn't crash them up too badly. In no time we were back at the apartment building and it was time to say a final farewell to our new friends Sophie and Erica. Went inside. Yadda,Yadda. Yadda. Snore! Snore Snore!!!!

In the a.m. I waited for them to get up and out after I took a cold shower. Danitta made us some great scrambled eggs and toast.... CNN... And it was time to say our good byes to Denitta and Minaka (Sp?). We exchanged email addresses and promised to keep in touch. We were off to catch the bullet.

Got tickets for the Shinkansen without any disturbance and this time understood enough to reserve a seat. After fumbling around trying to find the right track and the right side and the right car we finally sussed it out. train comes we get on nice bucolic ride past mountains and rolling hills and landscapes I wanted to paint right then and there.

When we disembark at Tokyo station we wandered around for a bit looking at stuff. It was like a mall down there. I had been looking for the Hiroshima Carps gear since I got here with no luck. But BAM! Right in front of me was a news stand selling Tokyo Giants gear. I almost got some. Even though I didn't know any of the players yet. Later on at lunch at a sushi bar one of the staff told me that the Nagoya Dragons were doing the best right now. How fitting. We started looking for the gear. but never made it past Akihabara. We got stuck shopping for souvenirs and looking at electronics and Anime robot models from our childhood like Gai King, Grandizer, Great Mazinger and others. Who were we fooling we were too tired to walk to the Tokyo Dome much less ask for directions, get lost, then find out what we want is priced out of Donald Trumps range.

I came back here to write. That was about six hours ago. I'm beat and my ass hurts from sitting here. But I had to get these last three days out.

Ok this is it. Last day in Japan. Wistful. A bit melancholy. Almost hoping the storm threatening us would keep us here another day. I am ready to see home again but there is so much left undone. It took two weeks before we could really take the subway and JR successfully. It took two weeks for me to realize the big building down the street two doors was a post office and had an ATM that spoke english and took foreign cards. It took two stinkin weeks to get to see downtown Tokyo. I still never saw Sumo or Noh or Kabuki or Bunraku or a tea ceremony. I never really hooked up with any japanese people my age who could give me the real ins and outs of this place. I need more time. Time to see Kyoto the spiritual center. Or see Osaka the "ghetto city". I need to see Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I want to see Snow monkeys bathing in hot springs. I want to see where Tezuka Osamu worked.