An Akiba D F

I’m sitting in a corner booth of a dingy izakaya in the world’s most famous nerd district, Akihabara, talking about XF Falcons and nursing a beer. In my pocket I have a piece of paper with the address of a building that apparently has four stories of shops selling nothing but tiny pieces of tiny toys sandwiched in between one story with nothing but bizarre fetish videos, described in the guide as “weird-for-the-sake-of-weird depravity.” This strikes me as somewhat ironic. J switches topics and begins to talk about his stint as a bouncer in Rockingham. It’s New Years Eve and I’m frustrated. Wary. Doing my very best to avoid slipping into a foul mood. Being cornered into being blokish, something I’m generally only capable of in four hour stints, is not helping matters.

Thus far, today has been what is typically referred to as a dismal failure. Capital letters. A D F. This morning we forgot to set an alarm or leave the curtains open and overslept, killing half the day from the outset. Once we finally roused ourselves around noon, we headed for Harajuku for bunch and to rock the crazy Tokyo angle.

Frankly, I think they should have just set up some sandwich boards outside the station with “Closed today” written on them and been done with it. The H was dead, the streets full with overdressed foreign tourists and curious Japanese up for the holidays. Most of the cool shit was closed. Omotesando bridge had three sad looking girls in petticoats sitting by themselves and looking like they were in the wrong place, when on any other weekend they would have been the most tamely dressed of hundreds.

We have hotdogs and decide to press on and meet the others in Akiba. Problem is, they’ve already been there for hours and by the time we rocked up they’re rearing up and ready to bail. So after a quick stall for coffee, it looks like the girls are pushing to go shopping in Shinjuku. I deftly manoeuvre myself into a “I’ll just chill here for a while and do my own thing position” thinking that as all the others have been here for hours and Glebe’s on a mission from God to buy something, anything, clothes related in Tokyo, I’m deadset cert for a couple of hours tracking down bizarre crap and picking up some cheap CDs by myself. Sweet. But Lisa comes from nowhere with a very persuasive counterargument (read: Justin, stay with Dan. Bloke it up. Here, money! Money!) and I watch as my extravagant plan to become King of the Nerds fizzles into nothing.

So now we’re in the izakaya, six beers down and the girls are saying give us another 20. We figure we’ll zip back to shinjuku and that will take us the required time to pretty much meet just when they’re finishing up. Somehow, miraculously, when we arrive at Shinjuku station half an hour later it’s still 20 minutes until they finish. We stomp up and down in the freezing cold for a few minutes and decide to get another quick one in before they wind up.

So we find a hole in the wall and order a Carlsberg. The place is deserted and the bartender admits that NYE in Shinjuku is tame, it’s all happening at Roppongi and Shibuya, he says. I notice I only have one bar of reception on my phone, so I run up the stairs and check to see if I have any messages or missed calls. Nothing. We knock down our beers pretty quick and head back to the meeting place, where there is still no sign of the others. We buy a cheap kebab and stomp back and forth, watching the shitty skaters try and do kickflips, to kill the time. It’s freezing. I give up on waiting and call Glebe.

They’re in a bar having a drink and snacks. Didn’t I get her messages? They’ll just finish up and can be down in about twenty minutes. Fucks sakes. When they do turn up, we’re hiding in Tower Records, where at least it’s not minus ten-million degrees. We agree to head back to our respective hotels and then meet up later so we can go to the club together well in time for the countdown.

I feel like I’m riding high, teetering on the fulcrum of a huge triangle with the words “disaster” and “blast” written on opposite sides, waiting to see how the evening progresses.

to be continued

Posted in Mwah on Friday January 6, 2006.