Up Your Alley, favorite San Francisco holiday, on July 28

Sad to be missing this year’s Dore Street “Up Your Alley” fair. Check it out in San Francisco next week.

 

Where I’ll be this holiday? At home watching HBO’s Girls

As the serious world of enterprise slows down at year end, I’m delighted to discover HBO’s Girls, a downwardly mobile Sex and the City set in Brooklyn. Think much much more unsatisfying sex, more existential angst, and many more Jewish characters.

The author, lead actress, and director Lena Dunham creates an often unsympathetic main character, who somehow manages to befriend a conservative girl, a bohemian girl, and a super painful virgin. But my secret pleasure is how she gave herself a disgusting boyfriend who is hot in a large nose and geeky fashion.

To share my mother’s characterization of this amazing talent: “I don’t like Lena Dunham, think she is a slob, painful to look at what she does with herself and how she wants/allows herself to be photographed.” I guess I agree with everything, except that I would delete the second word! I love it!

Is this what my college-age NYC nieces are watching? What is their review? I hope their parents, and frankly any parents, are *not* watching! And of course my husband has no interest since, as he says, “there are no zombies or werewolves.”

Folsom Street Fair, censored poster and nostalgia

When I think of gay religious holidays, I naturally imagine Folsom Street Fair, the world’s largest leather and fetish outdoor event. Hundreds of thousands attend. All the spiritual uplifting and community without the tedious obligations and family fighting.

Above is this year’s censored poster (click to enbiggin). I couldn’t find the au natural version on the interwebs, alas. It’s this Sunday, September 23.

Ramen is always a holiday

I don’t usually post food photos here, but I have to make an exception for ramen. There is something so porky and so satisfying about this common food.

There must be hundreds of ramen shops in Nakano, each with its own version. My current favorite is “Yokohama” style, on south side of the JR station, and features yankii-ish young cooks who are always wear towels on their sweaty heads.

Ramen is a health food and spirit recharger. It’s like chicken soup for Japanese, only tastier. This post is timed for someone else’s religious holiday: see what you’re missing!

Boys Be Ambitious

Happy Boys Day in Japan! It’s odd that there’s a holiday dedicated to boys, and more recently renamed to Childrens Day (although the non-holiday Girls Day is still on March 3 and some claim Gay Day for April 4). I love how rampantly commercial the celebration of maleness can be. Is ambition also something to be bought and traded? I wonder what ambitions boys today have.

“Hey Dad, can you help me”

Who knew you could offend the Catholic Church in just 10 seconds? And just in time for Easter Sunday, my favorite Jesus holiday. I also heard that Lady Gaga will be releasing her video single Judas on that special day!

Seijin no Hi Finale: Legs Spread Wide

Alas, dear readers, this is my final Seijin no Hi photo. Perhaps the culmination of all the other photos. For reasons not made clear to this foreigner, the joyous 20 year olds are posing with one of them in the air with his legs spread wide. A particularly fetching boy seems to be reaching his hand towards legs-spread-wide’s groin.

I can only imagine how much more fun happened after they got drunker. There’s something practically Muslim about how almost all Japanese socializing is same sex. I love it!

Yankii group excitement

Soon there was a horde of hot young 20 year olds combining traditional dress with big fried hair and excess testosterone. It didn’t take long for them to start falling all over each other, lit cigarettes in hand. I hope that they needed to pose for me, as much as I enjoyed their antics. I especially like how you can see inside the fallen boy’s skirt, I mean, “hakama” (袴).

Second in multi-post series on hot Nakano yankii men!

This photo series is indebted to the chubby guy with the pink kimono who noticed my not subtle lurking and photographing. He called his friends for a huge yankii group pose on this important day that celebrates youths’ new ability to drink, smoke, get married, and other fun stuff.

Check out Danny Choo’s website for professional photos and more attention on the ladies. I focused strictly on the urban yankii male. It’s easy to be sex-specific in Japan because so many adults and teens socialize almost entirely with members of the same sex.

My first observation is that only the most bad-ass men are wearing kimonos, hakama, and haori. Many of their peers are wearing cheap suits, and spending all their vanity on their glorious hair: dyed, permed, back-combed, gelled, sprayed, and sculpted. Basically a junior salaryman look with extra attention on hair and eyebrows.

The next posts will focus more on rough-housing, misplaced energy, and male intimacy.

Back to more cheerful public vistas

I apologize to my readers for so many sad and fugly pots. It’s time to turn your attention back to the Japanese islands, and images of hope, freedom and male vanity. On Monday’s Coming of Age (成人の日, Seijin no hi) holiday, I hit the Nakano  yankii jackpot.

The location is the plaza and musical clock in front of Nakano Sun Plaza, the same site where this blog’s header image was taken three years ago. Despite the dwilndling numbers of young Japanese, these boys were very excited to pose and rough-house for the “gaijin.” I was quickly joined in the photo pool by three hot yankii 20 year old girls.

I’ll post more images over the next few days . .