Lurking outside the new skatepark, under the expressway

San Francisco has turned the ugly space below the expressway into a super-popular Soma West skatepark. I wasn’t sure how to get in, so I just enjoyed the view from outside.

HBO filming at famous SF sex club Eros

 

This real-life site of gay worship, Eros, will be featured in the new HBO series Looking, which sounds like a gay male cross between Girls and Sex and the City. I feel like they’re filming in my “home.” Hope it turns out fun.

Very excited boys wrestle with light saber in early morning Shibuya

We discovered these boys rolling around the street in Shibuya with a light saber suggestively posed, crotch adjacent. I love the “call me baby” hand signal, suggesting he’s busy but open to new friends too. I cannot recommend highly enough an early morning visit to Shibuya on the weekend.

Kids showing police officer new guns they bought at shrine festival

It still seems incongruous that every Tokyo shrine festival features, amidst food and game stalls, stands that sell boy band photos and also plastic guns. These kids seemed very excited to show their new arms to the police officer.

New salarymen eat curry dogs at last week’s 3.11 commemoration in Hibiya Park

Identical black suit and leather briefcase uniforms, matching poufy hair, and all eating curry hot dogs. I am childish and find this scene sublime. Plus, they ate the last curry dogs. I wanted one, too, but could only enjoy it through watching them.

See the New Hong Kong

Despite the title, the “new Hong Kong” seems to include a lot of Japan and Japanese writing. The song is by Josie Cotton, famous for her 1980s minor classic, “Johnnny, Are You Queer?” (Via JoeMyGod).

Yukata posing at Southern Terrace

I was walking through Southern Terrace and was struck by this man in a dark yukata. I love how his fan is neatly tucked into his obi. He seemed to be parading around without an audience, so I obliged by taking his photograph. I love the contrast between his retro-cool outfit and the modern city around him: construction workers and clearance sales. I love the mix of old and new, stylish and mundane.

Pre New Year’s Resolution

My resolution for the start of the new decade is to improve my Japanese. The husband suggested keeping a daily diary in a notebook, that bound thing full of paper. Which he will correct later. So we went to Family Mart and bought an adorable 100 yen Muji notebook.

Here’s my first sentence, timed for tomorrow night’s bounenkai with Green Eyed Geisha:

はい。ホストクラブでだまされないようにする。

(As preparation for the long anticipated trip to the heart of male vanity, I have been watching Suddenly Last Summer on Youtube. GEG, out of kimono, will be my Liz Taylor. I hope that our elaborately coiffed hosts do not consume me like the cannibals who “devoured” Liz’s cousin. Liz is not only gorgeous, but this role foreshadows her real life career as beard to Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson, and Malcolm Forbes. Katherine Hepburn plays the perfectly in denial mother, and Liz truly “chews the drapes.”)

アイ・ラブ・ベジ, or “Aye Rabu Begi”

Suntory’s new drink offers human-plant romance as the backstory for a new vegetable drink. Father-in-law thinks Donna’s vegetable boyfriend is creepy looking.

I am amazed at the tag line, アイ・ラブ・ベジ, or “Aye Rabu Begi.” This is supposed to be the Japanese way to say, “I love vegi.” No wonder Japanese, for all the years studying English and the media ubiquity of “foreign words,” have trouble communicating in English.

Chocolate potato chips

Will living in Japan shorten my life? With chocolate potato chips, at least it’ll be a happy life.

Apparently this is a common snack food here. (Note: the subtitle says in English: “By breaking down old customs and producing consistently original items, we are pursuing a new level of chocolate enjoyment”).

Thanks okaasan sensei (お母さん先生)!