woke up at 6, feeling slightly groggy. his couch was very comfortable but it must be the alcohol that’s still left in my system. and maybe a bit of jet lag. it’s like 2pm LA time. oh well. take a gulp of water. open the onigiris that I picked up at 7-11 last night (SALMON!!) – can’t go wrong with this shit.

go online and check to see if my friends responded to my request to meet up. so grateful for my peeps. my sorry ass has no working cellphone, my 3GS is practically an iPod Touch. look into buying a prepaid plan from Softbank – fail, they want you to buy one of their phones which is badass but, I don’t have time to transfer all the contacts. try to see if I can buy wifi access from them. they offer access from all McDonald locations, which is great cuz I can try their seasonal/regional menu, but NOT so great cuz I’m only here in Tokyo for another 40 hours, and there are only about 10 locations in the entire city of Toyama where I’ll be for 12 days. fail. go back to sleep.

woke up again in about 3 hours. Takeshi is making coffee with his authentic looking copper pot, wearing in his right hand a pot holder – NICE. the man has good taste; a big ass TV set complete with Onkyo surround speakers, a black shelving unit with its every cell filled with sake and shochu bottles, the AKIRA plastic models, a few Bruce Lee action figures, a black Fender Strat, a Takamine acoustic and a Fernandes Zo-3 with the custom stickers on. he rides his bike to his work in Shinjuku, arguably one of the most fascinating/exciting/shady/chaotic parts of Tokyo which hosts the gigantic train/subway hub, essentially a fucking maze that is too confusing even for the locals. he’s living the dream of every country boy born in this country without realizing.

so we go off to meet up with ever-lovely-but-take-no-bullshit-supergirl Chiharu in Shibuya; a city that defines “cool” and/or “kawaii” or whatever the fuck makes people buy shit. they also have cool looking cafe-like places; supposedly the Tokyo youth has decided recently that drinking and smoking is not cool, so they flock to these cafes to hang out with their lifeless friends and talk about what they should buy next. no wonder the suicide rate is up. they’d better start smoking weed or something. we sip our cappuccino and take a bite on a panini that is NOT a panini – love how they just take the cool-sounding name and change what it is to suit the Japanese taste and/or their convenience. we talk about how Chiharu is almost going broke having to attend 9 weddings in 5 months or something. she’s forced to attend her coworkers’ weddings just to balance out the number of attendance from the employers of both sides, paying for the gift ($300 cash or more – this is customary amount), hair-do, makeup, transportation etc. so glad me and Chris eloped.

Takeshi has to bail at this point, to work on the script at a Burger King. so Chi and I walk out to the streets filled with future-models and boy-toys. my mission is to score that ridiculous deal on glasses that I got the last time I was here. Chi takes me to a place a few doors down and it already looks so much better than any ol’ Lenscrafters. they have LA Eyeworks quality and variety in Costco price. I WANT EVERYTHING IN HERE. I put an order for one and will have to pick ‘em up when I leave the country 2 weeks later. I could have picked these up in 2 hours if I didn’t want color lenses. there is no reason why I have to pick up a pair in LA when I can come here. success. then we shop for shoes and fail, we hit another cafe and hang for a few hours. Chi has to go to a meeting for yet another wedding so we hug goodbye. I promise to come back for your wedding, Chi!

then I’m off to meet with the oldest friend of mine. I don’t even remember how and when I met him, but Sawada does. in fact, he remembers so much of our shared childhood that it brings my dusty old memories as he describes every scene of our adventure, mischief and struggle. it’s a weird feeling to have your own tales told by someone else – and also a bit nerve-wracking when you have no idea how the story ends. luckily Sawada only has great ones and he tells them well – so well that it saddens me to know that the most of the sites that these stories took place does not exist any more. or maybe it’s better for them to stay in our memories, for we all know that often times the memories are more fun, vivid and beautiful than what they were. but then you have to think; those moments are gone. gone in what we define as time, thin vibrating strings that supposedly make up the ever-stretching universe. they disappeared almost as soon as they were born. all we have left is their remains, or the bio-record of our attempts to capture what it looked and sounded and smelt and felt like. if that’s all we’ve got and why can’ t we say that’s what it was? of course the perceptions may differ, but for now we are in agreement. and our hearts are filled with almost the same amount of joy and excitement. beer always helps.

then he receives a phone call from his lovely lady who later joins us. she seems to me very intelligent, caring and smiley. she had no chance to tell her story although I was eager to hear them; the time was spent on our 20-to-25-years-old stories which she has no emotional attachment to. yet she listened, laughed and asked questions like she cared. she probably did. they seem like a nice match. and it was kind of weird to see an old friend who I never associated with having any sex drive. our conversation was never that of what takes place between horny males. I knew of no relationship that Sawada had in the past. so this was the first for me. and it made me happy.