Off to
Osaka today with Chris to find collaborators for our first album and
to drum up some hype about us. I made Chris follow my Osaka
ritual of eating
at the Namba branch of First Kitchen, after hyping it up for an hour or so.
I finally realized that that place is just as crap as any other hamburger chain
and the only thing that I like about it is the garlic
mayonaise you get with
the chips.
Many beautiful girls in Osaka but of course we are too shy to talk to any
of them. Chris comes up with an idea. The scheme is this; We are University
art students making a calendar for a project. It's going to be a page-a-day
type calender with a picture of a beautiful girl whose birthday it is on each
day. So we write this up in a notebook with a couple of fake names and birthdays
to begin with- much like a busker (or 'street artist' as is politically correct
nowadays) throwing a couple of coins in his hat to begin with, because no-one
wants to be the first to give a bum some money- and presenting this to suitable
young things that we come across. Mind you it took us about an hour to work
up the courage to approach anybody.
Trying to find a nice hip hop club, end up in some dodgy place called sunshine
bar or something. There was about ten people in the whole place. Two nice girls
being husseled by some pimpy looking guy and a hot, sullen looking girl at the bar.
Of course this girl terrified me. After about half an hour of sitting around
trying to look cool, Chris abruptly stands up and announces that he'll be back
in about five minutes. Of course he isn't and I'm stuck there sitting in this
bar feeling like these old, desperate looking guys you see in bars sometimes.
Man, I'm too old for this shit.
Finally the door opens and about ten Sumo wrestlers file through. The air
is filled with the smell of the stuff they do their hair with. It's good for
a change, something to look at other than the game machine in the corner. They
meander over to the until now completly empty dance floor and I'm thinking,
"alright, some sumo dancing action." However they just sit around
the edge of the dance floor bobbing their heads.
Eventually Chris comes back and says that we have to hurry outside because
he's lined up five nineteen year olds. Of course I'm sceptical but I follow
him outside and sure enough he's used his charm and/or our fake art project
to pull five girls. Chris whispers to me, "I'll take the ugly one."
I look at the girls, then at him and ask, "Which one's the ugly one?"
Everything seems to be going fine until we are suddenly held up by three or
four Japanese hip hoppers. Not held up as in mugged, held up as in they just
start talking to us. This of course gives the girls a nice chance to escape
but not to worry because now we are invited to a live hip hop event in this
club called Neo. Amateur night at the Apollo kind of thing, The weakest link
and all. It's a battle event where the best emcees survive to rhyme again in
the next round. One of the guys is the DJ and we ask about the possibilty of
us joining the fray. That would be cool, our Osaka debut, well actually our
all-Japan debut since we have never performed anywhere yet. We should be nervous
but as everything is going along so quickly all of a sudden we don't really
have time to think about it.
Ultimately we were not permitted to join and it's a good thing too, these guys,
a lot of these guys were great, especially the guys that stopped us
in the street. We would have been slaughtered.
After that it was off to a nearby capsule hotel. This is the second time
I've stayed in a capsule hotel with Chris and both times there was always some
guy near us that as soon as he removed his clothes, he stunk like hell. What
is it with guys? How can they smell so bad? It was pretty vile. Then when I
went to my assigned capsule, some guy was sleeping in it! I was eventually assigned
another capsule but had to put up with some guy in our section mumbling to his
wife (who of course wasn't there) to turn down the heat. This went on all night