english signs frequently amuse; a sampling –
- this is the very steak, the big cut of steak
- italian tomato cafe jr.
- we are going to construction on coming 12nd of february. it will be make noisy a few times.
tokyo is all hospital. surgical masks are the baseball caps of the world’s largest richest yottalopolis, adumbrating pandemic as the newest hippest sport. 20% of the populace routinely wears them.
the fashion on the metro is as bland as the tube’s – browns, blacks, greys, dark blues, contrasting with the bubble gum pink and manga lime that dominate those other nipponic dimensions.
the bulge and sprawl of this place like a five-star god gulped by and digesting in a constellated arcade. tokyo isn’t pomo, it’s pofu (postfuture).
in paris one’s compelled to piss everywhere – a rite and sophistication
of sorts. here, if one were to pull out one’s dick in even the most deserted
street a shinto priest would surely appear, saying no piss no piss ... ... bowing,
bowing ... ...
japan is easier to enter than amerika. the Empire’s border umpires
scrutinize me as if i might be carrying a copy of the koran and hiding in it a
t-55 tank, a blueprint for the miscarriage of texas, and a load of banisteriopsis caapi. the immigration and customs people at narita look 15 and nervous, as
if they’d like to apologize for the geopolitical necessity of this impolite ritual.
i am of course no more on japan’s side than amerika’s – they each are
genetically jurisdictionally modified vegetables i snack on to supplement my usually
strict and robust psychic-aesthetic diet.
a metro – at least one of any size – grounds a city. lost aboveground,
weary, blistered, this moving matrix of mercantile production, mapped
infinities, i descend into any frequent staircase and am immediately at home.
even in a large metro like tokyo’s, its graspable finitude – about 285
stations and 13 lines – is readily mastered and i can moor the airy
limitlessness of urban supraterranean life in the colourful countability of a
numbered subterranean system, which is so impeccably and thoroughly – even
anally! – signed i don’t hesitate directionally once during my tenure. i’m
never lost below the soil. above ground, i can’t find anything. chthonically
yours.
shibuya (shinjuku ...) i expect to overwhelm times square but it
doesn’t, other than in its scramble – a choreographed technical animation,
dance of a hive, auto and human rigorously symbiotic. new york’s central
absurdity does neon, achieves a
gawdiness shibuya doesn’t seem interested in. the latter is a lit-and-technical
brand-and-buy outdoor mall; times square is religious vertigo, the light of
heaven dragged and chained to earth, the new jerusalem of spectral vision, god
on broadway bodway.
my insignificance in solitude in nature is mathematically matched,
jurisprudently balanced by my insignificance in tokyo. despite the
mono-ethnicity (i see a few aliens for every few hundred japanese, a
non-diversity that would be more offensive if it weren’t for the city’s obvious
techno-cosmopolitanism [the world is here, just not in flesh – or rather not in
flesh’s legacy bestial signs]) ... as a rare caucasian i am wholesalely
ignored. in mexico city, marginally more diverse – particularly on its metro –
i am often stared at. the blasé of being at the top?
i transit globally to feast spiritually on my nothingness – this
gigapolitic a trans-creation on that sticky theme of consciousness flickering on
the immeasurable screen of night.
it’s 2200h – late rush hour. tokyo’s metro closes soon after midnight
to accommodate straggling commuters, hardly for the drug and party crowd.
there’s no smoking on the streets except in designated areas. no one jaywalks,
crosses against red lights. i see nobody eating or drinking (even water) on the
metro or outside. 2 or 3 white-gloved transit attendants line every subway
platform and if i inadvertently break a regulation one instantly appears, its arms
in the form of an x. the place reeks of obedience.
intermittent digital reassurances appear on metro cars – in case of an earthquake, stay calm – a
thorough plan is fully in place
- throughout the city elevations above sea level are posted – some are as low as 0.3 meters
- the pacific is right there. so is north korea.
- ... and where is the plan for all those three-star michelin restaurants? who could stay calm if tokyo loses its #1 spot in food?
does the beast yet survive in this cacophony of hyperorder?
well, there are women-only metro cars so that females can ride without
being groped.
in the washroom cubicle at the meiji jingo shrine there are heated
toilet seats but no soap for washing. having shat, once outside, i rub dirt on
my hands making them look shit-splattered, deteriorating the situation on the 10-minute
walk back to the metro by rubbing leaves on my hands, spitting on them, rubbing
more. i look like a scatological wreck by the time i make it to soap. all this
on acid and the anniversary of the founding of the nation. i don’t know if
emperor jimmu would have been pleased ... but i’m as blapper happy as
blotter paper.
the hostel i stay at has –
- in the toilets integrated machines that do a pantheon of functions from the convenience of a seat-side panel: warm-water bidet with adjustable pressure, front and rear hole options, modifiable odour-reducing deodorizer, flush music sound with volume control to muffle any rude ass audio
- a communal bath (divided by the sexes), available mornings and evenings, in which it is mandated that you’re naked
- provided slippers, which someone replaces each day and neatly arranges at the foot of one’s bunk
- me as the only westerner among ~150 guests
- a lock-in from 2300 – 0600h
- families! scores of children, as if school trips from japanese hickland flit here for outings ... i saunter to the washroom to go pee one evening and battalions of screaming pyjamad 5-year-olds tumble polydirectionally in the hallways, whirled in that pre-bed ecstasy only the biologically young can pull off with such reckless grace
- ... families ... children ... and middle-aged traveling used sushi salesmen, who belch, fart, bellow and snore like antediluvian sumo wrestlers ...
- ... everyone’s in bed by 2200h and stirring by 0500 ...
where am i?
