Sons of Loki

I got into the Teriyaki Boyz recently, this Japanese rap supergroup comprised of Nigo (founder of A Bathing Ape), a dude called Wise, Verbal from M-Flo, and Ilmari and Ryo-Z from j-rap superstars RIP SLYME. I thought I’d expand my burgeoning interest in J-hip-hop by checking out Rip Slyme, who I was vaguely aware of before. So, first of all, listen to this. Listen to that synth bassline when it kicks in at 0:30. Isn’t that just the best thing you ever heard? Don’t you want it injected into your blood to harness the supreme sunny glory of that synth? Don’t you want it to be played from all the rooftops of all the houses across the land?

Saturday I was thinking about heading down to Shibuya to check out the BAPE store (as a child of 00s hip-hop rather than 90s rap I have been subtly brainwashed to buy designer clothes rather than shoot cops) but I ended up doing the complete opposite and shopping Akiba for DVI cables and cheap monitors (you can pick up a second-hand TFT one for 2.5k (£15), which is nuts). After that I met up with the guys in Shinjuku for nomikai, literally “drink-meet”. We found a izakaya which we thought was deliciously cheap. However, we had been burned. The izakaya was not offering cheap nomihoudai, as represented. It was some kind of gypsy grifter establishment … sorry, I’m channelling Philip K Dick here. Anyway, we ended up with a lot of food we didn’t want and a bill for 3,500 yen each and some dangerously watered-down cocktails. I wanted to use my gaijin smash to escape, but in the end decided to save it for another day.

Luckily, the club we went to was free.

We decided – well, the girls decided – to take Miles to his first ever gay club. And the place for gay clubs in Tokyo is Nichome in Shinjuku, so that’s where we went.

Man, it was gay. Nary a woman in sight. Bars with hilarious names. Men holding hands. Sunkus (truly the gayest combini chain). It was kind of exciting, in a gay way, like I imagine San Francisco to be. We met a Australian girl with her male friend (gay, no doubt) who was trying to find the same gay club as us (“Arty Farty”, which sounds pretty gay). Eventually we found it, went inside, and bought our mandatory gay drink (mine was a gay Vanilla Mule). Unsurprisingly, the place was packed with men. From what I hear, Arty Farty is the only place to attract a sizable gaijin (or should I say “gay-jin”? no, perhaps not) crowd, so there were quite a few foreigners about. And so we drank our drinks and entered the gay dancefloor, fittingly as “I Will Survive” came on.

And you know what? It wasn’t bad. No, actually, I had a really good time. There was just a different vibe to other clubs; everyone was there to have a good time, not to get pissed or start a fight or hook up with girls. (Uh, you know what I mean.) The music wasn’t too bad, and it was a whole lot cheaper than other places in Tokyo – and you got access to their other branch for free, which means basically two clubs for the price of none.

Today I went to the Tachikawa immigration bureau to get a student work permit. It was my first interaction with the machine of Japanese government bureaucracy by myself, so I’m surprised it went as smoothly as it did. I brought my documents and the form from TUFS authorising me to work, waited patiently for my number to come up, went up, was told by a scary man to fill out a form, filled out the form, waited for my next number to come up, went back up and – yes! – hadn’t done anything wrong. Japanese efficiency applying to everything but government, I should receive my permit in three weeks.

It was quite interesting, the ethnic mix in the waiting room. I know it’s not so, but always I tend to assume that the majority of gaijin in Japan are Americans, followed by Europeans, but that’s a colossal mistake. Of the zainichi (from zainichi gaikokujin, lit. “living in Japan foreigners”) the vast majority are ethnic Koreans and Chinese, who have quite an interesting place in Japanese society – they were born in Japan, have lived in Japan their entire lives, speak only Japanese and are to all intents and purposes Japanese, and yet just … aren’t. It’s an interesting subject.