a long sigh

Our last real day in Japan (Wednesday; we fly out tomorrow for China at 9am or so), and needless to say, there were many loose ends to wrap up, souvenirs to buy and mail (dealing with the Japanese post office literally gave Maya and I both headaches), huge and yet somehow not-quite-big-enough backpacks to pack, and, oh, tons of shit I'm probably forgetting and maybe we forgot to do.

But this afternoon, instead of dealing with all the above, we 1) learned that the story oft-repeated in the States - or at least in the Revolver office - that in Japan you can buy girls' used panties from vending machines is partly an urban legend (you can't buy them from vending machines) and partly true (you definitely can buy them from the many sex shops scattered around Tokyo). In the back of the sex shop Maya and I decided to peruse while sourvenir shopping, we found a back corner covered in little baggies, each stuffed with a pair of folded panties alongside small polaroids of a Japanese girl wearing said undergarment. Shit was expensive - like, 3,500 yen (approx. $35) each - or else I would have bought a pair for every member of the Revolver staff. Then again, as Maya pointed out, if you're the kind of person who has to go to a store to pay money for a female's used undies, 35 bucks probably sounds like a bargain.

After making this discovery, we 2) hung out with vocalist-keyboardist-songwriter Mirai and vocalist-saxophonist Mika (a.k.a. Mikannibal) of the awesome Japanese metal band Sigh. I had met Mirai briefly in the States a little while ago - he came into the Revolver office to write and record an original short song on the spot for the magazine's now-defunct "Unit" page (click here to hear the creepy little ditty), and when I knew I was going to Tokyo, I got in touch. As for Mika, see below what she looks like onstage - needless to say, I would never have worked up the balls to get in touch with her. And that's before Maya talked to her and discovered that she's a 3rd-year PHD student in physics!


Mirai and I had arranged to meet outside the Hard Rock Cafe in Oeno station - because that seemed like really the cheesiest place we could possibly meet - and from there, Maya and I followed Mirai and Mika on the subway and along a maze of streets on a personal tour of Tokyo's metal record stores. Most were Disk Union shops, while one (located in the Shinjuku district) was excllently named No Remorse Tokyo and it had an amazing variety of metal T-shirts, including a Gallhammer tee that I almost bought, except that it was gray-on-gray and I had seen a kid wearing a black-on-black one of the same design at the Mono/Envy show and that looked so much cooler that I just couldn't shell out the 2,100 yen (approx. $21) for the lesser gray version. (I did, however, buy a CD by Gallhammer frontwoman Vivian Slaughter's other band, Congenital Hell.)

I had actually been working on a Gallhammer story for Revolver before I left for this trip, and had even sent email questions to Vivian Slaughter almost a month before Maya and my date of departure, but she had never responded with answers and I had had to kill the piece. Mika, who is friends with Vivian, explained that Vivian really barely knows any English at all, and that she has had to resort to using Yahoo translator when trying to answer English-language interview questions. Plus, according to both Mika and Mirai, Vivian is really crazy, like she-should-be-taking-her-meds- but-isn't-and-she-gets-benefits-from-the-government crazy. Which only makes her cooler in my book.

In between record stores, Mirai and Mika took Maya and I to this insane noodle shop down some alleys by this almost dried-up canal. It was basically just a bar with space for many 20 people around it, and two greasy-looking cooks/servers scrambling over huge steaming vats of broth and ramen in the center. Mika ordered for all of us with a very mischievious look on her face, and when Maya's and my late lunches/early dinners arrived, we knew why. The meal consisted of a normal sized bowl of broth with strips of pork and bamboo shoots and pieces of scallion - and then an absolutely ginormous, I mean Godzilla-sized bowl of noodles that would easily feed a family of 5 in any of the other countries we are about to visit. While Maya and I looked at each other nervously, Mirai proceeded to noisily slurp up his entire portion (in Japan you're supposed to consume your noodles while producing maximum slurping noise - it's only polite) in about, oh, 5 or 6 gulps. Mika wasn't far beyond (though she had ordered a smaller bowl of noodle for herself - because, even though she's already enviably slendor, she says she's dieting. Ultimately, Mirai and Mika left the premises and waited outside for us - in order to make room at the bar for the steady stream of customers coming in - while Maya and I tried not to humiliate ourselves completely with our meager noodle-eating skills. Eventually we gave up and staggered out, bellies engorged. "You have to eat fast before your stomach knows that you're already full," Mirai explained his power-noodle-pounding technique later.

But while Maya and I feel like we've had to consume Japan very quickly over the last 2 weeks, I can definitely say that we have not had our fill. And when we bid Mirai and Mika farewell later that evening - knowing that we would have to bid Japan itself sayonara soon the next morning - we did so with full intention of returning sometime not too faraway.