Arrevederchi San Francisco!

It is now Feb 22, twelve days since the football match that saw the United States of America flog Japan 3-2, and a night after the game that went until dawn that I won't soon forget, like something where you meet Mr.Future and Mr. Past like in Dickens' Christmas story. In the days after the game, as I dusted myself as I always do and take inventory of what was kept and what was hurled overboard like so much nautical flotsam, I think I learned something more about what makes me tick. Notes have been taken, but, oh so much life has been lived, starting with life on two wheels.

The weather was unseasonably beautiful, warm, clear, hardly any fog and only two days of rain the nearly 3 weeks I was here. I took marvelous bicycle rides, starting with my ancient Cannondale stickered up for one last week of glory and then riding my new bike, the Norco that I have christend "Homage to Canada." I would usually ride all afternoon, either up O'Shaugnessy to the Haight or West to the ocean, sometimes straight south to the 'Top of the Hill' (Mission Blvd) in Daly City. On these rides I saw little local nuggets precious to me; The Native Sons Building, Pon's Restaurant, the Mission Rock, the Osaka Friendship Monument, and many, many more. Even the last ride today down Shotwell, the sun bleeding green off of the Bernal Ht.s hill behind Robert's. All much too lovely for words. And all because of Global Warming!

I avoided Museums this trip but everything else was fair game; two movies at the theatre, more rented, Republican cabaret (the Dick 'N Dubya show), two appearances on KPFA FM radio, one live studio vocals for a pick-up band, a true artist returned home. And one dinner with Andre experience, in this case Breton crepes with famed artistes Michael Peppe and Hal Robins. In Robert's spacious kitchen I produced some great dishes; lentils, pasta, mixed grilled shrimp, and a king curry. Food shopping in the Latino Mission was a treat; I even discovered a Mexican cut of meat, a ragged flank steak called an arachela that fired up great with tortillas. I'd love to cook again in this city...

My mind expanded in this surreal city. I considered many options for life; moving back, sending my son to school here, being part of the diversity, getting into recovery, writing, seeing Lingling work here, reviving the N. California regional autonomist party, selling miniature Japanese plastic action figures... Then my friend Bob Carasik suggested buying a house... in Fresno. Oh, yeah that housing market...

I'd like to thank my friends Robert Irminger for hosting my adventure in his beautiful home and garden, Bob Carasik and his wife Mary Droyvage and daughter Nora, see you in Japan in April, Steve, Teresa, and Liam Lautze, I would have liked to have spent more time in the East Bay this trip. Thanks to all the SubGenii - perhaps I will join you at a future Burning Man. Heart (a few loose possessions) and soul once again left behind in San Francisco.

article : Otakus of Den Den town

I'm posting this and the Tobita article (which will appear in the Kansai time Out this spring). Some wierdness is buried in the tourist copy, dig it up if you can.
Sven

Den Den town remorphs
Sven A. Serrano

Haven’t been to Osaka’s DenDen town for awhile? You may be surprised as the discount home electronics district has a whole new look. The big chain outlets for TVs, stereos, and air conditioners like Ninomiya and Joshin have downsized as cut-throat competition from out side the district has funneled customers north to Bic Camera in Namba and Yodobashi in Umeda. Same for the big computer places like Sofmap. Small computer shops selling motherboards and components moved in, but after a few years they had their own shake-out as profit margins fell below 5%. The result was a lot of ready-to-rent space, both in the big five story places and in the small shops too. So let’s go and meet the new neighbors.
Most people enter via the Ebisubashi subway station, which puts you in the middle of the electro-district, but I always start at Nipponbashi and walk south on Sakaisuji, parallel the Kuromon food market. Right there at the corner are two excellent old school camera stores Tokiwa Camera and Kunitate Camera, both full of traditional, 35mm Konicas, Nikons, Leicas and Hassleblads. Past the shiny remodeled 1925 Free Methodist church on the right hand side there is a small shop, Marui Kuni (tel. 06-6641-7621)　, which specialized in genuine Japanese nostalgia, mainly copies of old Meiji-era prints, 1905 battleships, old postcards of Osaka, and even picture frames festooned with unique matchboxes from ‘30s Osaka drinkeries long-gone. Mr. Tada, the friendly proprietor, will show you some original ukioye prints in this back studio.
A few doors down is the Shanghai XTD (tel. 06-6646-1390) complex, a seven floor China-mall in Osaka. Up from the ground floor furniture, clothes and curios, you’ll find a Chinese book and music store with all the Mando-pop and Canto-pop stars displayed. Higher up you’ll find a faithful Chinese supermarket with lamb and rabbit meat, fresh Shanghai hairy crabs, and over 15 kinds of xiao long bao dumplings. A casual buffet restaurant (888 yen for lunch, 1280 yen for dinner), a spa, a branch of the LAOX duty free electronics shop, a formal restaurant and a karaoke bar fill the upper floors. Don’t leave empty handed!
When you cross Nansan-dori you enter Den Den town proper. Duty-free electronics shops are still here, like Eisan Duty Free (06-6630-1056), which has been remodeled into an opulent showroom. The staff, who in the past spoke English, Spanish, or Portuguese, now answer your questions in Chinese. Outside you will see your first street vendor hawking pirated DVDs of new movies and manga series for 1000 yen each. These bottom-feeders only appeared a year ago and now they’re everywhere. Remember, any time you buy one of these copies, a Hollywood executive sheds a tear.
Now, staying on the right side of Sakai-suji, you come to a row of manga comic book chain mega-stores. Two must-sees are Comic KingsKing (tel.06-4396-8980, http://c-king-net), with a mural of cute gothic Lolita moppets in front and Mandarake (tel.06-6645-0772, http://mandarake.co.jp). The comics come in a rainbow of sizes, formats, and varieties: new, used, vintage collectors, box-sets, self-published fan comics (dojinshi) with all the accessory spin-offs. I especially like the section of anime music CDs, a big-money genre in its own right. Cue music -“Gigantor, the space-age robot!.”
Next door is another pillar of the new Den-den town, the plastic action figure store. Capsule Toy-Shop Super Position (06-6647-0676, ) displays whole populations of minature and doll-sized figurines of every manga and cartoon character ever created. Your best bet is to look for the racks with hand-labeled ‘factory-outlet’ clear bags of captive figures – they sell for as little as 100 yen. I bought six of these minature fetishes as gifts. I spoke briefly with Takeshi Sekine, the manager, who told me that Dragonball Z figures are his number #1 best seller. “Foreign customers? Chinese are the biggest group, they really like anime figures,” he observed. As for the changes in Den Den town he admits “We’re following Akihabara.” Again, Tokyo leads all trends it seems. In front are rows and rows of the bubble-gum style vending machines, dispensing clear plastic capsules with more figures. Standing in their little dioramas, they are little worlds within universes you can fit on a shelf
If you have young children with you, you can skip past Nobunaga Shoten porn supermarket, although this place looks innocently like a regular bookstore on the first floor (the featured photo book this month were shots by famed photographer Kishin Shinoyama of girls and their pets, called Kissin My Puppy). You should take them south on the left side of the street to the Hobix toy and model complex, and then another block to Super Kids Land.
Pass under the pedestrian bridge and at the next light and make a decision. Straight gets you the traditional small DIY computers places, CD and DVD stores, adult AV shops and the odd place selling used retro Famicon games. On your right you’ll see a giant metallic wasp looking down out you from a high rise. Turn right and walk two short blocks past some used places selling sodai gomi appliances and you’ll reach Ota-Road (Otaku-road, get it?)
Otakus were supposed be home shut-ins with all their computer games and toys but on this street they get a social life. Here, alongside computer potpourris and plastic figure places where sellers can rent glass cases and sell off their treasured collections for big yen (real revenge of the nerds), is the land of the Cosplay café. There are six at last count, with names like Raspberry Dream, MoeMoe, Café Doll, and Candy Panic, all discretely placed in second and third floor walk-ups. In Candy Panic a little Miss Muffet in a French maid’s outfit opens the door, bows, and greets me with a string of honorifics “You are most welcome, honored sir, how can I humbly be of service?” She looks just like one of the plastic figures I have in my bag. The café is all frilly and kid-like with white walls and shiny formica diner tables, where smiling single Otaku guys sit dreamily. At 500 yen the coffee is OK too. What the hostess bar is to the salaryman, the cosplay café is to the otaku, a place where they can truly relax and quietly indulge themselves. A full listing and map to these establishments can be found at www.otamap.com
If you need a break and a cosplay café isn’t really your thing, then go back down Sakaisuji south a bit and either Holly’s café, a decent Tully’s coffee clone, or Savoia (tel. 06-6631-6673) a good sit-down/take-out pizza place will satisfy you. Savoia has the best crust of any cheaper pizza place I’ve tried in the Kansai, and instead of a take-out slice, they offer a ‘roll pizza’ for a 100 yen. Great value but be careful, it can drip oil out of the bottom. So that’s Den-den these days. Like so many other industries in Japan it has re-invented itself and found new goods and services to fit unexpected markets and customers. Come back in a year and who knows, you may find animitronic robots staffing the shops and cafes.

On the Eve of Battle.

These are heady, fantastic days, bicycling over urban mountains and forests in Glen Park District, found rock outcroppings pushingpedals up O'Shaungnessy St. while reveling in the natural beauty of Twin Peaks. Then I biked down past Laguna Honda, Woodside, 6th Avenue, skirted a corner of Golden Gate Park and then past Kezar Stadium. I walked into the pub of the same name, Bremen-Stuttgart was on the big screen and two ex-London cabbies, one here in SF, the other from Fiji! Did we share some stories, loudly and with much insults,ther over Stellas at 3 in the afternoon! Shed End and Neil were invited to tonights Mad Dog in the Fog welcome reception, to which I am going in a few minutes with my regalia, flags and scarves. Tonight we drink as friends, tomorrow all business. Later on dinner at Little Henry's, then possible this evening midnight a Meat Beat Manifesto music at Mezzanine and THEN I go over to KPFA in Berkeley to asppear as on on-air personality on the SubGenius Radio Minstry.

Last night one of those nights when you are forced to be an artist. I sang vocals for a pickup band in a rehearsal space at 2 am with Carasik, my mainman Fred Crini, and a young lady named Angela we met at Lush (at a Death Sentence Panda show) who is trying to learn drums and base. It was a moment of pure self expression and bad/not-so bad Musique. Only here, only now, and only to me it seems. Boooshakallakalka!

Heim in Kalifornian Vaterland!

It's like I never left. You return to a place you lived in for a decade nearly 17 years ago and it's like you never left in so many ways. I write this in my good friend Robert Irminger's place, the always -open San Francisco socialist guestroom at 246 Precita on Bernal Heights with a labor history library, a cat for company and a cup of coca tea from Bolivia for a stimulant. Robert was just down there for President Evo Morales inauguration, that union delegate jet-setter! I have my mountain street bike here, humped over land and sea in a bike bag and I'm zipping around the city like a native Critical Masser, down to Montgomery Street this morning, then a tour around my old Asian Tenderloin nieghborhood, down Ellis to Market past droves of homeless lining up for relief and food. U.N. Plaza was stunning in its civic lines, tourists and statues, Chinese women doing wu shu dancing, then up Valenica for a lunch stop; veg burrito for 4.50, Italian mineral water 1.98 from Luccas, devoured in the lush back yard garden.

Social whirl fun my usual sailor on leave energy bowling everyone over, out for dinner first night with Robert,Bob Carasik, Mary Droyvage, daughter (starting university) Nora Carasik and old old not-seen-in-fifteen-years friend from Bloomington Indiana John Nelson. We had Ethipian food, big circle of spongy bread.
Then visit to our bookstores, Modern Times and Dog Eared Books. Books, novels and tomes bulge from the shelves of 'The Athens of the West!' Oh to return here and live a successful writer... Saturday we two go out for a giant breakfast at Carasik's suggestion but Bob and John sleep in. I somehow force air into my bike tires and take to horse, zipping past Precita Park to visit Bob's neighboring residance at 309 Montcalm. There I hang out with John Nelson on the patio and talk about old friends like Jim Hurd, Colin Carter and the self-martyred Steve Millen, to whom John has dedicated a tattoo "So long Stevie."

Afternoon is a load of laundry then Fred drops in and the three of us enjoy a weekend scotch up on the upper staircase balcomy of the building, soaking up a gleaming warm winter San Francisco sun. Before long I'm on my bike to Berkeley, kicked off the first carriage, in a pa system order (3rd one on this trip.} I get off in Fruitvale, delay 30 min, then my new bikelight breaks into a 6 piences. Evenutually I find Steve and Teresa's place and we have a hug and finish up cooking for the potluck.
Then its off to a Berkeley house party, great food and people, including an associate of Prof Richard Stites, whom I last saw in Helsinki in 1978! The fellow Georgetown professor Amy calls him and we catch up after all these years. I get a nightcap at the the Latin American club and leave my Go Nippon scarf behind. On Sunday I enjoy Yerba Buena gardens and park before catching a movie, "Syriana," Clooney and Soderburgh with a "Traffic" take on middle east oil intrigue. I get back in time with chips and beer for the Superbowl with Robert but not before I get rung up for too much at Safeway! God proves his hate for the Seahawks and they bumble numerous chances to score as the Steelers win the Stupid Bowl. Now I can concentrate on getting out the fans for the US Japan soccer supporters welcome and drink-off at Mad Dog in the Fog on Thursday.