Koen Ji tour

went to Koen Ji, a cool area in western tokyo, even the New York Times says its cool. anyway its supposed to be a bohemian area full of musicians and artists and stuff.

this is not koen ji, its yoyogi park when i was walking by. these girls were practicing their dance, but a lame pop dance not break dancin or booty dancin or poppin. its common to see people in front of windows at night practicing their routines with others but usually they are cool dances not cheese pop singer dances.

a condom machine with 3 choices in a "seemingly" random place in an alley

had beer and yakitori here.

each draft beer in japan is a beautiful creation, even when served in plastic party cups. on the table is various oden (fish cake stuff) soft cooked radish, hardboiled egg, japanese fried chicken, chicken wings, liver or some animal, and chicken meatballs. all delish.

directly behind us across the little alley was this dirt club where filipina dirt girls came out occasionally to talk on their cell phones.

then it started to rain, super hard. good thing we were pretty much done. man it rains a lot in japan.

finally saw some of the musicians the NY times was talking about! and they were so good! the guitar player had a guitar that sounded like a django reinhardt guitar, a selmer guitar or something like that. the bass player was plaing a string tied to a stick resting on the edge of an overturned bucket and it really works, awesome! they were playing django like stuff (gypsy jazz, swing). they also were both outfitted with kazoos and on point japanese lyrics. would be cool to have these guys as buddies or hire them to play at some party.

friendly kitchen staff at an Okinawan restaurant.

i met this guy while practicing kung fu in the park near my house. he was riding by and stopped and started talking to me, which is weird cuz people in tokyo don't do that. he told me he used to be a boxing champion in Kyuushu, a southern big island. a welterweight champion. now he does tatoos in shibuya he says. he gave me this drawing/design/tatoo art and signed it. This was all done through my super poor Japanese skills i posess at the moment. So I am thinking he is either homeless and or a crazy old man. that is going to be me when i grow up.

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