For The Damaged
I have fallen in love with Tokyo. It is the grace of the people which I have fallen in love with. It is the volume of dignity or should I say the lack of volume, the quiet souls, that alight this metropolis. I find the stillness smoldering, a white-hot intensity, the warmth without the flames. It is a love filled with varying degrees of sainthood and wretchedness. You can feel like a god here, a god amongst gods filling your cup with life and your belly with fire. But you can also feel invisible here; another number to add to the pavement. Is it not true that the pulse of love is often one that we decide? We invent the fate for our love, it breathes or stops breathing upon request. Yet at times it is decided for us, a quiver full of fate, piercingly cruel and apparent. Tokyo has pierced my heart and I hope the wound it has given me never heals.

Bloodless in Tokyo
I have been asked my blood type almost daily in Tokyo. I must leave soon. It frightens me that everyone insists on knowing what my blood type is. Man or woman, they all ask, and they are overly curious about this, my blood. I lie, telling them that I don't know and that there are no records of my blood type available. In fact machines that test for blood don't work on me, in fact, even when my blood type is told by the machine it is often wrong. I am afraid if I answer 'correctly' someone will proceed to knock me senseless and suck out all my blood. Bloodless in Japan, hell I cant afford health insurance in New York, imagine Tokyo!!
I have a creeping suspicion that everyone here is secretly a vampire. Very polite vampires. Vampires who will ask before sucking and thank you after the deed. Or maybe it's National blood drive week?.
Finally my end is near for I am cornered in a dark bar by a glittering dark eyed woman who is Japanese-French. I feel the inevitability of my own death reflected in her face, because she looks determined and hungry, should I run? Can chopsticks be used like wooden stakes? What about the garlic in the soup I had today?
"What is your blood type?" she purrs. I notice part of her red lipstick has smeared down her lip onto her chin. I am too tired to run so I give into fate's fantastic phantom of death.
"My blood type is...uh" I whisper a quick prayer. "Is..."
"Are you okay. You look a little pale."
"Oh, really. Its probably because I'm bloodless, yes, no blood in me. Yep. No blood. It's been a problem since I was a child, not having blood and all. I tend to get cold quicker than the average victim...I mean person."
She laughs and her brilliant white teeth reflect in the fluorescent light of the bar.
"Do you know why I ask?" she says.
I give in.
"Yes I know why. It's hardly a secret anymore. Is that why the Japanese can work such long hours? And how about sunlight, how do you do it? Without, like, melting and all?"
She blinks rapidly, like a summer fan, and stares at me. Then she smiles again,
"You are so funny. But I don't understand you at all." (This is a common observation amongst family and friends.)
She continues.
"I am wondering your blood type because it is like, oh, how you would use the Zodiac signs in America. If I know your blood type then I can see if we are compatible. You know what I mean? Like you are a Leo so you would look at another sign to see if it works. We Japanese look at blood types."
Oh.

Shibuya-Ku
I am in Shibuya near the 'Love Motels', a rendezvous point for the licit and illicit. My guide, a friend of my family who has been generous with his time, asks me,
"So what do you think of the erection?"
I look around trying to locate the insane man walking around with a visible erection. I do not see any walking dicks so I wonder if my guide is hitting on me. I try to shrug it off.
"Uh, not much." I say.
He looks at me surprised, as if I should have something to say about erections.
"You don't care about the erections?" he says.
The jet lag is blurring my eyes so that the neon lights that permeate Shibuya appear like hovering discs.
"Well sure I care about erections. Why wouldn't I care about erections? But its not something I think about all the time. I mean sure, last year when I moved to New York I didn't know that many people, so I would get lonely and, you know, I would think about erections, so to speak. Uh,.." I decide to stop rambling.
My guide looks at me and he is squinting, rocking back and forth on his heels, with his hands in his pockets.
Oh.
Of course.
"I hope Dean wins but it's likely Bush will win, but who knows."

Miscellany
It appears that I cannot escape discussions on the fetishes of Japanese business men.
{As a note I would like to add that this is by no means representative of Japanese men whom I have found to be some of the smartest and nicest persons on the planet. These little bits are facts of life for a certain group of men who live in Tokyo.}
*The "Yellow Cab" company is an agency for big breasted Asian girls. Japanese men appear to have a fascination with the buxom blonde but not necessarily the real buxom blondes. These men are looking for the Japanese buxom synthesis, a visual synergism of Valhalla and Japan.
*There is a club, actually several clubs, which sells itself on woman dressed as schoolgirls urinating. They do it in a glass box while men sit and watch and drink.
*Japanese cel phones are 3 generations ahead of U.S. cel phones. Not surprising. The majority of the cel phones have cameras built into the phones. What is surprising is the volume of the cel phone when it takes a picture. It is a loud crack, which I embarrassingly found out when I was playing around with the phone in a graveyard quiet coffee shop in Aoyama. I tried to discover a way to turn the sound off but to no avail. Later that evening I was told why the using the camera option on the phone was so loud.
"A lot of guys were using the cameraphones in the subways to take 'beaver' shots. It became such a problem that the phone companies were forced to create a cameraphone that gave a loud sound each time you took a picture. AND, you can't turn the sound off."
*What's a groper? Simply a man who likes to grab a woman's behind or breasts. In Tokyo there are websites and self published magazines that provide information for gropers. The information usually provides the best subway lines and train lines to grope. For many years Japanese woman were forced to accept groping as a fact of life. Now this is not always the case. "The subway gets very, very packed. Very tight. Two months ago, this shit take my ass, like dinner! I don't like so I tried to move, but he did it again. This is when I get Rambo. I pick up my foot and Yaah! I dig my high heel shoe into space between shin and foot. You should have heard scream! "

"Sashinoboru asahino gotoku sawayakani
Motama hoshiki wa kokoro nari keri.

As clear and refreshing
As the rising sun-
Thus might it always be
With the human heart!"

-Emperor Meiji-