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CHERRY
April 22, 2005
The Cherry Blossom Festival in
San Francisco's "Japantown", on
Saturday afternoon.
Japantown is at heart an
urban shopping mall, but MAULED
unlike most shopping malls,
it really does function What chains there are,
as a community center. are Japanese chains
that are unusual on
this side of the rim.
Japantown often functions
as an events venue,
it actuallly encourages
human interaction
beyond buying and selling.
Filmore Street is closed
for an outdoor stage for
"soul" singers -- No genre seems more
misnamed than "soul".
A token nod toward the black
culture to the south on
Filmore Street?
Or to the actual tastes of
Japanese-American kids?
A block away, in the
central outdoor plaza,
a tycho drumming group
performs. This is a
demo for a school:
a woman's amplified
voice provides
instruction to the
drummers: "All right!
Big finish now!".
We duck indoors to get our usual:
green tea and taiyaki (red bean
paste filling inside a waffle-like
shell in the shape of a fish).
Among the novelty cigarette
lighters, one was decorated Dangerbaby was in
with moving tilt-images: need of cigarette
From one angle, the statue of lighters to take
liberty, from another angle, to Bali -- a friend
the World Trade Center explodes. there collects
cheap plastic Japanese
A strange political lighters. She
commentary? skipped the WTC in
flames though.
A teenage white kid, short,
slightly stocky with thick
glasses. He wears a black tee
shirt and combat pants, carries a
bulging black day pack, and also
lugs a japanese sword, freshly A small store with
purchased from a vendor out on the glass displays filled
street. He stands up and jams it with decorative cell
inside his metal-studded belt. phone cases...
Like the husks
Over in the lobby in front of of locusts.
the bookstore, his female
counterpart: she wears a short
black dress over long legs in
white & black horizontal
striped socks. She hunches
forward, peering closely
through thick cat-eye glasses
at something she's writing
intently.
I point her out to Dangerbaby, and she
exclaims "She's going to be someone's
dream girl! Because she's *cute*, and
she doesn't know it."
"Oh, she's getting the idea."
The bookstore in
Inside the bookstore, a twentyish couple Japantown carries
are hanging around in what looks like a lot of manga and
Sailor Moon outfits. anime, some in
English translation.
In the stationary store, a Japanese (I'm always
woman works in traditional dress: contemplating
white flowers on deep blue, a wide a set of
yellow waist belt. The large black "Gothic Lolita
mole in the center of her broad nose Bibles", myself.)
is absolutely perfect, but no doubt
loathed.
At a tea ceremony demo, up
on the stage a row of three
people playing the role of
guests kneel side-by-side:
Two asian women, one in
traditional dress, another
A musical performance with in modern and between the
three older women playing two of them a heavy black
shamisen and two on kotos. guy in a gray Cal Bears
An ensemble of *fretless* sweat shirt. His thighs are
stringed intruments -- too tight to kneel all the
they're clearly experienced, way down, so he leans
but can't *quite* play forward on his hands.
together: Trills of sound
continually interfere and
turn dissonant.
Spam Masubi!
A cross-sectional slab
of spam, mounted on a
brick of rice, tied
together with a strip
of seaweed.
Outdoors on one side of the
building it's drizzling slightly.
We step indoors, walk through the
building, and see out the windows
on the other side a total
downpour: The strange illusion
that it's raining on only on one
side of the building.
Or maybe it isn't an
illusion? It's hard to
say in San Francisco.
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