Boogie Pants
...written on 05.01.05, @ 9:30 a.m.
Friday Min whisked me off to Kyoto. We went to Jittoku Live House where we saw Mikami Kan, the best singer in the world (according to himself), last year.
Three bands were scheduled for that night. The first band started around 6:30 pm. The first two members who came down the stairs from the Green Room, were dressed in normal street clothes. Then the lead guitarist came down in a yukata (a cotton summer kimono-like robe) with a towel around his head and his face covered with a red devil’s mask. The buzzed head lead singer followed wearing nothing but his white jockey shorts with the word “boogie” emblazoned in magic marker across the front of them. This band was called “Boogie Pants”. The other two bands, while not as creative as “Boogie Pants”, either in costume or songs, provided sufficient and enjoyable musical variety.
A side note: My students always giggle when we come to a clothing lesson and we come across the word “pants”. You see, “pants”, in the Japanese vernacular means “underwear”, not the long legged jeans you put around your legs.
After the Live House we had dinner at a family restaurant and then headed to our favorite Love Hotel. Japan is in the middle of the “Golden Week” holidays, when everyone hits the road to travel to tourist spots, visit relatives, etc. and when Japanese businesses hike their prices by at least 10%, as the note on the door of our room at the Love Hotel, proclaimed.
In the morning we had breakfast at a different family restaurant, and from our booth on the second floor, we could see the traffic jam going into the city. Not willing to put up with the crowds or the unseasonable heat (Min’s car is now without AC), we left Kyoto and headed back home.
Before we reached our city, we stopped in Kamiishizu, which has a large cluster of rice fields amidst gnarled green knuckles of mountains. We stopped in a park next to a lake and spread out a cloth to sit on and read our books as the wind off the lake kept us cool. We were there for about three hours and read and talked and napped and read and talked some more.
Min is a voracious reader. His recent author/titles include Krishnamurti, Gary Zukav, many books in the Conversations with God series, and Byron Katie’s Loving What Is. As for myself, lately I haven’t been disciplined enough in anything to stay with it long, be it reading, or studying Japanese, or exercising, or doing calligraphy, or writing for this journal.
I’m back at home now. Today I want to lay low and read, work on my journal, do some work projects, drink some good coffee, talk with my neighbors, etc. because my left nostril is “broke”. It is leaking and the only way I can control it is with a wad of tissue stuck up there. So, since going out on the town with a white flag hanging out of my nose doesn’t sound all that appealing, I’m staying inside to enjoy doing a myriad of things.