Tokyo – Day 12 Addendum – 03/29/2018
Dinner was awesome, as always. There seems to be an advantage to being a regular customer who knows to ignore the little girl trying to steer foreign customers away from the prime seats. Over time, my cuts of fish seem to have gotten a bit larger, and better. I took a train halfway across Tokyo for that meal – and well worth it. For those curious, 5 plates of Nigiri (2pc each) and a huge bowl of Miso soup with Clams comes out to about $8.00. I’d kill to eat like that in Santa Fe…..and I’ll miss the [deleted] out of that place when I leave.
After I got back to the apartment, I gathered up my things and walked down into Kabukicho one last time to hang out with Shingonawa Bingo for a while. I have to say that I found his performance last September to be a bit extreme. But I’m coming to understand that was a performance – for a specific venue – and a specific audience. Bingo-san’s style of Kinbaku is very smooth, very precise, and as sensual as it gets. He performed for the four of us present, and it was freaking brilliant. I will definitely stop by his place again next trip. We talked (best we could with limited common language), laughed, he agreed to train me, given we can find common time, and he gave me a nice hug when I had to leave.
Walking back here I got accosted by my first “West African” of the trip – trying to lure me into a club. Tenacious, they are…. But with a “No Thank You” (in Japanese) and a little faster pace to my walk, I dropped him in about 2sec…..
But speaking of leaving – the point of getting out of Bingo-san’s place before midnight was that I needed to pack. Dammit. That’s pretty well done now – I’ll finish in the morning. I have a big backpack, and my regular daypack to tote all the way across town on the Metro. I’m praying for relatively empty trains by the time I need to go. Nothing says “gaijin”, like a white guy with luggage on the subway…..
And on that happy note – it’s 0145 in Japan. I need to get some sleep. It’s gonna’ be a LONG day tomorrow. Lol – especially with the time change. My flight leaves Haneda at about 3:00pm – I’ll get back to Albq at about 5:00pm – same day…. Getting back the 15hrs I lost getting here. So for those math-challenged, tomorrow will be 39hrs long for me. Sleep on that – I’m going to…..