Asakusa Dori (Avenue)

 

Asakusa Dori (Avenue) by Tosh Berman

Tosh's Journal - October 13 (Lenny Bruce & Emil Cioran)

TOSH’S JOURNAL

October 13

“I’ve invented nothing; I’ve simply been the secretary of my sensations.” As I walk around Asakusa, I found the theater where Lenny Bruce performed, totally in English on Rokku-Broadway. It’s an area that is full of small theaters, and it is regarded as the home of 19th and 20th century Japanese comedy. Bruce, being the king of American stand-up comedy, decided to do a show here in the late 1950s, but did his act in English. Ten or so years after Japan surrendered to the United States, this series of islands had to cope with another alien invasion. What I have read is that he bombed at the Toyo Gekijo theater. It wasn’t his subject matter, but the fact that he insisted on doing the entire act in English, which in the 1950s, was not a common second language in Japan.

Nevertheless, it is not what he says that is so great, but how he says it. I rarely follow his narratives, but instead, I’m glued to the visuals of the man on stage. The way he snaps his fingers in key lines, it is virtually done to wake one up in the audience. In other words, he’s absolute music to me. But as a visitor or tourist, I tend to like to see performances in languages other than English. And English is the only language I know. And what I know beyond language is music and visuals. So in that sense and my thinking, Tokyo is the perfect landscape for me. Here, I can enjoy my misery in peace because chaos is all around me. I can’t figure out how to work with anything here. Toilets are impossible. So many push buttons to push, but all in kanji, so I can’t read what it is for or even why. But on the other hand, “Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself.”

I went to the “Band of Outsiders” cafe in Shibuya, which is a venue devoted to Jean-Luc Godard’s film “Band à part.” It’s an interesting place because all the customers here are encouraged to speak only lines from that film (in Japanese), and of course, at 9 PM every Tuesday night, there is the famous line-dance done in the movie. Sometimes there are up to 15 people doing an exact imitation of the dance done by Anna Karina, Sami Frey, and Claude Brasseur. With a few glasses of sake, I get the encouragement to join the dance. In my mind, I try to imagine Lenny Bruce dancing as well. I snapped my fingers like everyone else in the dance, but my thoughts are not on that film scene, but Lenny, as he performed in front of an indifferent Asakusa audience.

“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live — moreover, the only one.” Therefore I venture into the night and try to find substance, but alas, even that, is just an illusion. Yet, the beauty of the moment of getting lost, or having the mist of the rain hit your face, is truly what to live for. “Melancholy: an appetite, no misery satisfies.” I go to Disk Union Shibuya, down to the basement in their jazz store, to hear the melancholy playing by Art Tatum, and suddenly remembered that my life is full of right turns when I’m left-handed. No wonder I don’t connect to this world. And happily so.

- Tosh Berman

Tosh's Journal - September 30 (Japan Airlines, Shintaro Ishihara, & Marc...

TOSH’S JOURNAL

September 30

I will be leaving my home, or I should say running off from my current location. I’m the type of guy who throws his hat on the bed, and that becomes my pad. But now, at my advancing age, this will most likely be my last trip… of any kind. Nevertheless, I have to keep a brave face on and not let the others down. I have always looked for a paradise, and most would like to say an island such as Hawaii or Tahiti fits that bill, but for me, it will always be Asakusa. Not an island, by itself mind you, but part of the more significant island that is Japan. Or perhaps the island that is my mind.

The airline I’m taking is Japan Airlines, where once you enter, you must take your shoes off. The entire plane has a series of tatami mats, and of course, you can only wear socks on the material that is rice straw. Once you get your seat, the stewardess offers you a hot towel to wipe your hands and neck. Once you finish refreshing oneself, you then get a foot massage from them as well. It lasts maybe only three minutes, but it’s a gentle introduction to the mysterious Orient. And one hasn’t even taken off to the heavenly blue skies.

I have high friends in high places. One is being a gentleman by the name of Shintaro Ishihara. A writer who specializes in the subject matter of the Japanese sun tribe of the late 1950s. Not the first rebellious youth movement, but surely the most nihilistic group of young Japanese boys and girls who love and live for the beach culture. He eventually made a sharp right-hand turn and became the mayor of Tokyo. Due to his reputation and fame, we in the past have met in secretly at a bar in Shinjuku.   The bar is located on the top floor of a sushi boat place that is on the floor level. It’s an odd bar that only plays the music of Marc Bolan’s first band Tyrannosaurus Rex. What makes this place even more curious, is that they mostly have photographs of Steve Took (the bongo player) than Bolan on its walls.  That is here and there, and I’m sitting on the plane reading Truman Capote’s horrible novel “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and having a glass of cold sake.

Many hours later, the plane of no hope arrives at Narita, where I decided to take an airport bus to a hotel in Meguro, Tokyo. One hour and a half I’m in the middle of a hotel lobby looking forward to getting a room. I think my adventure will start now, but who knows, I can’t predict what will happen. I’m just a writer, you know. -Tosh Berman

February 16, 2017 (Tosh's Diary) Japan

February 16, 2017 (Tosh's Diary) Japan

The lack of sleep makes Tokyo into a city of your mind.  To this day, I'm not sure if it actually exists.   With little sleep, I met two American friends who are visiting the dream capital of desire.  There is something superb about facing the cold air, when utterly exhausted.  The good thing is my fellow countryman are feeling the same thing.   There is a bar next to their businessmen's hotel that has an extensive vinyl selection as well as free drinks.  Why the drinks are free is a question that is not examined too thoroughly.   All three of us are heavily into vinyl.   The other two have never been to Tokyo before, so it was my responsibility to take them to the right spot.

Our first stop was RecoFan.  It's very similar to Amoeba Music in Hollywood in many ways, but smaller in size.  Still, it takes up the entire fourth floor of the building.  Austin is into punk and Ray is into hip-hop and jazz.  I like instrumental bands from the 1960s and have been looking for "The Shadows In Tokyo" LP for the last five or so years.  The thing is, when you expect to find something, you're not going to find it. But when the unexpected happens that is the 'gotcha" moment.  The Enka selection at RecoFan is pretty impressive.  For those who don't know, Enka is a post-war form of music that is very much like a version of Japanese blues but with beautiful orchestration and voice.   There is also at times, a killer electric guitar solo that appears out of nowhere.  It sounds like the guitar is crying.  That type of music hits the spot when you're dead tired, and all you are feeling is emotion.

I couldn't find shit for me, but my fellow companions found stuff that made their eyes pop out of their skulls.  Me, I'm more of the cool type. I try not to show emotion while shopping.   We then went down the block to the Disk Union.   This is a record store in Shibuya (also a few stores in Shinjuku) where each floor caters to the specific type of music.  Again, I wanted the Sixties vinyl, and that is on the third floor, and Ray wanted hip-hop which is in the fourth, and Austin for his punk taste is the fifth.  The basement is jazz, and we decided to meet there in one hour.   "The Shadows in Tokyo" is a very tough LP to find, and lady luck was not smiling down at me.   Meanwhile, Austin came to the basement with five or six 7" singles of various punk bands from his neighborhood back home, and I couldn't see Ray's face due to the various packages he was holding.

At this moment all three of us were confronted with a spiritual feeling of loss and abandonment.   Apparently, we needed to take the Ginza line to Asakusa to the Sensō-ji to renew our faith in chance.  Sensō-ji is Japan's oldest Buddhist temple, and the peaceful aspect is the marketplace leading up to the temple's steps.   This is also the location to get postcards to send back home, as well as various swords.  Since the others had two or three bags of vinyl, it was my responsibility to hold on to the swords.  I put one down my pants, which of course, I have to be very comfortable not to trip, and I carried the other two with both hands.   It's very difficult to walk down the marketplace with the swords because the physical space is very tight due to the large crowd that takes place here.   I did find one postcard here, that had a very nice colorful image of the temple surrounded by cherry blossom trees.  I addressed the card to Stephen Bannon in the care of the White House, Washington DC, telling him "wish you were here."

The three of us ended up in a beer hall, that has been in business since 1926.   All the waiters here are in their 90s, which gives it an old school charm.  As we drank beer, and eat sashimi, we still feel that time is not on our side.  I feel that once I close my eyes, and then reopen them, everything will be gone like it didn't exist.  That is the beauty of Japan.

The Sunday Series: Sunday June 14, 2015

The Sunday Series
Sunday June 14, 2015


For the past 25 years, I go to Japan every year.  Usually I spend up to a month to two months at a time in Tokyo. The funny thing is I have no visual memory of that country.  What I do remember are the sounds of Japan.  Mostly due to the fact that I own "Sounds of Japan."   It is 34 authentic sound effects recorded in their actual locale. The album was put together by Katsumasa Takasago, who I know very little about.  

The beauty of such recordings is that one doesn't have to leave their home to appreciate another country's culture.   In 1965, I don't think that many American tourists went to Japan, yet here we have everyday sounds of a city that looks back to its past, but alas, very much part of the present life as well.  1965 can be 1975 as well as 2015.  I try to imagine what it must be like to listen to this album in 1965.  You never were in Japan, yet, you're thrown into a soundtrack to a movie that you imagine you have seen, but never actually saw it.

For whatever reason I think of Alain Resnais' film "Hiroshima mon amour," starring Emmanuelle Riva and the Japanese actor Ejii Okada.   The film script was written by Marguerite Duras.  It deals with memory, but like the powers of recall, it is always one's point-of-view, and therefore there is no truth.  So when a tourist approach a 'foreign' country or city, it is from the point-of-the-view of the visitor, who may or may not know nothing about the culture, but at least heard of it.

Listening to this album on a Sunday morning is like traveling through a Japanese city with your eyes closed.   One can easily feel or taste the country just by listening to the album.  The Snake Charmer in Asakusa who is on this album is more likely dead, but surely his son has taken over his spot in that beautiful part of Tokyo.  The snake charmer demonstrates the love making of snakes, which greatly amuse the children that walk by him.   There is something sinister about such a profession, especially when late daylight turns into evening.  In the darkness, there is another world.  Asakusa is the old downtown of Tokyo, and there is quite a difference between day and night there.  In fact, all of Tokyo changes of identity - it is not that dissimilar to Bruce Wayne when he puts the bat-mask on.  Another personality takes over the city as soon as the neon lighting is turned on.

"Last Year at Marienbad" can easily turn into "Last Year at Tokyo."  I want to wonder through the streets of the Ginza to locate the lost love I had there.  Once I find her, will she remember me?    Perhaps not.  The faint texture of being forgotten, left, or abandoned is all part of the Japanese feeling.  When I go by a bar and I can hear the hostess sing float beyond the entrance door, I think of her.  It is never a city of now, but a city of memories.   This album represents memories.  Even when the record came out in 1965, it was already a memory.

"Elevator girls at Takashimaya Department Store" would announce each floor in a high -pitched accent with an ultra feminine voice.  Announcing the goods on each floor, one is in a sense getting a floor show at a supper club, but alas, it is in an elevator.   The perfect choreographed gestures of using their white gloved hands to express what is on each floor and also to announce the upcoming floor number.   One is not encouraged to talk to them. It would be like talking to an actor on stage as he or she is performing.

It's odd for me to sit here this Sunday morning in Silver Lake, and listen to this album.  Whenever I leave Japan I feel great sadness.  I have almost a fear that I won't stay alive till the next visit.  I never want to think that this will be my last visit to Tokyo.  "Sounds of Japan," is my safety-net.   As long as I have this album, Japan will never leave me.  It is very strange to listen to this album. Even though it was recorded in 1965 in various parts of Tokyo and Kyoto, I still feel that it could have been recorded today.  Nothing has changed. Yet everything has changed.  The story of my life.

October 13, 2014

October 13, 2014

“I’ve invented nothing; I’ve simply been the secretary of my sensations.” As I walk around Asakusa, I found the theater where Lenny Bruce performed, totally in English on Rokku-Broadway.  It’s an area that is full of small theaters, and it is regarded as the home of 19th and 20th centuryJapanese comedy.  Bruce, being the king of American stand-up comedy, decided to do a show here in the late 1950s, but did his act in English.   Ten or so years after Japan surrendered to the United States, this series of islands had to cope with another alien invasion.  What I have read is that he bombed at the Toyo Gekijo theater.  It wasn’t his subject matter, but the fact that he insisted on doing the entire act in English, which in the 1950s, was not a common second language in Japan.

Nevertheless, to be honest, it is not what he says that is so great, but how he says it.  I rarely follow his narratives, but instead I’m glued to the visuals of the man on stage.  The way he snaps his fingers, in key lines, it is virtually done to wake one up in the audience.  In other words, he’s absolute music to me.  But as a visitor or tourist, I have a tendency to like to see performances in languages other than English. And Engilsh is the only language I know.  And what I know beyond language is music and visuals.  So in that sense and my thinking, Tokyo is the perfect landscape for me.   Here, I can enjoy my misery in peace and quiet, because chaos is all around me.  I can’t figure how to work with anything here.  Toilets are impossible.  So many push buttons to push, but all in kanji, so I can’t read what it is for or even why.  But on the other hand, “Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself. ”

I went to the “Band of Outsiders” cafe in Shibuya, which is a venue devoted to Jean-Luc Godard’s film “Band à part.” It’s an interesting place, because all the customers here are encouraged to speak only lines from that film (in Japanese), and of course at 9 PM every Tuesday night, there is the famous line-dance done in the film.  Sometimes there are up to 15 people doing an exact imitation of the dance done by Anna Karina, Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur. With a few glasses of sake, I get the encouragement to join the dance.  In my mind, I just try to imagine Lenny Bruce doing the dance as well.  I snapped my fingers like everyone else in the dance, but my thoughts are not on that film scene, but Lenny as he performed in front of an indifferent Asakusa audience.

“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live — moreover, the only one.” Therefore I venture into the night, and try to find substance, but alas, even that, is just an illusion.  Yet, the beauty of the moment of getting lost, or having the mjst of the rain hit your face, is truly what to live for. “Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.” I go to Disk Union Shibuya, down to the basement in their jazz store, to hear the melancholy playing by Art Tatum, and suddenly remembered that my life is full of right turns, when I’m obviously left-handed.  No wonder I don’t connect to this world.  And happily so.

September 30, 2014

September 30, 2014

I will be leaving my home, or I should say running off from my current location.  I’m the type of guy who throws his hat on the bed, and that becomes my pad.  But now, at my advancing age, this will most likely be my last trip… of any kind.  Nevertheless, I just have to keep a brave face on and not let the others down.  I have always looked for a paradise, and most would like to say an island such as Hawaii or Tahiti fits that bill, but for me it will always be Asakusa.  Not an island, by itself mind you, but part of the bigger island that is Japan.  Or perhaps the island that is actually my mind.

The airline I’m taking is Japan Airlines, where once you enter, you must take your shoes off.  The entire plane has a series of tatami mats, and of course you can only wear socks on the material that is basically rice straw.  Once you get your seat, the stewardess offers you a hot towel to wipe your hands and neck.  Once you finish refreshing oneself, you then get a foot massage from them as well. It lasts maybe only three minutes, but it's a nice introduction to the mysterious Orient.  And one hasn’t even taken off to the heavenly blue skies.

I have high friends in high places.  One is being a gentleman by the name of Shintaro Ishihara.  A writer who specializes on the subject matter of the Japanese sun tribe of the late 1950s.  Not the first rebellious youth movement, but surely the most nihilistic group of young Japanese boys and girls who love and live for the beach culture.  He eventually made a sharp right hand turn and became the mayor of Tokyo.   Due to his reputation and fame, we in the past have met in secretly at a bar in Shinjuku, which is located on the top floor of a sushi boat place that is on the floor level.   It’s an odd bar that only plays the music of Marc Bolan’s first band Tyrannosaurus Rex.  What makes this place even odder, is that they mostly have  photographs of Steve Took (the bongo player) than Bolan on its walls   That is here and there, I’m sitting on the plane reading Truman Capote’s horrible novel “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and having a glass of cold sake.

Many hours later, the plane of no hope arrives at Narita, where I decided to take an airport bus to a hotel in Meguro, Tokyo.  One hour and a half I’m in the middle of a hotel lobby looking forward to getting a room. I think my adventure will start now, but who knows, I can’t predict what will happen.  I’m just a writer you know.