24 posts tagged “los angeles”

If there's one thing I'll miss about this city, it's the skies. You can't really see the sky in Tokyo, for various reasons. The pollution, the neon, the buildings everywhere. But here, the sky is wide open, and your world just feels so much bigger.

Here's the sun rising over Korea Town, as seen through my little sister's apartment window.

And here are some shoes hanging from the wires.

Since coming here (LA) three months ago, I've lived in the slums of Beverly Hills (technically right outside of Beverly Hills), then I stayed in Korea Town, then I spent a few nights in the VALLEY (Studio City), went near the Miracle Mile, and now I'm back in Korea Town. I got a pretty good crash course in Los Angeles geography. The buses and trains aren't that bad here. They're cheap and pretty easy to use. The only problem is you can't really expect to get anywhere fast. But that's alright.

When I lived here as a teenager, I was in the San Gabriel Valley area. Everyone was Taiwanese or Chinese American, and it felt like we were miles from anything. That's probably because we were. So I appreciate the education. Also, I really was living in outer space the whole time, so I would actually say this was the first time I really lived here.

Here's me in the pricey (for me) hotel I stayed in for two nights. What a Jewish and Japanese looking face I have.
And here's me in the cheap Korea Town hostel room I just moved into. I like it! Sorry, pictures are for neighborhood only

Me: What time are you picking me up?
Rich: I get off work at 7, so maybe 7:30ish. What do you wanna eat?
Me: Are you paying?
Rich: That's subtle
Rich: Do I get a kiss?
Me: No
Rich: Then why am I paying?
Me: I was just asking

And what's wrong with just asking, people? I just want to know if I need to bring my wallet. I don't think I will after all.

I'm going out with Rich tomorrow. He finally got smart and asked me to something OTHER than to see him play in some dive. We're gonna go see Batman in IMAX. This is great for so many reasons. Not least because he won't be able to talk non-stop about himself if we're in a movie theater.

My friend Baldy (American guy) really needs to wake up and break up with his idiot girlfriend (Japanese girl). She pulled a knife on him and stabbed his shirt when they got in an argument in her kitchen! Dude, this isn't funny anymore. In fact, it stopped being funny a loooooonnggg time ago.

So I sent him a short email which said the following:
- your girlfriend sucks
- you don't suck, in fact you rule
- what's happening with you and your girlfriend right now is not only abusive and crap, it's also DANGEROUS. you don't want to get hurt, you don't want to hurt her, you don't want to get her pregnant, you don't want to have to go to jail or the hospital
- we all love you
- and we all understand that you're ACTING stupid but YOU are not actually stupid, so we'll be here waiting whenever you get over ACTING stupid
- and we hope its sooner rather than later

Since Baldy started seeing this girl, our good mutual friend got INTO and OUT of an abusive relationship! And he's still stuck! At least with our mutual friend it was a girl on girl love affair so there was no possibility of an "oops" baby. Plus that relationship's dead and buried.

I want to shake his pattern balding dumb head!

Earthquake! My first LA earthquake in years!

Little scary.

Went to LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for you out of towners) to check out the Joe Price collection of Japanese screen art. My favorite one was this one:

Hahaha! It's called "The Courtesan and the Daruma exchange Robes." The woman on the left is a whore. Whores wore gaudy kimono and tied their sashes in the front. You know, for easy access. The guy on the right is the Daruma -- a buddhist monk who worked super hard to achieve enlightenment, eventually losing all his limbs in the process. He was more of a rags kind of guy, seeing as he was above material possessions.

How funny is this picture? The whore's wearing the Daruma's rags, while the Daruma's wearing the whore's bright, sexy kimono, even tying it in the front. You know, for easy access. Look at his unamused face. Love it.

Joe Price is a huge fan of Ito Jakuchu, who's black and white paintings were just unbelievable. His stuff was head and shoulders above everything else, which must have totally sucked for his contemporaries. Skilled as they were, they just didn't have Jakuchu's ability to express so very very much with so very little, and they must have known it when they saw his work.

Then I found out that in fact Jakuchu wasn't that respected in his day. He defied categorization and because his stuff didn't look like anything else, people just thought it was crap.

Maybe they still do, I don't know. Joe Price isn't even Japanese, and he's Jakuchu's biggest fan. Sometimes it takes an outsider's objective eye to see the truth.

Shabbatt shalom.

The restaurants around my neighborhood have finally closed for the night. They open late and close around 3am on Friday (or I guess technically Saturday). Me and my dad are pretty much the only ones not dressed up and celebrating the shabbatt in our neighborhood, so nobody wishes us a shabbatt shalom when we walk down the street. Although it happens sometimes when I sneak up on an old man who starts his greeting before turning around to see me in my jeans.

It's not that I dislike my jewish heritage. I just wasn't taught very much about it. I feel like I owe it to my ancestors to study up on it a little more though, because they kept the faith alive despite a lot of crap. I don't like the cliqueyness and intolerance of a lot of jewish people though. Maybe it's not a lot, maybe the intolerant are few but very vocal. I don't like cliqueyness and intolerance in general, because if the whole world was intolerant of outsiders, where would that leave me?

The jewish side of my family accept me though. With open arms. I really do have a great family on all sides.

I have a friend. He's not too bad looking, in fact if you just looked at a photograph of him you might even call him hot.

But he's an idiot. He's kind of dumb and kind of pushy in an oblivious way. That works in your early 20s when everyone's dumb and oblivious. It stops working when you're over 30 though. Unless you go for very young girls, which gets a little creepy the older you get. Then again this is the guy who was sleeping with a 15 year old when he was 25, even AFTER he found out how old she was (this was in Japan).

So Rich is the guy I talked about before who just wants me to go see his band play. But they just play in crappy creepy dives. Every time they have a show I get a barrage of texts from his dumb ass.

Rich: So are you coming tonight?
Me: I said no.
Rich: Can't your sister drive you?
Me: No, she's in Chicago. Anyway no.
Rich: I just asked a friend who lives near you and he said he'll drive you.
Me: That's okay.
Rich: But I want to c u
Me: I SAID that's okay.
Rich: Don't you want to see me play?
Me: I don't want to get stuck somewhere by myself for hours with people I don't know and be unable to leave.
Rich: Okay.

I was kind of surprised he gave up relatively easily. As soon as he DID give up I suddenly felt guilty like I should go see his dumb ass play drums for hours in some god forsaken casino. I mean he works hard at his career and he wants to show me his accomplishments.

Then I remembered that he would never do the same for me. So no.

My dad came back from his camping trip today. He had a three-day beard and looked pretty tired, but kind of invigorated. He told me about where he went (some mountain on the Nevada border that's near Death Valley), and he asked me if it was similar to the boonies town my mother lives in. I couldn't answer him because I don't know what the place he went camping in was like.

Then Kosuke came to pick me up so we could go see a triple-feature on Asian punk rock documentaries at some artsy fartsy movie theater. I was kind of surprised to see Michael Des Barres there presenting the films. Gotta love LA. "Famous" people everywhere.

To be honest, we only sat through the first two. And the first one was just terrible. It was about the Beijing punk rock scene, except it wasn't really. It was half-ass and shallow and boring. The second one was cool because it was about the Tokyo punk rock scene, and seeing Shinjuku made me want to get on the next plane back. I miss it so much. But it was still crap. Both films were made by westerners for an English speaking audience, and neither of the documentaries really got past "hey! look at these Asian people playing punk rock!" And I was almost tearing my hair out at the end because it was just so repetative and boring. And there was absolutely no story!

It was worth it though, because I now know my favorite band name of all time. New Pants. That's what they were called. New Pants. They're from Beijing.

I went to go see this movie with my dad on Sunday. It was called Sword of the Stranger in English.

It was being shown in some really small theater downtown called Imaginasian. My good old dad said it used to be a Toho movie theater (or another Japanese movie studio) that showed their own films back in the day when there was a stronger Japanese American community here, but that space closed down a long time ago. I guess it finally re-opened.

We got there a little early and the theater was completely empty, which was a shame because it was really a beautiful little space. If you get the chance, you should go down there and support it.

The movie itself was pretty good. A little too bloody for my taste though. What was interesting (for me, and for probably a lot of foreigners who watch this film), was that the two main characters (the hero and his nemisis) were strangers -- they were outsiders, foreigners. In a country like Japan it doesn't take much to be an "outsider." A slight physical difference or a drop of mixed blood makes you a "stranger."

The nemisis was from China, but obviously from European stock because he was tall, big, with blond hair and blue eyes (he also had a very distracting mullet). The hero had reddish hair and slightly western features, which made me think of my part Ainu friend, who's father has reddish hair and western features. I mean seriously, the guy looks latin. These two main characters were both much stronger and more skilled than everyone else, which was cool. In my experience Japanese people don't appreciate foreigners being more skilled in their cultural techniques, like swordplay! I mean there's a reason why they stopped recruiting polynesian sumo wrestlers. I wouldn't be surprised if they do the same thing to Mongolians.

And I was sort of left scratching my head because I couldn't figure out why THIS film -- out of all the anime films that come out of Japan -- was chosen to be shown in America. As far as I know, it didn't make any particular waves in Japan. Then again I'm definitely no expert, so I might be wrong. It was good though, if you can stand all that blood and violence. I have a particular, almost irrational dislike of blood though, so you'll probably be fine.