OSAKA ESCAPADE

Friday evening, Richard called me up. He'd just gotten out the hospital, and said that he'd been unconscious for about 10 hours, once they gave him the anesthetic. He had his wisdom tooth extracted and had to get 2 stitches to close the wound, plus more antibiotics to prevent infection. Dang.

We talked briefly about the following day's trip, before I went to the gym to work on some capoeira moves. It's gotten a little warmer over the past two weeks, so I've been feeling more inclined to go workout after I get off work. I usually workout with Thomas, but he couldn't make it because he didn't have enough money for train fare--poor dude is really struggling right about now.

While I was exercising, Erin, the white Canadian girl I met last week, saw me exercising and came and talked to me for a bit. She said she was still interested in coming to check out capoeira class and asked me for my number so she could call me for directions. I think it'd be cool if she decides to join, since currently there are just 2 English-speaking Westerners in our group, and only 1 non-Japanese female; It'd be nice to diversify our group a bit more.

Later that night, I hooked up with Richard. He wanted me to roll with him to ID Bar, the biggest, busiest, so-called "best" club in Nagoya. So-called. He was supposed to meet with the managers to discuss some deejaying work they were soliciting him to do. Richard was skeptical and wasn't really banking on any special offers. I'd already been through the hassle of trying to perform at that club before and had no particular business of my own, so I was just tagging along for the heck of it. When we arrived, we saw the managers out front talking to some people. We said whatsup to one of the managers, a white-American guy named Thomas. Richard was supposed to talk the Japanese manager, Hara, but he was busy at the time, so Thomas let us in the club for free to hang out while we waited--which was cool, because I wasn't trying to pay the 3000 yen (about US $30) cover to get in.

I hadn't been to ID in months, but it was about as lame as I remember, particularly because of the lackluster resident deejays. On the Hip-Hop floor, I ran into some people I knew, including engineering students Mark and Keith. I ran into one of the old staffgirls from my company who'd recovered from a serious car accident last spring. We talked and hit the dancefloor to party it up for about an hour or so, but I wasn't feeling the vibe, just forcing myself to dance. Richard and I got bored and decided to bounce early. When we left, Richard couldn't find the manager, so we ended up just leaving, going back to chill at his place. I was super-hungry so Richard cooked up some Kraft Cheese & Macaroni straight out of the box. Man, that hit the spot. I hadn't had Kraft Cheese & Macaraoni in years. Richard was messing around on his computer, it had gotten pretty late, and I'd gotten pretty tired waiting for him to take me back home. He'd gotten pretty tired too, so he suggested I just sleep on his couch and leave with him in the morn. I hadn't brought any gear for the overnight trip to O-town so I had to go back home. He dropped me off around 4am, then told me we were supposed to meet again at 8am. Yeah, right...

...Obviously, that didn't happen. We both woke up late, and he had a school-related engagement in the morning, so plans changed and we didn't meet up until the afternoon. After some errands, we finally hit the road to Osaka. After about 3 hours on the road, we got there around 6pm-ish. Osaka was bigger than I remembered, it has a nice skyline with a huge river which runs through the city and the downtown streets are surprisingly wide, making it resemble a major U.S. city. We hit up a couple music and music equipment shops, before going back to his girl's (one of them) house for dinner around 9p. I hadn't eaten since that morning, so I was starvin' like Marvin. Richard, who loves to cook, whipped up some popcorn chicken, mashed potatoes, and stir-fried veggies, which were quite tasty. After the meal, we napped for about an hour to charge up before we went to the club. I dozed off right at the dinner table. We woke up around 11p and headed to Sam & Dave's in the Shinsaibashi district. (S&D's is a club franchise in Osaka that has about 5 clubs citywide, although the Shinsaibashi S&D's caters primarily to the Hip-Hop crowd.)

We hit the club around 11:30-ish and walked right in for free on the strength of DJ Black (Richard's deejay alias). Right away I noticed the vibe was totally different from any club I'd been to in Nagoya. People seemed way more laid-back and were just mellowed out. I wasn't catching shady looks from wannabe J-boys. There were a lot of J-kids rocking athletic jerseys and trucker hats. I suppose that's the latest trend--I can't keep up. They had foreign bartenders on staff, male and female, which I've never seen in Nagoya. There were quite a few brothas in the house too. I presumed most of them were African. Richard introduced me to some heads, including the manager, some chicks, and a couple djs. One of the djs, Jeff Daniels, was a poplockin' member of the original late-70's pop R&B group, Shalamar, with Jody Watley and Howard Hewett. I was kinda shocked to see dude was working there. Dude is like 45 years old, but he didn't look so old, in there kicking it hard with the youngsters. He was even busting moves on the dancefloor. I guess if you're ever wondering what happened to some once-famous Black musicians, check Japan!The music and djs were pretty tight. They spun a lot of stuff--there was a female dj from Tokyo, and she was on point. She would put any of the djs I've seen in Nagoya to shame. They played Dre and Snoop and the J-kids started throwing up their "W's," as always. Another surprise was when some dudes got on the mic, announcing that K-Ci and Jo Jo, of Jodeci, were in the house. Apparently, they'd just done a show in Osaka and had stopped through. I thought they were lying at first, because I didn't see the cats myself, and when they said that, we were looking around the club trying to spot them. Richard claimed to have seen them later on chilling in the cut at a table surrounded by security guards, but I never saw them.

The club got jumping quickly after midnight, and we partied it up on the dancefloor. Everyone seemed to be vibing and having a good time together, unlike many Nagoya clubgoers, who tend to segregate themselves. Richard's set wasn't scheduled until 4a, so in the meantime, he was on the mic like Funkmaster Flex, hyping the crowd to the music. In the end, Richard didn't spin at all, because he realized he had to be back in Nagoya by 8a to play in a baseball game. The crazy thing was that he still got paid just for showing up, including gas and tolls. Sweet. We left the club shortly after 4, and outside the club, we met some ghettofab little Korean-Japanese chick who spoke English pretty fluently. She wore a nose stud with her hair half-cornrowed and claimed to have lived in So. Cali for a while, where she worked in a beauty shop doing "hurr and neels." I was like, "You went all the way to the U.S. to do hair and nails?!" She said she hung out with Black folks in Cali and they called her "a sista." She got to arguing with Richard about her dislike for Americans, yet claimed she loved California. She was hilarious.

Finally, we gassed up and hit the road around 5a. The roads were clear, so the drive back was only about 2 hours. By that point I was completely beat and couldn't keep my eyes open more than 20 seconds at a time. We stopped back at Richard's and took a brief nap before linking up with some of his folks to go to their Sunday morning baseball game. I was so tired, I just wanted to go home and pass out, but I had to sit out half-asleep in the drizzling rain and cold watching them play baseball until 12:30p. Richard is a machine. I called him the "Terminator," because I couldn't understand where he found the energy to play ball after being awake for a day and having driven both ways on his own. I didn't get home until around 1p. It was a 24-hour adventure indeed. Definitely gotta do it again.