Below are the 4 most recent journal entries recorded in noboru watanabe's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, May 9th, 2006
1:58 am	Sunday Is my favorite day of the week. All of my friends are out on the street decked out in their finest: plaid pants, studded leather and spiked up hair. I guess we look kind of like misfits, dressed up like Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious in the middle of Tokyo. People come from all over just too stare at our clothes. Not just at us, but all the others too, Everybody has a different look. A group of girls dressed in black lace like 19th century maids were sitting next too us for a few hours, and and at least half the people around us had brightly coloured hair. Its strange though, I'm probably one of the few people here who know who the Sex Pistols were, and I don't know much myself. Most of my friends just dress the way they do because they think it look cool, because their friends do and because they want to stand out, not because they like punk music. Sundays are why I moved here. Most days I'm at work until late in the evening. Sometimes I go to a bar or a karaoke box, but I'm normally too tired to even think. Sundays we spend all day lounging around playing music, chilling in cafes and checking out what everyone else looks like. A lot of my best drawings are of people dressed up on Sundays. I was sitting next too a girl in a ruffled white dress when an American teenager came up to ask for directions. “By the way, I like your outfit, its soo cute.” “Oh, Thanks.” “Why do people here dress like this here, if you don't mind? I didn't know people liked British punk in Japan,” she glanced at me. “Oh, its just fashion really. You know, we all want to look the best.” After the teenager departed, the girl, smiling, looked at me and rolled her eyes. “I think you just made her day,” I said. “Maybe,” she laughed, “Do you think its all just fashion though? Don't we all want to escape from our real lives and jobs as well? I feel like we're all so rushed, over scheduled and pressured to be prefect at all times, the Lolita culture makes us take time to be polite, kind, and graceful. Who wouldn’t want to go back in time to a simpler, slower youth, where innocence and beauty are safe and not shunned or threatened?” I took a drag from my cigarette and slowly blew the smoke out. “You know, you're right. I didn't used to come here very often, and if I did, I wasn't dressed up. I would sit at one of those cafes watching and wishing I was able to be one of these people, but I had pretty much given up and resigned myself to sitting in a cubicle all day. But then I decided to become an artist.” “Really? Just like that, you became an artist?” “Pretty much. I used to bring a sketchbook sometimes for fun. One day a girl noticed that I was drawing a picture of her, and she told me she really liked it. She looked right at me and asked how long I had been an artist. I was transfixed by her elegant face and her brown eyes, and I told her that I had started a couple of months ago. “Do you have anything anything I can buy,” she asked, “posters or designs for clothes?” “You can have this one if you want, and I have a few more in my apartment.” “Really?” Her face lit up as if she had just met Nigo himself. “Are you gonna be here next week?” And just like that, as if she had caught my hand and stopped me from stepping into the path of an oncoming train, I became an artist. I found I could easily churn out drawings people would be, and soon I was making enough money to quit my real job and move to my apartment in Harajuku. Current Music: Only Anarchists Are... (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 6th, 2006
5:58 pm	Temple I often walk around the Meiji Shrine grounds when the weather is nice. It feels like an oasis within Tokyo: chirping birds replace the hum of traffic and the air is free of soot and dust. I happened to have a sketchbook today, so I decided to stop and draw a few pictures. A gentle stream of people flowed down the main path towards the temple, visibly awed and talking in deferential tones. Some of them were tourists, some (like me) have come for the relaxing atmosphere, and some have come to visit one of the most spiritual places in Japan. Farther on, at the shrine itself, there was a throng of people. several weddings were going on, most likely, and people were praying. Usually the brides and grooms dress in Kimonos, but a few wear western dresses and suits. Many of the worshipers are Shinto, but many are tourists, toting cameras and tour guides. When I got there, however, the crowd was much bigger and noisier than usual. I saw several groups with microphones and cameras. The commotion was centered around a middle-aged western couple praying at the altar. They bowed twice, clapped their hands and bowed again, in the Shinto tradition. I didn't recognize their faces, but I assumed they must have been foreign dignitaries of some sort. Whenever important people visit Japan, they always go and visit the temple. They always say that they pray for their people, and that they feel a 'connection' to Japan. I once heard an American couple reading from a guidebook while they went through the motions (and they were dead serious): “How should you show appropriate respect? After washing your hands and rinsing your mouth out at the stone basin, approach the shrine. Bow twice. Clap your hands twice. Think where you are. Then bow once again. You have become Japanese!” I can understand if tourists buy that, because thats what they're here for, but why politicians? Do they feel that this act assimilates them with Japanese culture? That they will be accepted because people have seen them visiting the Japanese shrine and praying like Japanese people? The girl standing in front of me was standing on tiptoes, trying to catch a glimpse. I touched her lightly on the shoulder: “Excuse me, do you know who that is?” “No, sorry. I think they are Americans though.” Sometimes they even try to explain how their religion and our religion are actually just another part of the same story. Thats what these politicians are always going on about: “I'm worshiping your god, but he's actually the same as my god, so your culture is actually pretty similar to mine, so I don't see why we shouldn't get along.” I don't really see why they have to try and impose this big explanation onto everything. Things can just be special, there doesn't have to be a big story behind it. Thats what I like about Shintoism; anything that is especially striking and seems to elicit a special sense of awe, they designate as Kami, without needing a big story to link it to everything else. Although, some of my friends have said that its pretty damn offensive that these people just go and pray at a Shinto temple when so many religious Christians were killed because they refused to do just that. Those people really take their religion seriously. I didn't bother staying to find out exactly who the visitors were. Instead I wandered around the gardens hoping for a particularly beautiful piece of scenery to catch my eye. Current Music: Air - Cherry Blossom Girl (Comment on this)
Friday, May 5th, 2006
10:21 pm	Girl My friend Nate has been dating a girl for a few months now. They see each other three, maybe four times a week. Sometimes they see a film or go out for dinner, but usually they just meet in a love hotel. “Why waste time fooling around,” he says, “we don't spend much time together, and we both know what we want.” I've been to a few love hotels myself – ended up with a girl after a night of partying, needed a place to go... A few drinks and gaudily decorated rooms left me with some of the most fantastically disorienting nights of my life. Anyways, the first time Nate mentioned this girl, I told him about a book I had been reading called “Lady With a Dog.” It was by a Russian writer, about two people who meet while visiting a resort. The man in this story – evidently he was quite a Don Juan – seduces a woman, but after she leaves can't bear being away from her. He only knows that she lives in a city named S____ and that her husband works for the government, but is determined to find her and tell her about these feelings. They are both married, but they manage to meet occasionally during secretive visits to hotels. They live for glimpses of each other, barely noticing the rest of their lives. I asked him once, “What is it like, dating a girl whose house you've never seen, whose friends and parents you've never met?” The sound of an motorcycle wafted in from the night, cutting through the silence. “I'm serious man, it seems rather strange. Do you ever talk to her apart from these mysterious rendezvous? Does she even have a name?” “Does it matter? I love her.” “What's that supposed to mean?” “Have you ever seen that Van Gogh painting? 'Midnight Café?' When you look at it, don't you feel as if you've known that couple sitting in the corner for years, as if you visit that café every night, even though you only know them as splashes of paint on a canvas?” “No.” “Oh.” (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006
3:23 am	Train I saw a little girl waiting for the train today. She was very young, wearing her hair in pigtails. She kept glancing around, as if she was waiting for something. She looked tiny and overwhelmed in the bustling crowd of self-absorbed teenagers and smartly dressed businessmen. If her too-cute red and white hello-kitty rucksack hadn't caught my eye, I wouldn't have noticed her. The train wasn't due for another 53 seconds, so I started to draw a picture of her. I was sketching the creases of her light blue blouse when I heard the rumbling of the train echoing off the curved ceilings. The little girl stood up straighter and stared, tensed, squinting to read the numbers on the clock. changing the pattern of creases. I looked down at my sketchbook to adjust my drawing. When I looked back up, she wasn't there. Her blood-spattered rucksack sat at the edge of the platform; the train was screeching to a stop. 6:37 Right on time. The businessmen and teenagers paused; somebody started to scream something, but was drowned out by the hiss of the doors opening. An old man in dark glasses, tapping a white cane in front of him, stepped unconcernedly into the waiting train. Current Music: Year 3978 - Nigo (Comment on this)