Memoirs of a Teacha- Ch.4- SUPER SENSEI!

For as long as I can remember, I have had the luck of finding myself in fairly odd, fully outrageous circumstances. I don't know why, but if you are a close friend of mine, you can attest to this. I simply seem to have this uncanny ability to attract colorful situations and characters. At times it feels like I'm living a life straight out of a comic book. Here are just a few examples as of late.

Remember that crazy schizo house mate I had? Well, the company is firing him. Good call doing it before he went postal. Guess who the replacement is? Agent Smith of Matrix fame. Or Lord Elrond of LOTR. Either way, he looks like that actor, Hugo Weaving. This new teacher is from Australia and he plays Beethoven's 'moonlight sonata' in the music room of my crib non stop. I rented an indie flick called "Elephant" the other day. Its basically a movie made to make the viewer feel like they were present during the Columbine shootings. (wish I knew that before I rented it). My heart was aching after watching that. If you want to watch a powerful film based on an actual event, watch 'Elephant". Yeesh, what's wrong with the world? The musical theme of the film was "Moonlight Sonata". The freaky thing is, is that after I watched the movie,ironically Agent Smith started to play this haunting, depressing song over and over again. Kuwai!!!(Scary)

Last weekend, I went down to Roppongi (Gaijin Ghetto). This the area of Tokyo which caters mainly to that of foreign descent. It was the international duo of mayhem night. I was with my Cuba bro, Aaron. The itinerary? Bar hop! The first bar was pretty boring until a big taiko drum was hit. Whenever some drunken fool hits the big taiko drum above the bar, that individual must buy the whole bar a round of shots. Lucky for us, some American business man got drunk enough and decided to be generous. After our shots, we hit up a tequila bar. Once inside, I completely lost my bearings. You truly believe you are in Mexico, Cuba or some other exotic Latin spot. It was blowing my mind that just outside was JAPAN! This was no shot bar. Ohh no..this was as classy and lavish as they come. Only the finest of the world's tequila in this joint. You get your tequila in a wine glass amigo! To make things truly authentic, Aaron and I indulged our senses with some cigars-sipping and smoking the night away. It wasn't long before we both were feeling the effects of the alcohol. Its at that moment that my adventurous spirit kicked in. So out we went into the insanity of a downtown Tokyo, Saturday night. An interesting thing I noticed while walking the yellow brick road of Roppongi was the amount of Africans here. Literal Africans. Not African American or Canadian. Straight outta Nigeria. Left, right and centre these Nigerians were trying to get us to go into their clubs. Them and they're clubs looked way too sketchy for us. See for yourself. Then came the Thai prostitutes. We were just wondering the streets trying to figure out when our trains were starting up again when these two, old Thai women came outta nowhere and aggressively pulled us into their building. They were offering some pretty interesting services for dirt cheap. It makes sense cause they were pretty dirty themselves. After saying no, they started yelling and making a scene. One tried to reach in my pants for my wallet!?!? We bolted with them chasing us! Thank goodness for the sun because as it rose, they backed off. I think vampires exist here. And that was that.

What else do I do on my spare time? I joined a gym, a dvd/cd rental store and started Japanese classes. Haha, I also signed on for Ninjitsu lessons starting next month. GO NINJA, GO NINJA, GO!

Here are some random pix...

Outside most arcades you can find characters like this waiting to be photographed or kancho-ed.
I'm at the arcade brushing up on my dance, Dance revolution game when suddenly I see this sight!?!? I've seen many animals do many tricks but a freakin horse playing video games is a definite first. WTF,WTF,WTF!



Finally, some pix of what keeps me sane in this bizarro world.




Hero in a half shell,

EMRAH POWER!