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In July, at long last, after much searching, one of the British companies I hesitate to call my "employers" finally paid me some of the money I was owed. This was a nice thing. I've been freelancing for near a dozen magazines these days, and judging by how, for two years, not a single one of them paid me a single hundredth-unit of any currency for any of the work I did, you'd almost think that I like complaining about not having money.
Homeless and half-delirious, I spent the month of June and the first half of July sleeping on my back, chewing a stick of uncooked spaghetti, on the lumpy, grassy hills of Yoyogi Park, hands folded behind my head, listening to the practice routine of a rather famous Japanese comedy duo, who practices in the park at three in the morning for the same reason Rumiko Takahashi eats at Wendy's: the park is free. Okay, so that's not the same exact reason, though hey, I can adapt: my friend Nick and I saw Rumiko Takahashi at Wendy's in July, and she was all alone. I knew her from sight because I'd met her before; one night while I was playing Dragon Quest V at a manga artist's house, Rumiko Takahashi sat next to me, talked to my hostess about publishing problems, and then helped me level-up a bit. That game, Dragon Quest V -- it has some mysterious memories for me. It makes me remember lots of things. I guess that's how we judge the worth of a piece of entertainment, by how many things it makes us remember.
We saw Rumiko Takahashi at Wendy's, alone, eating a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger and large fries. She was drinking a Coke. She's kind of a chubby woman. We can call her "pleasantly plump." She wasn't always so plump; then again, she wasn't always the richest woman in Japan. Money affords food, which affords plump, which affords pleasantry, is the model we're going to use. Nick didn't believe the woman was Rumiko Takahashi -- and he hardly even knew who she was, until I'd explained to him, like this:
"That's Rumiko Takahashi over there."
"Who's that?"
"A manga artist."
"Oh. What does she write?"
"Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, Maison Ikkoku, Inu Yasha."
"That's it?"
"Well -- that's kind of a lot."
"I hear Inu Yasha sucks, though."
"Well -- well!"
"And how do you know that's her? I mean, why would she eat at Wendy's?"
"Well -- what's your favorite fast food? You like Taco Bell? Just say Taco Bell."
"Fuck yeah, Taco Bell is good."
"Well, if you were rich, would you quit eating at Taco Bell, and eat exclusively snails at French restaurants?"
Nick saw my point. And four otaku passing down the rainy Shibuya backstreet on that July night saw Ms. Takahashi. They charged into the Wendy's. In humble voices, and with bowing heads, they asked her for an autograph. Ms. Takahashi was delighted. She asked them to carry away her garbage. They did so. She said she was finished with her Coke, and asked if they would get her a Frosty. One of the boys did as he was told. The others asked if they could sit. Ms. Takahashi said, sure. They pulled out chairs and crowded around the famous artist as she opened a silver pencil case and put vinyl caps on her fingers. With a knife, she began to sharpen a pencil. She asked the boys their names. She asked what manga they were currently enjoying. Hirohiko Araki's virtuoso Steel Ball Run (my personal pick for manga of the year) was mentioned. One of the boys showed her his sketchbook. She commented on it in a way that was not condescending. She offered advice for something regarding lines. She then drew the boy, Ryu-kun, a picture of Ranma-chan giving a thumbs-up and saying "Ganbatte, Ryu-kun." The other guy, Masa, got a picture of Inu-Yasha telling his girlfriend, Kimiko, that he loved her. "Kimiko, Masa told me to tell you he loves you."
And so on and so forth. It was really nice of her. It qualified her as a great person. I was inspired by her show of generosity for her fans. I thought, a lot, about it. I longed to be some kind of great person. If I ever was that kind of great person, I'd entertain my fans in a similar way. Ms. Takahashi draws a hundred pictures a day. It's nothing for her. It's the easiest thing in the world. So to draw them for some random guys who recognize her face at Wendy's -- for one thing, you have to be pretty hardcore to know both exactly what Rumiko Takahashi looks like and how to differentiate her from any other chubby middle-aged Japanese woman in glasses -- that's really great. It shows a lot of character. I wish I could do something like that for someone.
The comedians practicing in the woods at Yoyogi Park practice there for what I'll call "the same reason" as Rumiko Takahashi eats at Wendy's. She eats there because she is not afraid. She is not afraid of people talking to her. She's not afraid of them knowing who she is or asking her for sketches. She's not afraid of the cholestorol in a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger. She's not even afraid that someone might throw a Coke in her face and tell her Inu Yasha is going on for too long.
I made a friend in my Yoyogi Park days. She's a girl a little older than I am. I call her "Oneechan." "Big sister." This girl would not exist if she didn't have a cellular phone. I've tried to analyze it other ways, and not succeeded. She left Osaka at a young age to come to Tokyo and hang around outside rock and roll shows. She's the second girl I have ever met with this curious hobby. She talks to rockers, gets photos taken side-by-side with them, and later uses the photos outside another rock show starring the same rocker to score free tickets to the rocker's next show. It's curious, like China refusing to take Hong Kong back in 1946, scheduling a changeover for 1996, and later agreeing not to change a single law until 2046. Except in Neechan's case, she cares about herself, not the future citizens of her republic.
Neechan uses a Vodafone Prepaid cellular phone to email her friends upwards of a hundred times a day. Her emails can only include 128 characters. She has said before that she would not be alive were it not for that cellular phone. She emails friends simple messages like "What are you doing tonight?" They reply, a conversation begins, and in the end, Neechan has found a place to sleep for the night. Or she has been rejected. So that she doesn't end up burdening too many friends on too many nights, sometimes, she ends up sleeping in the park, writing emails all night, screaming at the comedy duo in the woods, and never, ever sleeping.
I told Neechan one night in the middle of July that I'd have my own apartment soon. I told her I had money coming in, for real, and that I'd be able to rent some place. She asked if she could come stay sometimes, and I knew that question was coming. So I told her she could. She came and stayed every once in a while, once the house was set up. She stayed with me on the first night I stayed in the house, actually. We met in Shibuya, I bought a pillow at Muji, and we boarded the Saikyo Line straight for that house in Ukimafunado, Itabashi. Itabashi -- right back where I'd started the year.
The house was rented to us by a couple of large Greek brothers named John and Milto. Milto was the younger brother, and it was in his car that I learned a life-important lesson: never drive from Chiba to Kawasaki in July in a car without air-conditioning. We got stuck in turnpike traffic for three hours. I almost died. He almost died. We put on a Jimi Hendrix MD and complained about Linkin Park. The conversation was good. It almost killed me to talk, however. Such was the heat. Milto promised me, that night, that'd bring some TVs they had kicking around in their warehouse. The TV didn't come until a week after I moved in. My roommates Drew, Nick, and Marco didn't show up until around then, either, so all worked out. Drew would end up punching a hole through the bathroom door one night while drunk, and then kicking a hole through the shower glass door one other morning while hung-over. I would dare him, then and there, to "go ahead and just punch the mirror out, while you're at it." The mirror, you see, stood above the sink between the shower and the toilet.
It was a wonderful apartment. I enjoyed my three months there, hosting all sorts of stray foreigners who happened to read my livejournal at the right time. I had to leave because of something cryptic that required my doing, between Kamakura and Saitama. Even now, however, the first two weeks I spent in the House in Ukimafunado remain a precious memory. This is because it was during these two weeks that a battle raged in my mind. This was the battle between 2004 and 1994.
In June, I spent a few evenings dying on the hot, hot, hot floor of Drew Cosner's old dirty-money-sanctioned foreigner-hole apartment up in the dead quarter of Saitama, watching him play Dracula X: Rondo of Blood on his just-bought PC-Engine Duo-R while sitting in a posture bodybuilders reserve for curling dumbbells, controller held beneath the chair's seat-level, back arched, forearm jackhammering as he hits buttons with finesse. (Drew always games in this posture, I've noticed.) Every few minutes, when he wasn't vocally angry about getting shafted by Shaft, he'd stop to expound upon why Rondo of Blood represents the fusion of old and new Castlevania. He was usually drunk. He usually kept insisting I was disagreeing with him. I'd have to tell him -- dude, I'm not disagreeing with you.
I kept thinking that I needed a Super Famicom again. How many Super Famicoms have I owned in my lifetime? Too many. I can count them on both hands. That's still too many Super Famicoms. I have to keep getting rid of them. They get spent. They explode. They die. They get given to someone else. And I need to get another one.
Well, once at the House in Ukimafunado, I got a Super Famicom, and I began putting my videogame collection back together. I started it like so, gotten for a grand total of 2240 at Suehirocho's FURENZU (just off the north tip of the Akihabara strip), all for Super Famicom:
1. Dragon Ball Z Butouden
2. Dark Half
3. Some Pachinko Game by Sammy (<--- these three all snatched out of the "take it and run, you damn thief!" box by the door)
4. Mother 2 (in-box, with manual and card)
5. Takahashi Meijin no Daiboukenjima (in-box, newish, WTF -- Super Adventure Island, you might know it as.)
6. Chrono Trigger (in-box, with manual, cards, and posters) (350 yen OH HELL)
7. Final Fantasy VI (raw cartridge)
8. Final Fantasy V (raw cartridge)
9. Dragon Quest V (raw cartridge)
I would later also procure FEDA: The Emblem of Justice. It, Mother 2, and Final Fantasy VI were pretty much the only games I played, after a long, angry bout with Super Adventure Island and its sequel.
FEDA, Mother 2, and Final Fantasy VI -- all three of these games were released in 1994. All of them tie me down to a surface of memories I cannot comprehend. I played them, mostly alone, on a sofa in a bedroom facing a little television, and ended up not learning anything from any of them.
There was a girl who played Mother 2 with me. She was my friend Sensei's daughter, a professional trumpet-player. She is also a black belt in karate and an accomplished pistol markswoman. In addition to this, she might soon be drumming in Large Prime Numbers, my band. Why she kept coming to my Ukimafunado house, I don't remember. Her father told me she wanted someone to practice her English with. She came over almost every other day, carrying herself with the swagger of a grappler in an old Japanese yakuza movie, and smelling of perfume. She set her tambourine-filled duffel bag down on the floor, sat next to me on the sofa, and pulled her knees up to her chest. In the best English she could muster, she talked me through half a quest of Mother 2 and three-quarters of a quest of Final Fantasy VI, sometimes asking me questions about Hideo Kojima. We spent a lot of time together. I wonder, now, even more seriously, what she really wanted from me. I've done the whole "speak English to someone who wants someone to practice English with" thing before; it always ends before it begins. Normally it doesn't mean that the other person really wants "someone to speak English to" so much as they've been told by their friend or acquaintance that they know a foreign someone and would like to introduce them as a potential friend. Sometimes ladies I know tangentially will tell their younger co-workers about me, and we'll end up on a date, even now. There's usually not a second date. Sensei had told his daughter about me for some reason I don't understand even now. She ended up trying her best to wedge herself into my life. She'd come over to my house and, speaking with a strong, nasal, "boku" (the pronoun for "I" used by young boys, the kinds who play videogames and read manga about ninjas in high school), fit herself squarely into my life as we played games by the likes of Enix and Falcom. She even went so far as to, at a point, revise my patented pepperoncini recipe in a manner that was hardly unappreciated. We talked, too, the way people talk when they are interested to know each other. Once, when I was showing her a photo of a cinnamon bun I'd taken with my cellular phone, she put her hand around my wrist and looked me in the eyes.
At that moment, I saw myself. It was really creepy, and kind of cool.
That was in October. She didn't come over any more after that, because I wasn't in the house anymore, and she was living up in Hino, near a mountain, working every morning at a morgue in Shinjuku, washing dead bodies that couldn't very well wash themselves.
Why didn't I do something? I should have explained my feelings to that girl. Hell, I should have explained my feelings to myself, first. I wouldn't be in any of the messes I get myself in, I realize again and again, if I would just explain my feelings to myself before I realize I did something wrong. I guess I'm saying I liked this girl. I suppose she liked me, too. She liked me enough to tell me, one day, that she'd broken up with a guy she was living with, because he reminded her of her father.
"I didn't like it, after a while. I found him on my own. He made me . . . think too much."
She told me, recently, that my father told her I remind him of himself. I think this might have something to do with a lot of things.
I had a choice this summer, between a girl who told me once, relaxing on my sofa in my apartment when no one else was around and fireworks exploded in the sky far away, as she picked through a bowl of strawberries, that 1994 was the best year of her life, and another girl who worked for Sony and introduced me to a lot of people, as well as obtained, daily, new videogames for me. I chose, for whatever reason, the woman who worked for Sony, and accepted free videogames daily. I did this for a few reasons.
At the end of the year, I look at all the games I played, and I realize this: the old ones are still better. The games I played on the sofa with fireworks outside and strawberries inside are games that are tied to my memories. They're games I love as both collections of graphics and sounds and memories of my past. You hear people, all the time, saying things about forgetting the past, leaving the past behind, or owning up to the past. I remember the words of the Romanian she-kook who said she was a poet though she was provably a massuese, the one who lived next-coffin to me, back when I was living in a coffin in 2003 -- according to some modern physicists, there is no past, and there is no future. There isn't even something you'd call a "present." All of existence is a single shape, a shape too large for all existing human eyes -- or even all human eyes who ever have and ever will exist -- to perceive at once. This makes man and his civilization god over all imaginary gods. And it also makes existence greater than man. Time does not move, and it does not flow; rather, the shape of existence is organically always moving and changing from one shape it will never assume again to another shape it will never assume again. What I remember when I remember 1994 is a series of shapes that existence used to be. Yet even my memories of 1994 are, when I think about them seriously enough, only elements of the shape existence currently occupies, here at the end of what we call "2004." I cannot fear my past; I cannot hate it; nor can I throw it away. I might as well let it be.
I wrote a short novel, called "MOERUIENONAKANOTORINOTANIHE," ("toward the valley of birds within burning houses") about this feeling that existence is a big, imperceptible shape, as told from the perspective of a white man in Japan, riding trains, carrying only a cellular phone and his memories of a comic artist who, three years ago, told him a disturbing tale of a phenomenon she calls "swallowed love." I wrote it in Japanese, on my cellular phone. Thanks to Sensei's editing, it looks like it's going to be published in Japan in the spring of 2005. That'll really be something.
His daughter has read it. She told me one day that she'd read it. I asked her what she thought. I didn't know what else to ask. She said she cried at the end. I wondered, aloud, why. She said that she was wondering the same thing. "It wasn't especially anything worth crying over. I just got to the last line and decided that was what had to happen. It was like applause more than anything else." She has good sense. I appreciate her words more than any other compliments.
**
1994. Ahh, 1994. The year The Blue Hearts broke up, following their drummer's straight-faced, serious request that the audience give up their worldly possessions and join a particular suicide cult. The year Kurt Cobain died. I was talking to Frank Cifaldi of The Lost Levels back in August, from a Korean internet cafe in Korea. On that same day, I'd gotten an email from a kid who asked me why I always mentioned "1994" in my articles. I shared this email with Frank, who stopped and thought and came to the conclusion that 1994 was probably the best year of videogames ever. I told him to write something for this fine website that worked with the hypothesis "1994 was the best year yet in videogames." He said he would do it, using his complete set of 1994 Electronic Gaming Monthly and EGM2 issues, which he'd bought from me, anyway. He ended up not doing it before the end of the year. That's alright. Because 2004 turned out to be a wonderful year for software, as well.
This year, we had Halo 2, Half-life 2, Doom 3, and plenty of other moneymakers. We had Katamari Damashii for innovation. We had the launch of PSP and DS, both of which show plenty of promise for upcoming software. We had Ninja Gaiden, an exciting new King of Fighters on PlayStation2, as well as a damned exciting Berserk title that proved melee action games could be original, and we had Dragon Quest VIII, the game I waited for all year, played before everyone else with great concern, and loved all too deeply. Though I played it and beat it in ten days, one could say that I gave my entire year to Dragon Quest VIII; I thought about it all too much, I set aside far too much time for it, and I lined up far too many harebrained schemes so that I would be able to play it ten days early, on a PlayStation2 that wasn't mine, in a house that wasn't mine, with a television that wasn't mine. It worked out, though in the end, I felt bewitched, and wanted to return to July 2004, when I remembered the whole of 1994. If only life had a memory card, and I could make two saves at what I thought were pivotal moments, so I could play to the end of one thread before doubling back and playing the one I'd wanted to play most in the first place.
Until that day comes, my raw cartridge of Breath of Fire II (that's Capcom, Super Famicom, 1994) is waiting in my Nintendo DS bag at a house that isn't mine, for that day I return to reclaim my Super Famicom.
[next: august]
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