I don’t think it’s a far stretch to say that I didn’t visit, but was rather digested by Tokyo.  Gobbled by electric turrets glaring from the tops of ferocious, shiny-blue window-scaled buildings, rushed through twisted intestines, and ending in back alleys, battered, beaten and torn . . .

That isn’t to say it wasn’t one of the best experiences of my life.

The wonders of Tokyo are far-reaching, both physically and mentally, but if you’ll pardon my indulgence, I don’t want to talk about them.

I don’t want to talk about Shinjuku and the decadent eateries, where smiling, knife-wielding men hold up wriggling eels in front of your nose; with a slight nod, a slash of silver, the gaping head flies off with an explosion of pink intestines like a party popper, and you know how gods feel after a sacrifice.  I don’t want to talk about the Golden Gai, which shrinks in height and width, not unlike the white hallway of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, until the miniature doors declare NO GAIJIN, no signs needed, and you have to exit through trumpet-blowing, naked, stone cherubs riding giant snails, perched above 1940’s photographs scattered like leaves in the garden of a collapsing temple, where a man swaggers up and whispers of pink things in dark alleyways.

Nor do I want to talk about Akihabara where every building is seventeen stories alight with things that hum electric, their complex innards and sleek outtards making American gadgets quake in their sockets, where the buildings themselves try to sing you to shipwreck, where I found a watch with a moon glow that made the rest of my clothes grow dull and tattered in comparison, and where we declined to dine in a Café hosted by Anime girls sprung to life, with legs that could kill and breath that could do the job twice as fast.

I’m definitely not going to talk about the Parasitological museum, stacked with beakers and wallpapered with photos, all filled with horrors caused by uninvited guests: elephantine limbs, a mouse’s chest exploding, a tortoise’s eye squirming, a man with skin like a cactus but with worms instead of spines, an 8.8 meter tapeworm extracted from a man’s lower intestine, and other unmentionables that made the contents of my stomach boil, and leaving me with an iron resilience to wash everything, cook until charred black, wash more, and then light it all on fire.

There are other things not to talk about, of course. I’m not going to tell you about Ghibli Studio, which looked like an everlasting gobstopper hidden in the woods, or its liqueur center with the fluttering reels of film that whirred from floor to ceiling, M.C. Escher like stairways, spiraled and criss-crossed, child-sized mouse holes that invite you to explore spaces between the walls, a petit Louvre, and hopping statues, the beauty of which made my eyes teary.  I won’t mention the “Heartwarming Arrowroot Cider with Ginger and Spices,” homemade pate open sandwiches, all chased with the appropriately titled “Fruit Sandwich of your Dreams,” or the workspace of Miyazaki Hayao, dirigibles, laughing gargoyles, maps, paints, a thousand books on a thousand subjects, all drawn from that peculiar place that we know in our hearts, but have never actually seen.

I won’t talk about the face of the hidden goddess (because I didn’t see her, of course) or her home Asakusa with its curled streets with hutted shops supplying everything from otherworldly knives the length of your arm to hand-painted fans that looked as if they would disintegrate with a breath, block printings that tell of ocean-stranded Samurai battling ship-sized leviathans protected by rat-nosed angels, restaurants that served Fugu, the spiked death fish, which in its natural capacity would kill you dead, but not before igniting every one of your nerve endings at the same time for a split second of universal pain, but if cut just right will be the most delicious thing you’ve laid tongue on, I promise.

Nor about the moment it ended, a swirl of lights and noises, gems to find, horrors to be fought, fame to be had, the maddening cyclical tunnels with specious signs, a million little traps and alleys to fall into, get lost in, a city that makes you feel so common, insignificant, and yet makes your heart pump with the possibility of Kingliness.

No. I don’t want to talk about any of these things. Only a single moment, right in the middle, with a girl and a bamboo flute.

But I think that can wait until next week.  All this not-talking has exhausted me.

-Xian

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 25th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under All Comics, Rez Sick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.