March 10th, 2004
107958043942726947
Down at Jam
There’s a small bar called Jam off Meiji street, near the Harajuku koban in western Sendagaya. I don’t remember the first time I went there, it was like talking to a girl at a friend’s party and not seeing her again until a surprise meeting on a blind date. For the last two or three months I’ve been coming here every other Friday, usually near last call thanks to the rigors of gave development. Like most of the places I hang out, it has about a dozen chairs and one that’s my roost.
Jazz or folk music plays in the evening, and indie art flyers litter the two plank counter. Three rows of liquor rest behind and above the bar, an eclectic mix of fraternity party memories and east European export. I’m hopelessly awkward in throttling between English and Japanese with the other patrons, so I usually just mull the independent store owner lifestyle over a glass of Canadian Club. Since moving farther and farther away from a pragmatic perspective on drinking (goal: drunk as cheaply and quickly as possible), I find I spend empty minutes here without concern for price or what else I could be doing with my time.
From time to time I try to pretend I’m not a total social loss and make small conversation with the bartender, whose name I’m too embarrassed to ask after coming here for so long.
It’s now twenty after ten, and early enough that the lights are still up and people are eating food. I got off work at six-thirty, and after an hour at Tokyu Hands, had a dinner at Pasta Diece with Kerouac and a random salesman from Nissan heavy machinery who wanted to practice his English. Thought after I move I’ll still live close enough to make the trip without trouble, I know it’ll be harder to come here with a last train to contend with. I guess that’s why I’m here tonight after already spending a decent amount of money at dinner. That, and my room is a black pit devoid of anything interesting except my computer, which I think is giving me incredible eye strain.
A “help wanted” sign perpetually hangs over the cash register and I occasionally think about visas amidst a sea of loan repayments, Cheers episodes, and images of more than eighty minutes to myself a day.
I’m tired of being jaded, but grateful for being young-spirited. So happy to be off at a normal time, and shopping, I almost ran into several people as I literally danced and sang my way through Shinjuku station and Takashimaya. Obviously there are at least _two_ people doing a timeshare in my heart.
