Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Kawai!

Midnight Mess last night kicked off slowly, Torture Garden were holding their Tokyo event, also in Roppongi. Until about two there were only about a dozen people there, and the music, while quite listenable, was, to my ears at least, obscure.

Then Rome Burns arrived. It wasn’t the real Rome Burns ‘cos simonsatori had short hair and I’ve no idea who the guy with the mullet was supposed to be – have they gotten a new bass player, or has Stoooos beard gone really really wrong?

From then on there was a steady stream of people arriving from the Garden. There didn’t seem to be anyone in particularly fetish outfits, there was a little more leather and PVC than is normal for Mess, but not noticably more than a normal London night would have.

The influx made it seem quite crowded on the dancefloor – but that wasn’t going to stop me jumping around a bit.

The final TG refugees arrived just as the music was finishing, at last some real rubber, there was a girl with just her face visible from her all-over bodysuit/dress thing. No idea who she was, I tend to recognise people initially by their hair (which, admittedly, is a less useful differentiator here than back in Europe).

We all waited outside while the bar was put back in order after the music stopped. The rubber girl said my t-shirt was ‘kawai’ (or maybe ‘kowai’, pretty) – I’m going to this take as a compliment but I’m not sure if it really was – which seemed, somehow, the wrong way around….

Maya-chan lead the entourage to Trick or Treat, where she had booked the whole place for the post-Mess mess….we weren’t turned away this time for being gaijin, since we were a mixed group. Theres one large table for groups of 8 or 9 plus a few smaller tables for twos and fours, I ended up on a little table with Spit, seperated by a kind of negative crucifix partition from Yvonne and her ladyfriend (whose name I didn’t quite catch).

Somewhat incongruously there is an electronic dartboard in the middle of the gothic decorations.

The food, when it finally arrived (they’d been hit by a group of 20-odd ravenous goths arriving together) was OK, but the cheesy chips I was expecting turned out to be fried mozarella. But in conclusion, I think I’d rather go to Criston Cafe, where at least I feel welcome.


16 comments

    • She translated to ‘pretty’ when I looked confused, but perhaps scary would be more appropriate….the Horatiis ‘Island of Zombie Women’ t-shirt, it was getting a disproportionate amount of interest yesterday since Rob is running a zombie theme night sometime next month and wanted to take a picture to add to his collection of dodgy b-movie adverts for it.

      btw, if kowai is scary, why does all the milk here say that on the carton? …perhaps it means something else too? Or maybe I’m buying scary gaijin milk that no local would consider drinking?

      • kawaii is definitly cute or pretty
        kowai ( or kowaii) is scary. is whats on the milk carton in romaji? or in katakana or hiragana? maybe its just a spelling of kow ai (cow love! ahhahaha)
        thos i really like the idea of scary gaijin milk lol

        • Romaji. I thought it was a Japanisation of cow, somehow, but that should come out at kowu or something, shouldn’t it? Cow is ushi?

          Theres also a ‘Kowaii Fashion’ just around the block from here, which I’d always thought of as scary, but for other reasons.

          My brain can’t really differentiate between the ka and ko sounds here in general use, which (once I understand anything) will make conversing that bit more interesting.

          • heheheh oh dear .. just make sure you don;t tell any girls that they look kowai(i) ehhehe
            i will ask kaytea if there is some reasonable explaination…

          • Oh, you think that might be bad? …except the scary smile dj, she was scary and, I think (hope), proud of it….no wonder I’m not making many friends here….

            I doubt there is a reasonable explanation, well, not one that translates well.

          • All the milk I have in now says ‘Nasu’, and I’ve got some kurotedo kuriimu to go with my strawberries. Thinking about it, it might say koiwai rather than kowai, but that doens’t make any more sense to me.

  1. you know yvonne and maya?? what a small world… ^_~

    did you see my friend isabel (portuguese girl, probably there with another portuguese girl) at tg? she was meant to have gone while visiting from london…but i’m not sure if she made it in the end or not…

    • You know them too? Maya-chan is pretty cool and Yvonne has only just started to remember my name, I met her over six months ago, not bad going.

      Didn’t make it to Torture Garden myself, just Midnight Mess, Mayas event, but a whole bunch of the TG people turned up later. I didn’t, to my knowlege, meet anyone Portuguese.

      • yvonne hit on me at a gay bar in shinjuku a long time ago (in more of a friendly way, but she was a lot of fun), and rang me up a lot but i was always at work and never got to talk to her from that point…i think she must think i’m the world’s largest flake, but unfortunately i lost my phone while drunk and can never call her back to rectify it ;P

        • Yeah, Yvonne is fun, not that I know her particularly well, I’m sure she’ll be alright about that kind of flakiness, it took her three months to remember she’d met me before, six to remember my name… doesn’t she come from somewhere near ?

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