dare I once again say....what?

"Fill your heart with love today 
Don't play the game of time 
Things that happened in the past
Only happened in your Mind."

It is no secret by now that strange situations have a habit of finding me.

I came home one day from doing god knows what, and I found a note taped to my door. It read, "Please to call Hana at office hour, thank you bye bye". Hana is my landlord. Upon reading it, I immediately became nervous. I know I don't have a phone, but it's a little weird to come home with a cryptic note taped to your door handle. Considering that I had paid last month's rent a day late, because I am a moron, I thought that maybe I forgot something else. I racked my mind for anything I could have possibly forgotten. Did you forget to pay again? No, you paid in full last time and got your last receipt. Did you forget to check out? No, your plane hasn't left yet, dumbass. A noise complaint? I stopped, and figured that must be it. Like every neighbor I've ever had, I was sure that it was somebody calling to tell me to stop blasting 90's industrial metal at 4 in the morning. Nervous, I booted up Skype and called my landlord.

"Guesto Housu!"

"Hi, Hana? It's Alex."

"AH ALEXANDRA-SAN!! Thank you so much for call!"

"Yeah, no problem."

"Ah, Alexandra-san, I have question?"

"...okay, shoot."

"Do you like kimono?" Hana went on to explain that a woman in the area had seen an ad for the international guest house and called her up, asking if she knew of any young western women that would be willing to have a kimono put on them. The woman's name was Junko Uno, and she is going to Canada in a few weeks to put kimonos on white girls for a fashion show, and felt that she was horribly uneducated in the art of trying to wrap one around a pair of big tits. I agreed, relieved that I wasn't getting booted out of my room. She told me that Junko would meet me at the guest house at 1pm on Monday. Ten or so minutes after I hung up the phone, I was startled by a knock on my door. It was Tadashi, the same dude that had led me through my first tour of the guest house. He sighed heavily, and thrust a cell phone in my face. 

"For you," he said. I took it. 

"Alexandra-san!! Hana again. Junko will actually meet you at the South exit of Tanashi Station. This okay for you?"

"...you sent Tadashi all the way over here to make a phone call?"

"Yah, this okay for you?"

"Yeah, this okay for me."

"YAY OKAY! Jaa, sank you talk to you soon bye bye!" I hung up and handed the phone back to Tadashi, who saluted and went back to his deranged painted van.

This afternoon, I was greeted by a confused looking woman behind the station.

"Alex-san?" She hesitantly approached me.

"Yes! Junko?" She was delighted that she had picked the right foreigner...although there really aren't any in Tanashi...and I got into her car and she drove to her house. Her English was a bit broken, but still very good. She explained that she had no experience at all with putting kimonos on 'western girl', and wanted to get the hang of it before the fashion show in Canada. She was older, maybe in her late 50's, and her house was one story and very nice. I was a bit nervous at first, just because I'm usually on guard around older adults because blah blah generation gap blah blah anarchy viva la revolucion blah blah etc.. But she was very chill, and extremely nice, and I stepped into her house to hear "Magical Mystery Tour" playing on a stereo. "You like The Beatles?" I asked, as she rushed around, pouring me a drink and getting the hundreds of layers of kimono fabric together.

"Ah, yes! Sutoraaberi Fiyodu, I like!"

"Yeah, Strawberry Fields is a good one." She stood me in front of a giant fold-out mirror, told me to take my shirt and pants off, and began wrapping folds of fabric around me. First a super light silk robe, with a long skirt around my waist.Then a large strip across my stomach. Than another strip. Then a cord tie, and another strip. Another cord and strip followed by a layer of puffy cotton over my chest and a piece of fabric over it to keep it in place. 

"Is it okay, I practice English?"

"Totally, go for it."

"Where, you came from?"

"Seattle, in America."

"Ah! My English teacher came from Seattle also! Her husband Japanese, so she teach English here. She say, many Japanese people there."

"Yeah, there are hella Japanese people in Seattle. Koreans, too."

"Ah, really? Wow. If I may ask," she yanked a cord tight around my waist, nearly knocking the wind out of me, "what is your mother job?"

"My mom works at an antique store."

"Ah, really! This is nice!"

"She got me this ring for my birthday." She took a look at it.

"Very beautiful! This is good for your mother! And what, if I may ask, does your father job?"

"He sings."

"Ah, really!!" She took a beautiful orange kimono off of the wall, embroidered with large yellow flowers and intertwining designs. 

"Whoa."

"Hands here, please," she helped me get my arms through the holes of the kimono, the immensely long sleeves dragging on the floor. She cinched it around my waist, getting on her knees to tie the obi around me. "So what, if I may ask, does your father sing?"

"Old songs, some he wrote."

"In concerts?"

"Yes."

"Wow! What songs?"

"You might know them, actually, if you listen to The Beatles. 'Happy Together'." She thought for a moment, tying a knot around my waist, then froze. She looked up at me, stunned.

"Ba ba ba ba, ba ba ba ba ba ba ba, ba ba ba ba!" she sang.

I cannot escape.

"Yeah, that's the one." 

"まじで、すごい！！" She continued to excitedly wrap the layers of the obi around my waist. "I remember this song when I was young! It is such good feeling song! Your father, very famous!"

"Yeah, I guess."

After finishing with the obi and assembling the half-dozen cords that tied around it, I was fully in the bright orange kimono, shaped like a tube and unable to breath.

"It suits you!" She snapped pictures of me with her camera as I stood near the window facing her garden. Afterward, she made me some special traditional dark green tea and gave me some kind of gingery dessert. Upon hearing about my love for octopus, she also made me some takoyaki - chunks of octopus encased in dough in a teriyaki-esque sauce that you eat with a stick. I asked about her family, and she said that she had two daughters, aged 26 and 30, who were, much to her disappointment, not yet married. She said that she's nervous that they'll never be married and have children. I told her I didn't think there was much of a rush, and asked her why she wanted to learn English. She said that when she was young, she had dreams of moving to America because it seemed really cool. Her decision to learn English was spurred on by her love of the Andy Williams show. I laughed. 

It took a good 10 minutes to get out of the kimono, after which she drove me to the station so I could go to Harajuku. I left her my address so she could send me the pictures she took, and I said goodbye to her.

Harajuku was hot, crowded, and horrible like it always is, but it still remains my favorite place in Tokyo. I walked along the main strip of Fashion Street, trying to locate a shop I found that sold cheap, oversized bags, seeing as how all of the souvenirs I bought are sure as hell not going to fit inside my suitcase. On my way there, I was drawn into a visual kei fashion shop. I decided that, since it was my last day, there was no harm in just looking around at everything. I'm going to desperately miss being able to casually walk into a store with walls of hanging chains, torn up trenchcoats, medical masks, and every article of clothing studded with massive, pointed spikes. I was looking around when I spotted a rack of ties. Rifling through them, one caught my eye. "Oh, no," I said, looking at the three large, beautiful silver buckles across the front, as well as the price tag. $50. Knowing full well that I was doomed to buy it, no matter what it cost, I went to the register and asked the cashier to remove it from the wall. I stuttered my Japanese.

"Excuse me."

"What."

"This one, please." 

"Sure." She lazily removed it from it's spot on the wall and brought it to the register. "Do you speak Japanese?"

"Not really."

"Oh. Well, whatever, since this is ¥5000, you get a free gift of one of these things." She motioned to the display at the register. A wrist band caught my eye, with horrible Engrish printed across the front.

"I have got to have this." She rang everything up.

"So like, you live here or what?"

"Not really. I'm an exchange student."

"I see. Where?"

"Tamagawa University. It's near Machida."

"You like Japan?"

"I love Japan!"

"Ha, no fucking way. Why?"

"Well...the fashion. I mean--look at this shit. The clothes are amazing!"

"And...you like the music too, right?"

"Oh hell yeah. Dir en Grey, D'espairsray, The Gazette--although D'espairsray's last album went in a really bizarre direction, don't you think?" She chuckled at me and handed me my change and my bag.

"Yeah, it makes sense now." She gave me my receipt. "Your Japanese is better than you think it is." I realized I hadn't had a communication problem the whole time.

"Oh...yeah, thanks." 

I left the store, and spent my last few minutes in Harajuku before waving at the entrance to Fashion Street and getting on the train.