Escape to Osaka

A big, international media studies conference was to take place in Tokyo this week. Several friends of mine were scheduled to attend and I figured it would be a triumphant highlight of my trip. But when the flu landed ashore here, the Japanese government imposed a battery of ill-conceived and futile restrictions on foreign travelers. Most of those from outside the country who were scheduled to attend the conference canceled, and then the conference itself was canceled outright. That night I had a dream that the little red ink pad within my signature seal case was running dry, and I was trying unsuccessfully to draw out enough ink to stamp my time card. I woke up and caught the first bus to Osaka. Ever since I arrived here people have been badgering me to visit Kyoto. They don’t know what a crass, know-nothing pleasure-seeker I am at heart. Osaka is the perfect city for me. There is very little sightseeing to be done there, only restaurants, bars, and shops winding through streets as circuitous as a yakuza’s tattoos.

The three staples of Osaka street cuisine are okonomiyaki (cabbage pancakes), takoyaki (balls of dough with bits of octopus), and gyoza (Chinese-style dumplings). There is plenty of okonomiyaki available in Tokushima and they are perfectly palatable, so I was under the mistaken impression that I had experienced this delicacy. Wandering the Shinsaibashi arcades Friday night I came upon a place that looked good: it was small and crowded and there was 60s-era free jazz playing, the latter a surprisingly reliable signpost of good food in Japan. I was ushered to the one empty seat at the counter and watched the chefs work their magic. Under paper-thin pancakes they pressed mounds of cabbage, eggs, kimchi, leeks, pickled ginger, powdered seaweed, even udon noodles, along with a variety of meats and fish, all topped with a sweet brown sauce and crisscrossing lines of mayonnaise. There were a dozen or so varieties of these things on the menu and the slender young gals next to me seemed determined to try every one, helplessly seduced by the chefs’ handiwork.

Later at the international bar Sam and Dave’s I drank cassis and soda (a break from umeshu) and talked to a 22-year-old Italian designer on his third trip to Osaka. Fashion here is defined by catch-all bricolage. The same kids wandering among the noisy boutiques of Amerikamura can be spied later in Shinsaibashi combing the racks of the Disney store for Mickey Mouse earphone winders and cell phone chargers. And for a tightwad like me the vintage clothing shops here measure up to those of any U.S. city. Wandering the Amerikura district I’m more convinced than ever that the medium is the message. Though the streets of Japanese cities have teemed with American popular culture for a century and a half, the frictionless flows of the Internet have allowed them to definitively triumph over us on any measure of hipness. Time Bomb Records has an exhaustive, pristine collection of girl groups, ska, bubblegum, psychobilly, and pretty much every other obscure and essential genre. Standard Books has a stunning array of works both authored and translated into Japanese: biographies of Eminem and Lee Scratch Perry, tomes on the movie Wild Style and the My Bloody Valentine record Loveless, the full runs of 212 Mag and Waxpoetics, whole shelves devoted to dog and cat photography and to album cover art, and pretty much every volume ever published by the mind-blowing German art-book house Taschen.

Osaka’s nightlife carries on without pause all weekend. Bars are open till 5 or 6 am and from there you can go to the after-hours places. You can still spy black-clad kids stumbling home in the late afternoon. I spent Friday night getting oriented at the Sam and Dave’s near my hotel in Nagahoribashi; somewhat like a Japanese Hard Rock, there are three outlets of the popular establishment in Osaka alone. Saturday I had a great burger at the ostentatiously American-themed Captain Kangaroo bar and several stouts at the Blarney Stone in Umeda. Sunday is a quiet night in Osaka; the bars are only open till 3 or 4. I finally made it to the intimate little karaoke bar Kama Sutra in Shinsaibashi (not much bigger than a karaoke room), downed four house beers and wailed through XTC’s “Mayor of Simpleton” and Olivia Newton-John’s “Have You Never Been Mellow.”

I met a lot of the city’s famously friendly natives at these places, practically all of whom had either visited the U.S. or were planning to do so (mainly Las Vegas and NYC), as well as quite a few ex-pats, mostly Australians, Brits, Irish and Yanks. Cool, young Japanese girls flock to the international bars; they can dress sexily without having anyone assume they’re hostesses or, better still, they can wear jeans. Learning that I was based in Tokushima, the natives offered patronizing quips about the Awa Odori dance (pretty much the only thing Tokushima’s known for), just as people in Detroit or Chicago start in about Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland when I tell them I’m from Saginaw. I returned to Tokushima on Monday with a sudden, stupid feeling of insecurity: do I live in a Japanese hick town? Shikoku has only been linked to Honshu by bridges for about twenty years; some Osakans were still unaware they could get here by car. After 15 years in New York and Philadelphia earlier in my life, I seem destined to spend the rest of it on the margins, even here. Having put a few days between myself and Osaka, though, Tokushima is again offering up the small pleasures I discovered when I arrived a month and a half ago, and starting to feel a little more like home.