I went back to my favorite spot, Shibuya. A lot of interesting things have happened to me over the years in Shibuya and writing about it now, I realize the area and energy of the place itself is in part fundamental to my development over the years.
I still like Shibuya despite going there so much.
Since my friends want to go to the touristy spots and I have seen these areas many times over, I let them go out exploring themselves. I taught them how to get around and they don’t have any problems so I am free to go off and do as I please.
Rather than viewing this as a vacation, I came here to see whether I wanted to live in Tokyo a little while longer or live in Taipei, Taiwan. I feel bad because I know my family wants me to stay back in the area I grew up but I feel at this time it is not helping me grow. Besides, I think it is the quality of time you spend with someone, not the quantity. Even the flicker of recognition across a train car can be deeper than a 10 hour conversation. I still believe family is important so if I were to live here I would still make every effort to return to my homeland to visit.
When I went to Shibuya, I ran into an old Jamaican friend of mine who hustles the streets to get people into a hip hop clothing store. I talked with him and he eventually ended up buying me a drink from the convenience store and taking me to this Nigerian barber shop so that he could eat his lunch.
Afterwards, he introduced me to a friend of his named Dede who is from Los Angeles and married a Japanese women. He turned 30 yesterday and was celebrating at the small bar he works at. I hung out there for many hours. Apparently Dede owns a skateboard team and does music so a lot of Japanese skateboarders and music producers were hanging out in there. I talked to them and even got the chance to do some freestyle rapping over the music they were playing.
It is funny because one of the kids sitting in this bar named Jesse knew my best friend in Japan, Alex, because they went to the same university (Temple University in Japan). Alex left to go to Tenri University in order to train to make the Judo olympic team. For some reason Alex and I have a strange connection where we tend to meet each other’s friends in random places or have our friends meet each other in strange ways. I guess this is one of those times.
In any case, I am still travelling about Shibuya meeting people and getting introduced. Today I met a professional rapper and he gave me a discount on his CD so I bought it for about $10. He was a pretty cool guy and showed me his music video on his iphone there in the street.