Surreality.

Imagine a place where violence is virtually unknown.

A place where everyone passes each other in the street with flurries of courteous “Excuse me”s, where you are thanked eleven times as you leave for patroning a given establishment, where the streets and trains are clean enough to walk barefoot (without blackening your feet), where people like you so much they are willing to pay upwards of $30/hr. just to have a conversation with you, where snowboarding and breakdancing is a sport not just for the young but for the pre-pubescent and wrinkly old codger as well, where vomiting and sleeping on the concrete outside the train station is neither ridiculed nor frowned upon but rather safe and acceptable (and often written off as a business expense), where everything can be deemed “fun” and virtually anything is allowed.

Imagine such a place existed.

Now imagine you lived there.

Welcome to my Surreality.

Where any day is as unbelievable as the next. Where work is camp, and camp is a concept unknown. Where sarcasm is as foreign as 3-car garages. Where coolness is almost entirely gauged by “cuteness” (read: “gayness”). Where anything is okay so long as I can justify it to myself.

…within the bounds of reason and common sense, of course. Should I think it prudent to furiously masturbate in a crowded urban area or in front of school children with a knife in my teeth and a T-shirt saying “I hate Japs”, dire consequences surely would result.

Suffice to say however, my wholesome upbringing has prevented me from engaging in such a heinous (albeit interesting…from a legal perspective anyway) spectacle.

Such a magical place of course is not without its drawbacks. Monthly expenditures can easily (and heftily) exceed $1500 (these do not include actual necessary expenditures such as rent, utilities or the like). Domestic transportation is the priciest in the known world. Many various types of slime are considered “food”, or even worse, delicacies, and it is virtually impossible to get a straight answer from anyone about anything at any time (aside from directions and prices).

Taken all together though, Japan is without a doubt a glorious place to live, especially for anyone with even a modicum of artistic talent. For those with actual skills, the opportunities are somewhat boundless.

ARTISTS AND MUSICIANS, COME YE HITHER…

One needs a functional visa of course, but that amount to perhaps the only obstacle in one’s way. Linguistic capabilities and grammatical prowess only serve to extend the possibilities even further. Let us not forget, or rather, according to my observations, Greater Tokyo is a cesspool of mediocrity (in terms of things Western). Generally in the arts community, nothing is really terrible, but nothing is really great either…and the demand for such things by so many millions of people crowded into such a small area is almost unlimited.

…it’s like being a kid in a candy store…only the candy is free, no, the candy pays YOU...mmmmmmm, candy...