Concert at Greek's Pizza

The View from Below
Originally uploaded by DerekSee

Tonight was bitter sweet. Stephanie invited me to a concert at Greek's Pizza (a place I had never heard of). We got some food and waited for the music to be played. A couple of artists performed, mainly just singer/guitarist. We came for DM Stith, who played last. Stephanie is friends with him from grad school. His music atmospheric. I think what really made it special was the addition of jazz trumpet, trombone, and saxophone. Randomly, the bassist is a guy I met when I was in Japan.

That was the sweet part, the bitter part was paying the cover charge, paying for James' cover charge, paying for James' and Stephanie's pizza, and then getting a parking ticket. Darn

Dream: Lost in Japan

Tokyo Map Dream
Originally uploaded by DerekSee

We are on one of Tokyo's high speed rails and I'm staring at a map. My family and a few strangers are traveling with me and relying on me to show them around. I stare blankly at the map. It's all in Kanji and I can't recognize any of the familiar locations. Even the shapes the trains make are odd and new. I try searching for Shinjuku, yet still no luck. The people in the group are expecting me to know about Japan and how to navigate. I ask a Japanese person about Shinjuku. They don't understand the words I'm saying. We get off at the next stop and wait. I run around frantically trying to figure out there we are and where we are going. The pink line, the red line, the brown line, the green line, they all blend together and seem to go nowhere. After failed trips and failed attempts to show my family I am at least slightly familiar with Japan and I'm not a fraud, I wake up.

I had a similar experience in real life of getting lost in Tokyo, the maps didn't show every stop because it was too complex. I am afraid I talk too much about Japan and don't really know that much about it. People ask me to make generalizations about a country I've only spent a month in, what do they expect. I'm afraid people can see right through me.