“Workin’ at the car wash, yeah….“

Well, I’m not really sure that these guys worked at a car wash. I don’t remember actually seeing any place to wash a car while I was in Tokyo. Maybe they were window washers… or office cleaners. Maybe they worked at a parking garage. I guess I’ll never know.

What I do know is that one of the dudes rocked a world class ‘fro and that they both wore matching blue uniforms and stuffed their thigh pockets with mysterious spray bottles and cleaning implements.

I really should have tried to hang out with them.

But, unfortunately, we were only passing by on our way to the sprawling Shinjuku subway station. A place where I nearly got lost on several occasions — thank you Helen and Marina, for saving me. Wikipedia claims it’s the busiest train station in the world; nearly three and a half million people pass through its doors every day.

Tokyo seemed so much bigger than New York.

Getting back to the subject of afros, there is definitely a segment of the Japanese population that is enamored of all things African American. I remember seeing some strange afro-related items while I was there. Things like “the AFRO JAPAN Funky Afro Phone Display Cleaner as Cell Phone Strap” (Legalize it!), and the much-celebrated “Afro Ken” (get it? Afri-can), a cute toy dog sporting a stylish, rainbow-colored ‘fro.

There’s even a manga series called Afro Samurai. It was adapted for television and ran on the Spike network here in the U.S. Samuel Jackson provided the voice for the title character, natch.

I hear there’s a chance it will be made into a live action feature film.

May god have mercy on our nappy-headed souls.

This is the first post in a long overdue attempt to photoblog my trip to Japan from two years ago. Hopefully, there will be many more to follow; keep an eye open.

The above photo is actually the last picture I shot while in Japan. M and I were in a bus on the way to the Narita airport, when I spotted the famed Tokyo Tower outside the window. I snapped wildly in its general direction as the bus flew past. Somehow, the tower ended up in focus in the center of the frame — with only a distinct lack of headroom to disappoint me. Sometimes you get lucky, I guess.

We’d seen the monument at night during the first week of our visit, when M and I had split briefly from our friends Stephen and Helen to take a quick trip to nearby Roppongi Hills. The tower was all lit up in orange, but neither of us could get a decent shot, and we didn’t have the time to keep trying or get closer. I assumed I’d missed my chance to capture it. I was wrong.

The Tokyo Tower was completed in 1958 and obviously modeled on Paris’ Eiffel Tower. It was built to symbolize Japan’s emergence as a force in the postwar world economy. Today, it mainly functions as an enormous radio and television broadcasting antenna… and, oh yes, a tourist attraction.

In recent years, the tower has been prominently featured in a number of Japanese movies and TV shows — GAMERA: GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE, POKEMON, SAILOR MOON, and TOKYO GODFATHERS (a very loose remake of John Ford’s 3 GODFATHERS).

According to Wikipedia, a character in the Anime TV series YOU’RE UNDER ARREST claims the following: the Tokyo Tower was built from recycled American tanks left over after the Korean War.

I won’t, however, vouch for that “fact.”

UPDATE: How could I forget to mention my beloved Mothra in this post? In addition to being partial inspiration for my web-moniker, she destroyed the hapless Tokyo Tower in her film debut. And she was only a larval kaiju when she did it!