dancing in the street

The young man sitting across from us on the train had feminine hands. Entwined with his girlfriend’s, it was almost impossible to tell them apart. They were sitting in the priority seats, designeated for the elderly and infirm, and pretending to sleep so they wouldn’t have to give them up. We were on our way to the Samba Festival in Asakusa, a kind of mini Mardi Gras. It was the highlight of the weekend. It’s a gray, lazy Monday as I write this, listening to a CD sampler that came with an order from an online CD purveyor. Interesting, energetic – so far, nothing I would buy.

The train wasn‘t too crowded, we eventually got to sit down – a huge bonus, a gift from the seating gods, who eventually smiled upon us. We transferred trains and our bounty became famine; we boarded a train that was already too full of humans. When it pulled into the station I said, “We can’t fit on that,” but moments later, we, and everyone else on the platform, were crammed into the train. Thankfully, we were on the express and disembarking at the next stop, so the discomfort lasted only a few minutes. I took quiet solace that the blond-haired girl next to us with her Japanese boyfriend seemed to be suffering slightly more than I. Unchristian maybe, but hey, whatever gets you through. We took a quick walk to the music store to pick up the local magazine full of all the happenings, to find the exact location of the Samba festival, and realized it didn’t start for another 30 minutes, which meant we would hardly miss a thing. The last subway ride was quite pleasant, and was a good rest before the day’s primary activity. Arriving at our final destination and climbing the stairs to street level, we were thrust into an orderly yet uncontrollable ocean of people. It was packed. We pushed on, at some points having no option as the mass behind was pushing and we were just riding the wave. Eventually, we managed to pull into a small nook of calm with a fairly decent view of the street. An old man and woman were standing on their bicycle next to us, and people were hanging from facades of buildings – all to see the spectacle, the parade. The samba groups came by intermittently, I assume to give enough room to hear each group’s music. Some were singing, some were dancing, some looked like they were being forced to march on a trail of tears; still others looked like they were in some kind of spiritual bliss. Underneath the Latin varnish, you could still feel Japan – something in the cadence of the singing and the low, slow beat of the tycho drums under the jazzy lighter drums. Costumes ranged from tie-dye shirts and everyone having white pants/skirts/shorts/ whatever to fairly risqué feathered ensembles. There were a good number of gaijin in the parade. I wondered if they were hired because they have the rhythm and the required jigglyness to pull off the samba costumes (especially those on the Asahi beer float). It was mostly Japanese though, and some of them really got into it – you could feel the vibe; it made you sway, tap, move to the rhythm, even if you didn’t want to. The crowd, however, was pretty subdued, and I wonder if deep down inside they were just dying to jump around. If this had been Rio, and the crowd acted as orderly, the performers would probably take it as an insult, that they couldn’t get the crowd jumping. But here, everyone seemed to understand that is how you do it. One old man down the block from us appeared to be a casualty of the heat and excitement; the emergency personnel worked to remove him as the parade simply moved around him.

When we had seen enough, we walked on, and one street over, it was empty, as if everyone in Tokyo was on that one street calmly watching the parade. We walked along towards Ueno. The weather was “room temperature” just perfect for walking. On one side of the street there was store after store after store, about a mile worth, all selling wooden cabinets that are rooms to keep your Buddha in, or your ancestors. They all seem to have the same stuff, and I wonder how does one choose which cabinet to buy? At one point, as we were walking, my loved one suddenly became animated, jumping up and down, saying, “Sumo on a bike, Sumo on a bike” and there came along a large sumo wrester riding his bicycle down the street, with a smaller sumo on a bicycle behind him. It almost looked comical. How many times in life do you get to see a sumo wrestler ride by you on a bicycle? Once, and I used mine up.

We walked on and came to the train station, hopped on the train, and journeyed back home, our odyssey ended. A pretty kick-ass adventure, if you look at it from the right angle.