Shopping is the Subconscious Need to Exist

Friday, October 25, 2024

I have one more full day in Tokyo before leaving for Los Angeles tomorrow evening. I’m exhausted. But the anxiety I had was now taking a little holiday because I was going to focus on shopping. What does someone like Tosh Berman shop for in Tokyo? Well, the answer is underwear from MUJI and socks. Most important to me is their Shaving Gel, to which I’m addicted. There is no scent, and it’s all about texture and how it feels on one’s skin for the day's shave. As much as possible, I try to shave once a day because I detest beards for myself and you as well. I have this odd conservative streak in which I look at a man’s face and wonder why they don’t get a proper shave. Not all men, because some beards are tailored-made for faces, but some are lazy, and laziness is a sign of less character. It’s impossible to purchase the MUJI Shaving Gel in the States. A large MUJI store on Broadway in New York City is not as good as those in Europe and Japan. None of them carry the Shaving Gel, only in Japan, but not all MUJI stores in Tokyo carry this product. A little-known fact about me is that all my clothes come from Japan, except my shoes, which are made in South Korea. So it’s an actual hunt, like chasing that rare record you always want but can’t locate.

I usually buy up to ten vinyl albums during my visits to Tokyo. On this trip, I purchased only one album and a 10-inch record. The 10-inch album is Haruomi Hosono’s soundtrack for the film Undercurrent. It came out last March this year, and I never heard of it until I saw it at Disk Union in Shinjuku. Hosono is one of my favorite music artists. I have mentioned that one cannot separate the early works from the later recordings/compositions by Scott Walker. I feel the same about Hosono and his magnificent music career. His music journey started with a psych-rock band, Apryl Fool, to his Southern California sounds of Happy End. His solo career then went from Jazz Swing with a solid Japanese sensibility to electro-pop with The Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). He has been focusing on working with musicians and acoustic instrumentation, doing songs from the Jazz Swing Pop era in the States and Japan, and doing electronic music scores for films and T.V. commercials. Undercurrent, I gather, is a slight return to electronic sounds.

When I first arrived in Tokyo a month ago, I found a copy of Kevin Ayers’ whatevershebringswesing, a challenging album to find in the States. If one does find the record, it is usually expensive. But I have heard that his estate is reissuing all of his Harvest record label recordings, which is good news. Still, I needed this album now, and mostly because I love the tune Song From The Bottom Of A Well. The perfect Psych-stereo/freak out of an aural experience that is both Hippie and dark at the same time. Kevin Ayers, along with the legendary Robert Wyatt, was a key member of the original lineup of The Soft Machine. His first three solo albums for Harvest Records are excellent, and this handsome, dapper Brian Jones-like figure had a magnificent and tragic life. The later albums or works are touch and go for me, but he is an essential figure in the British avant-rock/pop scene of the late 1960s and 1970s.

I discovered Rosemary Tonks precisely two years ago and wrote about her novel The Bloater for my Substack page. Slowly and steadily, I have been locating her poetry and fiction, and recently, in the U.K., they have reissued two more novels by her - The Way Out of Berkeley Square and Business as Lovers. My interest in her was through music because she contributed to the BBC Electronic Workshop with the legendary Delia Derbyshire. With that bit of information, I discovered Tonks as a writer of great talent. Now, one may wonder why I would buy books in the British edition in Tokyo. For one, I prefer the British edition of books due to the design. Penguin Books that are designed in the U.K. I think they are superior to the American-issued Penguin titles. Of course, the substance of these books is always fantastic, but there is something magical about having a Penguin U.K. book in one’s hand. A book lunatic or an otaku would understand this odd sense of desiring such books. The British Penguin book seems to be easy to find in Japan, so it is a treat to go to a bookstore like Kinokyuna in Shinjuku (South Side of the Station) because of its excellent inventory of literary treats, as well as books in French, German, Chinese, and Vietnamese.

For the nine-hour plane trip back to Los Angeles, I leave on October 25 in the afternoon and will arrive at LAX precisely on the same date and time, making that date the longest day in my life this year. Still, I’m bringing Julio Cortázar’s collection of short stories, Bestiary, to read on the plane. This edition was edited and published by the British version of Penguin, so it is not that easy to find in the United States. I believe I have some of the stories in this book in other short story collections by Cortázar that were published in the States. It’s confusing, but I’m very much looking forward to reading Cortázar on the plane trip. Besides being an excellent writer, he is also a difficult read due to his language play and experimental bent in telling a narrative. This work will keep my brain in motion as my body goes through various adventures while in flight. Flying is boredom in active activity. I can’t sleep on a plane, and I don’t enjoy watching films on a small screen, and the choices are usually bland. So, my comfort zone is always having a book with me on a flight. I also don’t deal with e-books, Kindle, or anything else. Text on a printed page is the only proper method to read. Unless it’s a blog, because that is writing, that is specifically for the medium.

As usual, it’s not traveling that sets a person off; the inner conflict one has within oneself is always the cause of stress or anxiety. I feel like I’m standing still, but the world around me is going faster and faster, and I have to deal with the complexities and stress of such a life. Of course, since I’m an American, there is a future that is coming upon us that can be dark. I’m hoping for Harris to win, not because she is fantastic, but more to do with the painful existence of being in the presence of such a psychotic figure as Trump. My main worry is not the politics but the thought of America becoming a state of mind where one is comfortable with a figure like Trump. I understand why he exists and even realize what allowed him to be in our presence. Still, I must fully accept that somewhere deep in the American conscience, they are quite comfortable with such a figure. David Bowie expresses it the best: I’m Afraid of Americans.