Breads and misadventures in clubbing land

A rare day off work in T-Town, and what have I done with it?? Lounged about and eaten breaded goods. Ahhh what a life, but who am I to deny those breaded wonders?

Ah variety pan, it's one of the top 10 things I love about Tokyo. Every conbini has a big aisle of breaded wonder that includes such delights as butter scotch bread, soba in bread, cheese breads that are made by the gods themselves. I'd have to give Seven Eleven top spot in the bread rankings though, a big brick of butter scotch bread goes down a treat and is number one hangover/drunken food. I swear I could live just off variety pan and that wonderful boulangerie Cafe. And you wanna know the best thing about variety pan?? I continue to lose weight while I stuff my face full of it.

I mean what could be in that bad boy?? It's always a lottery, but one you always win.

Wonders of Japan!

It was a dirty weekend of jubs and clubs as ever, fun and angst all rolled into one explosive big ball of booze.

Friday was low key but delightful all the same. I hit up the jub owned by the ex caretaker of my school, good old Matsuhashi-san, which happens to be about 5 minutes walk from my apartment in Nakano-Sakuae. SWEET!! I went with the ever strange but entertaining Tommy, a German/French co-worker who works at my sister school. A lovely traditional jub that serves Hokkaido food and drinks that I'd give a solid 8/10 jub rating. Add the fact that the director of my school phoned over and bought me a bottle of nice shochu (rice wine you uncultured fools), well happy days indeed.

Saturday was a little more dirty as is always the case. Now I've been on a mission for the past two weeks to really try and enjoy normal clubbing. We know I love love love parapara clubbing, but lets be honest it's very different to everyday clubbing. For one I know just about everyone in the para scene, and it's just a total comfort zone going to para nights. Normal clubs, for me, are a totally different thing. For one thing, I rarely go to a club where I enjoy the music at all, so as much as I enjoy dancing it becomes a bit boring... SHITTTTT!!!!

Of course I love my booze like nothing else (I don't have a problem....) and am happy to go anywhere and booze it up. But of course the main reason most everyone goes clubbing is to pick people up.

SEX SEX SEX....

Which leaves me twiddling my thumbs not doing a lot for most of the night, because if I'm honest I have zero interest in sex or flirting or picking up people or any of that. I never have been as a lot of you probably realise. I must have a wire that wasn't inserted correctly at birth, because I have never met anyone in my life that doesn't have any interest in all that stuff. Never. People say I'll grow out of it or you don't need to have these things they will come. But at 30 years old I think I know what I want and all the normal thoughts people have just don't seem to enter my brain. If I was to ever have a girlfriend/botfriend (no preference to be honest) someone would have to come up to me and lay their cards on the table.

The big question I have, if you were me would you class yourself as A-sexual?? Not that I really care about these labels, but hey, we all need them!!

So my efforts to like normal clubbing have officially failed. The last two weeks have ended with me leaving a club and walking about 3 hours home rather than stay there. And on Saturday I did what I often do when faced with doing nothing at a club, I went down the street, bought a bottle of whisky and drank on a street corner like a bum. But that's way more fun in my eyes. So I shall stick with para clubbing, jubs and whatever adventures come my way. But the real world of sex and real people can stay well away from this fool!

BOOM!! Pro para dancers are we!

It's been quite a week, the week I became a parapara dancing champion and stepped into the pro dancing ranks!!

Everyone reading this probably knows that parapara is my number one love in life. It's what I live for. Well last week Bancho, the organisor of my favorite para club event, Starfire, he asked me and my para dancing partner Jasmine to be part of the team for a live event on the Thursday. Of course we jumped at the chance. What it was was a live internet streamed event on Nico Nico, where the big three para clubs were invited to dance a couple of hours sets, all to promote Super Eurobeat 210 album.

Well we had no idea what to expect, all we were told was to be at Avex records headquarters on Thursday at 8pm. SWEET!! Oh and it would be fancy dress/cosplay as well. DOUBLE SWEET!!

So the day itself came and we hit Avex and finally found everyone after wandering around lost in the marketing department. SEF, 9loveJ and obviously Starfire were all there and each club had their own table. Everyone was surprised to see me and Jasmine seeing as it was just the best dancers from each of the clubs. Well we're Starfire dancers now so suck my dick!!

It was such a professional setup, like a proper tv show. The other side of the waiting room was the studio itself with the dj booth, stage, and big screen. Anyway the night was setup so SEF went on at 9pm, 9loveJ at maybe 11pm and Starfire last at 12:30am. At around 9pm all the other Starfire dancers arrived. They were (for those interested)...

Keetan
Innochi
Shintaro
Ryohei
Harumi
Take
Negi
Hitoshi
Heather (from America)

It felt amazing to be part of such an awesome team and even more amazing to dance with them. I love that Harumi, Innochi and Keetan were asking me to show them some of the dances. I feel like they really treat me as an equal in the para world. I know they've been around so much longer and let's face it are the kings of para, but I've worked really hard on my para style for a long time so I could be up there with them, and I've gotta say I feel I'm pretty good these days. Jasmine as well.

Well it wasn't long before Take and Hitoshi hit the conbini for alcohol goodness. We were all a little worried to have more than one drink seeing as this was quite a big event, but the Avex director '7A' came over to our table and told everyone to not worry and just have a good time, and generally just do what Starfire does best. And that is get drunk and dance! So that's exactly what we did. While the other clubs were being super serious and practicing in the toilets, we were all doing shots and having an awesome time. Bancho who was dj'ing was pretty drunk by the time we went on... haha, what a legend!

So it was getting near to us going on, so we all hunkered down around the setlist to decide who would dance what songs. There was about 70 songs in our set. I got to dance a lot of songs which was nice, and I was picked for a bunch of songs because me and Hitoshi were the only one's who could remember the routines.

Starfire dance time STARTO!!!!!

First song was Kingdom of Rock, and Hitoshi and Take went up first but Harumi was pushing me to join them, and who am I to argue!

Ohhhhh my days was it like a dream come true to be dancing with my favorite para dancers on tv (well internet). I danced a whole bunch of songs with all different people. Harumi, Hitoshi, Innochi, Keetan, Take, Jasmine and Heather. Just.... awesome!! The Starfire set went by so so quickly and we all had such an amazing time dancing and boozing. Throughout the night people could type messages that came up on screen, it was weird to see my name a lot. Messages like 'Max is sparkling'. Haha!

And I was XD

Half way through me, Jasmine and Heather were interviewed. That was embarrasing.... I just blurted out some rubbish Japanese that made little sense, but they know what I'm like and gfound me funny at least. For the end ten songs we decided everyone from Starfire would dance on camera together. That quickly turned into everyone who was there dancing, even Satoko from the parapara allstars. I just can't express how much fun it was!!

At the end the presenter wanted to interview the most messaged and requested dancer, and guess what, it was little old me XD I felt like a celeb, I was taking pictures with people at the end and we even had to sign a load of posters for avex. Awesome!!! Avex even payed for an after party. How nice! 7A the director is actually really nice, and Eri (hyper techno Eri) was sitting with us at the izakaya and she is really sweet. First time I've ever talked to her.

It was almost 7am by the time we got home and.... I had work at 8:30am. Bad times. I managed to get there by 11:30am. Not to bad....

So highlights of the night??

- Teaching Harumi, Innochi and Shintaro lots of routines.
- Dancing with the best para dancers in the world and feeling like I deserve to be there.
- Having everyone shouting 'Max Crime' when we were dancing Sex Crime.
- Annoying all the camera crew because we were all drinking in the studio
- Feeling like a minor celeb and making everyone laugh.

You can watch it all here - http://www.sendspace.com/file/p3w6eo

So there you go, one of the best days of my life, and I guess now me and Jasmine are part of Starfire. Ambitions have been met!