God rained on our Parade

I got back into a bit of marching this week, attending Tokyo`s Gay Parade with a couple of gay boys from Nagoya. I won`t name them. Tokyo doesn`t host Pride and it is appropriate and telling that they`ve chosen to change the name to something less challenging and more shame-faced. It was a ludicrously Japanese experience. The parade was due to start at 2pm, at which time a bell chimed, thunder struck and the heavens opened. I had soltaned all over, but soon it was washed off and glistening in oily puddles around Shibuya koen. Because we were forced to shelter until Allah`s disapproval passed over, we were slightly late for the kick-off, though being Japanese, this still had us arriving a good 45 minutes before anything actually happened. However, we were barred entry to the actual march because we needed to register at 2pm. I was sullenly muttering about no one understanding what a march actually was, when a Japan`s Big Gay Al came over to explain the situation an unnecessary second time, before passing his queenly decree and letting us join in the back of the march (perhaps only to spite us as my friends and I snapped at each other `we don`t like him`.

We were given brown ribbons - another source of discontent - and placed at the back (too much irony for me). I was kept in line by my friend taking fatherly control as I continued to grumble through the rain at the unnatural levels of organisation taking place, until we were shuffled around so each row had approximately four people in it, with two randoms allowed to straggle at the back and clearly irking the boy whose sums didn`t leave us in a respectably militaristic group. It was then explained that we were not allowed to take photos of the parade as some people felt uncomfortable being seen there. I was nearly kicked in the shin for whisperingly wondering what they had bothered coming for, before we finally, slowly, moved off. A huge pink parade bringing the safari to Tokyo`s drop-jawed shoppers, all keeping clear of the barriers and not attempting to feed the gays. With no cameras or videos allowed, it is pretty much a non-event to those outside the gay community (except the fag-haggers, nicely named Omamasans) so people stopped dead in the street trying to get a look at these weird creatures plodding behind rainbow-bannered floats blasting cheesy house that no one dared dance to (I forgot myself and had a go, but it didn`t last long).

It was a very muted demand for acceptance. That even my friends, who have been more brutalised by homophobes in Britain, should not want to be seen while demanding their place in society was quite a shock to me. Japan has a long, long way to go before it can claim in any way to be a developed nation. Socially, it is further behind Victorian Britain. Because of this, I spent most of the parade feeling like I had wasted my time. No one would hold their hand up to attending, no media would cover and force the straight-acting community to face the fact that Japan is not only a playground for philandering straight Salarymen, so very little was achieved. The two young kids being encouraged to greet us was a small, but positive step, but my friends were terrified that somehow, though they had travelled miles from their homes, that they would be seen and instantly lose their jobs and social circles. Whatever the laws against discrimination (I doubt such things exist), students and parents would not accept them and it would not be good business to employ them, so the more nervous of the two, huddled between me and the other, a borrowed baseball cap tugged down to his brow, where sunglasses took over the camouflage, and maintained a nervous silence, constantly watchful of cameras and video equipment that somehow might wind up on his Vice Principle`s desk. Here Japan`s notorious non-confrontationalism causes yet more problems (I don`t know of many instances where it helps) as no one is prepared to ask to be accepted. The parade meekly presented itself, almost apologetically, and barely made a millimetre`s progress as a result. In the 60s, black and women`s rights activists regularly faced brutal assault for their beliefs, and slowly made progress. They achieved a lot, but more still has to be done. At the rate Japan is moving, it will be 2106 before it is level with 1920`s Britain.

It is clearly not something society is ready to accept here. One very angry man - his hair scraped into a Bickleish mohican and a Smirnoff Ice bottle full of fireworks poking from his army fatigues, my friend from Nagoya swore that he was gay, but he seemed to be swearing that every man in Japan was - shouted at the parade to get out of the way and stalked us down the road until the police asked him, ever so politely, to move on. Of course, he didn`t and the only reason we could figure for his not being arrested was the police`s tacit agreement with his ideas. He badgered the back of the parade, frothing cheap sparkling wine at us a la Formula 7 and then coming back to harass a young Japanese boy who was so thrilled to be part of the parade and not at all upset at having to shoulder a banner all alone (and the only person, aside from me, visibly enjoying being there) that not even acts of aggression could dampen his spirits. Finally, when they spotted the fireworks, the police stepped up and the man was removed, but not as swiftly as you would have expected at home. I was just losing any faith left in Japan as a potentially progressive nation, when I spotted a woman and her mother encouraging her young daughters to wave at all the foreign gays. Clearly enjoy the safari park sensibilities, but also perhaps planting at least two seeds that not all gays are filthy perverts who need to be sacked from their jobs for fear of spreading their germs. And before anyone else asks, no, I am not `one`.

Friday night was Kate`s birthday and so I trundled off down the George. A few mod DJs were playing, but I was too sober to dance, although the Nova teachers tried to make me. I tried to join in, but a foolish (though aesthetically pleasing) choice of footwear and stark sobriety stopped me, so I downed a Sambuca and hoped to quickly join in with the party. I kicked off my sandals and was just getting going when everyone made a dash for the last train, so I latched on to the DJs and their friends and won them over by announcing, in painful Japanese, that 1968 was the best year. I was so caught up in this conversation, I didn`t notice what Ardir was up to with my camera and woke up the next day with all sorts of weird shots, mainly featuring Ken`s facial comments on the night (and me) and this woeful attempt to impress (it is sort of impressive - go to a Japanese swimming pool and you won`t find that much hair around the communal shower plughole). I tried to woo a Japanese mod and got so far, but while we were chatting he rounded off every sentence with `Zoe wakkaru?` (do you understand?) to which I had to reply in the negative and so we would potter over to his more fluent friend in the Pepsi Cola dress for assistance - I think the expense of having to fork out for her, as well as me, to come along on dates was the final, unsurmountable hurdle.

It justified my sudden spurt of Nihongo study recently. I use the term study loosely. I have bought a new book, which I showcased in front of my newly-permed and suddenly less attractive hairdresser (which is just as well, he saw me unwashed in my PE kit on my way to play tennis with Sean when I mistook him for a woman and thought it safe to go in and book an appointment) and haven`t touched since, as well as buying some kanji flashcards, which I flicked through and put down before I got out of the numbers, which I already know, for fear of being disheartened. I did arrange some language exchanges, unaware that this a euphemism for `study date`. My first date was clearly uninterested, we skipped through the `te` form of Japanese verbs without a pause for thought (it makes it much harder, believe me) and then he had me record some sentences. He claimed these were for the TOEIC exam, but then said he didn`t study for TOEIC. He took me to a karaoke booth so he could record in quiet surroundings, but did jokingly offer me a microphone for one song before we left. A sudden and unexpected show of humour. My first attempt hadn`t even gone that well, the man in question suddenly vanishing when I put my foot down about meeting on home turf. The third was not so bad; unattractive but we did have a genuine and useful language exchange. He did send a dubious email after suggesting we make our meetings `meaningful`, and there has been radio silence since I replied in perfunctory gratitude. My next `date` is with a 23-year-old that I don`t have the energy to even bother with now I have accepted this has nothing to do with studying.

I had a disappointingly giftless birthday party with the Menopause Sisters. This time, Sachiko showed off her house, where we startled her husband into a thousand bows when he stumbled across us in the living room before scuttling off to hide in the office across the path. Sachiko piled plates of homecooked food in front of us, the low table sagging with the weight, and my knees buckling from all the kneeling, while she fried up pork and chicken because I have somehow tagged myself as a vegetable-loathing carnivore. Takako and Hideko tried to broach corn on the cob with ladylike pickings at each kernel, before I picked mine up in my hands and they copied. Afterwards Sachiko dragged us to an empty karaoke bar (owned by Mamasan, who looked a lot like my own mother), where she forced everyone to sing. She was leafing through the book trying to coax me into Mariah Carey numbers and demanding to hear my `Yesterday` and bluffing offense when I said I didn`t like `Yesterday`. I felt her bullying and buffering everyone into something only she enjoyed negated any rudeness of an outright refusal on my part. The other two spotted long before that I was not keen on singing (karaoke is really only a means of getting and enjoying being drunk, singing sober is a vile thing to do), but Sachiko kept on like a pitbull on a baby`s face. Eventually, I had to buckle and attempt to sing a `popular Japanese song` after my protests that not knowing the tune or the words or even being able to read the words on the screen made it practically impossible were either incomprehensible or conveniently ignored.