90

I have always wanted my own personal robot and several years ago there was a robot in particular that I desperately wanted. This robot was made by the Asahi beer brewery and would pull a frosty mug from its chest, open you a cold Asahi beer, pour it, and present it with a cheery Japanese salute. Asahi makes my nose stuffy for reasons that I don't yet understand (although I love Osaka where Asahi was originally from), so I never bought the two hundred or so cases needed just to qualify for the lottery. A robot pouring Sapporo beer – now that is something I would get involved with. Even better than that, a joint venture with Japan Rail to provide a Sapporo beer pouring penguin robot. I just mailed one month’s worth of Sapporo cans back to New York as a status report, snapshot, and souvenir of my time in Takinogawa, but I may need them back if the contest begins, or if Sapporo begins a point card loyalty and reward program. What did airport security think when they saw the X-ray of the shipping box filled with empty beer cans and what would I really feel when confronted with a machine that willingly disembowels itself and offers you its innards with a smile?

28

I am sitting at the kitchen counter watching the 14:30 JST afternoon light illuminate my beer and pondering how each weekend in Vienna Harry Lime and Holly Martins are resurrected when the film The Third Man screens. Orson Wells (Harry Lime) and Joseph Cotten (Holly Martins) both previously starred in Citizen Kane where they played close friends. Watching The Third Man one can't help but sense their friendship leaking out from Citizen Kane and into The Third Man. I decided to screen the two films consecutively and marveled at the extraordinary saga of a tumultuous and shifting friendship with characters that argue, age, die, reappear, are thought to be dead, then reappear again and argue before finally dying. I specifically chose an icy cold Ebisu beer rather than my usual Sapporo to commemorate the occasion. The long yellow streaks of late afternoon light across the white counter top and intensified through my glass of beer serve as a lovely tribute to the strange longevity and richness of their friendship.

10

In a local Ōji Station café they were silently projecting Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke’s 1997 film Funny Games. It is an odd experience to be drinking an icy cold Sapporo beer, eating a tastefully spicy curry, and watching a father get methodically beaten with a golf club in front of his own child. Still, the curry was delicious and the late afternoon light streaming in the windows washed out the film projection in such a way that made it look not so much a projection, as an undulating and particularly violent portion of the wall. I ordered an espresso after my beer and settled in to study the murderous nature of some architecture.