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17 April, 2023 | Tokyo, Japan

The second person I met at Aiiro Cafe was named Jason. As it was my first night, I had not yet had any authentic local food. He offered to help remedy that, so we met up the evening of the 17th.

Izakaya was what we settled on, which is kinda like tapas if literally almost everything was meat on skewers. The food comes as it is ready and it is cooked in front of you while you are seated at a bar - not entirely unlike sushi in that regard.

But the highlight was our conversation. As someone eager to know more about the culture and what it’s like to live here, Jason was a nearly ideal person to talk to. He left Scotland a decade ago and has been living and working in Tokyo ever since.

A lot of what we ended up talking about living life in Japan and also what it is like being gay/queer in Japan, and boy howdy were there Things To Learn.

In brief:

1. The many advertisements that contained collections of twinks are not what they seem. I had assumed they were boybands - but it was strange they were so prominent and constant during the evening and weekend hours.

These are advertisements for “host bars” also sometimes known as “girls bars” in signage outside of them. These are bars catered to women - other men are generally not welcome - with the promise that the men that are advertised will be there for conversation, entertainment, and otherwise to try to sell women patrons as much alcohol as possible.

A similar set of bars exist for men interested in women, but the scope of the advertisement is minuscule in comparison. There nothing similar for queer people because:

1. Queer people have it kinda rough in some ways

Legally, Japan only criminalized homosexuality briefly between 1876 and 18801, and trans people can legally change their government identity. Culturally, Jason described the tolerance/acceptance afforded to queer people as predicated on being effectively invisible outside of very limited areas and contexts.

This is part of a broader theme I gathered from conversations while I was in Japan about the extreme reluctance to contribute to any “disharmony”. Talking about potentially contentious subjects like religion, culture, economics, or politics is often frowned upon - a serious problem if your very existence is subject to a political debate.

“Well then what do you even talk about?” I asked incredulously.

“The weather, sports. Stuff like that” responded Jason.

I’ve considered living in another nation for a couple of years. It was this moment that I realized I could never do that in Japan. I’d end up that disharmonious guy never invited to parties.

To cap off the evening we went to the Eagle - yes there is always a bar called “Eagle” - for a drink and some karaoke.

In contrast to a lot of karaoke I am familiar with in the United States, (1) video is used in every venue and (2) they almost never have the rights to the actual music video. Instead, there is an assortment of sometimes-but-not-often stock video footage with the lyrics overlaid.

Jason described how there is a cottage fan-fiction for a couple (man and woman) that appear as actors in these videos. They are usually apart, but sometimes get together or appear to break up. While everyone knows it’s stock footage created so you can go to like Getty and type “break up video” and receive something, people can’t help themselves and various competing long-form narratives have been created about this couple and their lives.