SUPER TERRIFIC HAPPY HOUR JAPANESE TOUR 2008: UNLEASHED IN THE EAST or INTENSITY IN TWO CITIES
By The Skate Nazi Photos and text by The Skate Nazi

Part One- Tokyo: Live At Budokan

First of all, I had been planning this trip for about a year or so, so I was really, really hyped to go this time. I had already been to Japan eight times prior to this trip, but I have always wanted to go to there with a posse and skate and get wild with a crew.

There were a few dudes, whom I will not call out by name, they know exactly who they are and they don't need to be reminded of their flakiness anymore, but anyway these guys had expressed extreme interest in joining me and loosely committed in the past to making the trip so it sounded like there would be about 4 or 5 dudes joining me on this epic journey.

 

Masa slaps cement at his friendly neighborhood mini-ramp.

 
It was gonna be super sick! Me and some homies running around Japan skating a bunch of sick spots and basically tearing up the land of the rising sun in every which way. Cut to March 11th, 2008 and I'm going to the airport on some solo shit. I have to admit, it would have been beyond epic to have had a little crew accompanying me on the trip, but did you think I was going to let such trivial matters stand in my way?

I am indeed no stranger to going for dolo on trips to Japan, but usually I am going there to visit a lady friend or three, and in fact I had not even packed a skateboard the last four times I had been there, which now seems completely insane to me. However, this time, my ninth time in Japan, was absolutely going to be the charm.

Rip and his faithful steed, ready to mash it up.

The plan was to go to Tokyo for three days and meet up with my man Masa as well as hook up with the homie Rip, who happens to be the unsung star of one of my favorite skate videos in recent memory, the Fourstar Japanese tour epic Super Champion Funzone. After three days in Tokyo, I would hop on the bullet train for another three days down in Osaka, my favorite city in Japan by far, and home of my boy Junji, who happens to be one of Osaka's elite skate filmers. Junji wanted to shoot three days worth of video documenting my entire stay in Osaka, and I was more than happy to ham it up for him.

But first, I had to get to Japan. Jumped on a Japan Airlines flight for nine hours, but time really flies when you have super hi-tech video consoles in your seat and hot stewardesses catering to you. If you're planning a trip to Japan in the near future I highly recommend JALways, the service is hella tight, blood.

NYC or Tokyo? A little bit of both, actually.

Once I got to Narita airport, which is roughly 50 or so miles outside of Tokyo, I scooped up my rail pass and hopped on the Narita Express, a luxury train that took me to Shinjuku Station in about an hour. My hotel was located in Kabuki-cho, which is the seediest part of Shinjuku, which is the probably the biggest, loudest, craziest, and most crowded part of the most crowded city on the planet.

My hotel was smack dab in the middle of hundreds of host and hostess bars as well as massage parlors, and there were always tons of wanna-be hip hop hustlers on the street asking me if I wanted to party and shit. Yeah, I think I'll pass, African dude that can barely speak english. Did I say host bars? Yeah, they have fucking bars there where ladies can pay outrageous amounts of money to sit down and hang out with pretty boys and tell them their problems while chit-chatting over 50 dollar drinks. Crazy shit. The dudes that work in those clubs were everywhere. The hairstyles and outfits that these cats were rocking were so on fire and ridiculous it was a constant source of amusement during the entire duration of my stay in Tokyo.

 

Miko and Masa representing with shakas outside PhiWiSpot.

 

As soon as I got situated in my hotel, I had to call up Masa, our Japanese homie that's been to Hawaii many times and is a good friend to Hartsel, Ryan, and Mako among others here on Oahu. Anyway, I couldn't locate a pay phone in the immediate area. If you haven't noticed, it's getting increasingly harder to find a pay phone on the street these days in this cell phone society we all live in, and I had to stop into a convenience store to ask where the nearest on was. The dudes that worked there had no idea where a phone was nearby, but one of the kids that was on the register reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone and motioned for me to use it. I was definitely surprised by this, but super stoked because this was some shit that I knew could only happen in Japan, and you would never see this kind of scenario unfold in the United States.

So I called up Masa and he gave me directions to his shop, which is located in Shimo-Kitazawa, about four stops away from Shinjuku on the Odakyu Railway train. Shit, I was like a 20 minute train ride away from where he was! Nice. I hopped on the train and made it to a super cool, artsy kind of funky neighborhood that seemed light years away from the ruckus of Shinjuku. Masa and his girl Miko run this amazing shop called PhiWiSpot, and they have all kinds of dope stuff that's reggae flavored, island vibe, Hawaiian style, I don't know exactly how to describe their shop, but it's super cool and they have a bunch of killer ska, reggae and punk music, videos, clothing and crazy accessories galore.

Wallied up to five-o over the hip at this semi-abunai street bank.

 

After meeting up and hanging around the shop for a bit, Masa and I walked over to his house, which was nearby and jumped in his car to drive to a local mini-ramp. Riding in a car in Japan is insane if you've never done it. You're in the passenger seat but it feels like you're driving because you're on the left side, and the car is driving on the left side of the road as well. This can be pretty trippy if you're not prepared for it.

So we get to this nice community park and there's a mini-ramp right there on the edge of the road in between some trees. This ramp was like 16 feet wide and about 5 and a half feet high. There was pool coping on the entire ramp, but it was on some weird cement block type of shit and it had little gaps between each block, making it super challenging and kind of sketchy, but you know the sound of grinding on cement made it totally worth it. As the day turned to night, the temperature dropped considerably and I began to freeze like a little bitch! It was probably in the high 40's but the wind blowing made it feel like 30 something, and if you're from Hawaii, well, that's beyond fucking cold and trying to skate when it's cold and dark? Not the best scenario.

 

These hoste$$ chicks are just waiting to separate suckers from their yen.

Bounced outta there and made plans to meet up with Masa the next day, and I had to get to the Shibuya area to hook up with Rip-san, so I jumped another train. When I called Rip from the train station in Naka-Meguro, it took him about 2 minutes to roll up on the scene on his fixed gear bike. Rip is a full on fixie fanatic, but I had never even sat upon one so I jumped in the saddle and gave it a spin in some back alleys. I'm not the biggest fan of fixed gear bikes and the cooler than thou hipsters that seem to be at the forefront of that scene, but I have to say riding one was pretty damn fun if not super challenging and baffling. Rip did a little demo for me and showed how to do skids and ride backwards and shit, he's got the bike skills on lock for sure.

We went to a local izakaya joint and downed a few beers and Rip and his homie helped me step up my chopstick game while we grubbed on some yakitori type joints. After heading back to the hotel, I decided to roll around the Shinjuku business district at about midnight and see what was up with some street spots. Jesus the sidewalks are rough in Tokyo, or at least my wheels are too hard and there are these crazy Braille strips on the sidewalk everywhere for blind people to find their way around. The late night solo mission was fruitless however, I was way too burned out to really skate and I retreated to bed at around 2 A.M.

RHPS: Big in Japan. This Shibuya skateshop was well-stocked.

The next day Masa was going to head out to Chiba for a private session at this brand new not yet opened to the public skatepark that used to be a hotel. Masa said that he could only bring one person and did I want to accompany him to go shredding? SHIT! I had a lunch date to go get sushi with one of my ex-girls, who is super cool and not someone that I would want to flake on, and since she specifically took time off from her busy schedule to do lunch with me I had to honor the committment and miss the exclusive session. It was totally cool though, I went out to Odaiba and had the most baller sushi that I have ever had in my life, and I do love me some pristine sushi.

After lunch and shopping in the Ginza area for the rest of the afternoon, I went back to Shimo-Kitazawa to link up with Masa and Miko at PhiWiSpot again, this time they were going to take me to a huge skatepark north of Asakusa, and we met up with some of Masa's boys there for a dope session. The park was huge and had several mini-ramps and a couple of wooden bowls that I didn't even get a chance to ride because the park was just so friggin' huge there was so much variety there I couldn't commit to all of it, it was that crazy.

After the park session, Masa and Miko drove me to this nice natural bank with a hip over the Rainbow Bridge near Odaiba, the second time I was in the area that day. It was perfect for a late-night sesh and there was no traffic or people to be seen the entire hour or so that we skated it. Nothing like sessioning some new shit in another country! We were pretty burnt after the park and then bank session so Masa and Miko took me to a Korean style Japanese restaurant and we got our food and drink on 'til the wee hours of the morning, and it was an awesome way to end my second day in town.

Hamming it up with Rip-san at the Burton bowl.

The third day of my stay in Tokyo started with a little drizzle, my nizzle, so I pretty much kicked it all day doing some touristy shopping and lurking in the Shinjuku area, most notably at Tokyu Hands, my favorite store in all of Japan. Tokyu Hands is basically a eight story slice of heaven that has just about every fucking thing that you could possibly ever need all under one roof, and easily the best place in the country for all of your one stop omiyage (gifts for people back home) shopping.

Across from Tokyu Hands in Shinjuku they have what I believe is the country of Japan's only Krispie Kreme doughnut outlet, so of course me being a Krispie Kreme fanatic, decided to go over and have me some. Uhhh, not so fast, gaijin. Somebody forgot to tell me that Krispie Kreme Doughnuts are super exclusive, ultra limited and hotter than fucking Bapes and SB Dunks dipped in crack cocaine. There was a mob of people waiting in line for that shit! I'm talking like it's not uncommon for doughnut fiends to stand in line for 2 hours to get their Krispie Kreme fix. I was utterly and completely blown away, not to mention devastated that I would not be enjoying any doughnuts myself.

 

Speaking of Burton, Rip is the ichiban bowl rider and resident sensei there. This is a stylish frontal air in the deep end.

Oh well, I took solace in knowing that I was about to meet up with Masa to go and skate the ultra private and super exclusive brand new Burton bowl in Shibuya with my man Rip! Apparently Rip talked the people at Burton Snowboards into building a smaller version of the Supreme Bowl on Fairfax in L.A. right there in their design/warehouse space in Shibuya, and me and Masa were beyond psyched to get a chance to roll in that thing.

First of all, Rip basically made the bowl happen in the first place, so it's only natural that he plays the role of sensei and teaches us the way of the samurai and schools us on how to attack the bowl with the heart of a champion. A super champion fun zone champion, that is. Rip killed it so hard, and gave Masa and I the inspiration that we needed to groove properly in the little bowl of fun. Nothing beats grinding a bowl with pool coping, except maybe grinding a real pool with pool coping, but this shit was a perfect little replica of a nice tight peanut, basically the baby brother of the Supreme Bowl in Los Angeles. Masa and I were giddy as little girls and we sessioned comfortably for hours at this indoor oasis as it poured rain in the darkness outside.

Beers, boards, and bros. Everything's just right in Shibuya tonight.

After the session, Masa, Rip and I kicked it old school style at the convenience store down the block and drank a few beers on the stoop sitting on our boards outside the store like a couple of high school kids, and that shit was a perfect way to end my stay in Tokyo. I would wake up the next morning and bounce to Osaka. Thanks, Masa and Miko! Arigato, Rip! Hope to see you all in Hawaii real soon.