5/7 Monday

Walking home in the rain is probably never a good idea.  And yet, there I was, struggling against the wind and rain as I tried to hammer out the hour-long walk to my apartment in Shinagawa from the wakate young comedian theater in Shibuya, trying desperately to not lose another umbrella to the wind whipping sheets of rain into my eyes.

The show went well enough.  It was a regular show, one that my comedy duo Iruka Punch appeared in twice a month, and, though the rain and start of the business week had keept a lot of customers away, the brave souls who ventured to the theater had been a warm audience.  We performed a new neta, a conte skit, and it went over well despite a few flubbed lines and deliveries here and there.

When things wrapped up a little before nine PM, the rain seemed to be dying down and, me being the responsible human adult that I am, the two hundred yen train fare to get back home from Shibuya seeemed to be a waste of money I didn’t have (I only have drunk me spending several hundred bucks on an Apple Watch to thank for that one).

I’ve made the trek from the theater to my apartment many times in my past and, to tell the truth, it’s pretty boring.

There are a couple of things you should know about Tokyo as a walking city.  One, Tokyo is actually much more compact a city than you’d think it would be and, two, most of the city outside of a couple of areas can be classified as the same sort of anonymous urban sprawl (at least for someone who’s been living here for a couple of years now) of midrises mixed in with random houses, old post-war buildings housing restaurants and random crap, and highrise condos that you can assume are only half occupied.  If you make the trip during the day, you might find something interesting.  When it’s dark outside tough, it can be grueling.

This is of course a very first world problem if there ever was one.  “My walk home from my job as a comedian isn’t exciting enough” isn’t exactly the stuff of sad songs or Shakespearean tragedies.  As a broke owarai comedian though it is literally the most exciting thing I did all day though, which is certainly something.  Cool cool.

Tokyo is very photogenic at night though, for what it’s worth.