ねこぐち | nekoguchi.com

Japan’s been having some erratic weather recently. The sky’s been cooling the grounds intermittently between days and I’m starting to wonder if the weather’s working it’s enigma on me lately. I woke up feeling anything but refreshed and then I conveniently blame it on the weather that I’m feeling rather sedate.

You know how a lot of us get utterly caught up in a myriad of daily responsibilities we forget what helps take the glitches away in our lives. We’re often found married to our desk at work or we get home too tired to even start a simple conversation. And with technology nowadays, I find that we don’t even open our mouths much anymore. At least that’s the culture I know back home. I know I haven’t spoken verbally to my mom across clearer signals simply cos MSN Messenger and Skype have been spoiling my budget too much.

Anyhow, it seems like there’s always a bunch of us going through ‘stuff’ in our lives at “moments” in time and then there are others (like yours truly) who’s perpetually trying to reel and nurse the repercussions of bad judgment calls.

Well life in Tokyo is a real eye opener so far and I had this メッチャ 珍しい (meccha mezurashii – extremely rare) privilege to meet the Guru of Otaku-ism here in Tokyo thanks to Windbell and I must say it was truly an honor. Danny Choo was doing a shoot for a broadcasting network and we tagged along for a feast to our eyes.

Turned out, it was a feast for the heart and soul too.

It was showering but that wasn’t stopping the traffic at Shibuya that evening. It was Danny in his Storm Trooper suit complete with Kungfu moves and soundtracks “blasting” from Sony’s Rolly that brought smiles to hundreds (Japanese Girls) that night.

Despite the somewhat cold wind and rain, screaming crowds and end-of-day-fatigue, I find it exceedingly warm watching Danny go about working his magic into the extra miles he put in, even though it wasn’t predominately for company’s work. Am sure you guys know he’s been feeling under the weather sometime last week and as we met up, there were still some trails of cough lingering in his convos.

The weather that night wasn’t particularly helping despite it being cool after the rain, the winds became somewhat stronger and while Danny was taking minute breaks, I could see the tiredness reaching in. But yet that didn’t stop him from charming the crowd.

I read the post at Danny’s site (Flattered, I would say to have some of my photos published there and there are even requests and compliments from fellow readers – Yup, who knew~). He says he had loads of fun doing it and meeting lovely people with his walk/dance about. Best of all, he doesn’t find Tokyo people snobbish. Personally, I can’t say the same for majority of me folks back home though.

I saw the number of smiles he plastered on people’s faces that night… and then it dawned on me if I’ve put smiles on people’s faces recently too.

We shared our photos after a warm bowl of ramen; together with Danny and his wifey – a marvelous soul indeed and though this is the first time I met her, we chatted for … ok longer hours than I did with my family since my arrival here (I hope they don’t read this! ) I could see the tremendous support behind the scenes put thru by Danny’s sweet other half. Not easy I’d say and I truly admire that ability then that put another smile on my face.

I made another new friend that day.

Sometimes I feel that having a ton on your plate of work and slogging for your iron rice bowl is a good thing. It keeps you sane at the very least but at the end of the day I guess we could all learn something from Danny – have fun while working but never forget to share (your joy/knowledge/experience or whatever that makes people go awww :D). It sure did warm up my soul.

Ok I had just wanted to pay tribute to Danny his wife but didn’t know that this post would turn out to be such an emo bibliography (must be da weather) but it did and I hope it somewhat made some sense. ~(^ . *)~