Dear all
I have spent the last week holed-up in my apartment with chicken pox. No, I’m not asking for your sympathy. I have no fear of confined spaces (my apartment is 20m2) or long stretches on my own (I have to quarantine myself from all people) so I’m fine. Nor am I going to bore you with the details of chicken pox which are amply documented on the internet. Instead, I’m going to tell you about a trip to Yoyogi Park which I made before I fell ill.
Yoyogi Park is a large park right next to Harajuku. You’ve probably heard of Harajuku as the district of Tokyo where everyone dresses like Gwen Stefani’s back-up dancers circa 2005.[i] If you go there on a sunny Sunday afternoon, you will see some of these famed “Harajuku girls” but believe me they represent about 1% (if that) of the huge number of people milling about and no, they will not be willing to have their photo taken with you. Harajuku is really just a popular place to hang out on the weekend if you’re 16 to 30 years of age. Most people are there to shop, walk around Yoyogi Park and generally just hang out. The average person is pretty well dressed due to the abundance of good, affordable fashion in Japan but not in an eccentric way. That said, you won’t be utterly disappointed if you come to Harajuku expecting to witness some Japanese eccentricity. In addition to the odd Harajuku girl, there will be the 1950s rock’n’rollers dancing in Yoyogi Park. They’re people of all ages who dress as greasers and dance to 1950s rock’n’roll just for the sake of it. Unless it’s pouring with rain, you can count on them being there. However, the most eccentric person I’ve come across in Harajuku was not Japanese but English.
I came across him one Sunday afternoon at the entrance to Yoyogi Park. He was handing out flyers regarding the Apocalypse. I stopped to listen to him which I think delighted him as no-one else seemed to be. He proceeded to tell me of the role that computers, particularly Apple computers, will play in the Apocalypse. According to him, the Apple logo (you know the apple with a bite taken out of it) is not a reference to the ingenuity of Newton but rather the apple offered to Eve in the Garden of Eden by the Devil and the bite mark is a reference to the bite taken by Adam. From this we can conclude that Apple is Satan and is leading us all to ruin with their products which are filled with destructive knowledge. To put matters beyond all doubt, if you take the letters of the word “Computer”, assign each letter a number according to its place in the alphabet (so C is 3, E is 5 and so on), add those numbers together and multiply the sum by 6, you get 666 - the Number of the Beast! He’s right, actually. I did the calculations myself in Excel.
Now, I’m not one to be scared of those with unconventional beliefs. Earlier this year I went to the Scientologists’ HQ and let them perform their psychoanalytical tests on me. They said I was depressed and not achieving my full potential which I could have told them myself. So I spoke to this fellow for about ten minutes and politely listened to all he had to say. I then took one of his flyers, gave him my email address and went on my way. Don’t worry. I didn’t believe any of the spiel about Apple being Satan and Computers being factotums of Lucifer … but it’s funny … if you get the letters of the words “IPod” and “IPhone” … multiply them by 6 and add them up, you get … 666. Maybe I’ll email that guy and tell him to put that in his next flyer.
Thank you for reading and take care.
Our Man in Japan
