a scan a day

Russ, 70s, Tokyo

At our home in Den-en-chōfu, about to enjoy a delicious breakfast. My parents both worked full-time when we lived in Tokyo so we had a housekeeper (Kitsutani-san!) who took care of most of the cooking & cleaning. However, I did most of the shopping. Things that weren’t delivered by the grocer (like these cornflakes here, & other dry goods) — produce, meats, baked items — were picked up at different shops around the neighborhood.

Before we moved out into the suburbs, we were right in the heart of the city, in the Roppongi district, a few blocks away from the Hotel Okura (where we lived for the first two months we were in Japan while we waited for our shipment — i.e., furniture — to arrive). It was a fantastic location — in a tiny compound with four or five large — by Japanese standards — 2-story homes. We were only there for a year, though — the compound was bulldozed to make way for a shopping complex & we moved out of the city & into the ‘burbs.

The New Monkees, Sanno Hotel, Tokyo, 1976

Ha! Found ‘em. Right where I thought they would be, too.

The funniest thing about these autographs is what’s on the other side:

Apparently I didn’t have a blank piece of paper on me but I did have a book with 2000 Insults (for all occasions). Because you never know. Right?

(see)

dad, tokyo, 1976

I hope he at least waited until after Memorial Day to wear this get-up.

He printed this photo himself. He went through a photography phase when we first moved to Japan and our den doubled as a darkroom for a while.

russell & clayton in tokyo, 1977

We didn’t own a car when we lived in Japan — we all rode the train & subway to school, work and everywhere in between. (I didn’t learn how to drive a car until I was nearly twenty, and even then, my boyfriend only taught me how to steer, no shifting, so I had to wake him up every time we came to a stop sign. Long story.)

1978

Senior year, sunbathing during our lunch break at the International School of the Sacred Heart in Tokyo. I can think of no other word to describe us other than retarded.

ETA: Yes, that’s a thermos between my legs & I’m also happy to see you.

Inspired by this recent post from hoarr, today’s scan is terribly blurry and also terribly embarrassing ‘cause I look like such a nerd, and not the cool kind. I had a good friend in high school named Alice who was a year older than me and an honest-to-goodness groupie — she swore she lost her virginity to Rick Wakeman when she was 14. When KISS came to Tokyo for the first time in 1977 it was a HUGE deal and they held a press conference at the Hilton Hotel. Alice was half Greek, half Japanese, and she spoke Japanese fluently. I don’t know how she did it, but Alice not only managed to get us into the press conference, she got us right up front. These blurry photos were taken with a Kodak Instamatic by a nervous sixteen year old dressed in possibly the dorkiest outfit ever (see first photo, taken in my bedroom by Alice before we left for the press conference).

Click here for bigness. Oh, and here’s the ticket from the show — I couldn’t get it to come out of the album without it tearing: