Dainoji

Saturday night I met up with a friend and some friends for a night in a place called Club Que in Shimokitazawa. We thought we knew what we were in for (UK ROCK) but we didn't really know the truth of it.

The first thing that seemed a bit amiss...was that the club was filled with women. Sudden excitement followed by creeping suspicions. Wait a second... Had we chanced upon some kind of lesbian bar? ..Would they get hostile to us? ..Would they all turn into vampires past midnight?

Sure enough, the DJ soon quits the decks and the stage and shortly after we'd paid a hefty 2,800 yen entrance fee and stowed our jackets bags things in a big bag, Dainoji appeared.

I didn't know who he was, but surely he was the reason for the lesbian vampires. The crowd went apoplectic. If we were going to get eaten, it was now.

Wearing what I'd later discover is a trademark, tiger-print sweatshirt he strutted onto the stage with an awkward swagger that didn't fit him as well as the sweatshirt. He wandered from side to side of the narrow stage with little hip bobs, head nods and apparently exaggerated, mimed acknowledgement of calls from the audience (who were to busy hopping and throwing themselves around for much else). The dancers appeared, they all made some tight little formation as a unit and the music started.

It soon transpired that Dainoji is no ordinary performer. Rather than performer maybe pretend performer is a better description. For I later found out that he is a household name in Japan as the ex-double world Air Guitar champion. He showed us his moves on Saturday night, alongside the carefully coordinated troupe of dancers. Once, he scissor-kicked his way off the two and a half foot stage and dashed towards us. For 30 seconds or so, we were given the privelege of watching Dainoji in action, miming guitar frets and neck rattles, up close between the bar and the exit.

The end for us came soon after my friend Ian's failed attempt at escape. Staggering with disbelief and tripping over vampire lesbian feet in his eagerness, desperation to get out he came to the same position Dainoji had recently occupied, between the bar and the exit. From there you could not see the stage but from my position, I had a view of the stage and Ian. With a wonderful synchrony, just as Ian was shouting over the din 'I cannot believe this', unbeknownst to him his friend Sam was being dragged onto the stage to attempt a succession of coordinated dance moves (for public ridicule). Ian heard a whole load of Japanese and the word gaikokujin! (foreigner!) and guessed it with a dumbfounded look to his face.

Shortly after this, we left and laughed about it and drank til the first trains were running out of Shimokitazawa.