Faux Pas, and How I Made Out with Lady Gaga

There's an excessive, hilariously polite expression I sometimes use jokingly use to brush off compliments or to convince the other person I'm good at Japanese: お褒めごとを預かって,恐縮です (Literally, "I am shrinking in fear from having received your honorable words of praise). But sometimes the cheeky tone gets me in trouble.

Last weekend I visited a bar for New Half--a Japanese euphemism for transsexual--to conduct informal interviews for my research project on attitudes towards crossdressing TV celebrities. When I entered, I was the only customer there.  The employees were a little surprised that I looked so... not a transvestite.

We chatted for a while, and when the barmaster (mistress?) mentioned that I looked straight, I chuckled and said thanks in that over-the-top manner for affirming my normal masculinity. The bartender kind of muttered "I don't know that that was a compliment..." Oops. Maybe that wasn't the best audience for a joke that unintentionally implied a standard definition of masculinity (and passing for straight) as the desirable alternative.

We got over the initial awkward hurdle, and I did make some good progress on my research.  But a later discovery in the bar piqued my interest in the mundane-yet-enthralling topic of bathroom decor. I can't really think of any establishments in the US where the bathroom strays from the decorative style that the whole place has, but a number of Japanese bathrooms stand out.

What would you expect to find beside the bathroom sink of Strawberry Times, the bar catering to businessmen who just want to wear a dress after a hard day at the office? Probably not a level 5 Super Sayan.


But the discovery just confirmed a pet theory that all shops in Japan must have bathrooms that provoke deep thoughts. For instance, a noodle shop in the Umeda district has posters of political candidates for the Reform Party. This is normal enough, except that they watch you urinate. A veiled statement about Big Brother?


My favorite gay bar, Bacchus, features a much younger and much less clothed shot of the owner, Chanho-san.  Also watching you naked.


And Lady Gaga's favorite bar in Japan, FrenZ, has... actually I have no idea how to describe it.


But its okay, because its the place colloquially referenced as the Lady Gaga bar.  They can do what they want and its "performance art".

That moniker for the bar came from an incident that is now local legend.  After Lady Gaga performed in Osaka last year, she came in disguise to this bar FrenZ. But she sang karaoke of her own songs, so people eventually figured out it was her, and cheered her into an encore concert. The bartender showed me pictures of where she jumped on the table to perform Just Dance -- I was sitting at the exact same spot.

 

And then, the bartender pulled out the bar's greatest treasure: the lipstick Lady Gaga dropped and left behind. He told us to be careful with it, as it contained "Precious DNA".  My drunky friend insisted on rubbing the lipstick all over my lips... meaning my skin cells have been brushed with those from the puh-puh-puh-po-poker face itself.

We basically made out.

I'm not sure whether using the Secret Treasure should be placed on my ever-growing List of Social Trespasses, but it was totally worth it.