Saved From The Yakuza by Doctor No

Fleeing the Emperor's darting tongue, I ran outside and found myself caught in a spray of Uzi fire between rival gangs of yakuza gangsters dressed in pink tutus performing Swan Lake. A black-gloved hand reached out and grasped me, I dare not say where, and pulled me into a hovering low-flying saucer-shaped disk of silver. As I oriented myself within the extraordinary whirligig, I realized that its driver was my old Go opponent from my nursery school days in Auburn, New York, the comely and raven-haired Dr. Ono No. Recently cashiered from the Office of Homeland Security by its masters, the Alien Reptile Men enjoying scones and Earl Grey in the Hollow Earth, she was now a practicing psychoanalyst in the Roppongi district, and had come to town to collect Hermann Hesse memorabili.

Was It Real Or Was It Memorex?

We skirted down into a great roaring stream of wizened Toyotas conveying the golden salarymen therein to their numbing labors; the little horns yipped, and one pie-faced college-age salarymaiden, seeing us, turned calmly away and then yawning a yawn a furlong wide grunted the news of our appearance to her fellow motorists, some of whom -- a large herd in point of fact -- began hurling all sorts of curious ephemera at us, from Pink Lady figurines with bobbing heads to super-deformed Gackt keychains to DVDs of The Matrix, all the while berating the White Man for Hiroshima and Vietnam and Linkin Park Dragonball Z music videos. Suavely giving her fellow nationals the finger, the good Doctor put the prow of her helm hard starboard and upwards we swooped, leaving the metallic cataract beneath.

Our trip toward the city accomplished, the Doctor, in search of lodgings for me, and doubtless hoping that out of sight would mean out of mind to the xenophobes below, shot down a narrow channel between the forests of corporate towers, which, if you please, were covered with specimens -- as fine a set of specimens as you could wish for -- of visiting Cantonese dragons enjoying the New Year.

Some of these interesting creatures were having siestas, hanging from ledges and lying half-asprawl on the building faces, with their green mouths wide open. One immense old female, cosplaying as Digi Charat, had a family of lively young crocodile-like young running over her, playing like a lot of merry kittens. The heavy musky smell they gave off was most drearily reminiscent of cheap Bulgarian frappuccinno, I regret to say, but I felt I should not make a row about this, as we were hopelessly in the wrong in intruding into these family scenes uninvited.

And so the Doctor merely drifted ourselves along rapidly, swapping reminiscences and humming old snatches of Two-Mix. Indeed the pace the craft swam down the channel of towers would be a wonder to the Henley Regatta.

next