After we’ve spoken to the media (just RES Japan for me), we go to the shared office space of RES and a few other magazines (if I understood correctly) so Mateus can do something, I don’t know. Anyway, we’re in a large conference space in the center of the bullpen, and on either end of the table are these large PANASONIC dry-erase board things, with a big scanner-bar on one end and a printer beneath. The idea is you write on the board, scan it, and you get a paper replica of it to xerox and hand around or whatever. So of course, Mateus and I are immediately smitten by the thing and ask if we can play on it. Sure, they say, so we do.

Mateus grabs the red marker, I the black, and we begin writing notes about one another. LOBO IS TEH R0X0R and I HEART MK12 and shit like that. Just any dumb thing that comes in our heads so we can have a cool printout of it later. So they scan it and it prints and its great and its time to go into Ayoama so Mateus can shop and shit, because for a dude, well, Mateus sure does like D&G and Prada and whatnot. We grab the erasers. Mateus’ red lines wipe right off. The black lines, the ones I was responsible for, don’t budge.

This is because I had picked up an indelible ink marker, the kind of one with which one performs acts of vandalism. It was with this very marker, which was until moments ago sitting beneath the large screen, scattered anonymously with all the other dry erase markers, that I had written all across this face of this thing in a conference room with glass walls on all sides in the heart of a crowded, busy office space full of people working to deadline. LOBO IS TEH R0X0R, forever.

Who the FUCK puts a permanent ink marker in a dry-erase marker tray? I shout, but really, who cares, and most importantly, how are we going to get this shit fixed?

The RES staffers are shocked—I mean, literally, shocked. Mouths open. Embarrassed giggles. Word starts to spread. Kana, who interviewed me, stares. The office, which for a deadline driven place of news was as silent as the subways are here (that is to say, completely and totally), somehow gets silenter. It’s a weird Japanese thing—shame somehow encourages even more shame. Spit is tried, to no avail. Scrubbing really, really hard is also attempted. Hiroyuki, the videographer, of course grabs the camera and begins rolling: Lobo and MK12 fuck shit up and try like busted schoolboys to clean it up. Alex, Maiko and Baker, and Mateus are laughing their asses off. I want to die, and quickly, because I am SUCH A GINORMOUS STUPID AMERICAN ASSHOLE WHO FUCKED UP THE SPACE-DRY-ERASE BOARD.

Someone procures some pads soaked in nail polish remover. These, miraculously, do the trick. We’ve only got about five of them, so while some folks scrub the ink off the board, someone else follows right behind with a Kleenex to wipe up the excess ink and remover-goo. More laughing. More videotaping. More wanting to die.

We get the board cleaned pure white again. There is still! More! Laughter!, and people stealing embarrassed glimpses of me as we very quickly beat feet and get the fuck out of the office and back out onto the streets.

O! Inscrutable Orient! Your mysteries, so fascinating! Your treasures, so immense!