Being a Westerner in Tokyo has it's perks. One of my elusive favorites is spotting famous people from back home. Stars look so cool, calm and "king of the world" until they arrive in the Land of the Rising Sun. Once they come through customs where they've been shown a picture hard core porn and heroin needles and asked, "Did you bring this with you?" A look of, " What the fuck is going on!?!" sets in on their faces and doesn't go away until they are back sleeping in their own beds in the old country. My first hour in Japan, I saw Sting. Rather, I would have, had I not been in the toilet. All of the other exchange students saw him walk through the gate. ( Apparently, he owns a house in Japan somewhere.) One of the students yelled, " Hey Sting! You're great!" Sting looked at him, decided the student wasn't dangerous, smiled, waved, and disappeared into the crowd. ( Yeah, it's possible for white people to do that here.)
One of my friends stood behind Ray Charles in immigration for a minute until an officer recognized him and called him by name as they opened up a new line for him.
Another friend saw Aerosmith spill out of a McDonald's one morning in Kabukicho, Tokyo's pink district.
I will forever have warm feeling for Downtown's legendary Matsumoto Hitoshi for telling Janet Jackson she never " wanted to talk about anything interesting on his show. Will you please talk about the nipple slip!? You know that's all we want to talk about!" and how well the interpreter managed to ask her something about the weather instead.
I will never forget how a reporter asked the then Governor of California Shwa-chan, who was on a tour to promote California produce to " take off his shirt and flex his muscles for us." (He would not.)
My biggest celeb sighting was a few summers ago at Shibuya crossing. The busiest crossing in the world with over a million people using it a day. shibuya crossing The area is full of 25 year-old girls in micro-mini skirts year-round. Not a single one of them has cellulite, not even a hint of a dimple. I know that because when, in the corner of my eye, I saw cellulite in motion that didn't belong to me, it stopped me. I had to get a better look at this otherwise skinny person in a hot pants. That's when I realized I was looking at Tayor Swift then with a string of flowers in her hair and her entourage flanking her. At the time, she wasn't that famous in Japan but the poor bodyguard treated every single passerby in the crossing like a potential threat. He really need not have worried about them. He should have been walking behind her.