Ryota & Maki

Ink on Paper - 420x297mm - 2016

I first met Ryota in 2014. My friend Blake however first met Ryota in 2013. They were staying in the same hotel for the Chaos in Tejas festival, Blake noticed some Japanese guys sitting by the pool and talked to them. Blake kept in contact with Ryota over Facebook and informed Ryota that I was coming to Japan. Ryota wrote the best message about how he would support me and gave me his details, it was definitely an assuring gesture. I didn’t know anyone in Japan at this point in time aside from an Osaka girl, who was a friend of a friend.

On the day of first visit to Tokyo, I woke up still drunk from the night before and way after check out from the hostel. My friend Hatanaka had taken me out around Shinsaibashi, drinking to bid me farewell as I finally decided to see somewhere else other than Osaka. I had been drinking at Bar Konton – where Hatanaka was the bartender – for nearly a week straight and he told me I should see more of Japan. I didn’t get back to the hostel until maybe 6am.

Waking up in a panic, I didn’t bother to shower (I really should of) and headed straight to Shin-Osaka station to catch the Shinkansen to Tokyo. Ryota had taken a half day at work to meet me at Tokyo station to show me my hostel. I was hungover, exhausted and was more than likely at my peak of bad body odor when he finally met. I gave me a big hug as soon as I saw him. Instantly I could tell he was a pure gentleman as he lifted up my luggage (which was about ¾ the size of him) and proceeded to carry it around until we found the hostel. The hostel was pretty dodgy looking, I could tell by Ryota’s body language that the place was shit, I asked him if it was cool if I could stay at his place. He said yes. Keep in mind that I had only known him for about an hour at this point in time.

The bed Ryota set up for me, as well as my luggage took up the majority of the free space in his apartment. I promptly showered. Ryota was a very relaxed host and made me instantly feel at ease, he was very insistent that I relax. Up until that point I was always feeling confused, lost, a little stressed and a bother to the locals – Ryota’s general wonderful nice guy attitude meant a lot to me. Whenever my household has international guests staying over I try my best to channel Ryota and make them feel welcome.

Ryota took me around to records stores, gigs, places to eat, and let me store all my stuff (mostly records and shirts) at his place while I was bouncing around the country. He’s also an excellent cook and a great drinking buddy. I have many fond memories with the dude. Meeting him, being his friend, and experiencing how nice a person he is, has made me a better person as I aspire to his match his niceness. He’s also a great person to drink and exchange music with, a hallmark of a great friend.

To reinforce how nice a dude Ryota is I’ll share a little side story. On my second visit to Montreal I brought with me a bottle of Bundaberg Rum, to give my friends there a taste of true Australian booze. It was universally panned for being horrible, one friend even came up with a new way to describe how terrible it is every time he spoke of it. I had the bottle with me at an after party, it made a few people throw up and again was met with much distain, it disappeared for a while and then magically reappeared. I’m guessing someone thought they had struck gold, tasted it, realised what it truly was, and returned it. Last I heard it was still at a friend’s place unfinished. A rare feat for a punk house. I also gave Ryota a bottle and he said he enjoyed it, and even brought some with him to a gig in a flask. He had to have been lying. But he still drank it with me every night I stayed at his place, without a word of complaint.

He said that Maki (his wife) had asked him to ask me if I would draw the invitation for his wedding party. I said of course but I doubled checked if she had seen my style of drawing before, it’s quite dark, weddings are quite not dark. He assured me that dark is okay. I asked what he and his wife might like for the drawing. They both like cats so we settled on that. I know how non-demanding a person Ryota is so I asked if he would like me to draw something cute, his face lit up with a yes. Then he very bashfully asked ‘is colour okay?’. I said as onetime special favour to him I would. I feel I should point out that I loathe being asked to drawing cute things, especially cats and I especially don’t like people asking me to draw something in colour. Any one of those requests would have resulted me not doing the drawing, however Ryota is really good friend and such a genuinely nice person I felt more than happy to do anything he wanted for it. I was also very touched and flattered they wanted my artwork for the wedding. So I put my wanker artist ego to the side for this drawing.

I took two weeks off work in August to look after Buddy, but the goal was more to get Ryota’s wedding card completed. I was very out of drawing practice, the last drawing I had done was at the start of June. I was also completely out of my comfort zone. I also spent the first week doing other art related things for other friends. I gave it my best shot, I tried making a Ryota cat on the right and a Maki cat on the left, sailing on their ship of love across the oceans of more love. My romantic side definitely came out.