singing in the streets

I'm always in for an odd surprise when I hang out with Kayo's high school friend Takeya. He came to Hong Kong with a senior from his school, and his friend Miwa. Yesterday, me, him and Nagayama (his senior) went to wander around Temple Street district. Takeya was distracted several times looking for flesh magazines for his "friend" (his suspicious choice of words!) but eventually we got to Temple Street. It used to be famous for Triad gangsters and the area still holds some of that edge, trash blowing along dirty streets. Stalls selling nock-off items, tourist knickknacks, stone buddha or mao sculptures, and some sort of anti-STD cream with horrific pictures of before the "magic product" was used. Nagayama speaks fluent mainland Chinese, and found us a dirty table on the street, where we could consume large amounts of local beer from large bottles. As we drank, he pulled out his "travel guitar" and began to play. Nagayama can't see very well at all, but he can communicate in many languages. He started with some loud world war two patriotic songs, then went to an Israeli song he knew that has an awesome chorus, a few instrumentals, and then to a Japanese song that Takeya sang with him. He then went onto a Japanese song about lower male body parts, and finally a few Chinese revolutionary songs. By the time he got to the Chinese revolution song he was screeching loud, screaming as he plucked away at his shabby guitar. Some old taxi drivers next to us enjoyed it and invited us over to share their table and food. We talked, or atleast Takeya and Nagayama-san talked in mainland Chinese, and I mainly just listened. The booze continued to flow, until finally around 5 I stumbled into a Taxi with Takeya (who was staying at my house) and made my way haphazardly towards home. (Directory of three sound files of this event.)