“Welcome to Deathmatch in Hell,” where 53-year-old metalhead reveals big heart of city beyond the Olympic bubble

TOKYO — On a stinking very hot summertime afternoon in a city of fourteen million folks striving to faux these $20 billion Summer season Games never ever existed, I eventually observed the crucial to that elusive Olympic spirit in the palms of a bespectacled dude putting on a Slayer hat and a T-shirt adorned with the deranged mug of actor Jack Nicholson from “The Shining.”

“My title is GO,” said this fifty three-12 months-outdated metalhead, sweat glistening on his arms as he stood outside his small business. “It is an honor to meet you, Mr. Mark. In which is your dwelling?

“Colorado,” I replied.

“Colorado! The extremely well-known ‘Shining’ lodge is there!” exclaimed GO Nakajima, as stoked as if he was assembly novelist Stephen King instead of an ink-stained wretch from Denver. “Redrum! Redrum! Redrum!”

He inserted the crucial in the lock of his establishment in the Golden Gai, a network of slender alleys identified for the best selection of dive bars in Japan. Opening the doorway of a tavern only slightly even bigger than a resource lose, GO waved me inside with wonderful fanfare.

“Welcome,” he said, “to Deathmatch in Hell.”

I was in heaven.

“I appreciate professional wrestling and weighty metal,” Nakajima advised me in English honed while pouring pictures of whisky to people from The united states. “So I wanted to title my bar a thing that sounded like the title to a B movie.”

For approximately three months in Tokyo, I had felt as caged as a hamster in a hermitically sealed maze, bouncing inside the Olympic bubble, bombarded with continual warnings to take my COVID-19 checks, remain off the streets of a intriguing city and never ever attempt to make a new good friend by conversing to strangers.

And that is the true crying shame of these Olympic Games. Mainly because if they are not one significant celebration, then what fun is investing $20 billion on empty athletic venues exactly where Hoda Kotb of “The Now Show” can make a screaming spectacle of herself as a self-appointed Crew United states of america cheerleader.

I’m persuaded it was the most nerve-racking Summer season Games in history, because a lot more than 11,000 athletes and an army of volunteers in essence had to dwell less than house arrest, exactly where it’s simple to feel emotionally adrift in solitary confinement, with minor company other than general performance anxiety.