Selena, Queen of Tejano (right) and Jennifer Lopez (left) impersonating her New Orleans style bar Famous Door celebrated its tenth anniversary last weekend and as a semi-regular customer I couldn’t miss that! Wow, I had never seen that place so full, they had a jazz live band playing well into the morning hours and lots of benches everywhere to accommodate everyone. From Louisiana it’s only a short drive to Texas, namely across the border, and earlier that night we - me and two friends - had been to a Caribbean bar although on that night it was 100 % Tejano music! Never heard of that genre? Tejano is Spanish for “Texan” and the tunes are usually performed by Mexican immigrants in Texas, hence the name. Needless to say, the lyrics are in Spanish. Tejano, in sound and rhythm, resembles Norteña music from the northern Mexican provinces, and the biggest star the genre had ever seen - Selena - was assassinated at the age of 23. Selena had reached huge popularity among Latin communities and in the year of her death, 1995, she was recording a crossover album that would almost certainly have made her an international star, comparable to Gloria Estefan, only bigger, for Selena sang better, looked better and had loads of charisma. Quirky detail: Selena was not a native Spanish speaker but learned the language through her music and by the time of her death she was fluent. Two years after Selena’s murder her life was made into a movie and another star was born: Jennifer Lopez, who was chosen to impersonate the Tejano star mostly because of their strikingly similar hourglass figures. Personally I like Selena a lot more than Lopez and I still listen to her music every now and then. By the way - I discussed cultural differences regarding beauty ideals with some students in a recent lesson and learned that Jennifer Lopez is considered fat in Japan! In the US she was voted most beautiful woman of the year (don’t remember the year but it was not so long ago). And I just got another little culture shock.
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I was running errands around Odori and dropped in at Tokyu Hands earlier this week. I knew they sold pet goods on the top floor and went to check out cat travel carrier bags and toys. To my dismay I realized they not only sell pet items, but pets as well. The puppies are locked up in tiny cages without ventilation, and all of them were lying apathetically on the bare floor of their miserable cages. Two of the puppies were so big that they had to curl their bodies to even fit into their prison cell. Now that I know that Tokyo Hands tortures animals they won’t get another cent from me, or yen, for that matter.
