Free Harajuku Sunday by S. Michael Choi Page A

Redd sniping.   In these battles, the line between the two sides becomes blurred, such that instead of AB vs. CD, it's A vs. BCD or ABC vs. D and many one-time posters.   There are even these extremely rare times when Soren and Redd actually agree on something or at least find a common ground on which to respectfully disagree.   It becomes this regular thing; this habit of our days to jump online once a day during lunchtime or at a coffeebreak, on some weekend afternoon between other responsibilities and see what fresh outrages have erupted, and everyone jumps in; I mean really everyone. Julian the filmmaker makes it his specialty to write ambiguous posts that at first sight aren't what they really are.   Trashy fast-talking ditzy American girls post off-topic remarks, completely missing the point.   But it is at the same time that I begin to learn what genuine hatred is, because Redd, despite all voluminous posting, despite his maniacally over-written entire paragraphs and pages, is not really offering up actionable critiques of our old gang, things we have done, or organizations in the world that appear in the news. Rather, his rage is really a function of the fact that he really is a loser and does not have any particular skill, quality, or achievement that he can be proud of.   He is the red-haired English monkey.   I think he knows who he is; I think he feels a considerable amount of self-hatred at the person he has become: a late twenties middle-school assistant language teacher making eleven hundred yen an hour to grade his thirteen-year-old students and the mannerisms, put down by the tenured Japanese teaching staff, lectured on his teaching style, and with the artificial personality of a forcibly and perpetually cheerful “Hey boys and girls!” English assistant that he has been for so many years, junior status at work, junior status on weekend nights, junior status at life.   This itself, of course, is not truly contemptible.   What is contemptible is that what his writings show is that he really wants everyone else in the world to be like this too.   He wants a world in which there are no achievers, no excellence, no urban sophisticates or dangerous sex appeal.   No crazy parties and drama that leaves you spending the night in jail, calling up your friends frantically.   Everyone will become a lower-middle class Ozzie expat with a fat girlfriend, crappily living in a plastic prefab apartment.   And when he starts attacking me; when he makes these outrageous claims about things I have said or done at parties that he wasn't even invited to, I feel my teeth grit; I feel myself go on edge.

    By the third month of the Cyberwar, mid-October, the student government types— Tokyo 's Coordinators for International Relations, decide to step in.   Ours is not actually the only crisis unfolding that overwhelming, suffocatingly hot summer.   A random American girl who ends up staying in Japan for only four months has a fit of hysteria and claims a Japanese or Chinese was waiting for her on her balcony.

    "I came home… and he was standing there right at the balcony.   It was him!   That Chinese guy who pulled out a knife on Dominique!"

    I can never quite understand where the believability factor kicks in, but the community being what it is, rumors again start to explode.   “Soren's friend” Shan (who ironically is actually the only person charged by the police; Soren is completely behind any claims he is under investigation or has committed any crimes) is now everywhere, is seemingly lurking behind every park tree and inside every trash can, ready to leap out and slash innocent girls newly arrived to Japan.   With all that sentiment in the air, impetus for the “Town Hall meeting” comes from two individuals Liam, a genial Tokyo City international affairs coordinator (overseeing the young foreigner community in Tokyo ) from Dublin , and Melanie, the artsy printmaker and design fanatic who's going out