My girlfriend found Tiger Mask in a store in Japan - the Christmas gift I will never forget
I saw Tiger Mask for the first time in 2008, in a small pro wrestling shop near Korakuen Hall in Tokyo: the kind of place where there are autographs in the stairwell and posters of obscure 70s grappling matches peeling off the walls. He sat resplendent among a few dozen lesser masks: most with patterns, a couple with horns, none as mesmerizing as my sweet golden prince with floppy ears and pettable fur lining.
>I didn't buy it, obviously.
Tiger Mask is the alternate character of a wrestler (well, several wrestlers ), inspired by a manga, with a 40-year-old story is too complicated to even start to explain here. The important thing is that it sits at the intersection of my interests: as a kid who was a nerd before being a nerd was cool, I loved superhero comics and pro wrestling; as an adult making up for lost time, I got into mixed martial arts and overdressed for costume parties.
The mask would have been the keepsake perfect, but I just couldn't afford it: on the same trip to Japan, I'd slept in an internet cafe to save money, and as I slipped into my late twenties without a foot on the property-wide, lowering the price of dinner for two on a superhero mask seemed… frivolous. I regretted it, however, and had to tell my girlfriend about it at some point, because one merry Christmas morning a few years later, I opened a cardboard box to see a familiar burst of fur and gold.
Joy.
With today's youth high on frictionless online shopping, it's hard to explain how difficult mask was at the source at the time: turns out my girlfriend found the store, got into contacted one of our Japanese friends to place the order, and had navigated the tricky parts of the customs forms and had the thing delivered without me having a clue. When you're an adult, it's a practically perfect gift: slap-bang in the center of "thoughtful", "cunning" and "memorable" on the old Christmas Venn diagram. It was, and still is, one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me, and I think of it every time I look at this mask, which now adorns a foam mannequin head in the background. of my Zoom calls.
< p class="dcr-1b64dqh">And my girlfriend? Well, I don't wear Tiger Mask much anymore. But our son absolutely loves it.
I saw Tiger Mask for the first time in 2008, in a small pro wrestling shop near Korakuen Hall in Tokyo: the kind of place where there are autographs in the stairwell and posters of obscure 70s grappling matches peeling off the walls. He sat resplendent among a few dozen lesser masks: most with patterns, a couple with horns, none as mesmerizing as my sweet golden prince with floppy ears and pettable fur lining.
>I didn't buy it, obviously.
Tiger Mask is the alternate character of a wrestler (well, several wrestlers ), inspired by a manga, with a 40-year-old story is too complicated to even start to explain here. The important thing is that it sits at the intersection of my interests: as a kid who was a nerd before being a nerd was cool, I loved superhero comics and pro wrestling; as an adult making up for lost time, I got into mixed martial arts and overdressed for costume parties.
The mask would have been the keepsake perfect, but I just couldn't afford it: on the same trip to Japan, I'd slept in an internet cafe to save money, and as I slipped into my late twenties without a foot on the property-wide, lowering the price of dinner for two on a superhero mask seemed… frivolous. I regretted it, however, and had to tell my girlfriend about it at some point, because one merry Christmas morning a few years later, I opened a cardboard box to see a familiar burst of fur and gold.
Joy.
With today's youth high on frictionless online shopping, it's hard to explain how difficult mask was at the source at the time: turns out my girlfriend found the store, got into contacted one of our Japanese friends to place the order, and had navigated the tricky parts of the customs forms and had the thing delivered without me having a clue. When you're an adult, it's a practically perfect gift: slap-bang in the center of "thoughtful", "cunning" and "memorable" on the old Christmas Venn diagram. It was, and still is, one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me, and I think of it every time I look at this mask, which now adorns a foam mannequin head in the background. of my Zoom calls.
< p class="dcr-1b64dqh">And my girlfriend? Well, I don't wear Tiger Mask much anymore. But our son absolutely loves it.What's Your Reaction?
