My Japan: A Week of Drag Queens, Ballroom, and Queer Joy

My motto is “say yes to everything.” And that is how I found myself living in Japan in my early 30s, juggling three jobs and two different worlds: a kaleidoscope of subcultures and countercultures, queer exploration, joyful connections, heartrending confessions. And as a journalist, my mission is to observe it all: to take it in, to listen, to process.

This is My Japan, one week in the very busy life of Kat Joplin / Le Horla Mizrahi.

Monday

The evening before was exhilarating — I’d gone to a goth and punk music festival in Kabukicho called Blood Flowers. Nearly nine hours of dancing to old school goth tunes and German industrial amidst a writhing crowd of spiky hair and sweat-slick tattoos. This morning, however, I’m refreshed and full of energy.

Upright, moving forward with my day. First, I have a looming deadline on an article on pet funerals for The Japan Times. The second I’m dressed and have make-up on, I’m sitting at my computer, banging out the remainder. When I finish with that, I’m sending emails, asking follow-up questions of my interviewees, asking for photos of people’s deceased animals. It’s an extremely extroverted type of writing.

Once I’ve got all my Japan Times work complete, then and only then do I allow myself breakfast and coffee — usually, technically, it’s lunch at an Italian café I frequent.

After breakfast/lunch, it’s off to my day job, tutoring international school kids in Nishiazabu. These days I walk to and from work: 1.5 hours each way. It’s my new thing, my only alone time when I can relax and think and listen to music, winding my way through the Tokyo streets.

On this particular Monday, after four lessons of goofing around with my students, teaching math, English composition, and literary analysis, my work day ends at 7pm. I have the rest of the evening blocked off: I’ve planned a horror movie night with my roommate, Angel Heart, and our drag queen colleague Kira Kira who lives a few blocks away.

Kira Kira’s apartment resembles one of those hoarder reality shows, except that it’s all drag gear: wigs on styrofoam heads, racks and racks of tulle and sequined costumes, piles of makeup pallets and cups of glitter covering her dining table. Her living room / bedroom, however, she’s tied up for guests, and we all make ourselves cozy on Kira Kira’s wide couch.

“Mind if I vape?” she says, and soon there’s a heavy veil of gray aerosol hanging over the TV as we start our horror flick. Kira Kira and I scream and clutch each other at every jump scare while Angel grins maniacally.

Tuesday

This is a special week: I’ve been booked for my first ever corporate drag bingo. As such, I took the day off from my tutoring job and feel quite the professional getting everything prepared: undergarments, corset, costume, makeup, mirror, accessories.

My co-star and drag mother, Nattmara, arrives around lunchtime (at the same café as before), dragging a huge hardshell suitcase. Two meters of lean Swedish goth queen, crowned with a slinky mane of long brown hair. The top of my head barely reaches her armpit. She’s brought me a gift in the form of a lacy black Killstar dress that’s a bit too tight on her shoulders, but fits me well. I’m pleased to take it off her hands.

Back at my apartment, we both set up for draggery at tables in adjoining rooms. I put on some music (mainly tunes I’d Shazam-ed at Blood Flowers) and we get to work. Three hours of blocking eye brows, applying pan-stick foundation, cream-contouring, powdering, and adding eye shadow and designs. Nattmara is looking like a typical gothic drag queen today, while I’m painting myself bright pink with black, “Biblically accurate angel” eyes and eyelashes.

By 4pm, perfectly on time, we’ve packed our costumes and are on the Chuo express train to Tokyo Station. It’s rare for me to be in drag (or in this case, half-drag) in the middle of the afternoon. A friendly gentleman approaches us on the train to take our pictures and chat. Other people gasp and gawk from afar. It’s utterly delightful.

When we arrive at the office building, we meet our friend, drag king Derek Toro, and all get into costume. The bingo game commences.

Wednesday

A new day, and back to business.

Wake up. Emails. Texts. My Japan Times editor wants me to cut out some passages. He wants me to interview a professor as well (rather than over-referencing her academic papers), so I hammer out an email for her too. I have other edits to make on an article draft, and a new piece commissioned for QueerAF to start planning. Things are moving smoothly along.

Today I’m three-for-three with my local café, and as usual I can’t resist getting the grilled chicken. It is a blessing and a curse to be this consistent.

I’m joined by a special guest breezing through the café entryway: Kristi, the Louisiana-Texas girl I’d met one random night in a Shinjuku Ni-chome bar two years prior, now back in Japan to visit. Even in sneakers, basketball shorts, and cap, she is every inch a femme queen, teased to surgical perfection. I’m like a garden sparrow to her peacock.

Though we’d only met once two years ago and kept sporadically in touch online, Kristi is the kind of person with whom you feel you’re already best friends. “Well, friends say I’ve never met a stranger,” she says, a soft southern twang to her voice. We spend the lunch gushing about her fascinating life, the violence and crimes she’s survived as a trans woman, the places she’s traveled for work. When I meet a person I love, and whom I find so interesting, it’s hard to make the questions stop. When I’m not looking, Kristi pays for both our lunches and gives me a wink.

“It’s a gift from my sugar daddy.”

I see Kristi off to her taxi, then walk to work in Nishiazabu as usual.

That evening, I eat ochazuke at a restaurant near my work and walk home at around 11:30pm. I meet my friend and neighbor Mika-Le to lend them a prop for the upcoming ballroom function in which they’ll be competing. Knowing my obsession with walking, Mika-Le takes me around the block a few times, the two of us catching up and chatting about love and dating. I look down at my phone and see the clock has just hit midnight. It’s now the birthday of my ballroom mother, Koppi Mizrahi!

“Let’s take a video for her!” I say, moving into a patch of buttery streetlight. “It’ll be cute — we’ll be the first to send her a happy birthday message!”

“Happy birthday, Koppi!” we squeal in tandem while I blow kisses into the camera.

Thursday

I wake up to a maelstrom. Kristi has scratched her eye quite badly. A misadventure with a torn contact lens. She’s traveling solo, with no knowledge of Japanese or the healthcare system. Her texts sound frantic.

I pop up and find some English-speaking eye clinics, picking one off the list that seems like it would be close to her hotel, and book her a slot for that afternoon. I call the clinic to confirm they take tourists without Japanese health insurance — no point sending a wounded Kristi if they’ll just turn her away.

“Thank you so much,” she writes. “I literally want to cry right now.”

“Don’t cry!” I replied. “Not on your poor eyeball!”

Feeling proud of myself for helping a friend, I go back to tackling the usual whirlwind of morning tasks. My Japan Times article is moving its way through the editing process; now, I have to track down some extra photos because the ones I’d gathered from my interviewees are too low quality, or not quite the right subject matter. I shoot off more emails.

I decide to avoid my usual café today and instead go to my other usual café. This one, Midnight Brew, serves a special curry, and is about a 20-minute walk away in Nakano Shinbashi. I’m hoping I get my step count above 20,000.

Chugging along through my day of tutoring, and I get another message from Kristi with updates about her eye injury. The ophthalmologist has set her right: dousing her with three different kinds of eye drops and apparently squeegeeing her torn cornea back into place like “schloop.” She wants to hit Gay Town to celebrate.

It’s rare for me to visit Shinjuku Ni-chome on a weekday, but the thought of spending more time with Kristi during her short trip to Japan is too enticing. Weekday Ni-chome has a special charm, anyway: quieter, more lowkey, easier to talk in clubs. Kristi downs some tequila shots while I double-fist burritos at Alamas Cafe. Finally, we wind up at Kingdom where drag queens Mia Scandals and Candy are go-go dancing for the night. Candy is a baby queen I’m meeting for the first time, but Mia is a seasoned performer of Ni-chome and a great favorite of mine.

Friday

I always block off my Fridays from tutoring (three-day weekend, hellll yeah!), but really that’s just so I can workaholic myself into oblivion in newer and less lucrative ways.

I wake up and spend a bit of time in bed looking at memes and cat videos, then it’s up-up-up and back to clearing out work emails. Between the tutoring job, the Japan Times, organizing drag shows, and juggling ballroom drama, there’s always something in my inbox that feels urgent.

I head to a special, fancy place (Sarabeth’s in Lumine) to treat my ballroom mother Koppi to a birthday lunch. She arrives looking absolutely killer, like she had just gone on a shopping spree through Ginza. We gleefully order tomato soups and bougie omelettes while debriefing each other on the latest ballroom happenings.

Koppi is unbelievably important to me, and to the entire ballroom scene of Japan and Asia. One of the trailblazers of Japan, the mother of house of Mizrahi, and the first international Icon, Koppi is an ally who’s dedicated her entire life to ballroom. She’s also the first leader to ever see any potential in me—an oddly-shaped vessel who fits awkwardly into the category systems of ballroom, just as I’ve awkwardly fit into just about every community and society I’ve come across. I remember the afternoon in 2022 when Koppi first asked me to join the house of Mizrahi — before I could even text her back, I had to jump up and run back and forth, screaming in delight. It was Koppi’s way of telling me, “You fit well enough for me.” I will never be able to stop saying thank you.

Home from the birthday lunch, and I spend a bit more time working at my desk. I’m working and sweating away, right up till my scheduled video call meeting with my QueerAF advisor — seconds before I hit the “join meeting” button, I’ve plopped a bunch of secondary sources and interviewee names into a google doc, so my advisor won’t think I’m a slacker. The meeting goes well; we outline the upcoming article. My heart is beating with excitement that I get to write for QueerAF again.

The moment the meeting is done, Angel and I whisk off to Roppongi for our old language school reunion. Six years ago, at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies, Angel and I met for the first time and began playing at drag. By the end of our year of study, we had both debuted as rouuuuggghhh little baby queens in Tokyo and were making plans to move in together somewhere in Shinjuku. It’s wild to see where time has taken us.

Saturday

I read a tweet once, commenting on how messed up it is that the two trans holidays are (1) asking society to acknowledge us, and (2) remembering our dead.

This is why I think ballroom is important. Every event you hold creates another holiday to celebrate trans folks.

That Saturday, Merlin 007 and Persi 007 hold a function called the T4T Kiki. T4T stands for “Trans for Trans,” emblematic of trans people loving trans people: romantically, sexually, platonically, as friends and as family. Every ballroom event has its mess and its stress, but consistently, what I’ve observed is that the truest ones make transgender people feel seen, celebrated, and cherished in a way they might never have felt before in mainstream society.

For this function, I was honored to be chosen as part of the judges’ table, so I spend most of the seven hours perched at the end of the room, giving my “Tens” during the preliminary round and voting between contestants during the battles. Kristi is there, and other femme queen friends of mine: Eva, Armaiti, Emily, V, Essence. There’s a moment during one of the breaks when my whole field of vision is filled with nothing but happy trans people, capering around. Transmasc Tension Pinklady and Qoo practicing their Old Way moves. V braiding Emily’s hair. Kristi curled up on top of her pink coat like a fancy lady at a picnic. Eva snapping selfies with me, calling me her “butchy butchy.”

During the Face category, Mika-Le steps out with the prop I lent them — a large picture frame covered in rhinestones to look like the trans flag. They flaunt their mug for us judges, get their tens, and win their trophy.

Too soon, the T4T function winds up, and in just minutes we’ve disassembled the whole room, swept and tidied the place. A room of magic has gone back to being just a large dance studio. We’re slipping out into the night, turning back into hurried Tokyo commuters.

I’m in a hurry too. Straight from T4T, I’m heading to a drag show, Queens For a Cause—a showcase organized by my sister Stefani St. Sl*t to raise money for environmental issues. I’m aware I can’t keep up with these hectic itineraries forever, but how long will I even be living in Tokyo? How long will I call this place home, these people neighbors? I want to cherish every second.

Sunday

Queens For a Cause, then an after party out in Shinjuku Ni-chome — and now far too soon, it’s daylight, and Angel and I are back out and catching a train, groaning.

Whose idea was this? (definitely mine) We’re heading to TenCups for a drag brunch.

I had just recently researched the heck out of drag brunches and interviewed every brunch-organizer I know for a Voyapon article. Now I’m excited to be back, expecting the brunch will be all the more fun now that I’ve learned so much.

At TenCups, I pound back an unwise number of coffees and socialize with the queens. Labianna Joroe, the co-organizer. Guest performers Aqua Marine and Hobeni Chiiko. I love going to drag shows populated with non-drag audiences because I always feel spectacularly VIP cozying up to the drag queens.

“Oh girl! It’s you!” Aqua Marine gushes, clasping my hands. We’ve talked online many times and Angel and I have booked her for a December show, but this is our first time properly meeting in real life. She is prettier than words can describe. I hate her guts and want to tear up her wigs.

“It’s so good to meet you!” I cry. “I can’t wait to finally see you perform!”

While Angel and I stuff ourselves with embarrassing amounts of fancy brunch food, Labianna gives us old school lip-sync splendor, clutching her chest and throwing back her head to the classic I’m Every Woman. Chiiko runs out in rockstar wigs and performs Japanese crowd favorites. Aqua, at one point, comes out dressed as a giant hamburger, her long, skinny arms and legs noodling from the buns. I think I might die laughing.

A brilliant end to a brilliant week, I think as I bully Angel into walking the 1:15 hours minutes back to our apartment. A carousel of colleagues, friends, artists, and entertainers.

The best and worst part of being a freelance journalist is that there is very little separation between your private and work lives. I can attend a million incredible balls and drag shows without any guilt because I know every experience will contribute in some way, directly or indirectly, to my writing on Tokyo’s queer community. It is also a mountain of work, and hardly a day goes by when I’m not pounding the pavement, hunting down another queen, king, or event organizer with whom to network. 

And yet, how many people can say their career and their passion line up as perfectly as mine do? I wouldn’t trade it for the world. 

Featured image by Berk Akkaya.