March 2, 2007 11:25pm

Last Friday after my usual gig at Cabanas, I decided to head towards Dupont Circle and perhaps visit Cafe Citron. Along the way, I passed by Cafe Japone, a place where I used to gig about 10 years ago. It just so happened that Kenji, the owner of Japone, was outside. He immediately recognized me although it had more than a year since I last stopped by his restaurant, so he invited me in and offered to have the chef make me some dinner. Kenji's a very generous guy. He asked me, "What do you want to drink?"

I was in the mood for a Bacardi and Coke, but I just said, "Anything's fine."

So he says something in Japanese to Megumi the bartender and two seconds later, she set down in front of me one of those large (32 ounce) bottles of Sapporo beer. Aw man, that's way too much. Hehe. But it's OK. It's not like I'm driving home. So I just chilled at the bar with Kenji and we reminisced about old times.

Anywayz, so like 10 years ago, I used to perform here every Wednesday night with dancers Edwin Aparicio and Melisa Tomá. Cool thing was that I didn't have to bring a sound system--we just used the microphones, amplifier and speakers the restaurant already had setup for karaoke. If I recall correctly, we did two sets which, besides the usual dance numbers, also included an opening guitar solo and a Gipsy Kings rumba sung by the multi-talented Melisa.

The pay was OK. We were all relatively new to negotiating money, but Kenji made up for it by letting us order whatever we wanted from the menu after the show. And you know how I love sushi! We were having fun, getting to know each other artistically, gaining stage experience and getting paid for it.

We had a small number of regulars who came to our show including our good Paul Fradin who later became the producer for the New York show of Edwin Aparicio's Entresueños last year.

So what's new with Kenji?