Reality Strikes

by Karin De Havin

  Kenzo whispered in my ear, “Hey, biker chick, ready to rumble?”

  “Too bad you don’t have a Harley.”

  “With the import taxes in Japan, I’d need to be making a lot more money to ride one of those things.”

  I took in his leather pants and jacket accented by silver zippers at the chest pockets and the bottom of the sleeves and realized my jacket matched his. We looked like the perfect couple. There may be hope for us yet.

  My stomach growled. “Where’s this great restaurant you’re treating me to?”

  Kenzo gave me a cockeyed grin. “Follow me. I picked the perfect place.”

  He tugged on my hand as we zigzagged our way through the Saturday night Shinjuku crowd. Hip kids looked like they were dressed in outfits fit for a fashion cover shoot. I suddenly felt underdressed. The mass of people converged at the intersection and I could barely keep myself upright. Kenzo didn’t help matters by walking at top speed.

  My head spun by the time he stopped in front of a restaurant. A giant koi fish loomed over the door. Once inside, the waiter led us to the only free table in the restaurant. Our table, crammed into a corner, took intimate seating to a whole new level. I tried to inch my body along the wall as I navigated around an enormous fishnet artistically draped across the back of the restaurant.

  “I hope you don’t mind but I’m ordering for us again.” Kenzo waved the waiter over to our table.

  I gave him a half-hearted smile. “Well, as long as nothing is moving on my plate.”

  “No problem. I never break a promise.”

  In my attempt to give myself more breathing room, my head fell backwards right into the fishnet. Kenzo got up and did his best to disengage me from the net’s clutches. I held my breath as he lifted the knotted rope away from the wall and pulled on a large section of my tangled mess of hair.

  “Ow!” Finally, minus a few hairs, I was free.

  He let go of the net. “Sorry. There’s a price for freedom.”

  I held my head in pain. “Ha ha. I don’t know whether to thank you or kick you in the balls. That hurt!”

  Kenzo bent over, protecting his crotch, and quickly returned to his seat as our dinner arrived. After the waiters put down the plates, I scanned their contents. Not a dancing shrimp in sight, just an endless selection of multi-colored raw fish.

  I popped a piece of fish in my mouth and tried to forget my newly acquired bald spot. “So, what do you have planned for tonight?”

  Kenzo finished polishing off a salmon skin roll he ordered. “I’m going to give you my special tour of Shinjuku. What I like to call the Underbelly Tour.” He brushed some rice from his goatee. “We’re going to check Kabuki-cho and the dying icon of Japanese culture, the Love Hotel.”

  It sounded dangerous. “Great.”

  “Half the fun is getting there.”

  Kenzo was suddenly losing points on my desirability meter. I took a deep breath. “Can I finish eating my delicious dinner first?

  “Sure. No problem. I just can’t wait to take you to Kabuki-cho.”

  I’d heard all about the infamous Kabuki-cho in the student lounge. It was a must-see destination for adventurous types and completely controlled by the Japanese mafia—better known as the yakuza.

  Following Kenzo’s lead, I plowed through the rest of the sushi before he called the waiter over for the check. He wasn’t kidding about getting his Underbelly Tour going ASAP. Back out on the crowded street, he held my hand tightly. I needed to pick up the pace. You had to be careful walking the busy streets of Tokyo. They reminded me of the highways back home. The speed might say seventy, but if everyone else was going ninety, you better step on the gas.

  Kenzo tugged on my hand. “Let’s get the show on the road. I have a lot of ground to cover in a couple of hours. Don’t worry, I’m not going to let you miss the last train. I don’t want to be blamed for you going back in the doghouse.”

  He led me down an ever-increasing maze of streets. The atmosphere soon changed from trendy clubs and restaurants to an occasional porn shop. For some inexplicable reason, all the storefronts were painted bright pink.

  Kenzo made a grand gesture with his arms. “We are now entering the pleasure zone.”

  “Where the heck are you taking me? It smells like a giant urinal. “

  “How would you know anything about urinals?”

  “How soon you forget my punishment for being in the doghouse.”

  Kenzo breathed in the air. “Oh yeah. Then you should feel right at home. We’re walking through the famous piss alley.”

  I was grateful there was no visual evidence of its namesake.

  Just on the other side of the alley, he stopped and pointed to what looked like an ordinary restaurant with a bouncer guarding the front door. “This is a no panties coffee house. The girls serve drinks and food with nothing on from the waist down.”

  “Well, I guess that beats Hooters back in the States.”

  He laughed. “The yakuza had to think of something new. They’ve had topless joints for years so what else could they do? They’re always looking for new marketing schemes to drum up more business. They’ve got these massage parlors called Soaplands. The guy goes in and they’re massaged by a naked girl covered in suds.”

  I laughed at the image of masseuses clothed in bubbles. “I bet the girls have a lot of injuries. I can’t imagine how you could massage someone like that without sliding all over the place.”

  “Couldn’t say. I’ve never been to one.”

  I didn’t know if I believed him or not as he seemed way too knowledgeable about the industry. Maybe Setsuko was right about Kenzo having a dark side.

  We passed a row of seedy-looking strip clubs. Even the bright colored neon signs couldn’t make the buildings rise above their grimy dark exteriors. Black-suited men the size of Sumo wrestlers stood in front of the clubs screaming at the top of their lungs hustling customers. Several grabbed the closest person walking by and tried to pull them in the front door.

  No offense to Kenzo, but I didn’t think he could defend me against the bouncers. “You know what? I can skip this part of the tour. I get the picture.”

  He put his arm around me. “Sorry. I was just trying to take a shortcut. Tonight must be slow. The guys seem more aggressive than usual.”

  We cut down another street that was thankfully vacant of hustlers. I gasped as we rounded the corner and wound up directly in front of a building decorated like a brightly colored Mardi Gras float. “What goes on in there? Is that a Love Hotel?”

  Kenzo shook his head. “No, that’s an image club. People dress up in costumes and do all kinds of crazy stuff.”

  He led me even deeper into Kabuki-cho. We came to a block that looked like the Vegas strip on steroids. The buildings that lined the boulevard had been painted a kaleidoscope of colors, each façade more outrageous than the last.

  He put out his arm to stop me just when my Tokyo legs were kicking in. “Look down there. Our first Love Hotel. See the building covered in crystal lights with velvet curtains draped over the entrance?”

  “How could I miss what looks like Elvis’s bedroom at Graceland?”

  He led me farther down the street. “This place looks like a rocket.”

  The hotel was the spitting image of the one of the spaceships from Star Wars. “What are the rooms like?

  “Let’s go check some out.”

  Once inside the lobby, I noticed no signs of life. A big screen displayed the different themed rooms. “Why are some of these pictures lit up?”

  He gave me a knowing smile. “Those rooms are occupied.”

  One room in particular caught my eye. In the middle of the floor stood a large tube. I pointed at the picture. “What the heck is that thing? It looks like a transporter from the Star Ship Enterprise. Beam me up, Scotty.”

  He gave me a wink. “So, you’re a Star Trek fan, too. I haven’t been in the room, but my guess is it’s some kind of giant shower.”

  Ken
zo opened the lobby door. “Let’s move on to the Cupid Hotel. You’re going to love the place.”

  As I turned to leave, I came face to face with my first sex toy vending machine. It looked surreal filled with brightly colored handcuffs and rainbow packed edible panties.

  Kenzo said proudly, “We have a motto in Japan, there’s a vending machine to service any desire.”

  The Japanese were so matter of fact about sex. Lingerie vending machines were on almost every street corner. We walked into the Cupid Hotel’s lobby and my head spun in every direction. I have never seen cupids doing so many outrageous things in my life. It was like something out of a Rococo porn nightmare.

  Kenzo pointed to the giant room display board. “This is my favorite.”

  The room had a bed shaped like a giant heart with cupids flying all around the ceiling. The walls were covered in flocked wallpaper with Pepto-pink heart.

  I looked at him, “You’ve got to be kidding. You like this room? The last thing I’d think of having in this room is sex. I’d be in the bathroom throwing up the whole time.”

  His expression looked like he was trying to solve a particularly hard math problem. “I thought women loved cupids. My last girlfriend raved about it.”

  “Well, maybe in nineteenth century France, but not now. This room is gross.” I doubted it was the room the ex-girlfriend had been crazy about.

  Kenzo pointed to another picture. “Okay, how about this one?”

  It was hard to imagine anything more tasteless than the cupid theme, but the reality of a worse horror was pictured in room number six. The headboard, a giant stuffed Hello Kitty face, was surrounded by walls covered in Hello Kitty wallpaper. The sheets had giant Kitty faces scattered all over them. Now I really felt sick.

  “First off, there is no Japanese invention I hate more than Hello Kitty. Second, can you tell me what is sexy about a cartoon character?”

  “I thought all women loved cute little kitties.” Kenzo led me out of the lobby shaking his head. “I’ll take you to a spa hotel. I wanted to explain how the hotels work in case you ever need to use one.”

  “Think I can figure out the important part.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean that.” He gave me a wink. “Love Hotels are actually less expensive than regular hotels if you know how to work the system. You don’t check in until ten. Then you just pay the overnight rate, which starts at six-thousand yen, about eighty dollars.”

  Kenzo sure knew his way around Love Hotels. “As long as you’re leaving right on time in the morning, you can’t beat the price at any comparable hotel in Tokyo. In the morning you pay by credit card, and they let you out of your room.”

  How scary. What if you had a huge fight with your boyfriend? There was no escape. I was impressed by the fact that the hotel staff was hidden. At Love Hotels, discretion was the name of the game.

  Kenzo showed me the way to the next stop.

  It looked like a classy upscale boutique hotel. “I would have never guessed this was a Love Hotel. What gives it away?”

  “If you noticed, we entered on the side rather than the front. If you look over by the door, there’s a purple sign. This means it’s a Love Hotel.”

  Walking inside the lobby, the difference was obvious. A real check-in desk covered the back wall, but strangely no one stood behind the counter.

  Kenzo followed my gaze. “I know what you’re thinking. Where’s the desk clerk? There isn’t one. It’s just there because the hotel has to look legitimate.”

  The display stood discreetly in the corner. The rooms were pretty tame by Love Hotel standards. They looked stylish and contemporary, something from the pages of Modern Homes magazine. Very New York Upper West Side.

  Room number ten caught my eye. A sleek platform bed stood in front of a huge console that sported a large flat screen TV instead of a headboard. Over in the corner I noticed a sauna. I pointed to the left side of the room. “Hey, am I seeing things or are those tanning booths?”

  “Yes, they are. This is a Spa Love Hotel, after all. The rooms have saunas, whirlpool tubs, everything you need to pamper yourself.”

  I was starting to think the Japanese were on to something. My legs ached as I stared longingly at the hydro-massage table prominently displayed in room ten. As I turned away, a bright glow from the corner of the room display caught my eye. A Japanese woman wearing a long orange kimono was holding a large round mirror in her hand. She had on a gold disk crown and the light radiated from behind her. I bit my lip when I saw that her geta clad feet floated a good three feet off the floor. Yanking on Kenzo’s arm, I pointed to room ten and said, “Does this room have some kind of levitation device?”

  He followed my gaze. ” What are you talking about? Just looks like a normal spa room to me. Although the hydro-massage bed is a nice touch.”

  My eyes blinked twice when I saw that the levitating woman was gone. Maybe looking at so many crazy hotels caused my brain to go into hyper drive and add excitement where there wasn’t any. “Sorry, must have been imagining things.”

  “I’ve probably just worn you out from my Underbelly Tour.” Kenzo looked at his watch as he opened the door for me. “We better head back. It’s ten forty-five. You don’t want to miss your train. “

  As we speed walked toward the station, I had to admit Love Hotels really did look like a lot of fun. I could see using one of the fancy boutique rooms as my personal day spa after a day like today. Ah to luxuriate in a big Jacuzzi tub and then move over to a tanning booth to get a little color. Gina was always bugging me about how my parents must be vamps because I was so white.

  By the time we arrived in front of the station, I was in Fantasyland. That is until I looked at the JumboTron and something caught my eye. “Oh crap. It’s eleven fifteen. We’re never going to make it to the station in time. I’m going to kill you right now.”

  He looked at me like I was crazy. “I thought I had at least ten minutes to get you on the train. I had no idea we blew it.”

  I liked the way he threw the “we” in there.

  “Look, what am I supposed to do now? I can’t believe you did this to me again.”

  “I know. Why don’t you call your host family and tell them you’re going to stay with Gina? I can take you to a capsule hotel and you can sleep there tonight.”

  “Capsule hotel? What the heck is that?”

  Kenzo looked surprised. “You haven’t seen them? They take up a whole section at Shinjuku station. Let me show you one. They’re cool.”

  We walked up the mile-high main stairs to the west side of the station. Somehow, I got the feeling I’d been set up. Like Kenzo had pulled the old the-car-ran-out-of-gas routine, except we’d run out of time. I hated to admit it but part of me was excited at the prospect of spending the night in Tokyo with Kenzo.

  He proceeded to lead me on a crazy path of twists and turns, finally ending up in front of what could best be described as the inside of a spaceship. A huge plastic wall made up of a series of large oval-shaped tubes with frosted glass doors took up the whole side of the platform.

  Kenzo pulled on my arm. “Look over there. A guy’s getting in. You can see what it’s like inside.”

  The man put a card into a slot on the front of the capsule and, just like magic, the door popped open. Inside was a long tube-like compartment with a small mattress, pillows and a blanket. A tiny light in the ceiling, no bigger than a pen flashlight, cast a faint glow. All I could think of were the freezer units I’d seen in the morgues on detective shows. There was no way I’d be able to sleep in a capsule with my claustrophobia.

  He rubbed the side of the capsule. “See, aren’t they great? You just jump in and crash.”

  “Great? There’s no way you’re getting me into one of those things. Besides, what if I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night?”

  Kenzo gave me an exasperated look. “The public restrooms are just down at the end of this set of cubicles. What more could you ask for?”

&
nbsp; I folded my arms in front of me. “How about a real place to sleep? I can’t believe you can ask me to sleep in one of these things after we’ve just been looking at all those luxurious rooms at Love Hotels.”

  Kenzo planted a huge grin on his face. “Gee, Erin, is that a proposition?”

  Chapter 5

  I’m Not That Kind of Girl

  November 16-11:30 PM

  Kenzo continued to grin as I tossed my hair back in a vain attempt to look cool.

  “Very funny. You know what I mean. We are just friends after all.”

  He reached over and stroked my hand. “Oh, come on, admit it. You’re also my number one fan.”

  Maybe I was, but I didn’t want him to know. I brushed his hand away. “How can I be the number one fan of a guy who just landed me squarely back in the doghouse?”

  He let out a sigh. “Sorry. Let’s call your host family and let them know you’re not coming home. Then we can figure out where you’re going to sleep tonight. Sound good?”

  I had to admit his solution sounded reasonable, but what the heck was I going to say to Okasan? There had to be something else I could do. “Can’t I take a taxi?”

  “To Takao? It’s over two hours from here. It would probably cost you three hundred dollars to get home.” Kenzo gave me an encouraging grin as he handed me his cell phone. “Call home.”

  After six rings, Aki answered the phone. “Mushi Mushi, hello?”

  “Hi, Aki. I just wanted to let you know I’m going to stay with Gina tonight. Kenzo and I met up with her in Shinjuku. Please tell Okasan. Bye.”

  Kenzo gave me a thumbs-up. “Nice job. Handled like a true professional.”

  I didn’t say anything. Why did he put me in this position again? Did he lose track of time or was missing the train a maneuver to get me in a Love Hotel?

  Kenzo grabbed my hand. “Look, let’s go to a coffee shop and figure out a plan.”

  I let out an audible sigh. “Okay. As long as I can get a drink not served by a girl with no panties.”