Harajuku Sunday

by S. Michael Choi

  "Are you okay now?"

  "Let me see."

  A few minutes pass, and we hang out in the bar thinking our private thoughts. Things seem to settle, but then all over again, Soren feels claustrophobic-the walls are closing in, fast—and much worse this time. He needs to go; he really needs to get out of here. "C'mon Ritchie, help me out here man." We pay the check and leave. I try to find a cab. Soren's pupils are dilated.

  "It's kind of a waste," I say, after he tells me he wants to take a Prozac to shut down the MDMA. "Don't you know how hard it is to score good stuff?" But then, he is sweating and pale, maybe even green. He disappears again, this time for a convenient alley, and then returns. "Ok, let's get the cab."

  This time, one is right there. We hustle the driver; we ride back to Roppongi, and then double-time all the way back up to Soren's twentieth-floor apartment. "Okay, okay," he says, after he sweeps dozens of vials out of the bathroom medicine cabinet, and finally—finally—finally--finds that Prozac, which he dry-swallows, gulping it down. Both of us collapse onto his black leather coach where we had started the evening, but with the view now of the city fully night.

  "So you feel better now?"

  "A thousand percent," he says, with eyes closed, and shudders. He's subdued, but it's only been a matter of seconds since he swallowed the Prozac, far too early for the SSRI to have had any impact. It's true what they say, I think, it is all in the mind.

  "Were we sitting near an overpass, and then I went and took a piss at one point?"

  "Right before we got the cab."

  "Okay good, I was starting to think I hallucinated that."

  For a few hot moments, I feel a flash of hatred. It's one thing if those who have more than you have greater strength of character. But I would never let myself get into this sort of state. As quickly as it comes, though, the feeling passes; I recognize the absurdity of the situation; I'm not going to get caught up in it. It's actually much later before I consider the possibility that the whole breakdown is an internal, drug-induced mind-game on Soren's part, a sort of emotional trick. He's lonely; he wants a male friend. This is his way of establishing grounds for me not to feel inferior in his presence, as so many others did.

  This is how begins Soren's and my friendship, a brief, breathless, high-octane, flighty sort of relationship that fuels itself precisely because so many come and go in that city. That summer I meet Soren, I have already been in Japan for more than an entire year, and probably met upwards of two hundred people, most of whom I end up meeting only once or twice again if ever. Such is the young gaijin expat reality. My Tokyo days, however, date from the beginning of knowing Soren, for it is only through him that the chaos and churn begin to fall into a recognizable pattern, and hence, one that can be exploited. You go to people's parties, but do not throw your own. You ask for favors, but manage to delay recompense. You mooch and prevail, because there is a brand new person to meet just around the corner or landing at Narita, and they are too dazed and confused at the rush of oncoming sensations, they are too young and naive and so easily fooled, all the intensely foreign and new exotic surroundings dazzling their senses, to understand what is happening, and they accept anything and everything as merely part of the experience. So long as you are relentlessly recognized as being in the know, so long as you are picking up new people faster than you are losing the old, the process is entirely sustainable. In this way Tokyo yields to me. If my new engagement of the city is actually the one that is truly naïve and trivial, if I accept this external system as my own without thinking it through enough, then this is only something inevitable, a completely foreseeable counter-season to the relative middle-class childhood and a university life on scholarship. Here, now, in Japan, with Soren, with his flowing stream of acquaintances and connections, the onrushing flood-tide of people streaming through the city, and finally, yet most certainly not unimportantly, the apartment that becomes the solar center of a constellation of activity for a free-spending crowd of young undisciplined expats, I am reborn into a priest of restlessness and a prophet of those without code.

  "Oh don't invite Julian, he's such a weirdo!" Soren is on his cell phone. "What?" A pause. "Oh it's his film that came out?" Pause. "Well I guess he has to be there then."

  I sit at the kitchen counter, suppressing a grin and nursing a Fuzzy Navel. After his call ends, Soren comes over.

  "Isn't there some way to have a party for somebody but not actually invite them?"

  "Yeah, I definitely think so. Especially if it's like a birthday party, then you know, you can like bring out a cake, and instead of the person blowing out the candles, everyone can just do it."

  "Say, there's an idea!" Soren considers for a moment. "Seriously though, what else do you know about what's going on? I'd really like to keep a mile away from Julian, he's gone all weird from living here too long."

  "Well, there's this new guy at work, Brad, and I promised to show him around. He said he knew some people visiting and I can find out what's up."

  "He cool?"

  "California surfer. Lemme make a call."

  "OK."

  So, I make the call. We are, however, disappointed. Half-a-dozen text messages and voice calls streaming across the great Kanto plain later, it's clear there's already too much momentum forming for at least starting off with the indie filmmaker's night out with his artsy friends. We could try to get something else started in Shibuya maybe, playing on the seeds of an existing trio looking to get more time in J-pop sugarhigh central, but clearly the best choice is to at least start off the evening at Lush, and then we see what happens from there.

  "Oh well, at least I can stay in Roppongi tonight,“ says Soren, looking at the bright side of things. "Oh wait, dry cleaning." Soren looks over at Chairman Mao. "Ahhh! It's gonna close. Ritchie, do me a favor?" He's already racing out the door.

  "Wha?"

  "I gotta go pick up my dry cleaning, so go meet Ayako in front of Almond's? You guys all go over to Lush together, and I'll meet you guys there." Almond's coffeeshop is on the way. Arriving at the intersection, I spot Ayako immediately. As stated, she's tall and extraordinarily beautiful, and when she looks and smiles, my knees weaken just for a moment: it's like the sun shining. But I don't betray it. I smile back, and raise my hand in casual greeting.

  "Yo, Ayako!"

  "Hey Ritchie. My friends coming fifu-teen minutes."

  "No problem. So how are things with you?"

  "Great. Have we decided what we going to do yet?"

  "Well, it looks like there's some filmmaker who just released a film and people want to go to his thing first, but then after that, I think it's pretty open."

  "Cool. I like movie!"

  Ayako's friends show up almost immediately thereafter. While cute, they don't quite eclipse the shining supernova that is Ayako Ishibashi, J-girl goddess. One might suspect they are almost chosen by Ayako to frame and complement her looks, two retainers who don't outshine the queen. But, perhaps as a consequence of being more down to earth, they are friendly and cool and speak decent English, and in half Japanese, half-English, we muddle through some cheerful small-talk as we walk over to Lush and people already streaming in, the indie black-clad artsy people who already have a table, and some group of somebody's friends also arriving as we arrive just as my cell phone buzzes to announce an incoming text. "WHERE U AT?" It's Brad. "COME ON OVER," I text back. "LUSH ON ROPPONGI-DORI."

  The August heat hangs heavy on the street, and tonight, girls in kimono and sunglasses clop down the sidewalk in their wooden sandals, geta, giving a cultural edge to the general street sleaze that prevails. I sit back and order a gin and tonic and the girls get frozen margaritas. From the next table over: "Are you hunting tonight?" "The predator always hunts." Laughter. Hands waving at arriving friends.

  "So I worry about Soren these days," comments Ayako, perhaps a trifle wistfully.

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Like he get in car accident, maybe living too much stress in life, it
's not good."

  "I'm sure it's just a phase. City life is kinda intense, I guess."

  "Somebody needs to take care Soren. Somebody who really cares him."

  "I think you're a great influence."

  My words, however, don't seem to have any impact. Ayako continues to look a wistful, and she toys with the umbrella in her tropical drink. Our attention is then drawn to the artsy table, with the arrival of the night's man of the hour, the filmmaker Julian Hara.

  "Hey Julian!" "The maestro arrives!" "Welcome!" The artsy types with their ironic 1950s glasses and hipster dress shirts welcome their friend with glad cries full of themselves and pleased.

  "You wanna go and congratulate the filmmaker?" I whisper over to Ayako.

  "Okay." She says. "Let's go after he settles down."

  For the moment before we go over, I study this figure of local fame and my impressions are less than completely favorable. Julian's thin as a reed, with a sort of neurotic look to his appearance and sallow skin. He is the epitome of that unsuccessful adoption of Japanese thin-boy fashions. Everything in terms of the torso is dead on—completely stylized Japanese UNIQLO sleek, but there's something weird about the way his black-curly haired head is perched on the whole deal, an out-of-place, nerdy, sallow speckled complexion off-putting lego-head on top of a thin torso that's otherwise pure Roppongi hipster. It's almost as if he can't quite shake off the person he really is, that the head is the real Julian, still Canadian geek, resisting the fashion evolution brought about by exposure to Japan (girlfriend?) to the point of an up-to-date wardrobe so that the body is neat hipster. Wiry black hair and ectomorph's build: the art-school loser.

  I think Julian gives a tiny flinch when he notices Ayako and me walking over to him. (Or is it that everyone inside at Lush, actually, gives a little but real, detectable reaction when I walk in with J-goddess in tow…)

  "So, Julian, congratulations on the release of your film. I'll have to get a copy from you."

  "Um, thank you. Um, it's underlying aesthetic truth to e-e-essential entropy of um, things, vision of p-p-post-apocalyptic Tokyo, um, being in now, s-s-subterranean truths."

  I look for a second at the film-maker with the strangely nerdy head spouting off. "Uh, okay. Well, sounds like I can't miss it then."

  Ayako beams at the nervous Julian. "I'll definitely check it out."

  "Um, thank you." And there's a moment of awkwardness and then that's that.

  Brad, my new colleague, arrives next. Unfortunately, he's going to turn out to be one of those people who can't stand the country for some reason and will return home to California within three months, but tonight, he outdoes himself. He shows up with his promised friends and they turn out to be three hot girls and this backpacking girl from Australia he picked up off the street about five hours ago. We all pull up chairs around our table and start chattering away, as our waitress brings another round of iced drinks, wet with condensation from the summer heat.

  Brad's backpacking friend: "Hey, so everyone just has to wear a uniform while they're in school?"

  "Yeah, it's just the way it is in this country."

  "But it's Saturday."

  "Yeah, but they think it's stylish and flattering so they wear it even on weekends. And some schools still have Saturday morning sessions."

  "No way, that's far out. This country is weird!"

  It is easy to get caught up in the excitement of a new arrival and of course, our own time in-country is at this point measured in months. The conversation can be truly endless: all the spectacle and all the phenomena and all the theories, and the impact of the mass media telling us What Japan Is in all those convulated ways everyone has, those theories that everyone starts making up when nine months living abroad turns you into some sort of Japan expert. Without even realizing it, an hour or two passes into the evening when I go to the bathroom and I notice that Soren's arrived in a fresh new shirt just pressed from the cleaners.

  "So there I was with the little aspiring actress girl and we were both getting pretty drunk, and then Miki, remember Miki?" His audience eases in closer to hear the story. "Miki had always liked me, but then she started licking me on my other cheek, and I was like, okay." We smile. "Then all of a sudden, Takashi-he hadn't said a word all evening, he was just being grumpy, suddenly has this, like spasm, this freakout, and he says, 'Solen alleady habu girlfliend! Solen alleady habu girlfriend!' And he just looked exactly like this little angry Japanese general, this little Tojo getting all heated." General laughter erupts. "I couldn't control myself. I laughed out my drink through my nose."

  "That's Takashi. He's our little white-trash Japanese."

  "Aw shut up, you're Euro-trash French, Devra."

  "That I am. That I am."

  "I hate Japanese men. One time I was sitting there peacefully on the train and an old guy whipped out his penis and started masturbating in front of me."

  A general cringe.

  "If you ask around, every Western girl in her twenties who's been here at least three months, and I mean every single one, has been either groped or stalked or flashed by some Japanese perv at some point. These people are freakin’ perverts."

  I feel the need to intervene. "Yeah, but it's the safest country in the world for women to walk around at night. You can't say that about New York or London."

  "You just don't understand. It was disgusting. I don't care if I can walk around at night if I'm not safe on the train in broad daylight."

  "What did the other passengers do?" pipes in an girl.

  "Nothing. That's it! They just pretended not to see what was going on."

  The males present nod their sympathies. There may, however, be the faintest of amused smiles flickering on their faces for the briefest of deniable moments.

  "I think Japanese guys are all gay. Or at least eighty percent. Come on, how else do you explain those little handbags some of them carry? The salon hair-does?"

  "Oh no," says two or three people. "You're reading it all wrong... European men also..."

  Julian and Soren meet later that evening. It's at least two or three in the morning, right before the film-maker and some of his friends call it a night, and only the real hard-core Roppongi crowd is staying on, the regulars of GASPanic, that downmarket club of last resort. Julian calls Soren "boy wonder" or "boy band" which is unexpected, but the timing is perfect, and it's just so unexpected out of the shy, neurotic nerd that for two seconds we're staring at him in incredulity before we erupt in laughter, we do have to give him absolute credit for it, Soren's smirk notwithstanding. And anyway, it's just Tokyo in the summer, no one can really hold anything against anyone, not when you're well-dressed and beautiful, and in this Japan just this once. Groups coalesce, merge, drift apart, and rejoin throughout the small numbered hours, our cell phones buzzing, our texts tripping back and forth across the space of a few hundred yards or across the city. One of the girls for reasons known only to her makes me take a pair of sneakers to her in another club, and I oblige because she's cute and somebody I've known for a full year now, which by Tokyo standards makes us old friends. The main body ends up going to Vanilla: it's just so in this summer, and we drift in and out of GASPanic and the other more pure-play meat market clubs, and finally some people mosey over to the Wall Street that has the underground dance floor. I end up watching a soccer game at a bar (live, it's daytime in Europe) with a German girl before saying "Auf Wiedersehen" and putting her on the correct train, or maybe that's some other night, all of these summer Tokyo weekends blend together in a seamless, tipsy succession, so many nights of listless drinking, chit-chat, smoking cigarettes, clubbing, casual flirtation, tipsy bumping into each other on the dance floor, tipsy accidental hand on the girl. But no actually, it was definitely that night, just one of those high summer nights, after so many hours of clubbing almost deafened from the music, leaving 911 you are surprised at how the sun has already begun to rise, you can see the day has already begun, and you can see over there, Tokyo Tower, sil
ent, uncommenting, still, in the summer sky already lightening to day.

  II.

  Summer draws to a close. The hot, miasmic subtropical air begins to retreat from over Kanto, hurried along by breezes that have blown in from the great Asian mainland. As if by a painter's brush, oranges and umbers, reds and browns begin to sweep across the forests of Japan, seen on television news reports in passing, the colors first touching the mountain tops and then creeping downwards and southwards and into the lowlands below. In the streets of Tokyo, there is a complementary change as the first light jackets begin to appear on the people, and the girls of Tokyo slowly, reluctantly, abandon their miniskirts and t-shirts for longer apparel. Ayako finally leaves Soren, their relationship unconsummated, her still wistful, him barely noticing. Soren gets caught up at work and has to put in longer hours, and then that fades away, we return to partying. We have one final summer party at OaraiBeach in Ibaraki and make some desultory plans to get something going out to Kyoto, but nothing ever comes of it.