When You Are Engulfed in Flames

by David Sedaris

  January 31

  Four weeks without a cigarette.

  Given the state of my Japanese it seems unfair to criticize some of the English I’ve been seeing. A sign outside a beauty parlor reads “Eye Rash Tint,” and instead of laughing, I should give them credit for at least coming close. What gets me are the mass-produced mistakes, the ones made at Lawson, for example. A huge, nationwide chain of convenience stores, and this is what’s printed on the wrappers of their ready-made sandwiches: “We have sandwiches which you can enjoy different tastes. So you can find your favorite one from our sandwiches. We hope you can choose the best one for yourself.”

  It’s not that horribly off the mark, but still you’d think that someone, maybe someone in management, might say, “I’ve got a cousin who lives in America. What do you say I give him a call and run this by him before we slap it on tens of millions of wrappers?” But no.

  Among Hugh’s birthday gifts were two handmade teacups I bought at Mitsukoshi, a department store. Included in the box was a profile of the craftswoman, who has, for many years, been enchanted by “the warmth of Cray.” I thought that this was another craftsperson, the beloved Cray-san, but Hugh figured out that what they meant to say was “clay.” The sentence, in its entirety, reads, “With being enchanted by the warmth of Cray and the traditional of pottery over the period so far she is playing active parts widely as a coordinator who not only produce and design hers own pottery firstly but suggest filling Human’s whole life with fun and joyful mind.”

  February 5

  Beside the Imperial Palace, there’s a park, with a big koi-filled pond in it. Hugh and I were just nearing the gate yesterday when a pair of young men approached, saying, “Yes. Hello. A minute please?”

  Both were students at a local university and were wondering if they might show us the sights, “Not for money,” explained the larger of the two, “but to help improve our Engarish.”

  “I don’t think so,” Hugh told him, and the young man who had spoken, and whose name turned out to be Naomichi, turned to his friend. “He is saying to us, ‘No, thank you.’”

  Then I piped up. “Oh, what the heck,” I said to Hugh. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

  “Are you saying, ‘Yes, please’?” Naomichi asked. And I told him that I was.

  For the first five minutes of our guided tour, we talked about the ruined buildings. “If this is the shell of the guardhouse, where’s the place the guards were guarding?” I asked.

  “Burned down,” Student No. 2 told me.

  Except for a few walls, it seemed that everything had burned. “Why didn’t you build stuff with stone?” I asked, this as if I were scolding one of the three pigs. “If fires were a problem, and they obviously were, why not move on to fireproof.”

  “Not our way,” Naomichi said.

  “We did not then have the skills,” his friend added.

  It was here that we lost interest in the park and began asking the students about their lives. “What’s your major?” “Do you live with your parents?” “How long have you been studying English?” While Hugh and Naomichi talked about the declining popularity of sumo wrestling, Student No. 2 and I discussed the majesty of nature. “What wild animals do you have in Tokyo?” I asked.

  “Wild animal?”

  “Do you have squirrels?”

  No response.

  I pretended to fill my cheeks with nuts, and the young man said, “Ah, sukaworra!”

  I then moved on to snakes and asked if he was afraid of them.

  “No. I think that they are very cute.”

  Surely, I thought, he’s misunderstood me. “Snake,” I repeated, and I turned my arm into a striking cobra. “Horrible. Dangerous. Snake.”

  “No,” he said. “The only thing I am afraid of is moutha.”

  “The snake’s mouth?”

  “No,” he said, “moutha. I maybe saying it wrong, but moutha. Moutha.”

  I was on the verge of faking it when he pulled out an electronic dictionary and typed in the word he was looking for, ga, which translates, strangely enough, to “moth.”

  “You’re afraid of moths?”

  He nodded yes and winced a little.

  “But nobody’s afraid of moths.”

  “I am,” he whispered, and he looked behind us, as if afraid that one might be listening.

  “Are you afraid of butterflies too?” I asked.

  The young man cocked his head.

  “Butterfly,”I said, “colorful cousin of the moth. Are you afraid that he too will attack?”

  Hugh overheard me saying this and turned around. “What the hell are you two talking about?”

  And Student No. 2 said, “The wildness.”

  February 6

  I thought before coming here that every afternoon I would grab my iPod and my index cards and take a long walk. It’s what I did in Paris, and, as a result, whenever I use a particular phrase, I recall where I was when I learned it. Yesterday morning, for instance, I ran into Super-san, and when I asked how many children he had, I thought of the Boulevard Daumesnil, just as it reaches the Viaduct des Arts. It had rained heavily the day I learned Lesson No. 13, and the last leaves of the season, russet-colored and as big as pot holders, stuck to the sidewalk as if they had been glued down and covered with varnish. I walked for two hours that afternoon, and the phrases I learned stayed learned, or at least they have so far. I think it helped that I was smoking. Back in December, I could light a cigarette without thinking. Now I don’t light it and think so hard about what I’m missing that there isn’t room for anything else.

  A bigger problem is that it’s difficult to walk here, at least in the way that I can in London or Paris. Take Ginza, a neighborhood of fancy shops and department stores. It’s the sort of place I feel guilty for liking, the sort that offers menus in English. There’s a stand there that sells black ice cream and another that sells pizza in a cone. On Sunday afternoons, the main street is closed to traffic and beautifully dressed people parade about in their finery.

  Ginza is a mile from our apartment, and in order to reach it I have to cross umpteen lanes of traffic, often using pedestrian bridges. Then there are the elevated highways and overhead train tracks, the off-ramps and construction sites. It’s not just in this neighborhood, but everywhere I go. The arrangement of buildings is higglety-pigglety as well, the mirrored cube between the high-rise and the one-story house made of cobbled-together planks.

  As a child I once found an ant, running a crazy path across my family’s basement. I meant to open the door and herd the thing out, but then I got a better idea and dropped him through the ventilation grate in the back of our TV. What the ant saw then and what I see now are likely very similar: a chaotic vision of the future, heavy on marvels, but curiously devoid of charm. No lake, no parkland, no leafy avenues, and it stretches on forever.

  February 7

  I tried on a swimsuit at one of the Ginza department stores and made the mistake of walking fully dressed into the carpeted changing room. The saleswoman saw me and called out in the only shrill voice I’ve heard since my arrival. “Stop. Wait! Your shoes!”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that I needed to remove them, but after all this time I suppose that it should have. At a small shop I went to last weekend, I had to change into slippers in order to look into the display case. Then I put my shoes back on and had to remove them again to climb the stairs to the second level, which was designated as a sock-only zone.

  Then there was our recent visit to the Asakura Choso Museum, the restored home and studio of the late, noted sculptor. Upon entering, you change into slippers, which are then exchanged for other slippers if you want to step onto the patio. Slippers are removed entirely for the second floor, but put back on for the third, and then changed again for the rooftop garden. The artist’s sculptures were displayed throughout the house, and though there were quite a few of them he could have completed twice as many if he hadn’t had to change his goddamn shoes every
three minutes.

  February 8

  Yesterday was my last day of school, and once again I had second thoughts about defecting. Our first teacher was Ayuba-sensei, one of my favorites. With her we spend a lot of time repeating things, which is fine by me. Talking is the only part I’m any good at, and she’ll occasionally reward me with a little “Ii desu,” meaning “Good.”

  At the end of the session, she moved her fingers down her cheeks, imitating tears. I started to think that I was making a terrible mistake, but then we had our break, followed by two hours with Miki-sensei. She’s a lovely woman, but I died a little when she handed out lined sheets of paper and asked us to write an essay titled “Watashi No Nihon No Seikatsu” (My Japanese Life).

  My final product was fairly simple, but it involved no cheating and it was all written in hiragana. “My Japanese life is entertaining but very busy. My place is tall — 28 stories — and all the time I am riding on the elevator. Sometimes I go to the movies with my friend Hugh-san. Every day I do homework but always I make bad tests. Now I will go to England and talk English. Maybe later I will study Japanese.”

  February 9

  To celebrate the end of school, Hugh and I went out to dinner. I ordered the tasting menu, which consisted of eight courses, none of them large enough to fill a saucer. The second — a stunted radish carved to resemble a flower, a bit of fish, a potato the size of a marble — was served in a deep wooden box and accompanied by a hand-calligraphed sign. The presentation was beautiful, each plate a different size, a different shape, a different texture. The food was good too. There just wasn’t enough of it.

  We ate at the counter, not far from a man who was just finishing a bottle of wine. “Do you mind if I light a cigarette?” he asked, and I told him to go ahead. “Have three, why don’t you, and blow the smoke this way?” I think he read my remark as sarcasm, but I was being completely sincere. Back when I was smoking myself, I was often irritated by the smell of other people’s cigarettes. Now for some reason, I love it. Especially when I’m eating.

  February 12

  Late yesterday morning, Hugh and I took our new swimsuits and headed to a nearby municipal building. There, on the seventh floor, is an Olympic-sized pool. I liked that I could see our apartment from the floor-to-ceiling windows behind the lifeguard stand. I liked the dressing room and the quiet way people moved about. The only thing I didn’t care for was the actual swimming.

  As opposed to Hugh, who’s always had a bathing cap and a pair of goggles drying in the bathroom, I haven’t attempted a lap in over thirty years. Bike riding I can manage, but three strokes in the water and I feel as if my heart might burst. It took awhile, but I eventually got from one end of the pool to the other. Then I did it again and again, each length terminating in an extended howl. While groaning and panting, I gripped the edge of the pool and screwed my eyes shut, looking, I imagine, like a half-dead monkey. Out of everyone in that room, I was the only person with hair on his chest. This was bad enough, but to have it on my back as well — I could actually feel myself disgusting people.

  February 14

  I quit smoking only six weeks ago, but already my skin looks different. It used to be gray, but now it’s gray with a little pink in it. I also notice how much easier it is to move around, to climb stairs, to run for a bus. I’ve often heard cigarettes compared to friends. They can’t loan you money, but they are, in a sense, there for you, these mute little comfort merchants always ready to lift your spirits. It’s how I now feel about macadamia nuts, and these strange little crackers I’ve been buying lately. I can’t make out the list of ingredients, but they taste vaguely of penis.

  February 15

  It is now official: there is no place on earth where you will not find a Peruvian band. Leaving Tamachi Station last night, I heard the familiar sounds of Simon and Garfunkel’s “El Condor Pasa.” Up the escalator, and there they were: five men in ponchos, blowing the pipes of Pan into cordless microphones. “Didn’t I just see you in Dublin?” I wanted to ask. “Or, no, wait, maybe it was Hong Kong, Oxford, Milan, Budapest, Toronto, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.”

  February 16

  On my way home from the park yesterday, I decided to stop and get my hair cut. The barber was just sitting around watching TV when I entered, and he invited me to set my bags on one of his three empty chairs. He then gestured for me to sit. I did, and as he covered me with a cloth I came to realize that the man had shit on his hands, a swipe or whatever, most likely on the palm. The smell was unmistakable, and every time he raised the scissors I recoiled. Spotting it would have set my mind to rest, but because he was busy, and most often gripping something, it was hard to get a good look. Then too I was preoccupied by our conversation, which required a great deal of concentration.

  Shit on his hands or no shit on his hands, you couldn’t deny that he was a remarkably friendly barber, and a talented one to boot. Early in his career he’d won some sort of a competition. I know this because he showed me a photo: him, fifty years younger, being presented with a medal. “Number one-o champ,” he said, and as he held up his index finger, I bent forward and squinted at it. “Not number two-o?”

  He knew, by my count, eight words of English, and after he had used them, we spoke exclusively in Japanese.

  “Last night for dinner I ate pork,” I told him. “What did you have?”

  “Yakitori,” he said, and I wondered how I might ask if some of that yakitori, the digested version, might not have come back to haunt him.

  “Mimi,” I said, and I pointed to my ear.

  “Very good.” And he pointed to his own ear. “Mimi!”

  I then touched the tip of my nose “Hana.”

  “That’s right, hana,” the barber said, and he touched his own.

  Next I raised my hand, fanned out the fingers, and slowly turned it this way and that, as if it were modeling jewelry on the shopping channel. “Te.”

  “Excellent,” the barber said, but rather than displaying his own hand, he simply raised it a little.

  It went on like this for twenty minutes, and when he had finished cutting my hair, the barber covered my head with a damp towel. He then proceeded to punch me about the ears. I’ve gone back and forth on this, wondering if “punch” is too strong a word, but I really don’t think it is. He didn’t fracture my skull or break any of his knuckles, he never actually drew back his arm, but it really did hurt.

  “Hey,” I said, but he just laughed and landed another blow above my right mimi. Luckily the towel was there, or in addition to the pain I’d have obsessed about the shit he was pounding into my new haircut. Of course I washed it anyway, twice as a matter of fact. Hugh had his hair cut a few weeks ago, and so I asked if his barber had punched him in the head as well.

  “Sure did,” he said. So at least that part was normal.

  February 19

  According to Amy’s friend Helen Ann, it takes thirty days to break a habit and forty-five to break an addiction. On my forty-fifth day without a cigarette, I was in Kyoto and didn’t think about smoking until we left a temple and came across a group of men gathered around an outdoor ashtray. This was at about 4:00 in the afternoon, during a brief break in the rain.

  Our weekend trip was a package deal — train fare and two nights in a slightly shabby hotel. I don’t know if it’s common or not, but all of the bellhops were women. Not one of them weighed over ninety pounds, so it felt very strange to hand over my suitcase. It also felt weird not to offer a tip, but, according to Reiko, that’s never done.

  The hotel wasn’t very busy, and its relative emptiness made it all the more depressing. Our Western-style breakfast was served on the ground floor, in a plain, harshly lit banquet room. It was there that I saw a Japanese woman eat a croissant with chopsticks. The food was self-serve, and I wonder who they consulted before deciding on the menu. Eggs and sausage made sense, as did toast, cereal, and fruit. But who eats a green salad for breakfast? Who eats mushroom soup, corn chowder, or ste
amed broccoli? On our second morning we went to an equally sad room and had the Japanese breakfast, which was served by women in kimonos. This, too, was something of a nightmare, and while shuddering I imagined a mother scolding her son. “Oh, no you don’t,” she might say. “This is the most important meal of the day, and you’re not going anywhere until you finish your pickles. That’s right, and your seaweed too. Then I want you to eat your cold poached egg submerged in broth and at least half of that cross-eyed fish.”

  February 22

  Lying in bed this morning, I realized that since leaving Paris I have not seen a single person on Rollerblades. Neither have I seen anyone on one of those push-along scooters that were a five-minute fad for the rest of the world but remain inexplicably popular in France. The problem here is bikes, which people ride on the sidewalks rather than in the streets. Elsewhere this is done with a sense of entitlement — “Get out of my way, you” — but the cyclists of Tokyo seem content to slowly, silently creep along behind you, “Don’t mind me” being the general attitude. I also notice that of the hundreds of bikes parked outside the subway station, hardly any of them are locked. This makes me wonder if people lock their cars or the front doors to their apartments.

  February 23

  Every time I return from the basement supermarket, Hugh asks me what music was playing. I wondered why he wanted to know, and then I started paying attention and realized that it’s a really good question. A few days ago, I stood in line and listened to an English rendition of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Since then I’ve heard “Rock-a-bye Baby,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” “The Bear Went Over the Mountain,” and what may well be the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing “Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s home from work we go.”

  February 27

  In the spotless restroom of the Tamachi station, I noticed that beside each urinal there’s a hook for your umbrella. It’s just another of those personal touches that keep you coming back.