The cop just wanted to make contact and let us know he was on to us. We weren’t detained from our wanderings for more than a few minutes. Slightly enraged, Billy and Ned were now in a feisty mood, and more than ever ready for a good time.
Continuing down the street, we came across a gambling joint. It was too much. Slot machines, blackjack, roulette. Sparks and I jumped to it, cashing in our yen for tokens and pouring them into the slot machines. Billy and Ned weren’t quite so enthusiastic. They watched us for a while, throwing away an occasional yen. A Japanese fellow who’d been hanging out in the place struck up a conversation with them. They were both trashed and were laughing at everything he said. The fellow picked up on it and began laughing too. But soon the novelty wore off and Billy and Ned said they were going to a bar the man had told them about and would meet us back in the gaming hall in a few minutes.
Sparks and I kept playing. On the machine next to mine a fellow was raking in jackpot after jackpot. It was incredible. I asked him his secret, to which he replied in Pidgin English that it was the number of coins you put in that gave you the best odds. I followed his example and hit the jackpot myself. Delighted with my luck, I went up to the cashier to turn in my tokens. She looked at me and smiled, pointing to the multilingual sign that hid in the darkest corner of the room:
GAMES ARE FOR ENJOYMENT ONLY. NO MONEY WILL BE GIVEN OUT.
Disgusted, I walked away with Sparks and handed my mentor all the tokens I’d won. Strange people, strange people …
Billy and Ned, as was to be expected, did not return. Sparks was a square, and I wasn’t up for what they wanted, so they blew us off. No problem—we actually felt like taking it easy, anyway. We strolled into a shopping mall and picked up some maps of the town. On my recommendation Sparks bought a copy of The Tale of Genji.
Having done this, we stepped into a backstreet noodle joint for dinner. The beer flowed and the noodles were fine. At that point anything tasted better than what we’d been getting on the ship.
There is a strange cult in this world not known to the population at large. It is less flamboyant than the International Society of Odd Fellows, and more mysterious than the Knights of Columbus. Its ways make the Masons look like novices. This cult is that of the Golden Horde, a select group of people who realize and edify the glory of Genghis Khan. As it happened, both Sparks and I were active members.
Sparks was a very intelligent man. He’d worked for the military in the Arctic Circle, on the DEW line, and had joined the Merchant Marine as the result of what appeared to have been a midlife crisis. It was a joy for me to find another as worked up as I was about the Mighty Khan, the great unsung genius.
But the time had come to return to the ship, and after navigating our way via the railroad to Sakai (which involved numerous wrong stops, stilted conversations with policemen, and various taxi rides), we awaited the launch on the dock.
The launch went out only every four hours, and if Billy and Ned were going to make watch they had to catch this midnight ride. But they never showed up. Sparks and I were wondering what to do when a nervous Japanese businessman showed up. He was a company representative, and he told us they were in jail.
CHAPTER 11
THE OLD-TIMERS TOOK the news with an air of “I told you so!” smugness. Billy and Ned were troublemakers! What the fuck did they think they were doing? Who the fuck did they think they were? Etc., etc.…
Charlie and I smiled at each other when we heard them bitching. He leaned over to me and said, “Those motherfuckers—they pulled the same exact fucking shit in their day, and now look at them, cackling like a bunch of old ladies.”
The old-timers were now generally to be found in the mess, while the boys hung out in the lounge. It was the beginning of the second distinction on the ship: officers vs. men; old-timers vs. the boys. Not that the latter conflict bred much ill will. It was mostly a question of the old-timers wanting to sleep at night and the boys being sick of hearing the same stories from World War II over and over again.
Our two war heroes returned to duty that afternoon. They’d been fined and let out on their own recognizance. That was generally the practice with seamen or sailors in any port; it was to be expected.
In a party held in Jimmy’s room that night the true story came to light. Ned and Billy had wandered off to a bar and gotten trashed. Ned fell asleep at the bar, and Billy was in a state of complete incoherence. He managed to get up and go to the bathroom at one point, but while he was in there a cop burst in and grabbed him from behind. Billy wheeled around and KO’d the cop, then ran out to get Ned. Mama-san had called the cops while Billy was in the bathroom, and the thin man who’d been following us was right there. It seems when we split up he’d felt it wise to follow those two. Billy didn’t get very far before the riot police were on him. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d stuck to his fists. Unfortunately, Billy bit a policeman in the chest, apparently ripping out a fair-sized chunk of his flesh, and that’s when the nightsticks fell.
So far as the boys were concerned, they were heroes. The liquor flowed and the jokes got worse but somehow funnier. Billy came up to me and shook my hand, saying, “You goofy motherfucker!” Then he put on a concerned, innocent tone: “What happened to you guys? Ned and I went to a bar, had one drink, and that was it.” He felt guilty for ditching us, but it was no problem—we were getting along and it was all right.
The party continued. Billy turned to me an hour later and said, with less guilt this time, “How’d it go with you guys? We missed you; did you wait there? We showed up. But, hey, a good fuckin’ time, huh? Yeah, a GOOD FUCKING TIME!!”
The boys began to notice that Billy was getting particularly drunk. He was swaying about the room with his drink and shouting every word. We had all tried to phone home in Osaka, but none of us had gotten through. That hurt Billy especially. He and his wife were not getting along at all when he left, and it had been eating away at him for two months now.
Where was she? Why wasn’t there anyone at home? Worse yet, when he tried again, a recording came on and said the number had been changed.
The third time Billy turned to me he was mad. “Where were you guys? We waited for you but you never showed up!”
Then Billy snapped. I’d seen it before with a friend of mine who’d taken acid and didn’t know how to handle it. The subconscious took over; he wasn’t the same person. No one in the room was the same to him, and nothing that had gone on over the last two months was as it had been. Like a prophet, he went around to each of us, one by one. Each person in the room received a full analysis of himself from deep down inside the man’s primal fears.
Jimmy and the cadet were noticeably shaken. Ned had passed out, so there was no one to help Billy. He was lost, completely lost. Charlie tried to carry the conversation as if nothing was wrong, but Billy’s ravings silenced him.
After this had gone on for half an hour, the cadet took to talking about it to his face. Billy couldn’t hear; he was lost.
“Gee, I’d like to do something for the guy, but what the fuck,” the cadet said.
I signaled to the cadet to stop it. I was trying to talk him down, but it wasn’t working. He was too far gone, and I was still a newcomer. Billy just kept it up, preaching to his captive audience until we finally made excuses and went off to bed.
Billy was not the only one who’d undergone a personality change. While his was an extreme example, Bud, Peanuts, and many of the others were very different now that they had booze whenever they wanted. Which was all the time.
The next morning, life went on without further mention of the incident with Billy. Bud stayed on after his watch and stuck around in the lounge. He was overwhelmingly relieved to have a good stiff drink again. He offered me a scotch and I accepted. Despite his uncannily good mood, however, he was still apt to bitch.
“This trip has been a fucking disaster,” he said. He wasn’t in his element. He was too physically perfect, too noble in his manner. As it tur
ned out, he was a college dropout and came from a family that lived in a wealthy suburb of Wilmington. But he was also a surly malcontent, and had taken to the sea with a vengeance.
This morning his main entertainment was a Japanese porno magazine that he had picked up in Sakai. The law in Japan was somewhat arbitrary—you could buy pornography in vending machines anywhere around the city, but the pornography could not show any sexual organs other than the woman’s breasts. Thus one often found the standard centerfold crudely defaced by the publisher, who had scratched out the genitalia with a knife. In the high-class magazines, such as the Japanese Playboy, an airbrush was used to smooth out any offensive material.
CHAPTER 12
AT FIRST I THOUGHT it was my imagination, a projection of my pirate fantasies. I could have sworn I’d seen well over a dozen people that first day ashore wearing eye patches. The second venture into Osaka confirmed this. Yes, there was in fact an inordinate number of people with cumbersome gauze bandages over their eyes.
I figured it had something to do with the terrible Japanese pollution. We had all heard the horror stories about schoolchildren wearing gas masks, and about the fresh-air vending machines. I was mistaken, however. The oil company had sent a watchman to the ship while we were in the harbor, a nice fellow who spoke good English and gave us tips on the town. When I asked him about the eye patches he explained that they were from plastic surgery. In Japan big Western eyes had become very chic, and hundreds of Japanese were having operations on their eyes, widening them, one at a time.
Our friend the watchman lived in one of the empty cabins on B deck. When he wasn’t talking to the chief about port logistics (which was very seldom) he could be found in the lounge, watching TV with the crew.
I still hadn’t called home, though, and for my second foray I asked the watchman to write down the location of some place where I could call the States. He was glad to do this, and on the back of the map he’d given me he scrawled the address in Japanese. Underneath he wrote the English translation: THE GLAND HOTEL.
It wasn’t long before we were all accustomed to the new way of life. With two months of back wages burning holes in our pockets it wasn’t hard to have a good time ashore. One afternoon I decided to split for Kyoto and, packing my knapsack, I made for the gangway. Jake, Joe, and Charlie were also going ashore. The old-timers looked at me with disapproval, asking “Are you going on the town looking like that?”
I had on my basic blue jeans/work shirt outfit and hadn’t really given it much thought. Seamen, however, like to dress up when going ashore. They carefully unfold their special outfits and slap on their cologne (and not Old Spice, either—Jimmy said all anybody gives him at Christmas is Old Spice gift sets!). It was a way of distinguishing themselves, I guess, but they all had the worst taste in clothing. Billy especially—when he got ready to go ashore, he inevitably wore the tackiest polyesters known to man.
Charlie, on the other hand, was like me in that he didn’t care what he wore. He started laughing at the old-timers and told them to go fly a kite.
After another tedious forty-minute launch trip the four of us walked into town together. Sakai was a very quiet little town, and we were probably some of the only Westerners who had visited there in years. The townsfolk treated us with something bordering on suspicion, serving us with a surprised and uneasy look in their eyes. In the center of town was the bank where we went to change our money. For some reason it took Jake and Joe an extra long time to get it done, so we told them we’d meet them in the bar across the street.
As soon as we were outside, Charlie asked me what I was up to. When I told him I was on my way to Kyoto, he asked if he could come along. We decided not to wait around for Joe and Jake—they were going to slow us down, and we were on the move.
The train ride was more like a subway ride from Coney Island to Co-op City. There were only occasional hints of something other than the urban sprawl. The cityscape changed, though—the imposing concrete megabuildings of Osaka gave way to smaller, less impersonal structures. Then there were the pagodas. Then the massive temples. We were in the heart of the former capital of one of the great aristocracies of all time.
We walked out into the street and took a look around at the swirl of traffic and tourists. Even in their own country, Japanese tourists march in large, controlled groups and wear cameras. And this was the tourist mecca of the whole Honshu Island. They visited in droves.
We decided to check out the big temple opposite the station. It was actually a complex of temples sealed off from the din of the modern world by a ten-foot earthen rampart that had no visible gaps in it allowing for comings or goings. This mystery could not go unsolved, so we searched for an opening. Sure enough, there was a private driveway, and we were in.
All we could hear inside were the sounds of the local birds and the distant hum of a hundred monks chanting. We had stumbled into the private sector and had the run of three great temples and their gardens. The broad wooden boardwalks creaked with each step—“the nightingale’s song.” It was intentional. If anyone ever tried to sneak up on the shogun, he’d be betrayed by his own treacherous footfalls.
The main buildings and court were open to the public. The Temple Prime was on that day filled with priests undergoing some sort of obscure Shinto religious ritual. Charlie and I took off our shoes and sat down before the meditating monks. The sound of their chanting was as smooth as the beatings of bees’ wings. It drifted over the crowd and lulled us into a blissful calm.
But Charlie wasn’t ready to spend the afternoon in a trance and got up. He wondered, “Where are the whores, anyway?”
We hit the street again and wandered the town.
There wasn’t much to do at that point; we had reached something of an impasse. Charlie wanted action and I wanted temples. But I went along with him—why not?
Down the streets we roamed, always on the lookout for a geisha house or a promising bar. At one street corner we ran into a Dutch hippie and rapped with him for a while. Charlie scared him off, though, by asking about whorehouses. I guess they hadn’t put that in Let’s Go: Japan.
There was one building that advertised beautiful women on the outside, and Charlie dragged me in. The ultramodern and ultrachic décor should have tipped us off right away that we were on the wrong track. The elevator doors opened on the top floor and we found our bedraggled, sweaty selves staring at two high-priced, high-fashion models attending a very elegant dinner. We didn’t bother with the other floors.
Night was falling and Charlie was disappointed by the lack of action. Even so, we were having a good time and decided to hit the road again. Suddenly we found ourselves in the red light district.
Charlie was psyched. This was the place—this was going to be it. But it never happened. The hawkers in front of every club either ignored us or said we weren’t invited. Something was definitely not quite right, and it was us. They didn’t want us hanging around, two uncouth Americans, strangers in the town, eager for their women.
We wandered the district for an hour or so before finally giving up. Charlie was angry and disgusted. So we decided: When in doubt, go to the closest beer vending machine (right next to the contraceptive dispenser and the Vend-O-Toy) and down a few beers.
As the night wore on, and as we grew less coherent, the better time we had. We took in the silent backstreets of the city, where front doors were never locked and every family garden looked like a work of art. We gazed up at the Toji Castle, dangling our feet over the moat and teasing the two-foot carp. And eventually we were reduced to hysterics, rolling on the sidewalk with tears pouring down our cheeks as the uncomfortable passersby gave us wide berth.
The night was spent in an empty house that was under construction. Charlie had obviously been out on the street before with no place to live, for he spotted the house at once and slipped in with a master’s grace. It wasn’t a long sleep, though. Charlie wanted to get out of there before the workers arrived. (It seems late-sleep
ing bums often get beaten to a pulp.)
Charlie split town that morning, wanting to get back to make some overtime. I stayed on and wandered up the mountain that overlooked the town. There I discovered several forgotten graveyards, and several more temples. The thick green underbrush that swept over them blended into the morning mist. There was a tranquility there that was lost even in the main temple down below, a simplicity and a quietude.
The TV had become the center of attraction on the Rose City. This was partly because we were sick of our movies, and partly because it was so weird. Each morning the day began with Tokyo TV’s version of the Today show. In the lower right-hand corner a digital readout of the time let commuters know just exactly where they stood in the shape of the day’s coming events.
In the afternoon it was all monster movies and serials. One prizewinner involved a record monster that threw 45s with deadly accuracy; others, various gymnasts in outlandish costumes.
One afternoon there was a samurai movie on. We were sitting around, watching it sleepily, when Bud came in and frowned.
“Where’s the fucking monster?”
As if on cue, a huge fire-breathing reptile emerged from the lake and chased off the panicking samurai.
Perhaps the oddest shows on the tube were the baseball games. Every night there were at least two or three on. We did not find this altogether surprising, until the watchman told us that half the games we’d been watching were high school games. That seemed a bit much—broadcasting Yokohama High’s big mid-season showdown with Osaka Academy. But the Japanese loved it, and, like everything else, they took it deadly seriously. At the end of a big doubleheader between two high schools, the losing team ran out onto the field and started filling little yellow sacks with dirt. We asked the watchman what was going on.
The Voyage of the Rose City Page 12
