by Jennifer Cox
Although flying in separately from London and Seattle respectively, Garry and I arrived at the hotel within moments of each other. It felt a little odd to be in a hotel, but we picked right up from where we’d left off in London.
Rather than succumb to jet lag, we joined Garry’s co-workers JR, Jon, Doug, Bob, and Bobby (all of whom I remembered fondly from Seattle) for a night out with JR’s Japanese friend, Toshi. We piled into two cabs and fought to get the best views out the windows as we inched through Tokyo by night.
Miniskirted teenagers chatted in private huddles as they waited to cross the road. Their bodies flickered with light from the billboard video screens and neon signs suspended from every building around, giggling mouths hidden modestly behind cupped hands and long fringes. A couple of feet away, tired-looking businessmen—shoulders drooping, suits crumpled, briefcases held limply in their slack hands—stared off into space, seemingly aware of nothing but the red crosswalk light that stood between them and the remains of their evening. Behind them all, in brightly lit alleyways, streams of people disappeared into bars that seemed too small to contain the numbers pouring in.
In Tokyo, it seemed packed was the norm, whether in the office, traffic, or bar.
We arrived at our destination, a teeny noodle place in Shibuya. The waitress led us three short paces from the door to the bar and gestured that we should sit on the stools squeezed in front of it. Heads bent low over their steaming bowls, all around us locals scooped soba noodles into their mouths, chopsticks swooping rapidly and efficiently from bowl to mouth in a movement that was both graceful and (to our Western eyes, at least) a bit greedy. Jet-lagged, disoriented, and bigger than all the other diners there, we clumsily clashed knees and prodded elbows as we swiveled around on our stools and gulped down every movement and moment being served up around us.
The next morning Garry and I had a couple of hours to explore a little of Bunkyo-ku—the ward or district the hotel was in—before he headed off with the rest of the broadcast crew to the arena where the games would be played, two days from now.
After Garry left, I lost no time heading back out into the city on my own: My traveler’s instincts were tugging—like a dog on a leash—to be free to explore. The first thing I liked to do in a strange city was to find my bearings; I didn’t feel comfortable until I knew where I was in relation to everything else. Also, I wanted to know as soon as possible what was out there to see and do. Tomorrow there was the date with Will the journalist; three days from now I had a date with Kylie’s friend Rob, a Brit working out here for one of the big airlines.
So today I wanted to explore Bunkyo-ku.
I peeked into rice cracker bakeries, watching old ladies deftly wrap long, pungent strips of seaweed around little bricks of puffed rice, or lay hand-lacquered wafers on yards and yards of bamboo mats to dry. I braved the deafening racket of the pachinko parlors, where businessmen sat for the duration of their lunch break compulsively feeding ball-bearings into slot machines: a dexterous and addictive mix of hard concentration and soft porn.
After a long day, Garry and I arrived back at the hotel again at the same time. Too jet-lagged and weary to do much, we lay in the hotel’s spacious steam room and caught up on each other’s day. Garry had never seen me with my Road Head on and was eager to hear my stories of the world around the hotel, as he’d been working in the arena for twelve hours. Swathed in towels and steamed near insensible, we lay in the sauna and sweated companionably together.
And the next morning, like an old married couple, we had breakfast, kissed each other good-bye and went off in separate directions to work: Garry to continue setting up for the broadcasts at the arena, me to date Will the journalist.
Although I’d walked as far as the subway station at Edogawabashi, I hadn’t yet traveled on the subway.
The first cut may be the deepest, but the first hurdle for solo independent travelers in a new country—whatever it may be—is always the highest. Until you have a sense of how routine things operate, a city remains frustratingly inaccessible. Today was no exception. All the ticket machines were in Japanese, and although countless locals were kind enough to stop and ask “Can I help you?” since it turned out that that was the full extent of their English, I remained stuck on square one.
In the end I just randomly bought a ticket. Through the barrier, I stood in front of the huge wall-mounted subway map to work out which lines would take me to Shibuya-Ku. Although the color-coded lines meant I could easily figure out where I had to go, it was going to be a complicated journey and I spent a few minutes looking for the shortest route. A student stopped and asked: “Can I help you?”
Thinking it was another well-meant but ultimately pointless offer, I gave the briefest answer, only to be surprised and delighted when she replied: “Ah, Shibuya-Ku is on my way. Come with me and we will travel together.”
I didn’t discover her name, but the young Japanese woman was a fascinating guide and we chatted all the way to my destination. She worked hard: In her fifth year of studying to be a doctor, she was also working in a bar to pay her tuition fees. I asked if that was how she had learned such good English.
“No,” she replied earnestly. “I spent last summer studying in New York.”
“Oh,” I said curiously. “On a medical program?”
“No,” she answered gravely. “I was training to be a cheerleader.”
As my eyebrows shot up in surprise, she gave a little moue of alarm, instinctively covering her mouth as she did so. “Here is your stop,” she said, bowing her head urgently as she gestured toward the closing door. “I hope you have a good stay here in Tokyo.”
I thanked her and jumped off the train, joining the crowd heading for the exit onto the street.
I was in Harajuku ward and was meeting Will (Date #62) here, at the entrance to Yoyogi Park. It was next to the square where the Japanese teen fashionistas bused in from the surrounding towns to show off their look (running the entire subcultural gamut from Ninja nurses to Goths and skate punks). Although curious about the phenomenon, we weren’t meeting here for that reason: Will wanted to show me the Meiji Jingu shrine.
Will was very much the boy next door; tall with floppy, light brown hair, he looked a little warm in his thick blue cords and long-sleeved shirt. But he was good company, chatty and obviously pleased to see someone from home. As soon as he’d spotted me, he’d rushed over, given me an awkward hug, then bombarded me with questions about album releases, soccer results, and the progress of the repairs to the Central Line on the London Underground.
When moving overseas, there is a transition point at which the enthusiasm and excitement of being somewhere new has worn off but the routine sense of comfort and familiarity with your new home has yet to kick in. The result is homesickness, and Will was clearly at that point. I tried to answer all his questions as we walked along the peaceful, tree-lined path to the Meiji Jingu shrine.
The building was a faithful reconstruction of the prized Shinto shrine, simple but imposing, built here with dedication and reverence in 1920, then destroyed by incendiary bombs during World War II. Monks in deep green robes and tall black headdresses sat in the shrine’s inner courtyard. Although they sat perfectly still, their eyes sternly followed the white-robed acolytes humbly sweeping the ground between them and the altar.
Although Will wasn’t my type, he was a nice man and it was a charming date. Quite literally, actually—we were both fascinated and tickled to see the stalls outside the shrine selling charms and offerings. They were extremely specific and covered everything from health and happiness to passing your driving test, having a good visit to the dentist, and getting a university scholarship. As a little offering to Fate, I bought one of the many charms dedicated to meeting your Soul Mate and was intrigued to see they were far more expensive than all of the others. It would seem that even in the more spiritual world, falling in love was big business.
I was already asleep when Garry got back from the arena
that night, but at breakfast the next morning we had a chance to catch up. “How did it all go yesterday?” Garry asked in a tone that seemed—to me, at least—to indicate concern for my well-being rather than anxiety over my fidelity. “Was everything okay?”
I told him all about it: how frustrating the underground had been; how I’d been saved from aimless wanderings by a cheerleading doctor; how interesting the shrine had been; and how Will was like a million people I knew from home.
Without dwelling too much on the date, we talked on, about Garry’s day and the progress they were making over at the arena.
“You know,” he said, grabbing a bottle of water and dropping it into his bag, “it looks like we’ll have all of tomorrow off. What have you got planned? If you like, we can go exploring.” A smile blossomed on my face, then just as quickly froze and died.
Tomorrow I had a date with Rob.
The thing was, after this week I didn’t know when I’d see Garry again. If he had a day free, I wanted to spend it with him. But at the same time, I was here to date and committed to doing it thoroughly and to the best of my ability.
And, of course, there were Rob’s feelings to consider, too. Even though we hadn’t had much contact, I still felt a great sense of responsibility toward him. I couldn’t drop a date because I’d got a better offer from my boyfriend (not for the first time, I wondered if anyone knew what the rules were in this situation). But if I said all of this to Garry, I knew his response would be: “Baby, you’ve gotta go on the date: It’s what you’re here to do.” And that would be our only day gone.
Oh, this was tricky. What to do?
Garry gave me a ticket so I could go to the basketball game that night; then he left for the arena and I for our room.
In the lobby, I jumped into one of the lifts just as the doors were closing. As I tumbled in, I belatedly realized that the lift was already full of people. And not just any people: It didn’t take me long to recognize that I had inadvertently crashed in and was now going up with the Seattle SuperSonics basketball team.
Although I’d seen some of the wives around the spa, it was the first time I’d actually seen any of the players. And they were really quite a sight, like long ladders of muscle, propped up against the lift’s interior. I wasn’t sure what the protocol was, so I didn’t introduce myself, just stood quietly as they discussed their training session. It was surreal, being stuck in a lift with a group of seven-foot athletes. I looked up instinctively as they conversed in the air a foot above my head, and it was like gazing up into the muscular branches of a forest of bench-pressing oak trees. And when they did complicated handshakes and talked in completely incomprehensible slang, I felt myself getting smaller and smaller.
“We’re not in Essex anymore, Toto,” I observed to myself sagely.
Up in our room, I sat distractedly on the toilet and wondered what I should do. I didn’t actually need to go to the toilet, but it had a thermostatically controlled, five-setting heated seat, and after all the walking around yesterday the hot seat on my aching thigh muscles was bliss.
These bathrooms were the Rolls-Royce of the peeing world. If the hotel had charged for each of the facilities the toilet offered, like, say, the minibar or the pay-per-view TV, it would have made a fortune. In addition to the hot seat, it sported two bidet-esque water jets, both with fully adjustable water pressure and temperature settings. There was also a hot-air fan (for drying), an air extractor, an air freshener, and a panel with built-in sound effects including that of a toilet flushing and waves crashing on a shore (both presumably to cover the sound of what you’d shortly be needing the air freshener for).
But unfortunately, all the fluffing, flushing, and freshening didn’t seem to be helping today, so I decided to call Rob and take it from there. He was in a meeting when I rang, so I left a message on his voice mail explaining my situation.
The phone rang virtually the second I hung up. Snatching up the receiver, I found not Rob but Garry on the end of the line. “Hey,” he said busily, “just wanted to check you’re okay to get out to the arena tonight.”
“Ummm, yes, there’s a bus going from here,” I told him a little distractedly.
“Cool,” he replied, “and if you’re up for it, we’ll go out with the boys after the game tonight. I’m definitely not working tomorrow, so we’ll be able to stay up late tonight and sleep in tomorrow.”
Okay, now I really had to sort this out.
As I put the phone back in the cradle, the voice mail light started flashing. I punched in the code: Rob had called. Could I either ring him back in the next few minutes or email him, as he was in meetings the rest of the afternoon. “I’ve been thinking about the date tomorrow,” he continued in the message. “There’s an incredible fish market called Tsukiji-shijo, it handles the seafood sales to most of the restaurants in the country. It’s an early start but absolutely worth it: I thought we could meet at, say 5:15 a.m., then have a sushi breakfast afterward. Let me know if that suits.”
What was it with men, that the dates always seemed to include boats or raw fish?
But more to the point, I’d just managed to arrange a very late night out drinking, immediately followed by a very early morning eating raw fish. It would be full-on, no question, but that was my fault for not coming clean with Garry.
But there was one more twist. “Oh, and as for Garry,” Rob continued in a winding-up-the-message voice, “why not just bring him along?”
I looked at the phone in amazement.
Bring Garry on our date? How would that work? Was Rob serious? Did he really think that was a good idea?
I shook my head and blinked hard as if trying to dislodge something blocking my logic circuits. No, it was still there. I sat in front of my laptop for about half an hour trying to compose my response. I had no idea if Garry would want to come along or not. He was certainly a huge fan of Japanese food; a fish market and sushi breakfast was definitely his thing (in fact, far more so than mine, probably). But would he agree? I sighed heavily as I typed:
Rob, you are an amazing man! Thank you for being so kind and understanding. I’ll find out if Garry can make it tomorrow. Either way, I’ll be coming, so can you please let me know where I should go? I’m really looking forward to meeting you. Take care, Jennifer x
I then went to the hotel gym and ran on the treadmill like a woman possessed for the rest of the afternoon.
Just before I left for the game, I checked my emails and Rob had got back to me with the details of our rendezvous:
Let’s make it 5:15 a.m. at Shintomi-cho station (Yurakucho line), on the platform as you get off the train.
Well, so far so good. And with that, I picked up my coat and my ticket: After a day of jumping through hoops, I was glad to now have the distraction of watching a group of men shooting them instead.
When I arrived at the game, I didn’t see Garry or any of the crew, as they were in the broadcast truck behind the arena. But both JR and Bobby waved to me during the break from their camera positions courtside.
I loved watching the game; it was easy to follow and the enthusiasm of the crowd was infectious. I was lucky—my seat was next to Mimi and Missy, wives of the team doctors, friendly and funny women who had been going to the games together for years. They knew all the rules and all the players and they entertainingly explained everything that happened on court.
The Sonics won, and later, back at the hotel, I joined Garry and the crew for drinks. The broadcast had gone well and everyone was boisterous and upbeat, chatting animatedly and drinking steadily.
Suddenly it was well after 3 a.m. and I was quite tipsy. Garry put his arm around me. “Ready for bed?” he asked. I’d had a lovely evening and I couldn’t wait to see the next game, plus the guys were all so much fun to be with.
But I still hadn’t got around to telling Garry about the date that was, in fact, happening two hours from now.
Back in our room, as we stood in front of the bathroom mirror brus
hing our teeth, I knew I had no choice but to bite the (minty) bullet. “Garry…” I started.
“Ummm?” he replied sleepily through a mouthful of toothpaste.
“Garry…” I said, spitting out the toothpaste and going for it. “I know I should have told you earlier…” Garry continued to brush his teeth, but raised one eyebrow quizzically. “You see, the thing is…” I continued, “…I actually had a date lined up for later today, but when you said you’d be free, I really wanted to spend the day with you.”
Garry had stopped brushing his teeth. I looked at the clock on the wall: 3:45 a.m. I had to meet Rob in an hour and a half.
I spat it out. “So I rang Rob—he’s my Date—and he’s invited me to look around a fish market and go for a sushi breakfast afterward…” Words tumbled out of my mouth; Garry frowned in concentration. “…and he said why don’t you come too?”
There was a brief delay as Garry made sense of the sentences I’d just rattled out. He smiled unexpectedly, then laughed. “That’s really funny,” he said, apparently genuinely amused at the prospect of coming on a date with me…and my Date. “There’s never a dull moment with you, is there?”
