—You could talk to Mr. Rhodes. He has a degree AND a beard.
—Yes, he does. And a vast collection of vests.
—Vast vests! And he curses, so you know he’s down with the kids.
—And yet I think I’ll hold off.
—Until fall? When the leather vest comes out?
—Yes. Because I like the idea of working through my issues with Han Solo.
—Very retro-nerd. Not Yoda?
—Yoda is too new age for me. And swampy. And unattractive. Is that shallow?
—I think that’s actually one of your issues.
I parked the bike in the shade and walked around inside the little shop as long as I could without seeming weird. Everything on the shelves would have amazed Michelle—the yogurt chewing gum, the ramen-flavored potato chips, the little toy cars that came with the bottles of tea, even the miniature cans of Coca Cola with Japanese writing on them would have made her clutch them and gasp.
—I told you. Even the coffee is cute.
—Is this flan candy? Is flan, like, its own flavor here? Hey, do you think they’d sell us cigarettes?
I bought a can of sweet coffee and headed back to the house. By the time I got there, Mom was already packing the food into the car.
The cemetery was scorching, and I was grateful our plot was near the trees and there was a little shade. Ojiisan gave me a bucket and a brown-bristled brush, and we started in on the stones. They looked clean enough to me every year, but we scrubbed off the dust along the surfaces and in the grooves of the Chinese characters that spelled out the names of my great-grandparents, my great-uncle, and others I did not know. Ojiisan went over the names again with an old toothbrush when I was done. The granite was hot, and the swaths of black left by the wet sponge turned gray again in seconds. Mom and Obaasan weeded around the graves and set down the food on a blue tarp.
—Graveyard picnic.
—I know it seems weird. But it’s a thing.
—Not really. It’s like an Irish wake, I guess. But you’re not actually looking at the body, so maybe it’s actually less creepy.
—We’re supposed to welcome their spirits back home.
—Do you have to welcome all your relatives, or can you choose?
—You can’t choose. Just like when they’re alive.
Everyone ate and talked in Japanese, which I didn’t mind. Down the slope, a couple of other families were wringing out cleaning rags, opening and shutting coolers, just like we were. I thought about everybody at Michelle’s house after the funeral, the women all unwrapping trays of ziti and carving ham on the dining room table while Michelle’s mother pointed slowly to cabinets and drawers to tell them where they could find the serving spoons or extra bowls. The men moved folding chairs or stood in little groups eating or smoking outside. Mom said everyone needed something to do, and it seemed like they all knew what that was. It was like there was a plan, but I didn’t have a copy of it. And here, under the shade, Ojiisan sat cross-legged eating fried chicken beside his parents’ graves. He looked content to me, grinning at something my mother was saying. I wondered how it would feel to clean Michelle’s grave in twenty years.
That night, the park over by the elementary school was strung with red and white paper lanterns that circled the rickety-looking tower in the center. The base was covered in red-and-white-striped cloth, but it just looked like Ojiisan’s iffy homemade scaffolding to me. Nobody seemed worried, though, least of all the man up top beating the drum over the recorded festival music that played from the speakers. I always liked the slow circles they made with their arms and the crack of the sticks on the wooden edge of the drum, how it sort of hypnotized you. My mom and grandmother were taken up into the current of people dancing in unison around the tower. I watched for them to come around each time with Obaasan’s cluster of friends, all old ladies who suddenly looked sharp in their stiff obiwith fans tucked into the bows on their backs. Ojiisan was sipping a ridiculously tall can of beer next to me and looking regal in his striped, indigo kimono. Oddly enough, I stuck out most when dressed as a native. My heels hung off the backs of last year’s wooden sandals, and I was sausaged into my yukata. The fabric was white with a pattern of straight irises that went crooked around my chest, which formed a lumpy shelf over the rigid yellow obi. Obaasan had clucked and laughed to my mother as she tried to get the lapels to lie flat, shoving at my boobs like she was punching down bread dough. By the time we were ready for a photo, my face was pink and sweating.
—Should have brought a sports bra. This is the problem with interracial marriage right here. Your Italian boobs are like an invasive species taking over the Japanese kimono.
—Wow. Is that racist, sexist, or just bad science? How did you even pass Bio?
—D. All of the above. Which is also how I passed Bio.
—Shut up. Absorb some culture.
A little blue flag with the kanji for “ice” in red was swinging over the kakigori stall. Two little boys with buzz cuts were bumping against one another, watching the shopkeeper turn the cast iron wheel on an ice shaver that snowed into two paper cups. The mountains of white turned a nuclear green with the syrup, and the boys, suddenly still, dug in as soon as the cups were handed over.
—Oh, my God. I think I have diabetes. By osmosis.
—I think you can scratch that worry off your list. That and osmosis.
—Get one! You know you want one. Get the lime. It looks like antifreeze!
—It’s not lime. It’s green melon.
In minutes, I was drinking the melted, neon slush at the bottom, enjoying the cold ache in my molars. I knew Shell would have loved these even more than snow cones if she’d ever come with us.
—This is insane. It’s like honeydew on steroids.
—Right? Wait till you try one with condensed milk. So good.
—And it’s so fluffy! Oh, my God. American snow cones are like licking a dirty snow plow. I’m never eating one again.
I looked straight into the bottom of the cup, and pictured Shell next to me in a borrowed yukata, poking at her cup with a straw, her hair frizzing in the humidity. I focused hard on her standing there, her feet hanging off her sandals, like mine, and I pushed out the image of her in that white casket she would have hated, with the white satin lining and stupid lace pillow, and the brass railings all around it, like some tacky princess bedroom set.
Everyone was walking down to the river to watch the lanterns. As we inched down to the concrete embankment, we saw people lighting the tiny candles in the white paper boxes and setting them into the water. Mom asked if I wanted to do one, but I told her I just wanted to watch, so we waited by the railing and let my grandparents go ahead. This is when I would have gone all tour guide and told Michelle about how the lanterns are supposed to guide the souls back until next year. But it looked hard now in a way it never did before, sending them away like that, all the lights heading off and leaving the people on the banks in the dark.
—What if you don’t do it?
—You have to.
—But you’re not. You could light one for me right now.
—I know. Just not yet, okay?
—Okay. It’s so pretty. It’s beautiful.
—I knew you’d like it.
The lanterns spread out and clustered together like an ambling crowd of people as they were pulled downstream. Ojiisan and Obaasan lit one lantern each and pushed them lightly into the current, letting them drift toward all the others and float farther away until we could no longer tell them apart from the rest.
I Hate Harajuku Girls
by Katrina Toshiko Grigg-Saito
I am sick of Harajuku girls. I avoid the bridge in Tokyo where they congregate on weekends, posing for pictures in their too-high heels, fiddling with plasticky blonde ringlets, and lowering fake eyelashes in ruffled Victorian doll outfits.
When I first get to Japan, I think it will be hilarious to take a picture with one of them to send to my mom, but when I try,
this girl pushes my camera away and shakes money in my face. Like a picture with her is worth twelve dollars. She should be paying me for a picture with an authentic sixteen-year-old Amazon: I’m about six inches taller than pretty much every Japanese person here (male or female), and can give a fierce Maori haka look if people rub me the wrong way. She probably only notices my darker-than-a-tan skin and crazy curly hair, but all she has to do is look hard at the shape of my eyes to see that they look just like hers. After the embarrassment rubs off, I’m angry: at myself for wanting a picture, and at her for refusing one. It hits me how wrong it is that the Harajuku girls dress like dolls and call themselves Lolitas. I don’t know which is worse: thinking they’ve never read Nabokov, or thinking they have. I want to give them a brief history of the objectification and infantilization of women, but—I don’t speak a word of Japanese.
Just saying that chokes me up a little. I don’t speak my father’s native tongue. He didn’t teach me. I didn’t ask him to teach me. Being the only half-Japanese, quarter-Dominican, quarter-Scotch-Irish girl I’ve ever heard of was hard enough in our little town of Barre, Vermont; I guess he didn’t want me to sound Japanese too. On nights when my mom worked late, my dad would spin stories from his childhood. Our little apartment would disappear, and we were inside the story, throwing crumbs to koi, climbing inside giant Buddhas, or zooming through Japan on the bullet train. “I want to go!” I would say when he finished. “It’s too expensive,” he would say, or “too far,” or “what would you do when you get there?” and then I would recite things to do and places to see from his stories. “You have good memory,” he would say, but we never made plans to go. I guess, because of the stories, I always felt more Japanese than American. And after I walked into a bathroom at school to see “Go home Sady you sneaky Jap” scrawled on the stall door, I imagined doing exactly that. There, I thought, I would belong.
After Dad died, I told my mother, “I have to go to Japan.”
She kept washing dishes. Later, before bed, she said. “Honey, it’s just that Japan’s a tough place for foreigners. Your dad’s family . . .”—she said family like it was a flawed theory, a gas, a myth—“cut us off when your dad married an American.” She twisted one of her braids. “His life was here.” I recognized this conversation ender, the mantra she repeats to friends.
But I knew his secret stories. I wanted to taste the foods he grew up on, to wear a kimono, to feel the human crush at Shibuya crossing. If I went to his favorite shrine would I find him there? I dreamed he was waiting for me, covered in mist, and I knew I had to live the answers to all of my questions, not google them, not guess at them. I had to be submerged in my dad’s Japan.
Gary, my advisor at school, who I love, helped me find a program at an international school in Tokyo with a scholarship for kids who are part Japanese but have never been to Japan. I figured it was a long shot, but then the yes-envelope came in the mail. I jumped around a bunch before my mom got home, and then I told her.
“I’m going to Japan for a year.” I had planned to ease into it, to give a speech about how enriching this experience would be, how I still loved her and would be back before she knew it, but I ended up blurting it out and freezing. Her shock resonated in the soft part between my ribs. Since my father died I’ve had the uncanny and irritating ability to feel what she’s going through, rather than guessing it based on her still face. But she’d be okay, and I wanted this. “Colleges will love it,” I added.
And here I am, regretting the day I decided to come here.
It isn’t the school—the school is pretty awesome. The kids are sophisticated and open and from all over the world. A lot of them, like my best friend Oliver, went to Japanese schools before transferring and speak flawless Japanese. On field trips, Japanese kids always want to take pictures with him or practice their English. They ask if he’s the guy from the Twilight film, which is half ridiculous and half plausible. He has the same enormous eyes and angular features, but his hair is too red and he’s super skinny. I like walking with him, because we’re about the same height and sometimes people stare at him instead of me. When kids mob him he tells them, “No, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not that vampire from Twilight,” in near-native-sounding Japanese. This makes them go even crazier. I do not have this effect on Japanese kids. Usually they’re not sure what language I speak, so they stare and run away. If people do talk to me they ask if I’m Brazilian or treat me like I’m a little slow. When I tell people I’m haafu, as in half, as in half-Japanese, they shrink away like haafu is a contagious disease. I look just as different here as I looked in the US. It’s exhausting.
My dad always said that I was beautiful. He used to call me otenba, like he was really fond of me. I always thought the word meant something like “my favorite child” or “butterfly girl” or something really cool and complimentary. Right before he died, when we were home from the hospital, I googled otenba. Tomboy, it said. I checked again. Otenba, Tomboy. Otenba, Tomboy. Panic thumped in my throat. I ran into my father’s room trying to keep the unsteady balance between crying and yelling, “Otenba means tomboy? Tomboy?” and even as sick as he was, my dad managed a laugh.
“Yeah, so what?”
“Dad, tomboy is not a good thing. I don’t want to be a tomboy, I want to be a girl.” My dad’s laugh faded to a smile that told me how much he was going to miss me.
“No, no, you got it wrong.” I can almost hear my dad’s voice. Slippery like fish eggs, its l’s and r’s all mixed up. “I raised my girl to be otenba. Otenba mean strong, otenba mean know what you want.” I unequivocally love my father’s accent and his weird grammar. It reminds me of Yoda from Star Wars, his favorite old movie. Yoda’s green and wise. Kind of like my dad at that moment. “I raised my girl to think for herself. I talk to her like adult, and she answer like adult. I’m proud of you, Sady, my otenba.”
We had other talks before he died, but that’s the one that stuck. I want to tell him that I’m trying, but I’m an otenba among Harajuku girls. My dad didn’t warn me about them.
Instead he told me about the way the pebbles sound underfoot when walking down the long path to his family’s shrine. They stand with thousands of other families, in the cold on New Year’s Eve, waiting for midnight to hit and for the year to turn. His mother, wearing a heavy brocade kimono, fastens her tabi socks at the ankle, and slips on some zori sandals and a fur stole to keep her warm. His father wears an Italian suit and just-shined black loafers. My father, the youngest, holds his mother’s hand and watches his brother and sister running off to see friends in the crowd. He tells me that even if Tokyo, this crazy city of fourteen million, reinvents itself, the sound of those pebbles would still be the same. I ask my mom if she remembers the name of the shrine, but she doesn’t. I can’t ask his family. I do extensive research, combing through my guidebooks and searching for his shrine in every part of Japan.
I look for koi ponds with fish that would remember his name.
I look for ramen shops with creaky stools and worn counters, cut from one slice of tree.
I look for stands that sell crispy hot cakes shaped like fish, with each fin articulated and sweet beans in the middle.
I look for little boys in my father’s school uniform, the Showa hat with the red tassel.
I look for people reading Shakespeare, sounding out the English words the way my dad used to do.
I search for his brother and sister, look for his face in those around me.
But he doesn’t surface.
“Ok,” Oliver says. “We’ve combed the shrines in Yanaka.” That’s a tiny little neighborhood with old shops and wooden buildings, almost like the Japan from Dad’s stories. I was sure it would be there, but no go. If I can just find Dad’s shrine, I can find the heart of Japan that never changes even though the crazy Harajuku girls are ruining Tokyo.
“Did you bring your guidebook?” he asks. I try to hand it to him, but he shrinks away like it’ll give him leprosy “Not
a chance, I will not be singling myself out as a tourist. Read me one we haven’t tackled.”
“Gokokuji,” I say. We can usually fit in one a day, since we get out of school at three and most shrines close around five.
“Sady, that’s a temple.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Buddhists, temples. Shintos, shrines.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Really, Sady, do you know nothing about your dad’s country of origin? You said your dad went to a shrine on New Year’s Eve, right? If he went to a temple, there would be gongs; a shrine, good luck toys.” Oliver has a way of making me feel extremely stupid. I battle with the orphan tears that like to rattle in my chest and seep out of my eyes in moments like this. I try to focus on the memory.
“I’m not sure,” I want to add, and I can’t ask him. Ollie looks concerned and throws an arm around me.
“Sorry, Sades. I’m in for the hunt. We can go to every shrine, every temple you want. We can even go to that church on Omotesando.” I punch him in the arm.
“So, Gokokuji?”
“Might as well give it a go. Yurakucho Line, car 10.” Oliver is a secret subway nerd. He knows all of the stations and lines in the spidery map, and knows which subway car lines up with each exit. It’s spooky. “Haven’t been to that one.”
I try not to breathe hard and I try not to lose him as I follow him through the transfers. His PASMO subway card is always ready. He taps it and spins through the turnstiles, expertly dodging businessmen in black suits and even helping a woman carry her stroller up the stairs.
“Here,” he says, after charging up four flights of stairs. We’re in front of an impressive gate and I cross my fingers. The road is concrete. No pebble crunch.
“Bummer,” I say. “Well, might as well get my book signed.”
I love the silence of temples-and-or-shrines. I love slinging off my shoes the way we did at home and tiptoeing into these dark damp spaces. I find the desk with the calligraphy monk and take out my accordion book. The old man opens it and says something to me in Japanese. I just nod, and I watch as he puts the heavy weight on one side of the book to keep it flat and steady. He inks up a square stamp in bright red, and centers it on the page. I think most people just drop their books off and walk around while he finishes, but this is the best part. After the stamp dries, he pulls the sleeve of his robe back and paints intricate black characters on top of the stamp.
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