Tune in Tokio

by Tim Anderson

  Midori, who has been doing her level best to ignore the woman next to us, looks at Kenji, and they both smile sheepishly.

  “I can’t hear everything she say,” Kenji begins, “but I hear her say something about, how do you say…shit of dogs?”

  “Oh, I see, dogshit,” I reply. “What do you think she means? Is someone eating dogshit?” I look eagerly from Kenji to Midori and back to Kenji again.

  There’s a bit of a pause while Midori and Kenji decide without speaking who will do the explaining. All the while the woman continues her rant, her laugh upgraded to a cackle.

  “She say she, um, gonna make someone to eat the dogshit,” Midori says, warming to the subject, definitely not bored anymore.

  “Uh-huh,” I nod sagely. “Do you know why? Did she give a reason?”

  “I can’t be sure,” Kenji begins, also getting a kick out of our dirty topic, “but I think I hear her say a few names. And also ‘God.’

  ”

  “Sorry, no,” she says, deflating my hopes. I’ve never felt such irritation at my lack of skill in the Japanese language. The woman next to me is either a) having some kind of nervous breakdown, or b) already batshit crazy, and I can’t properly eavesdrop. The language barrier is made of glass, allowing me to see but not understand.

  All I can do is watch as she increases her volume and takes to picking up and slamming down the objects on her table. At one point, she shoves the table away from her, as if it had just told her she looks fat in that kimono. The teapot, teacup, and various condiment containers topple and crash into one another as the table teeters from side to side. She stands, her pink cherry blossom kimono still wrapped artfully around her, her face still immaculately painted, her white gloves none the worse for wear. She grabs her small bag, walks with her clipped stride to the door, opens it, and with a smile and a bow in the direction of the employees at the counter, departs into the night.

  “Thank you! Come again!” they beam.

  It is a suggestion she appears to take a little too seriously, as, mere minutes after leaving, the Empress is back for another cup of tea, smiling and bowing at the counter staff, looking the picture of Ginza classiness. She sits again at the same table and stirs her tea, that familiar smile on her face all the while.

  “So, Midori-san, Cameron Diaz is lesbian?” Kenji asks in English, returning to our discussion.

  “Only in movie, I think,” Midori answered.

  “Ah, in movie only. Does she make other movie like this?” he asks as he gets out a pen to write down the names of the other movies in which Cameron Diaz appears as a lesbian.

  They continue discussing lesbianism as I look over at Mood-Swing Diva to see what she’s up to. Sure enough, her expression has changed in the manner of that clown’s face in Poltergeist: she looks ready to toss her teacup right through the window, pick up some shards of glass, and pick a fight with a few pedestrians. Two seconds later her face again softens and she lets out an evil laugh, perhaps having just thought of a new and exciting way to kill a person. She stirs her tea, places her hands in her lap, and closes her eyes for a few moments: a Buddha in drag. Then she screws up her face, looking like she’s going to cough. Her tongue curls inside her open mouth, and her throat expands.

  “Oh shit,” I think, clasping my hands together. “She’s not gonna cough. She’s gonna puke. Yes, yes. She’s gonna puke. I wish I had my camera!”

  Sure enough, she starts heaving, and this being a woman who has recently screamed that she is going to make someone eat the dogshit, she doesn’t engage in it quietly. Her whole body shakes in its seat, throwing itself into the task of getting rid of whatever horrible and noxious thing lives within. Our conversation stops dead, and Midori, Kenji, and I look at her with the kind of expression you have when you drive past a car accident hoping to catch a glimpse of a dead body.

  She heaves and wretches and heaves, like a freshman at her first frat party. I lean closer, disingenuously hoping I can coax the puke from her stomach.

  “Uuuaaaaaahhh! Oooahhhhh!! Uuuahhhh!” she screams. By this time, the entire café has gone uncomfortably quiet, its patrons wishing to God she would hurry up and toss her cookies so the staff can clean it up and we can all get on with our lives.

  She wretches once more and leans forward over her teacup. Then, silence. She leans back, smiles, and as regally and serenely as she’d arrived just a few minutes earlier, she stands, carries her tray to the drop-off, and steps out into the street.

  We watch as the Empress of Ginza strides by the window at which Kenji, Midori, and I are sitting. She laughs maniacally as she walks, and Kenji, laughing, says she said “dogshit” again. And again and again. Also “dick,” “asshole,” and the Japanese equivalent of “motherfucker.”

  Our conversation loses its momentum after she departs. Both Kenji and Midori seem sad that she’s gone. It is certainly the most exciting language exchange we’ve had. We stay a few more minutes, finishing up our coffees and allowing Midori time to finish what she has to say about John Malkovich’s Hole and for me to explain to Midori and Kenji in English what the phrase John Malkovich’s Hole means to me when I hear it. A fresh batch of embarrassed laughter from them and we’re off.

  We leave and begin walking back towards Ginza Station, chatting in English about work and plans for the weekend. It’s about ten now, and the pedestrian traffic has died down a little bit, though up ahead there is still a sizeable group of people gathered around the street performer and his Stradivarius-wielding puppet friend. As we pass quickly by, I can hear over the swelling of “Greensleeves” a distinct hyena-like cackle.

  I look at Kenji and Midori, and we all nod in agreement.

  Her majesty the Empress is in the crowd.

  And she is amused.

  # of salarymen witnessed throwing up on train platform after midnight: 15

  # of times salmon eaten for breakfast: 7

  # of times lied, said I’m from Switzerland: 1

  8

  That guy you knew in high school who wore his Boy Scout uniform to school? He moved to Japan and stole everyone’s girlfriends.

  The western wind of Japan whispers the story of a lone white man from a tiny town in North America (or was it England?) who came to the land of the rising sun to seek his fortune, to see how they live on the other side of the world, or to simply experience his first fourteen-hour plane ride. He was a modest man, a clerical assistant at the local community college in his mid-to late twenties, with ice-blue eyes and a bright, friendly face. Also, freckles, buckteeth, a birdcage chest, and a mullet that curled up on the edges.

  He had never really had a girlfriend, unless you count the poster of Princess Leia he’d had on his bedroom wall since 1977. But something deep within him told him that there was a place in this world for guys like him, and that it was probably not in any English-speaking country. More likely it was in faraway Asia. So he got a job as an English teacher in Japan, packed his bags, and came to the great city of Tokyo to explore a country that had always held a certain fascination for him, with its famous sculpted gardens, traditions full of nuance and studied elegance, and amazing technological feats like Fujiyama, until recently the fastest and tallest rollercoaster in the world. Also because, if the Internet is to be believed, the high school girls are all total slags and really short skirts are part of their school uniform.

  This mysterious stranger hoped to God he was in for a major life change. And sure enough, something magical happened when he deplaned at Narita Airport, boarded a train, and headed towards Tokyo. People took notice of him. At home he was nothing, a nobody, an eyesore. A piece of lint. A yellow sweat patch on a dirty old white T-shirt. A pocket protector. But as he settled into his new life in his new country, he became blissfully aware that he was no longer Invisible Vince from Vicksburg or Nobody Nick from Newcastle. Yes, in Tokyo, he was GaijinMan. And he had three dates this week.

  There’s a saying here amongst us gaijin folk, reminiscent of that proverbial
“tree falling in a forest and no one being there to hear it” question: If a white guy in Tokyo is rambling on and on and on about absolutely nothing interesting and there’s no one remaining at his table to hear it except for his Japanese girlfriend who can’t understand him anyway, does he still need to be bitch-slapped?

  Actually, I just made that up, and I’ve never actually said it out loud, but the more I quietly ponder this question while studying at a café or reading on the train or browsing at the record store as I’m forced to listen to the unabridged ramblings of some Western goofball explaining the Fourth of July (or was it Guy Fawkes Day?) to his newly minted Japanese girlfriend™, the more I think the answer is a resounding, “Good God, yes! Somebody shut him up!”

  We gaijin are here for many different reasons. There are the lost souls like me, desperately in need of a battery recharge, who are convinced that living for a few solid years in a country that is completely devoid of Big Gulps and commercials for Plavix might just allow us to find ourselves; there are the nerds who have been obsessed with Japan since childhood and refuse to leave the country until they can properly read a daily newspaper (these are the ones who end up in Kyoto and will be there until they die); there are the artists, writers, photographers, musicians, and/or actors (not to mention architects, entrepreneurs, and other professionals) who for one reason or another have found their niche in Tokyo and feed off it for creative inspiration; there are the folks who use Tokyo as their base so they can travel easily to other parts of Asia; then there are the guys like my former roommate Sean whose number-one priority and sole reason for being in the country is to screw Japanese girls. But no matter what brought and keeps us here, we all have one thing in common, and that is that the moment we walk out of our doors and into the Japanese world outside, we are different, special, and interesting without even trying. Even if we are the most retarded people to ever emerge from our hometowns, here in Japan, where 99.9 percent of the people are Japanese, we are mysterious and exotic. And in my case, unnecessarily tall.

  I saw my first GaijinMan when I was living in Fujisawa and almost stopped dead in my tracks. He had oily black hair parted on the side and combed over. He had a face speckled with acne. He had patches of beard scattered here and there. He had a briefcase with papers sticking out of it. Most amazing of all, he had an impeccably dressed, porcelain-skinned, drop-dead gorgeous Japanese girl on his arm. And she was smiling and intermittently leaning her head down on his shoulder as they walked.

  “What the-” I said, doing a double take as I passed them on the street. I was deeply troubled, wondering if the earth was still round and pigs still unable to fly.

  But I eventually came to grips with the fact that GaijinMan, though not nearly as prevalent, is as much a part of contemporary Tokyo as giant television screens, mangled English signs that say things like “Happy Merry Christmas Day,” and cell phones that double as stereos, personal computers, porn interfaces, and best friends.

  Almost every straight white guy I know has a stunning Japanese girlfriend. Every guy. Whether he looks like Steve McQueen or Steve Buscemi. These are guys who would be resoundingly dateless back home, guys who go to Star Trek conventions, guys who talk through their noses and use the word “prototypical” in everyday conversations.

  Yes, sometimes it seems like obtaining a Japanese girlfriend here is about as difficult as catching a cold. If you stay out long enough, you’re bound to get one. Now, this is not meant to disparage Japanese girls. I love them. They are beautiful creatures and are surely the most sublimely and ridiculously dressed girls on the planet. They must have their reasons for accepting dates from all these Barney Rubbles. But what’s really going on here? Is there that much of a discrepancy between Japanese and Western concepts of good-looking? The answer is an emphatic maybe. I ask my roommate Akiko, who has a thing for black guys, what she thinks of some of the beautiful women walking around with unattractive Western men one day when we are sitting outside a kissaten (coffee shop) in Koenji. As if conjured by my very words, an absolute doll-baby of a young woman with flowers in her hair approaches holding the hand of a short white guy wearing orange shorts and Birkenstocks with socks and sporting an impressive potbelly. And a Mickey Mouse watch.

  “Like them,” I say, pointing to them with my big nose.

  “Oh, she not so pretty, I think,” Akiko replies.

  “Nu-uh! Are you serious? She’s beautiful!”

  “Mmm, not so beautiful. A little cute. Looks a little stupid.”

  “OK, but still, look at the guy she’s with, Akiko! Look at him! Isn’t it amazing how brazenly unattractive he is?”

  “What means brazenly?”

  “Umm, like, you know, openly.”

  She looks back at him as they pass, adopts the expression of a disapproving aunt, and says, “Yeah, he need shower. Or, how do you say…makeover.”

  Though she does admit that the guy is far from a twenty-four-hour sex bomb, I am surprised she doesn’t feel the imbalance of the match as deeply as I do.

  “She rebellious, I think,” Akiko says upon further consideration. “Maybe want to make her parents anger.”

  I can see the confrontation with her mother right now. She sits at her vanity applying lipstick when her mother rushes in pleading, “Chieko, darling, why you date ugly white man?! He wear tuxedo T-shirt!”

  “Shush, Mother,” Chieko hisses as she applies another flower to her hair. “He take me nice restaurant! We go hot spring this weekend!”

  Then the doorbell rings and it’s her still-unshowered date, standing at the door in a jacket, tie, and jean shorts. Mother answers the door, takes one look at his flip-flops, and jumps out the window.

  Rebellion or not, whenever I see an Asian babe with one of these schmucks, I want to take her by the hand, pull her to the side of the street, thump her on the forehead, and say, “Look, maybe you don’t realize this, but this guy is a former president, vice president, and treasurer of his high school geometry team, and I think they still have weekly meetings!!”

  The sensitive nerd in me at first wanted to congratulate these guys on their great luck. After all, I’m sure many of them have never been properly laid and, hey, everyone deserves a little hot loving. But my initial good wishes are turning to nerve-prickling dread and massive irritation the more I have to deal with the GaijinMen at Lane.

  Yes, we have several of our very own GaijinMen haunting the classrooms, the hallways, and the teachers’ room with their puffed-up egos and idiotic hairstyles. The other day I was walking through the lobby of the school, where lots of students gather between classes to chat with each other and with teachers passing through. The Lane G-Men love sitting out in the lobby during their lunch hour or whenever they have a free moment because it affords them the opportunity to chat with the lovely girlies who gather around any available teacher just bursting with questions about English.

  I hear GaijinMan Brody explaining the word freaking to a girl and her friend who are confused by its use in the sentence, “This is freaking ridiculous!” which they heard one of the teachers saying as he stormed out of their classroom earlier that day.

  Brody is a mama’s boy from Vermont who probably needs help buying train tickets, putting his glasses on the right way, and eating steak. And he should definitely never be encouraged to explain anything because, as cutting off someone’s head customarily leads to torrential blood flow from the neck, asking Brody a question about anything, however small and insignificant, invariably leads to a flood of unnecessary sentences, tangents, biblical references, and literary allusions that are impossible to stem. And you, the unfortunate captive audience, must ride it out until you can back out of the room far enough to make a quick getaway when he blinks.

  “Well, it has several different meanings, really,” the professor explains with a confident smile. “It comes from the word freak, which means a strange or abnormal person. Freaking is usually used as an adjective. Often we use it as a slangy alternative to the ter
ms really or very when we are describing something.” He folds his arms and smiles, pleased with himself. He’s only just begun.

  “Desclibing,” one of the girls, Ai, says with a quizzical look, probably having understood about 20 percent of what he’d just said. “What means desclibing?”

  “Well,” he replies, clearing his throat, “for example, if I were describing, say, you ladies, I would say, ‘You are really smart and beautiful.’” Then he winks. Oh my God, he winks.

  Ai smiles, giggles, and covers her mouth with her hand so as not to offend Sensei Brody with the unseemly sight of the inside of her mouth. Takako, her friend, nods vaguely.

  “Or,” Casanova continues, “I might say, ‘That’s a very pretty dress you are wearing, Takako.’”

  Takako smiles faintly, betraying a hint of annoyance. She isn’t buying it. She knows where it’s at. (Note to self: befriend Takako.) But Ai is swallowing Brody’s manipulative, flimsy charm hook, line, and sinker.

  “Ah, sank you,” Ai says for an unimpressed Takako.

  “You’re very freaking welcome,” Brody says with a cheesy grin.

  The conversation continues, but I can’t bear any more, so I duck into the teachers’ room where I see Rachel and Josephine sitting at the table grading papers.

  “I’ll give you one guess as to what Brody’s doing in the lobby,” I say.

  “Talking nothing but crap?” Rachel offers.

  “Slinging a bunch of bollocks?” Josephine rebounds.

  They are both right.

  But I think I’ve come up with a satisfactory answer to this white-dork-with-Japanese-hottie conundrum which will allow me to at least get beyond the sheer bizarreness of it all: the girls want free English lessons and they probably figure that the dorky ones make better teachers. And GaijinMan is more than willing to oblige, for why not? He has the best of both worlds. First, he gets to parade around town with a stunning woman, no doubt sending digital pictures of them together back home to his old chess club buddies. Plus, due to the language barrier, he can rest assured that if his girl’s going to nag, at least he won’t be able to understand it.