Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries (2 page)

And me, I would find my place there. I would walk the acid-rain-soaked streets by night clad in a beige trench coat, a cigarette dangling from my pouty lips, a hardened, city-delirious look on my face. I would order steamy ramen from a sidewalk noodle bar using the Tokyo slang so pervasive in whatever part of the city I was haunting that night. The neon would reflect off my sleek black sunglasses. I would begin reading up and down and right to left.

I would be Harrison Ford in
Blade Runner
, scouring the city for replicants. (Or cookies, whichever.) I would follow a trail of tiny origami figures left by a man spookily resembling Edward James Olmos. They would lead me to my destiny. Trouble and unrest were in store, and I welcomed them.

My apartment, on the 237th floor of a giant, fully automated apartment block, would be dark and smoky. It would be lit only by the flashing neon advertisements outside my window and accessible only by a cylindrical glass elevator that spoke fifty languages and could recognize who you were and what floor you wanted by the tone of your voice when you said, “Konnichiwa, XR378-B.”

I would have all the Japanese mod cons, like a futon bed that collapsed into the size of a credit card; a Ramenator in the kitchen that would offer a variety of ramen selections with complimentary chopsticks; a mechanical ShowerPal in the bathroom, which would disrobe, soap, shampoo and condition, and finally blow me dry as I watched the news on the hologram television suspended in midair like Princess Leia. My alarm clock would know when I wanted to get up and when I
needed
to get up. When someone approached my door, the scanner in the peephole would tell me their name, address, criminal record, how much they’d had to drink, what they do in their free time, and their favorite color.

I would go there, this Tokyo. I would bravely run away from all of my problems at home and strike out for a new and, fingers crossed, utterly ridiculous place. I would amaze the people of Tokyo with my wit and height. I would drink flaming pastel-green cocktails and sing Elvis karaoke songs to rooms full of adoring and utterly charmed Japanese.

Yes, this city would fix everything. Who would be my Madonna? Tokyo would.

I’m here now, obviously, and things haven’t panned out exactly as I’d planned. All the vehicles are in close touch with the ground, traffic is treacherous (and that’s just the pedestrians), some Japanese folks would just as soon have me step
in front of
the train as
on
it, and my living quarters leave much to be desired (a kitchen and bathroom, to name just two). And where the hell is Edward James Olmos?

But it’s a brilliant city. I finally have health insurance. Every day promises a new and exciting humiliation. And most importantly, I’ve lost twenty pounds.

I guess it’s perfectly natural for me to be asking this “why” question. Surely all travelers at one point or another have been compelled: Gulliver, Ulysses, Bilbo Baggins, Indiana Jones. Each had his own answers—and I have a few of my own. Number one on the list? The world’s biggest record store is here. And it looks like a spaceship.

I am no longer simply an American. I am a
gaijin
. These are my stories.

Oh, and Brad Pitt will not play me in the movie adaptation. Sandra Bernhard will.

My spacecraft glides over the Shinjuku district of eastern Tokyo as I swivel giddily in my captain’s chair with all the blinking labelless buttons on the left armrest. Looking out the window, which circles the entire ship, I see the blinking lights, sleek skyscrapers, packed commuter trains, and tiny inhabitants hustling and bustling along sidewalks, across bridges, and into and out of the giant beating heart of Shinjuku Station. My craft touches down slowly and alights on top of the Takashimaya Times Square building, which looks like a giant luxury cruise liner. I rise from my seat, remove my goggles, and prepare myself to be beamed directly into the thick of the madness spread out below me. I set the transporter to “Tower Records, Shinjuku,” and seconds later, here I am.

(Actually, no. I take a plane and then a train and then walk for a bit and then sleep for seventeen hours and then start work and finally get a day off after two goddamn weeks.)

The giant Tower Records television screen just outside the south end of Shinjuku Station plays a pop video featuring a gaggle of preteen girls dressed in shiny, frilly outfits so bright and cutesy they make American child beauty pageant contestants look like Dickensian street urchins. They dance in formation—not particularly well—and stare at the camera, doe-eyed and hollow. I stand at the bottom of a massive escalator looking up at the dangerous display of chiffon and taffeta and excitedly contemplate the pastel-tinted nightmares I will have about all this later.

I’m wandering around the city for the first time, enjoying my first day off. I interviewed with a popular language school called MOBA before coming, and they assured me they could place me in Tokyo. An empty promise, it turns out, since I’ve ended up with an apartment in a town called Fujisawa an hour south of Tokyo and a job at a school in nearby Yokohama. A disappointment, yes, like a young small-town Russian with stars in his eyes must feel when he has his heart set on living in the Big Apple and instead is forced to rent a studio in New Brunswick, New Jersey. But I’ll make it to Tokyo, no problem. All I need is thousands and thousands of dollars so I can afford to put a deposit and key money down on a fashionable closet or cubbyhole in, say, trendy Shibuya or, perhaps, the East Village–like districts of Kichijyoji or Koenji. It’ll happen. I’ll just need to teach a few hundred more English lessons, sell my used diabetes syringes and Pia Zadora records on eBay, and limber up for those lap dances. I’ll be there in no time.

In the meanwhile, I’ll continue my job in Yokohama, where I’m honing my communication skills and preparing myself for a career in front of the camera in ways I never anticipated. I have taught so many lessons that I’ve begun dropping all articles, prepositions, and sometimes the verb “to be” from my speech just to be more easily understood. (“On weekend went to movie and ate nice restaurant. Food so delicious.”) I’ve also started pointing to my ears when I talk about listening to music, behind me when talking about the past, and in front of me and over a little hill when talking about the future. Even when talking to my two Australian roommates, Ewan and Sean.

MOBA is a popular language school with branches all across Japan. I’d had to fly to Boston for the interview, and though I usually choke during interviews, this one ended, amazingly, with an immediate job offer.

Admittedly, it’s satisfying to know that simply by virtue of being born in the right place I have a skill very much in demand in another part of the world. I never really considered my English degree very marketable, and neither has anyone else. College papers touting Jane Austen as England’s best Harlequin romance novelist or exploring the homoeroticism in
Bleak House
won’t get you very far in the real world, let’s face it. But when I decided to travel to a faraway land of people who want to know how to speak like me, I automatically had a highly marketable skill: I speak great English. Jim, the interviewer and a former MOBA teacher, was clearly dazzled. In fact, he’d seemed to have only one concern:

“Now, Mr. Anderson, do you think that, as a full-time teacher, you can deal with being asked day in and day out questions like what your hobbies are, why you came to Japan, if you can use chopsticks, if you speak Japanese, if you like sushi, what your favorite movie is, what kind of music you like, what time you usually wake up, how often you eat out, and what your plans are for the weekend?”

It was a legitimate question, one you could spend days trying to answer appropriately. But when you get right down to it, the question he was really asking was, “Tim, can you talk about yourself until you’re blue in the face?” And the answer to that, my friend, is, “I feel confident that I can.”

He seemed satisfied with this. Then he’d promptly asked me what my hobbies were.

“Well,” I began, licking my lips, “I like reading, traveling, playing the viola, and collecting records. And yoga. And swimming. Oh, and watching movies. Did I say swimming?” Of course, I could have gone on and expressed my love of gossip columns, White House scandals, Speedos, and interracial porn, but I figured in this case less was more.

“That’s good, you seem to have a lot of interests,” Jim said. “Because the teaching will take care of itself. Your free time really will be your own, and it’s good that you’ll easily be able to fill it.”

And that was that. He said they’d be sending me an official offer of employment in the next few weeks, and he let me go. In hindsight, I think if I’d said my hobbies were reading other people’s mail, collecting used handkerchiefs, and having sex with my viola, I would have gotten the same response. He just wanted to make sure I wasn’t dangerous and could string a sentence together. I fit both criteria and so got the job. My university degree is probably spinning in its frame.

It was the green Yamanote train that carried me to Shinjuku, and against all possible odds in this city of 13 million, I actually scored a seat on it. I got comfortable in my precious foot and a half of Tokyo real estate as people continued to roll into the carriage, a procession that might have lasted days but thankfully ended when the doors closed behind an old, hunched-over woman carrying three heaving shopping bags.

I stood up quickly to offer the tiny obaasan my seat. Cute as a button, she stood about four and a half feet tall, with sleepy eyes, short stringy silver hair sprouting out from under a white visor with a smiley face on it, and a back arched from years of housework, child-rearing, gardening, shopping, and bowing.

She was clearly one of a breed of elderly Japanese women who appear to be approximately 130 years old and, though they still walk around freely, doing their shopping, taking trains, and looking disapprovingly at young people, always look like they could keel over at any moment, uttering their last “sayonara.” Some gaijin folk uncharitably refer to them as
Yodas
. Usually it is those who have come up against the nasty side of these women, commonly displayed when the so-called Yodas board a train and proceed to elbow and smack out of their way any person younger than they are (pretty much everyone) so that they can get first dibs on the scarce supply of seats. So, because I’m a suck-up (and because I have a soft spot in my heart for old women wearing visors), I stood and offered her my seat. She bowed, smiled so wide I feared she may tear her face, and said thank you before sweeping me aside, wiping off the seat with a handkerchief to be rid of my white-man funk, and plopping herself down. I wanted to ask her to be my grandmother, but before I had a chance to come up with a decent pitch, the train pulled into the next station, she rose with all her bags, swatted her way through the crowd, and hopped off.

I sat back down, adjusted my gaze straight ahead, and gave a startled jump. There, staring directly into my eyes, into my very soul, was a young boy of about four years. He looked at me with an eerie, inscrutable expression, like the one a child forms when he’s about to command the dark forces to descend upon you. He didn’t take his eyes off me; he didn’t blink. He just stared, cute and creepy. I averted my gaze as the train began to move, hoping that he’d do the same. After a few minutes I turned back to him, and his expression hadn’t changed, though he had tilted his head slightly.

To take my mind off the probing toddler eyes, I stared out at the Tokyo scenery rolling past in the fading light. Actually, scenery might be too fancy a word. Explosion of ugly buildings would be more appropriate. As the train sprinted its way through the metropolis, an endless smattering of ashen-hued structures stood together in a desperate display of jigsaw development. No empty space is left unmolested, every extra block of air smashed to bits by the erection of an edifice with an attached arcade, karaoke box, cell phone stand, convenience store, apartment building, police station, flower shop, or Japanese eatery. The buildings aren’t in rows, unless your idea of a row is a slipknot. They face each other according to whichever way completes the jigsaw most effectively. The result is a static architectural orgy, the buildings caressing, groping, slamming, and going down on each other in a manner reminiscent of the last scene in
Caligula
(minus the money shots).

Eventually I brought my gaze back inside and briefly made eye contact with the staring toddler before noticing the attractive young girl sitting next to me. She was digging through her purse and pulling out mascara, lipstick, tweezers, blush, and an eyelash curler, obviously intent on giving herself a quick touch-up. Then she pulled out a lighter. And next the largest hand mirror I had ever seen. It was the size of your average windowpane and probably afforded her a good view not only of her own cosmetic shortcomings, but mine and the sleeping gentleman’s on the other side of her. She had more tools than a smack-addled surgeon. I watched out of the corner of my eye as she used each one in turn, impatient for her to get to the lighter. Finally she only had two instruments left, the lighter and the eyelash curler. And sure enough, she used them simultaneously, flicking the lighter and holding the tiny flame over the curved metal end of the curler. When she believed it to be hot enough, she put the piping apparatus up to her eye and gave herself a set of shapely, luscious, twenty-four-hour lashes. I feared she’d put her eye out if the train should make a sudden jerk, but even with the rolling and swaying of the carriage, the girl’s expert grip on her tools and the precision with which she performed her tasks continued uninterrupted. Amazed, I looked over at the toddler. He was still staring at
me
.

The train pulled into Shinjuku Station, through which two million people pass in a typical day. I wasn’t sure which exit I should go for, but I realized it wasn’t up to me when I found myself eased down the nearest staircase by the sheer force of the crowds tugging me like an undertow. They decided I would go out the south exit. That would be fine.

So here I am, staring at a giant television screen full of wide-eyed, dancing preteen cherubs and wondering (1) if Japan has its own Britney Spears, and (2) if she’s a cheap dime-store floozy like ours. I hope so.

As a large portion of the two million Shinjuku-goers hustle past and slap me with their shopping bags, I wonder where to go. I have no plan, no idea where anything is. I just want to see some local color. I continue walking ahead and through a concrete courtyard directly in front of the exit. Lots of young folks are hanging out, strumming guitars, playing bongos, simply posing, leaning against railings, comparing wacky hats, and so forth. Up ahead, people sit and slurp at a steaming mobile noodle bar right next to a punk rock band thrashing it out on the sidewalk, surrounded by a dedicated horde of twelve-year-old girls offering their support.

The sounds of Shinjuku—spoken advertisements over loudspeakers; pop music from the Tower Records TV screen; the clinking, buzzing, and whirring of the pachinko parlors and game centers; the piercing recorded voices beckoning you into this shop or that one—whoop and holler around me as I walk. I enter this swirl of activity, feeling like one of those wide-eyed, big-headed aliens seen occasionally in Utah or Nebraska.

I pass a horde of young girls with bleached blonde hair, fiercely tanned complexions, panda-like eye makeup, foot-high platform shoes, and miniskirts of a cut that would make Paris Hilton stand back and go, “Oh, honey, cover that shit up a little!” A cute high school couple—wearing matching kilts and carrying the same handbags, made out of what looks like poodle fur—walks by hand in hand. Not to be outdone, a tall guy wearing Buddy Holly glasses and sporting an afro for the ages walks determinedly behind them, his black shirt screaming in white lettering, “So Fucking What?” Local color—check.

As I look around for something else to gawk at, a friendly looking middle-aged woman wearing flats and a skirt that is, thankfully, knee-length, approaches me.

“Excuse me,” she smiles. “You speak English?”

Not waiting for me to answer, she continues. “It’s nice to meet you. I am Miho Johnson.”

You’re
who
? I think. Her English is Japanese-inflected, but her last name most definitely is not.

“May I ask, where are you are from?” she continues. She sports a matronly bob, her bangs cut straight across and hanging just above her thin, painted-on eyebrows. Though she has a smile on her face, it’s tempered with a constant look of concern. Also, she never seems to be looking directly at me. When she asks where I’m from, she appears to be reading from a cue card placed above and a little to the right of my big head.

She has made no assumptions about my nationality, so I am tempted to adopt a strange accent and say Greenland or Siberia while gently taking her hand and rubbing my nose on it, the traditional greeting in my country.

“You are from America?”

“Yeah, actually. How did you guess?”

“Oh, just thinking. How long you are being in Japan?”

I tell her I’ve just arrived, and at this her pensive face brightens. “Oh, that’s nice. I want to tell you about my church…”