Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries (22 page)

Jimmy pulls a fork out of a balled-up pair of socks. “Found it. Can we go eat?”

We eat at a local Yoshinoya restaurant, a cheap fast-food chain where the specialty is what is called “beef bowls”—thin slices of seasoned beef over rice. Jimmy cannot hide his enthusiasm for the ordering protocol, which involves very little human contact and admirable efficiency: you walk in, put your money into a machine, push a button, get a receipt, sit down at a semicircular counter, and hand the receipt to the enthusiastic worker behind the counter. Your beef bowl and miso soup will be with you in a matter of seconds.

“Is Jimmy impressed?” I ask as he digs in with his fork.

“Yes, he is. Pass me the ginger.”

One point for my mistress Tokyo: she makes a quick, sensible, delicious meal.

After our late lunch we take the train to Shibuya because I want to show Jimmy Tokyo’s crazy side, the side that cakes its face with panda makeup, bleaches it’s hair until it looks like a pile of straw, and slips on its pencil skirt, rainbow knee-socks, and foot-high platform boots and thinks that’s a perfectly reasonable state in which to face the world.

We exit Shibuya Station along with 2.3 million other people, 90 percent of whom are at least ten years younger than us. Shibuya is where the young people of the greater Tokyo area come to play videogames, smoke cigarettes, visit “love hotels,” and, in a financial pinch, sell their underwear to appreciative and deep-pocketed salarymen. I ask Jimmy if he feels like doing any of these things.

“You know,” I prod, “to try and fit in with everyone else.”

“I might be willing to sell my underwear,” he says after a minute of reflection, “but let’s wait till Thursday and see how my money’s holding out. I’d like to get a few more days’ wear out of it.”

“Gross.”

As we pass under the three giant television screens the sole purpose of which appears to be to give the nation epilepsy, Jimmy breathlessly gasps, “It’s like
Blade Runner
.”

“Isn’t it? Or at least
I, Robot
.”

In Shibuya we do what the both of us were put on this earth to do: record shop. Tokyo has the best record shopping any indie pop-grime-jazz-krautrock-acid fusion-dream-pop-dub-trip-hopafrobeat-grunge-eurotrash-neujazz-freakbeat-hip-hop-electroglitchpop-freak folk-old school-electro-minimalist-reggae-dance-hall-girl group-lounge-punk-goth-new wave-house-new world-old world new world-shoegazer-noise pop-new wave revivalist-folk-electro-folk-rhythm and blues-Jpop-gospel-French pop-Bulgarian noise opera fanboy could hope for. That band from Perth from the eighties that only released one single but it’s the best song you ever heard? It’s here somewhere. And you know your friend who is in that god-awful band that somehow found the time in its busy schedule of totally sucking to put a CD together? Tokyo’s got that CD. That song you’ve been kicking around in your head for a few years but have never committed to tape? Also here. And it’s expensive.

We go to my favorite store, Disk Union, where the narrow aisles present a tough but rewarding challenge for any customer with a waist over thirty inches. We wade in and look around, twisting and angling our heads so as to read the titles and allow people by, but Jimmy ultimately succumbs to a crippling claustrophobia before even getting to the Momus and David Sylvian sections, and he takes his leave after just forty-five minutes of browsing. I reluctantly put back on the shelf a Madonna twelve-inch on skin-colored vinyl and follow him out.

“Well,” I say, trying to assuage Jimmy’s guilt over forcing us to leave the record store so prematurely, “there’s a CD shop for big fatties just around the corner.”

“Great, let’s go there.”

We browse in a few more spacious record stores, and Jimmy excitedly finds something. He gasps, holds it up, and walks determinedly toward me. I look at it and realize that this find is something that could mark a turning point in his trip: a Japan-only release of a best-of by Japanese electro pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra.

“We wants it,” he hisses in his best Gollum. “We neeeeeeeds it!” He nudges my shoulder over and over with his head.

“OK, but if I buy this for you, you have to use chopsticks at our next meal. And greet the waitress in Japanese.”

“Whatever.”

“And you have to eat whatever I put in front of you.”

He considers this last point with a pensive and dreamy glare.

“OK,” he finally agrees. “But don’t get pissed if I puke in your lap.”

We meet my friend Shunsuke and his friend Chieko for lunch at an izakaya in Shibuya. It doesn’t take long for the two of them to start chatting like old friends, even though Jimmy keeps calling Shunsuke Shinjuku, as in:

“So, Shinjuku, how long have you lived in Tokyo?”

or

“Shinjuku, have you ever been to the U.S.?”

or

“So, Shinjuku, you like Celine Dion. Why is that?”

“Jimmy, his name is Shunsuke!” I finally correct him. “Shun-suke! Shunsuke.”

“It OK,” Shunsuke says, laughing. “I just make new name for Jimmy. I call him Miami. Is OK?”

“Sure,” Jimmy says. “Better than Kernersville.”

Our waitress arrives, breathless, stressed, and with no time for small talk. A perfect candidate for Jimmy to bludgeon with his newly acquired Japanese.

“Jimmy,” I say, holding up the expensive CD I just bought him and nodding in the direction of the waitress.

“Cone nishy wa,” he says with a big smile.

Shunsuke translates for her.

“
,” he says. “He’s trying to say hello.”

She smiles, bows slightly, and says “sank yuu” to Jimmy. He looks at Shunsuke.

“Thanks, Shinjuku.”

“You’re welcome, Miami.”

We order a number of small dishes to share, the way real Japanese folk do. I make sure that one of these dishes is the one on the menu that looks like a plate full of fried popcorn shrimp from Red Lobster. Jimmy loves popcorn shrimp, as do I. I’ve had this dish before, two weeks into my Japan odyssey, and it really altered my perception of what I can voluntarily put in my mouth, chew, and swallow. It was fried chicken gristle, and it felt like eating deep-fried knuckle. As an American Southerner, I stand firmly behind any food that is deep-fried. It’s part of who I am. So even though I had a profound distrust of this new dish, I continued popping those little suckers into my mouth and negotiating them into my stomach. Ick. I couldn’t stand it. But I ate more. So gross. Then I ate more. Revolting and unequivocally foul. I couldn’t stop eating. Wanted more. What a horrid culinary delight! Disgustingly delicious! I finished the plate myself. No food had ever filled me with such a fervid ambivalence. I haven’t tasted that crunchy gristle since, but I am dying to witness the awakening of Jimmy to its existence. He’s a Southern boy too, born with a fried drumstick in his hand. I’m going to test his limits.

When the plate arrives, I place it in front of Jimmy and hand him a pair of chopsticks.

“Go for it, little man.”

He takes the chopsticks, separates them, and positions them in his right hand just like any red-blooded American would who is recovering from a horrible accident during which he was stabbed repeatedly in the right hand.

Using both hands, he manages to get a piece of fried kernel between the two sticks and lifts it to his mouth.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Grating of teeth.

Crunch.

Grimace, furrow of brow.

Grinding and then grating of teeth.

Crunch.

Wonderment.

Crunch.

Swallow.

Picking of teeth.

“You like it?” Shunsuke asks, doubtful.

“I like the fried part,” Jimmy responds. “What’s inside it?”

I can’t hold it in any longer.

“It’s chicken gristle!” I hiss excitedly. “Chicken gristle! Gross, right?!”

“Hmmm,” he says.

“Don’t you love and hate it?! Doesn’t it make you want to throw up and eat some more?! Isn’t it just immorally appetizing?!”

He picks up another piece, this time with his hand, and tosses it into his mouth. His crunching is less reticent now, his grimaces and brow furrowing more often giving way to thoughtful expressions of acceptance and, after a few more nuggets, unconflicted, decisive satisfaction.

“Actually, it’s not bad. But it needs better dippin’ sauce.”

Jimmy and I circle Tokyo, and she does her best to show him what she’s got. And what does she got that Jimmy might like? She’s got the Rainbow Bridge that takes you to the Odaiba district on Tokyo Bay, voted the best place for a date in the city, with its miles of shopping, street performers, amusement parks, game centers, and even a fake Statue of Liberty. She’s got the crazy kids dressed in their finest gothic threads and having a pose-a-thon next to Harajuku Station. She’s got the dancing Elvises in Yoyogi Park. She’s got the serenity and heart-stopping beauty of a hidden Japanese garden just off of the bustle of Omotesando Dori. She’s got the tallest building in the country in Ikebukuro and the glass capsule elevators running along the outside of the Mitsui Tower building in Nihonbashi. She’s got the labyrinthine underground malls and subway paths, which are a really fun place to hide behind a pole and watch Jimmy get confused and then a little worried. Best of all she’s got lots of food and, to Jimmy’s delight, an abundance of forks.

“Look, Jimmy! Isn’t it beautiful?” I ask Jimmy as we stare wide-eyed at one of Japan’s most marvelous sights, the majestic Mount Fuji, which on a clear day is visible from Tokyo.

He doesn’t answer. He looks impressed and awestruck, but more than a little scared, like a child sitting up in bed, eyeing his bedroom closet door, fearful of the hideous monster that lurks behind it. But why? Why does Jimmy look so pale, so panic-stricken, so pop-eyed? Is it the experience of looking at something so beautifully formed by nature and nature alone? Is it due to the vertigo one gets sometimes when seeing in person a sight normally only seen in pictures and postcards? Or is it because he’s currently at the Fuji-kyu Highlands amusement park just outside of Tokyo, strapped in beside me in one of the world’s fastest and tallest roller coasters, the Fujiyama (“Mount Fuji”), from which Mount Fuji is clearly visible, and which is currently at the beginning of its great initial ascent of eighty meters? We’ll probably never know.

We clamber up towards the summit, and when we reach it, the coaster momentarily straightens out, allowing us a brief respite from abject terror before nose-diving back to the ground at warp speed. Jimmy’s gleeful screams fill my ears as my cheeks flap in the wind and spittle splashes upon my chin and neck. We drop and drop and drop. Then we twist, turn, twist, ascend, nose-dive again, and finally, finally the carriage slows down and pulls back into the boarding area. The ride is over. With exhilaration, we realize we’ve survived, that everything will be OK, that we’ll live to eat another Japanese pancake. Though just a few moments ago we were tasting our own mortality in the back of our throats and were very close to puking it up, we managed to keep it down and make it through to the finish line. This calls for some green tea ice cream.

“How about it, Jimmy?” I ask.

“Yeah, but while we’re here, we might as well visit the haunted insane asylum. Get that out of the way.”

You know how, in the first blush of romance, you spend so much time with someone because you don’t want to be out of each other’s sight and it’s all great for the first few days because you’re all excited and you start mapping out your future together in your head and then the magic wears off a little bit and a few days later you kind of get sick of the sight of them especially after you catch them using your toothbrush—your toothbrush!—and you start to wonder when oh when they are ever just going to go away and sleep in their own freaking bed? I didn’t want that to happen between Jimmy and Tokyo. So after spending a few days locked in a passionate three-way with this fair city, we decide to take a trip south. It’s preemptive day trip time.

So it’s off to Kamakura to show Jimmy my friend the Big Buddha and then to the small rocky island of Enoshima, just off the coast of Fujisawa city, my old stomping ground. We walk across the bridge from Kamakura and onto the island on a beautiful sunny afternoon. We hike up the narrow, winding paths of the island village, visit small neighborhood temples, and sip green tea at little old-fashioned tearooms where the staff are simultaneously fascinated and horrified by us and our big, ungainly American ways. We follow the paved paths as they cut through thick greenery and eventually find ourselves heading down toward a rock outcropping on the side of the island where the land meets the water. I follow Jimmy down, and we alight on the flat rocks, pushed along by the determined Enoshima wind whispering in our ears, “Hurry up, gaywads, it’s beautiful down there!”

We walk to the edge of the rocks and stare down as the water from Sagami Bay licks at the hard edges of the island, and we wordlessly sit for a rest after our long walk. The cold water laps against the flat rocks and into the deep gaps between them. The sun and wind work in perfect concert, ensuring we are neither too hot nor too chilly as we lie back on the rocks and allow the surroundings to lull us into a brief catnap.