Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries (28 page)

“I’ll tell you what, though, I am going to continue studying Japanese,” I say.

“Really?”

“Yeah. You know, I’ve already dedicated so much time to it. I figure, well, why not?”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Rachel replies, thinking maybe she should start taking some lessons. “Then again, you know,
why
?”

She has a point. Japanese will be about as useful to me back home as a Hello Kitty diaphragm. I guess it’s my way of clinging to my Japanese experience and making sure it stays with me even after I’m gone. Whatever, I plan to continue my study of the language at least until I get my first job back home as a temporary substitute data entry clerk.

I hang out at Rachel’s place in Okubo until about three a.m., say goodbye, and walk down her tiny side street towards Shinjuku Station. I will wander around for a few hours until the station opens and I can get on the first Yamanote train. Maybe I’ll take it around a few times and enjoy the view of the city waking up. Perhaps I’ll fall asleep on the shoulder of a drunk, sweaty salaryman and then get beaten awake with an umbrella by a 103-year-old obaasan, who will then kick me out of my seat so her older sister can sit down.

On my way to the station, three different Korean prostitutes offer me “massages,” and I politely decline. It’s an honor just to be asked. Just a few feet beyond where the third prostitute approached me is a bike stand where two policemen struggle to wrestle what must be a stolen bike free from its chain.

I do have some regrets. I’m still in debt. I still have no great job prospects or get-rich-quick schemes. And the closest I came to meeting a Japanese lesbian was when I saw an older woman on a passing train sporting a classic feathered Alabama mullet.

Most disappointing of all, I was never asked to be on Japanese television. But really, once you’re on Japanese television, where is there to go but down? Anyway, you can’t have everything, and besides, once I get home and brush up on my English, the world will be mine for the taking.

As I hunch down into the seat of the 5:35 train, I think about the sign I saw posted on that glass door leading to Mos Burger:

Sound advice, but I think maybe I’ll leave this one open.

I absolutely must get on my knees to grope all of those who offered encouragement along the way as this project morphed from a series of mass e-mails to a series of longer mass e-mails to an excitable and overwrought outline and finally to a manuscript that would need to be hacked and carved into this, its final perfected form that could probably still use some work.

Muchos arigatos, first of all, to Terry Goodman, my editor at AmazonEncore, for discovering Tune in Tokyo and enthusiastically bringing it aboard the Amazon Publishing train. Not only is Terry the reason you are reading this now, he is also the recipient of the 2010 Holly Golightly Award for Most Appropriate Surname. Congratulations, Terry!

Thanks to Jane Hobson Snyder for encouraging me to develop my stories into a book; to Janet Reid and Kristen Elde, whose contributions to and feedback on this manuscript have been heroic to say the least; to Valerie Tomaselli and Hilary Poole for their most excellent support.

Special thanks to my sister Laurie, who has always encouraged me to continue with my writing even though it would likely embarrass our mother.

To my boyfriend Jimmy, who never had a doubt that this book would make us rich beyond imagining and allow us to live like the gays we see on the teevee. (Sadly, Jimmy is often wrong.)

An extra special thanks to Kristin Matwiczyk (
www.kmatw.com
), who created the original version of the mammal head you see on the cover.

Many thanks to Aiko Ogata and Junjiroh Sumikawa for their translation assistance.

Also, to the city of Tokyo, without which the title of this book would only make partial sense:
To Toru, Rachel, Josephine, Shunsuke, Akiko, Sato-kun, Mamta, Suzie, Charlie, Bronwyn, Julia, Ruth, Tony, Tami, Holly, and Grant, as well.

And to you, the reader who heard about
Tune In Tokyo
through a friend of a friend of a friend of an ex-fuckbuddy or weed dealer and took a chance on it. I hope you had fun.