Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries (3 page)

Your
what
? Church? They have those here? Hmm. I was actually hoping she’d be able to give me directions to a good ramen shop, a decent record store, and/or a news agent that sells English-language magazines. Perhaps I’m expecting too much.

“Church? Your…church?” I stammer, trying to think of a means of escape.

“It’s lovely place, everyone accepted. We have many meetings and enjoy. Jesus there. It’s near to here. Please, let me take you to there.”

As she places her open hand against my shoulder to lead me towards Christ, I wonder, can this be true? Can I have traveled all the way across the world from the God-fearing American South to an island known more for its electronics, its love of stately rituals like tea ceremony and flower arranging, and its raging Lolita complex than its faith in Jesus Christ, only to be witnessed to in broken English about the Good News?

“We all God
child
ren. Brother and sister with
Christ
. Jesus love
you
.”

Yes, I guess I have.

When I envisioned my first jaunt through vast Shinjuku, it went something like this: I would first circle the city on the Yamanote Line, starting at Tokyo Station in the east and making my way westward, through Hamamatsucho, Shinagawa, Gotanda, Ebisu, and the hot-to-trot districts of Shibuya and Harajuku. Along the way I might pick up a pair of Harajuku girls dressed fashionably in fitted burlap sacks, ten-inch heels, and Mouseketeer hats, and we would walk through Yoyogi Park arm in arm as a band of Taiko drummers followed behind us on a dolly and beat out a rhythm for us to swagger to. We would arrive in Shinjuku and immediately go for a few cocktails at a place called Hello Highballs. The cocktails would be neon blue, and they would turn our lips a fetching shade of fuchsia. After drinks we would spill back out onto the street and hitch rides with a clan of bosozoku motorcycle bandits. They would escort us into the next club, which would have a name like Stark Raving Suzuki. There, we’d have more cocktails—these smoking and gasoline-scented—and befriend the DJ, who would be in the midst of a world tour that had taken him to Paris, Berlin, Rome, Moscow, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Jersey City. After his set, he’d offer us some magic mushrooms, and we’d gladly accept them. Then we’d take turns at the turntable rocking the worlds of the club kids. As the night slowly came to an end and the crowds dispersed, we’d elegantly take our leave, lock arms again, and step out into the crisp morning air hand in hand, escorting each other to the station, secure in the knowledge that we’d done a little bit of Shinjuku.

Nowhere in my wild imaginings did I consider that the first Japanese person I spoke to socially would be a forceful born-again Christian with nothing but time on her hands and a quota to meet. Because I must say that, all due respect to my parents, who tried their hardest to raise me right, realizing a closer relationship with Jesus is not what I’ve come to Tokyo for.

“Thank you so much, but I’m really not…able.” Not unless your church sells
Details
or
Vanity Fair
. Hell, I’ll even take a damn
New York Dog
. “I’m…waiting for a friend.”

Either she sees through my lie or she doesn’t care.

“We have meeting right now, please, you can come and we food and drink and talk and enjoy with other of Jesus people. We sing about Good News and praise God and Jesus Messiah. You bring your friend. You call from there.”

It hits me right then how important correct intonation and word choice are to evangelism. You absolutely must put the right stress on the right words or you’ll sound unemotional and disembodied, like Ira, the chatty computer screen consultant on
Wonder Woman
. Because of her flat Japanese intonation, she sounds only vaguely interested in what she’s saying. But she
is
pushy.

“You come? You come? It just this way.”

“I’m sorry, thank you, but I’m not interested.”

She appears confused, disbelieving. I decide to break it down into the simplest possible terms.

“Thank you, I no interest. No can do. Can’t. Must with friend and eat.” I figure the less sense I make to myself the more I make to her. Wrong again.

“No, please, you must not go tempting! God watching you!”

I see. And what does that mean, exactly?

“It safe in my church. Safe from tempting.”

“Thank you soooo much,” I say, backing away. “But I meet friend now. I see Jesus later.” Then she rushes me.

“Please, take this, you can visit anytime you like.” And with this she drops into my hand a flyer and her church’s business card with address and directions in English. “You no go tempting,” she says with a worried smile.

“Thank you,” I say again before turning around and getting the hell out of there. I walk briskly, lest Ms. Johnson should decide to approach again, this time with a bigger, beefier member of her church less inclined to take no for an answer. A rotund black belt named Akira O’Donnell, say. I cross the street and, since I have no idea where I am or what I’m doing, walk towards whatever is ahead of me. I stop under another giant television screen and take a look at the flyer Miho had given me.

On one side is a collection of illustrations seemingly drawn by the good folks at Marvel Comics. In the center is Planet Earth, above which stands—I’m assuming here—God, wrapped in angelic white robes, His arms outstretched, His smile twinkling, His long white hair and beard nicely highlighted by the halo suspended above His head. He stands in the center of what appears to be a meteor shower, but He’s unaffected because He’s God, and He
made
the friggin’ meteors, bitch. In another scene, the Statue of Liberty faces an attack by a thick red, yellow, and evil cloud. And in another, a tall, square-jawed, ruggedly handsome man, dressed in a dark blue shirt and matching cape, walks in front of a dome-shaped building, a religious gathering place, perhaps. Oh, and he’s got a sign on his shirt that says “666.” Oh, and also there are people bowing down in front of him. (I don’t blame them. Look at those cheekbones. The man is
handsome
. Like,
Superman
handsome.)

On the back of the flyer is a lengthy piece of hysteria titled “The Final Signs of the End.” I read through it quickly, stumbling through the arbitrary and relentless use of underlined passages and all-caps text. (“ONE MAJOR
FINAL
SIGN OF THE
VERY
END that is yet to be fulfilled and that many prophets predicted is the rise of a powerful
One World Government
led by a bestial dictator who will actually be fully possessed by Satan himself!—
The Antichrist!”
) I don’t read too much, not wanting to slip into hopelessness and despair on my first tromp through Shinjuku. And besides, I don’t see anything about the Apocalypse happening anywhere near the greater Tokyo metropolitan area. I put the flyer in my back pocket so I can look at it later and laugh all uppity-like.

Let’s see, what’s next? A-ha! Straight ahead is a narrow shopping street peppered with groups of sharply dressed, incredibly oily looking young men wearing collared white shirts open nearly to their navels, smoking cigarettes, and looking like they’re in training for the International Sleaze Olympics. Let’s go this way!

I notice that every so often, one of these men will see an attractive girl in the throngs of passersby, run up to her, and, walking alongside her, offer her some sort of proposition. He bends down and speaks directly into her ear as she passes, and more often than not, she tries to lose him. Eventually, she’ll hold up her hand politely, shielding her face from the guy, and decline his offer, speeding up her step to outrun him. He doesn’t give up easily, but, as if he’s being kept on an invisible leash by his greasy compadres, he eventually halts, takes a drag of his cigarette, and swaggers back to his post.

Being naturally curious and, yes, even nosy, I walk the length of the street up to the next block, turn around, and walk back from where I’ve come, just to watch this ritual a few more times from different angles.

As I expect, every time a particularly attractive or otherwise qualified young lady passes by, one of the greasers jumps up and chases her down like a little puppy, speaking softly into her ear, getting the same polite but unequivocal “no” from the woman each time. Eventually he backs off and rejoins his boys.

What’s going on here? Was he asking her out for an ice cream soda? Complimenting her on her knee-high socks? Challenging her to find his one and only chest hair? Frustratingly, I can’t find out. Even if I could speak good Japanese, these guys are obviously young gangsters-in-training. Come on, would
you
approach Christopher from
The Sopranos
and ask him what he wanted from the attractive young women he kept talking to on the streets of New Jersey? Huh? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

So I give up and keep walking. While waiting at an intersection with half a million other people, I think about my encounter with Miho Johnson. Did she see in me someone who looked lonely and desperate? A lost, malleable soul? A kid who’s treading down the wrong path and needs to be brought back to the Alley of the Almighty? Or did I just look like an easy target? When it comes to the devoutly religious, there’s a fine line between those who bow their heads in humble supplication and those who can be convinced to puncture bags of sarin on the Tokyo subway. Which camp is Miho in? The literature she gave me is hysterical, but is she?

They say people are put in your path for a reason. If so, Miho’s reason must be to lead me to an entire street of massage parlors and sex clubs, as right in front of me is an entire street seemingly dedicated to getting male Tokyoites’ rocks off. It kind of makes sense. Usually when missionaries hang out in huge cities, they tend to place themselves near the dirty and immoral goings-on in order to steer misguided souls away from sin, the possibilities for which typically loom very close by. They loiter in hopes of steering those who are about to enter a sexual healing zone towards a purer destination where the healing is focused elsewhere. I once stayed at a Christian youth hostel in Amsterdam that was right across the street from an S & M store. Yes, Miho had succeeded in pointing me in the direction of Shinjuku’s smut district. It’s all so dirty and depraved. I can’t wait to have a look.

On the other side of the intersection there’s a much wider side street exploding with revelers, club bouncers, flyer hander-outers, and drunken businessmen. I set off down this street, and before I know it, smartly dressed men—some Japanese, some African, some Middle Eastern—are approaching me, one after the other, asking me if I’m interested in any number of titillating activities available at their particular den of sin. Massages, lap dances, private scrubdowns, penetrating conversation with a gorgeous hostess: all is offered.

It’s new and exciting to be taken for a straight man. I can saunter down the dirty boulevard completely immune, not tempted in the least to take any of these generous gentlemen up on their offers. Now, were these guys offering supple young college kendo masters named Nobu, I might have been more engaged. But as it stands I can breezily decline while enjoying a pleasant tinge of moral superiority.

I walk the length of this very long strip of hilarious heterosexual filth and feel sated, if a little nauseous. You can’t behold a Hello Kitty sex toy collection in a shop window—including a vibrator, love oil, and what appeared to be French ticklers—and come away the same person, no matter how prepared you think you are for it. At the end of the day, however, I feel better knowing that if I ever do find myself in dire need of a deep tissue massage administered by a woman dressed up as a schoolgirl of fourteen (or by a girl who is actually fourteen), I know where I can find it.

At this point I’ve given up on meeting the Harajuku girl of my dreams/nightmares and decide that I will count this evening a success if I can get a good Japanese meal, grab some reading material, and find my way back to the station. I’ve pretty much gone in one direction, so I figure I’ll just go around the block and return the way I came. I do this; I end up lost. And the more I try to set myself on the righteous path back towards the station, the more tangled up in Shinjuku’s web of winding shopping streets I become.

I sit down to consult my dog-eared guidebook again, but its detailed maps and extensive explanations tell me nothing. I stand up and look down the street, hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of a gigantic neon sign showing a steaming bowl of ramen accompanied by a flashing message in English exclaiming, “WE ALSO HAVE ENGLISH MAGAZINES!!! AND OREOS!!!” I walk around the corner and start thinking about just giving up when I turn my head towards a news agent and my eyes land squarely on naked male flesh.

Even better than a steaming bowl of ramen or a copy of
Soap Opera Hair
! I’ve successfully stumbled upon a gay “bookstore.” Well, since it’s right here and, you know, I don’t have Internet yet, I’ll just, you know, have a, you know, take just a little, uh…

It’s small and incredibly cramped, but boy is it well stocked. I excitedly squeeze through the other gawkers to have a look. There’s shelf upon shelf upon shelf of magazines, books, videos, and toys. A porn-a-palooza. Many interests are catered to. Got a surfer fetish? Go straight back and have a look at the top shelf on the left. Into straight guys who are “gay for pay”? Look beneath the surfers. Got a thing for aging, fat Japanese businessmen being stripped naked, hung in a tiny net suspended from the ceiling, and probed with a lit candle? You are sick and should be ashamed of yourself. Look over to the right above the lube.

All the magazines are shrink-wrapped, so I have only the covers to go on, but I haven’t seen the stuff in a while, and since these days I’m becoming aroused at the sight of subway advertisements for energy drinks, everything looks good (up to but definitely not including the fat old businessmen). I do the waltz of shame around the shop, trying to wring myself through any tight squeezes and not send a collection of Japanese surfer videos crashing to the floor. After a few minutes of browsing and fending off the advances of an old Japanese man with whom I’m sure I have nothing in common, I make my choice, sheepishly pay my money, receive some free condoms and lotion, and get the hell out.