by Holly Smale
I abruptly type:
Am fine. Stop eating my stuff. H
Then I press SEND, turn off my phone and stare miserably out of the taxi window. Tokyo is just starting to wake up: people in suits are swarming in and out of stations and music is beginning to blast out of speakers. The sunshine is bright, and the air is starting to thicken up with heat and smells.
I cannot believe I’ve managed to screw up already and the shops aren’t even open yet. That’s speedy, even by my own standards.
All I really want to do is go straight back to bed, pull the duvet over my head and wait for the day to end. Again.
So that’s precisely what I do.
n my dreams I’m fighting octopuses and pink unicorns and Japanese-speaking seagulls, and finally one lands on my shoulder and starts screeching in my ear. I open my eyes with a start.
It’s not a seagull.
A thick wave of dense black smoke is pouring under the door, and the only working fire alarm is having a loud panic attack in the living room.
“Rin?” I yell at the top of my voice, coughing hard. “Poppy?”
There’s no response, so I leap out of bed and run straight into the kitchen. I switch the grill off, open a window and pull out the burning toast. Both pieces look just like Hello Kitty, except totally black and smoking. One of them has an ear on fire.
I really hope Rin never takes up arson as a hobby. They’d catch her within seconds.
“Rin?” I shout, running Hello Kitty under a cold tap until she goes soggy and her bow falls off. Then I stagger into the living room, turn off the alarm and flap my arms around to dissipate the smoke, even though I know that’s not actually how smoke or arms or flapping works.
Suddenly I hear a screeching, desperate sound coming from the bathroom, and race to the door in a panic. “Rin? Are you all right?”
“Lalalala,” somebody is singing at the top of their voice. “No I won’t, be a Craig, no I-I-I-I won’t be a Craig, just as l-oong as you stabby, stabby me. Lalalalalalala me, dddddaahly daaahly.”
The bathroom door abruptly opens in a wave of steam, and a slim blonde figure pushes past me and past the girl emerging from the bathroom.
Without a word, Poppy slams the door behind her.
“Stabby Me is favourite Australian song,” the girl states happily, drying her hair with a towel. “But who is Craig? And why does nobody want to be him?” Then she frowns and sniffs. “Are you smoking, Harry-chan? That is super bad for you. You should reassess this.”
“Rin?”
The girl in front of me looks nothing like Rin. The curls have gone, and her hair is straight and in a short, ear-length crop. Her eyes are clean and shaped like a kitten and her skin is flushed pink and pearly. I look down and stare at the huge T-shirt she’s wearing:
I AM! Happiness when I eat potato.
“English is magical, ne?” she says, beaming at my stunned expression. “Harry Potter. Cute Australian with shiny stick and glasses. Pow pow.”
“Rin … I didn’t even recognise you.”
She looks heartbroken. “Hai. Yes. Pretty stuff is back in box. Models not allowed sparkliness. It’s nandakke … non-professional.” She pulls on her T-shirt and makes a vomit-face. “Now I look just like boy.”
“You don’t.” Without all the attachments and plastic accessories, Rin gives Poppy a run for her money in the looks department. “You’re so beautiful.”
Rin giggles and pats me on the head, reaching up on her tiptoes because I’m considerably taller than she is.
“Foreigns are crazy, ne? Don’t worry about Poppy, Harry-chan.” She looks at the bathroom with a shake of her head. “In the morning, she is – nandakke. Mean like God.”
“Mean like God?”
Rin puts two fingers up to her forehead like horns. “Meh meh. Eat grass.”
“Goat?”
“Yes. God. Bites and booms with head.” Rin taps her forehead. “Super perfect at modelling, though. Poppy, not God.”
She frowns and looks me up and down. “Harry-chan, in English is cute to look like Avatar?” She touches my face cautiously, looks at her finger and rubs a little blue ink experimentally on her own face.
I smile awkwardly. “Yesterday’s shoot went pretty badly, to be honest.”
“Then we must fix this,” Rin says. She takes my hand and starts pulling me into the bedroom. “If you are unobstructed today, I will show you Tokyo.”
“I think I’m free, actually.” Yuka’s going to need at least twenty-four hours to calm down, I reckon.
“Free? Chotto matte.” Rin gets a little computer out of a pocket in her T-shirt, and a few seconds later says, “Without charge? Will you normally charge me for friends, Harry-chan? Why?”
I laugh and the bathroom door opens. “Are you going out?” Poppy calls. “Can I possibly come too? Chanel’s given me the day off so I’m going to be so bored.” She wanders into the hallway and grimaces. “Sorry for queue jumping, Harriet. I was desperate for a pee and you were kind of standing in the way.”
Rin makes goat horns and pretends she’s eating grass behind Poppy’s back.
I grin, but my stomach’s starting to flip anxiously over and over. Poppy’s lovely, but I’m not sure I want to spend the entire day with her. She’s what Nat calls an MBF-er: a girl who refers to ‘My Boyfriend’ every twelve seconds, just in case anyone makes the hideous mistake of thinking she’s single and unloved and unwanted. Even though people who look like Poppy never are.
I’m not sure I can cope with this. I like to think of myself as existing on the nicer end of the human spectrum, but I’m not Mother Teresa.
“Erm …” I start doubtfully.
“You come,” Rin tells Poppy, promptly deciding for me. She sticks her tongue out at a pair of black jeans and a simple black vest and then pulls them on. “We will spend day together as three new BFFs.” She says this biffs. “I shall show you the many wonders Tokyo and … Dame! Kono itazura neko!” She grabs Kylie, who’s pouncing around a box in the corner of the room. “Gokiburi wa tabenaino!”
“What’s that?” I bend down and pick the box up. It’s a little cardboard house, with painted roof tiles, tiny drawn bricks, flowers and a little white picket fence. Out of one of the windows, between bright pink curtains, is a smiling cartoon beetle, waving happily. Over the door it says – in English – WELCOME.
“It’s a Japanese cockroach trap,” Poppy explains as I drop it on the floor. “They’re huge and sooo gross.” I look a little closer at it.
Under the word WELCOME it says – in small yellow letters – TO YOUR DEATH.
I guess we have to hope our cockroaches either don’t speak English or have really bad eyesight.
“Cockroach climb in,” Rin says perkily. “Cockroach pass out.” She frowns. “Nandakke. Pass on.” Then she looks back at me and adds, “Go shower, Harry-chan. You smell of fishes. We will begin Japan from new for you.”
She pushes me gently towards the bathroom, and the warm feeling in my stomach starts to glow again. Poppy and Rin start taking photos of themselves holding up Kylie so they look like they have furry beards, and Kylie desperately tries to get back on to the bed again.
Friends, I think as I laugh and close the bathroom door behind me. After fifteen years, maybe I’m finally starting to understand how to make them.
I ♥ Japan.
By lunchtime, I am incoherently, head-over-heels in love with Tokyo. As my brand-new T-shirt, baseball cap, pen and pencil, and badge will tell you.
I ♥ the strangeness and the noise and the height of it.
I ♥ the politeness and how simultaneously ordered and manic it is.
I ♥ the two-storey-high televisions stuck to buildings, and the way the shop assistants bow and sing irrashaimmaasseee!!! (welcome!), as if you’re royalty.
I ♥ the fact that you can throw coins in a ticket machine any way you like and it still counts them properly, and the way people fall asleep on the tubes against the shoulders of
strangers.
I ♥ the electric toilets with warm seats that play music and spray water at your bottom and pretend to flush while you’re peeing so that nobody can hear you.
I ♥ people who actually wait on the side of the road for a green light, even when there are no cars coming.
I ♥ the sense that I could never be bored, not if I lived in Japan for a billion years.
And, more than anything:
I ♥ how ignorant I am here.
I can’t read, I can’t write, I can’t speak. All I can do is marvel with wide eyes at just how insignificant and tiny I feel.
Bunty was right: I even feel temporarily free from being me.
“Tokyo’s OK,” Rin concedes with a casual shrug. She’s been racing us through tourist attractions as if there’s a twelve-hour deadline before the entire city falls down. We’ve been up the enormous Tokyo Skytree; lit incense at the Asakusa Kannon Temple; wandered through Ueno Park and watched the jugglers. We’ve eaten bits of chicken on sticks and coffee jelly and tuna mayonnaise wrapped in rice and seaweed and bits of fried octopus in balls of batter (sorry, Charlie).
We’re now in Harajuku, having crêpes on Takeshita Street, and it’s taking every bit of my inner dignity not to attempt a joke that – frankly – I’m too old to be making.
I stare at Rin over the top of my strawberry, banana, ice cream and cheesecake pancake. “Rin, Tokyo is incredible.”
“Not like Sydney” – Rin shakes her head – “There is no aces beach and BBQ and flaming gallahs.”
I laugh. “Did you know that there are more people in this city than there are in Australia and New Zealand put together?”
Poppy sighs. She’s picking off bits of strawberry, wiping cream on her napkin and then flicking it on the floor. “I find it all a bit much, really.” She points at a tiny, fluffy dog walking by in a green dress with a bright green, lit-up, pulsing lead. “I mean, what exactly is the point of that?”
“But that’s what’s so brilliant,” I say in surprise. “There isn’t one.”
We watch a couple of Japanese girls wander past. One has bright pink hair with blue tips, a purple tutu, green stripy tights, a camouflage-pattern jacket and yellow shoes. The other is covered – head to toe – in cuddly pink toys, as if she’s doused herself in glue and run really fast through a toyshop. I turn back to Poppy with a huge smile. “How lucky are we?”
“I’ve been a successful international model since I was fourteen,” Poppy says, pulling a bit of chocolate off her pancake, sniffing it and then wiping it on the bench. “The world gets boring pretty quickly.”
I suddenly feel a pang of pity for her.
Toyshop girl and her friend notice Poppy and I, and stare at us. “Kaaawwaaaiiiiiiiii,” they squeak. Then they dissolve into giggles and skip down the street, glancing back so that they can collapse in hysterics again.
I turn to Rin. “What does kaaawwaaaiiiiiiiii mean?”
“Cute. Kawaii mean cute.” Rin looks with open loathing at her black jeans and vest. “You are wrong, Harry-chan. There is point. Cuteness is point.”
Everything surrounding us is fluffy, or pink, or sparkly, or covered in hearts. Everything has a face: gloves, umbrellas, crisp packets, mascara. Rin’s bank card is pink. Even the poles holding up the building works opposite have yellow bunnies drawn on them. “In Japan, all must be cute,” Rin explains firmly, “or …”
“Or what?” Poppy suddenly says. “For goodness’ sake, Rin. There are more important things in life than being cute.”
I glance at Poppy in surprise. She’s been staring at herself in every reflective surface since we left the house. A few minutes ago she was checking herself out in the pancake spoon.
Rin is appalled. “No,” she says belligerently. “Cute is most important. Love is cute. Fashion is cute. Flowers is cute. Animals is cute. All good things is cute.” She gestures at us. “Friendship is cute. We shall ask BFF questions and do answers now, ne?”
I beam at Rin. I love questions and answers. Plus, I’m not sure any girl has ever said that to me before. Even Nat tends to avoid Q&A whenever possible. She knows I get a bit too carried away.
“Brilliant,” I say, trying not to notice Poppy stifling a yawn. “I’ll start. Rin, where in Japan do you come from and what is it like?”
“Nichinan,” she says. “It is small fishes town at bottom of Japan. Very hot. Palm trees and chicken and rice and mountains and sea. Pretty but nandakke … hushed.” She pulls a face. “Me now. Harry-chan, have you always been wanting to be modelling?”
“No,” I laugh. “It just sort of … happened.”
“You enjoy model much?”
I think about this. “Sometimes. It’s fun and exciting, but it can be a bit scary. And I’m a walking disaster in high heels. I guess I’m always waiting for it to end, to be honest.”
Rin nods. “And you are possibly here for more Baylee, Harry-chan? I see cute jump jump picture in snow.”
“Nope.” I wipe cream off my jeans with a bit of pancake and then stick it in my mouth, like the Goddess of Class I am. “Actually it’s for Yuka’s new campaign. She’s left Baylee, and she’s setting up her own label. There are quite a few of us working on it in different countries. I got Tokyo, so I’m super happy.” I smile at Rin. “Your turn, Poppy.”
Poppy throws another strawberry on the floor. “Hit me,” she says.
“Nick-kun,” Rin replies, and my stomach drops as my ears go totally numb. “How long have you been in awesome twosome with perfect Australian, Poppy-chan?”
“Oh, I don’t know, six weeks?” Poppy says, instantly brightening. “Seven?”
What?
He waited less than two weeks before moving on?
“We met on a shoot and REALLY hit it off straight away. I could tell he liked me immediately. He’d just split up with somebody else, but that was a total non-issue.”
An involuntary twitch has started in the corner of my eye. Change the subject, Harriet. Quickly. Pretend like Nat told you to. “Who…?” I hear myself say, and then clamp my mouth together.
Yup. Whatever comes, I’ve totally asked for it.
“Just some girl,” Poppy shrugs, throwing a bit of pancake at a passing scooter. “He must’ve got bored of her pretty quickly. It was no big deal.”
I suddenly want to cry. The only romance of my life was No Big Deal?
It was a big deal to me.
No: it was a massive deal. Elephantine. Titanic. Megalithic; cumbersome; stupendous; monumental. I feel like I’m a tiny fly that accidentally zoomed into Nick’s face: as if he’s just wiped me away on a bit of tissue and carried on walking with slightly watery eyes, while I’ve been totally obliterated.
Boring?
I start getting all indignant and then abruptly stop. Oh, who am I kidding? I hear that insult all the time. It’s currently scratched into my pencil case.
Rin is totally fascinated. “You are One for Him, Poppy-chan,” she says, her eyes glittering. “I feel it here.” She pats her chest. “Everything until you meet is … nandakke. Rehearsal.”
“I guess,” Poppy says, standing up gracefully and throwing the rest of the totally uneaten pancake in the bin. “When it’s perfect you just know, don’t you?”
No, I realise. Clearly I do not.
“Entirely,” Rin says cheerfully, hopping off the bench. “I think we will go have biff photos taken now. We can ride horse and wear bunny ears together. Amazingballs?”
“Cool,” Poppy says. “Can I be in the middle? I’ve just bought a new lipstick.”
As we start making our way to a huge machine with a queue of giggling girls standing outside it, all I can think is if there’s anything worse than being dumped, it’s knowing that you were just a dress rehearsal.
That a Big Deal for you was just practice for somebody else.
in drags us around the rest of Tokyo until even my love affair with it starts to feel a little strained.
Finally she decides we’
ve seen enough for one day and allows us to drag our exhausted, aching bodies back to the flat. Poppy goes straight to the bathroom to get ready to go out again.
With her MBF, I think miserably.
“Harry-chan,” Rin says, patting a plastic bag containing a puffy sparkly yellow dress and matching yellow shoes. “I must go get dressed up for stay in watch TV. This trousers is making me super sad. Ooh.” She bends down and picks an envelope off the mat. “Alphabet for you.”
I smile and open the letter. In beautiful, curly handwriting it says:
Ring at 7am. Be ready. Yuka
On the upside: I obviously haven’t been fired yet.
On the downside, I have absolutely no idea what Yuka means.
She’s never been prone to particularly elaborate sentences, but this is concise even for her. There’s an address written in Japanese just below that makes equal sense to me.
What am I supposed to do? Is she going to ring me? Does she want me to ring her? Are we doing a wedding shoot, or something based on horror films? Is it Lord of the Rings themed?
Actually, I bet this is the exact letter Frodo got before they sent him out of the Shire.
Tucking the letter into my back pocket, I go straight to the bedroom and pull an alarm clock out of my suitcase: a pretty little plastic bird that plays a genuine recording of a British skylark. I carefully set it to start dancing and flashing its eyes at 6am tomorrow morning and put it on the top of the drawers next to my bed. Then I drag out my rocket alarm clock, set it to launch at 6.10am, and put that next to the bird.
Finally, I get my target shooter clock out and put it on the other side of the room. When it goes off at 6.20am, I’ll have to get out of bed, cross the room and shoot it in the middle with a laser gun to stop it beeping. And probably throw it against a wall and stamp on it as well, because even point-blank range is a bit too far for my sporting prowess.
Rin watches the entire process from her bunk bed, and then abruptly grabs Kylie (also now in a little yellow sequin dress), runs into the cupboard in the hallway and climbs inside it. After a lot of rummaging – and a bit of disgruntled yowling – she scurries back over to my bed with an armful of objects I don’t recognise.