HARAJUKU SUNDAY
By S. Michael Choi
THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS ARE A FIGMENT OF IMAGINATION AND ANY RESEMBLENCE TO REAL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.
© 2011, S. Michael Choi.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems—without the written permission of the publisher.
Cover photograph Creative Commons License, Giuseppe Bognanni, 2007.
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For Makiko
Part I
I.
It can begin anywhere. Soren comes up to me on the Keihin-Tohoku line home from work on a Thursday evening and at first I don't know who he is. All I notice is a figure in my peripheral vision standing up out of one of the traincar seats, approaching me, and in clear unaccented American English saying, "Ritchie? Ritchie, is that you?" Surprised by this unexpected greeting, I look over and realize that I do recognize the person. His name is…Soren. Right. Soren Soutern. Three weeks ago, he had put an advertisement on Tokyo Metropolis website, offering to trade a box of English-language books for a packet of non-Japanese cigarettes. It's not easy for expats to get paperbacks and moreover, the whole ad had been funny, reading ‘bring me over a pack of non-Japanese cigarettes and you’ll get in an entire cardboard box of recent paperbacks in return.' With all these earnest 'English lessons for 2500 yen' or 'Japanese girl seeks English language partner for foreign exchange' entries crowding up the listserv, the seemingly ironic ad had to be investigated. Moreover, I had had, by chance, a whole carton of duty-free Sobranies lying around the apartment that I had picked up last visit stateside and never found anyone to gift to. So I called up the listed phone number, noted the unexpected address, and went later that day with the cigarettes and a tacky American-flag lighter added in purely as a bonus. I returned home that evening with a good-sized box of both cheap paperbacks but also some quality college lit titles all in decent condition, definitely a good deal.
That day I had answered the advertisement, I had also found myself unexpectedly recognizing the other person. You see, when Soren opened the door to his Roppongi Hills apartment, the individual, perhaps in my mind's eye already some spoiled university student living with his parents in an over-priced apartment, or maybe even a Japanese (they take on unusual English names sometimes; they think it's cool) is actually on the contrary a tallish, good-looking twenty-something foreigner, sandy-haired and trim, whom I had definitely seen before out and about. This was unusual: there are a good thirty-thousand foreigners in Tokyo. And Soren and I had actually not talked before. But he had a way of standing out from the crowd: wearing always fashionable clothes, seemingly perpetually with a cocktail glass in his hand, he was invariably seen with this unbelievably tall and beautiful Japanese girl, a gazelle-like figure who looked like she had stepped from the pages of a fashion magazine and carried herself knowing it. Soren and I had nodded to each other a few times at social events, the 'foreigner nod' you give to other foreigners in Tokyo, but had never really spoken. It was part of the "rules of cool." You knew dozens of people whose names you didn’t know.
If Soren does not come up to me on the train now, three weeks after our exchange of books for cigarettes, perhaps we are destined never to enter each other's lives. We will go our separate ways in the city of Tokyo, population twenty million, attend a handful of parties or get-togethers in common, perpetually exchange the ‘foreigner nod,’ and then move on to whatever it is we will do in the years to come. But he does come up to me, he does make that approach despite it being a minor violation of the rules of cool, and I do not call him out on it. Rather, I greet him friendily and ask him how the cigarettes are working out.
"Fine, fine. But actually Ritchie, I'm kinda looking for something else."
"Uh, sure, what do you need?"
"Do you know where I can score some drugs?"
At this response, I feel like groaning. This is exactly how quickly Soren gets to the point, and my first reaction is to wonder if I give off some sort of drug-vibe--if I don't communicate in some strange way without being aware of it, "hey, I'm clearly a lowlife drug dealer. Come up to me if you want to score." But that's ridiculous. I know for a fact that to all outside appearances I am the utterly conventional-looking twenty-one year old American expat in Tokyo that I am in truth, with my ‘just above English teacher’ job in IT and mildly ironic expression perpetual on my face. If anything, I look a hundred times more conventional than your average expat because I noticed that some expats seem to really unsuccessfully adopt Tokyo fashions after living here for some time--usually in some hodge-podge mixed up way that isn’t completely one thing or the other. At twenty-one, I'm indifferently conventional, a sort of Mugi and occasional Uniqlo-shopper, casually chic without being too perfectly in the now. Yet truth be told: unfortunately Soren’s instincts are correct. I'm also wide-ranging in my choice of acquaintances. I've been in Japan for fourteen months now, and through a willingness to know all sorts of random people you encounter in the foreign scene, I can, unfortunately, actually get Soren what he wants. I'm not a drug dealer. I’ve never made a penny from smoking up some reggae star in a club or tracking down a connect for some ace on the low. I'm really not. But it's true, forty minutes later, I'm at Roppongi Hills climbing up the fountain-lined stairs to the main plaza with two pills of ecstasy—MDMA—hidden hidden in an orange pill container in a black messenger bag and with a flicker of a smirk on my face. I'm smirking because it's Japan, because I am, well, legally, supplying drugs, and because the place is just ridiculous.
Soren's building, Roppongi Hills, you see, only just then finished, is the talk of all Tokyo. Built by the "visionary" Minoru Mori, the miniature "city within a city" Cosmopolitan Living Concept is a fantastically gigantic 'megaproject' that destroyed several entire neighborhoods to put in multi-billion dollar pod-shaped 'arcologies' of luxury housing, a hotel, IMAX theatres, art museum, entertainment facilities, and offices. From your sixteen thousand U.S. dollar a month apartment, you can take any number of escalators and moving sidewalks to your Merrill Lynch finance job, stop briefly at the organic fourth-floor supermarket, and then be sped up forty stories to your private swimming pool overlooking some of the most stunning vantage points of Tokyo, all without ever having to expose yourself to all the pollution, street crime, and assorted other highly risky dangers of Japan's dangerous streets. So this is why I had earlier thought that the guy at the other end of the phone line had to be somebody living with his parents. What twenty-something could afford such a place? As it is, Soren's father, a New York City commercial real estate tycoon, purchased the apartment in the Towers straight out for use by his son and to recycle some cash for tax purposes. It's a sort of a ridiculously great sort of pad for a young guy to have, and though I'm not desperately poor, yeah for sure I’m all eyes. Technically I should be intimidated. Technically, I should be so awed by the sheer amount of power that Soren's wealth implies that I should quake in my New Balance sneakers and run back to my downscale downtown pad. But with the blasé confidence inspired by the sort of division-less equality of expat life and all the confidence of somebody straight out of university, I walk into Soren's apartment and plop down on his black leather couch where he had served me orange juice three weeks earlier. I lean my head back to feel the fu
ll blast of the apartment's air-conditioning that I had remembered and now experience as quite effective.
"So you got the stuff?" Soren asks, nervously.
"Yeah, dude. Got it all." I spill out the contents of the medicine vial onto his palm. He looks at the pills suspiciously.
"Where'd you get 'em from? How do you know that guy?"
"Relax. Friend of a friend named Big-T, he just mixed them in with some prescription pills last trip back from New York City."
"And how long has your friend known Big-T?"
"Only like two years, but then he knows somebody who knew T since elementary school. They're totally legit."
The answer seems to satisfy Soren. Looking almost plaintive, he gulps down a pill of E with a glass of ice water.
"Wow, in the middle of the day?" I say, "Oh my god. I thought you were going to use them at some party or something."
"Been too long, man—I really needed to score, it's just been that kind of week. What do I owe you?"
"Nothing, dude. I don't actually want to become a drug seller—they're all yours on the house."
"Cool… thanks. I mean really."
We sit around his place waiting for the Ecstasy to kick in, and leaning back, I take in the interior decoration. There's this curious temporary feel about the decor, as if Soren's not quite psychologically deciding to settle in: lots of white space on the walls where art prints should go, entire sections of wall-space completely empty. Pop Chinese kitsch—a little Chairman Mao figurine, a poster of revolutionary Chinese farm workers complete with inscrutable slogan—doesn't really fill up the place, but I do catch sight of the SubZero refrigerator, the Bang & Olufsen touch-pad stereo—I knew these things from magazine ads; I know what they imply.
"So, just curious man," I say, "you said when we swapped for the paperbacks few weeks back that you recognized me. Was this true? You really know who I am? What do you know about me?"
"Yeah, dude, sure. I definitely seen you around the place Ritchie. You're like…well, one of the hipsters always hanging out, into some or another artistic b.s."
I laugh. "Really? I thought I was rather boring actually."
"No, dude man. Wasn't there some hot little blonde number hanging around you all the time? She your girlfriend?"
"Nah, she's just a friend. We were sitting next to each other on the same plane when we came over, and then we kept running into each other on the streets, it was weird, so we keep in touch. But you know, I don't think we actually feel the slightest bit of any sort of chemistry with each other." I ask him in turn about his apparent girlfriend—the tall "gazelle" girl that some of us have been talking over repeatedly—but Soren smiles sheepishly.
"Actually Ayako and I are not really boyfriend-girlfriend either. She's still moping over some ex of hers, won't let me sleep with her."
"Oh my god," I say, "You realize you just disappointed the entire male gaijin population of Tokyo? Everyone thinks that girl is unbelievable."
"Yeah, she's something isn't she?"
"She's like this girl out of like some mists and samurai novel—not your typical little tiny J-cutie, all fluff and squeaky voices, but somebody like…you know, Tale of Genji, samurai and cherry blossoms, castles in mists. Ancient Japan. 'Cuz she's tall, you know. She’s graceful."
"Yeah well, she's just letting me sleep in bed with her, not a move further."
"That's it?"
"Yeah, Ritchie. I like, try to touch her when we're in bed, but she just moves away."
"That's really sad," I say laughing. "You share a bed with a girl night after night, but you don't actually get any play."
We sit there silently for a moment, thoughtful, and the afternoon atmosphere seems filled with a sense of foreboding. The immensity of the city sprawl hundreds of meters below the floor-to-ceiling windows is silent and unyielding, a steel-colored monolithic city, and for a moment one might almost characterize the mood as strangely oppressive. The sun is appreciably low in the sky and one can begin to see the blinking patterns of light that mark buildings on commercial drives flickering to life as the changeover from daytime to evening begins. Slowly, surely, the night city is stirring to life. Then, suddenly, the silence is interrupted by the shrill ring of the telephone, which Soren, sitting near to, reaches over and picks up. It's friends of his; they want to go for a ride. Soren in sheepish tones answers a series of rapid-fire questions, something to do with a BMW Z3 wrapped around a telephone pole, or actually just punched against a highway barrier, "no engine damage, dude, no engine damage--just sheet metal" that's all, really. There's some mutual agreement being hammered out, and then he puts down the phone.
"Uh, Ritchie, you free tonight?"
"Yeah, what's up?"
"People hanging out. Let's go!" So we hustle, and take the elevator down and walk over to Roppongi-dori, where there's a white Infiniti SUV backing up traffic. Five minutes later, we're taking the onramp to the elevated expressways that shoot between the skyscrapers. I recognize the driver, Takashi, too, a young Japanese dude who seems to know all the foreigners, everywhere, all the time. I say hello and he smiles back and everyone's already talking excitedly to each other. "Like we should totally share life stories and all because that's all we really have, each other," says somebody's dizzy chick. I put on sunglasses; I grin.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, it's because cars are rare, because the trains run so regularly and everything is so convenient that getting to drive around the city is an experience of itself. It's exactly that part of Tokyo near the river engineering works, where suddenly there's just sky on the break of evening that makes you feel that you've made the right decision and this is where you ought to be, the center of the universe, the cutting edge of the cutting edge. Paris? NYC? Those places are so last year! On a day of clouds or rain, Tokyo washes aclean, and everywhere, in everything large and small, the palpable influence of the foreign-to-you aesthetic, the Japan feel, infiltrates everything, so that there's art and potential in all things, a brief glance from a girl on the sidewalk, the seemingly flimsy architecture, the display in a shoproom window. You're at once in an ancient, ancient foreign country and yet the same time a new plastic fantastic metropolis, the center of fashion and commerce and desire. That evening, we end up in Aoyama.
"You know the bassist for Quality of Light?"
"Yeah. We went to college together. He's a good guy."
"No way, that's way cool."
Soren takes us to a hole-in-the-wall bar on a side street, someplace you'd only ever find out about if somebody took you there. We enter the joint, and for the first few moments are just staring around at things: the entire interior is molded in white 60s plastic, complete with corresponding day-glo fixtures, a colorful, retro circle motif, lime and orange, and bar stools, wall decorations, and lights all in the same repeating circle pattern. Cibo Matto is blaring from wall-mounted speakers. "Man, this place is melting," somebody says, and we're laughing at something, though we don't know what. The hostess comes over and seats us at a booth.
"So, Takashi," I say, finding myself next to him, "what's been going on in your life?"
"Ahh, not much, Ritchie, same old same old. So many people coming, so many people leaving, my head spinning, you know?"
"Yeah, I understand the feeling exactly. Still, there are a few people who seem to just thrive here, hey?"
"Yeah, I guess a few. But then sometimes I feel when new kids come in, I just getting older."
"Don't worry, dude, you look about twenty years old."
"That's what people say. But Ritchie, I thirty now! So old!"
I chit-chat with one of the girls, the one who wants life stories, but she seems a bit spaced-out, just being like "wow" to everything and not seeming to quite grasp any responses, and then as a group we talk about where the most authentic Mexican food is in the city, though we all agree it's impossible to really get the stuff anywhere in Japan. This is a topic of massive importance to the foreigners of Tokyo. We can spend thousands of conver
sations and start bitter feuds over the question, but tonight Takashi's antsiness does not disappear, and then in what seems all of a sudden but is probably nothing of the sort, he gets a phone call and talks excitedly to whoever it is on the other end, and then has to leave, promises to meet up later that evening, and the girls, including the spacey one, decide they'd like to go for a spin as well, and suddenly all of a sudden it's back to just Soren and me, staring into our drinks as rock music blares. I'm not actually all that close to Takashi, he’s just that 'foreigner-lover English speaker' who knows every single foreigner, but Soren apparently has some kind of prior friendship, and maybe as a side-effect of the Ecstasy, he seems troubled by some sort of social diss, some emotional intensification even if there's no basis in logic. Or maybe Soren actually does take it harder than most; maybe he projects unruffled confidence so habitually it makes him actually much more full of doubt inside.
"Man, I think I'm about to have a breakdown."
"No, bad idea, about what? Just take a deep breath and calm down."
"No, I mean really man. I'm about to go." Suddenly he gets up and stalks off to the bathroom. When he comes back, there's the faint odor of vomit coming from him. "You wouldn't understand. There's some other stuff going on. I'm never going to get free of it. Anyway...that felt good," he says, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Just the drugs talking."
Harajuku Sunday Page 1