by J. E. Park
Turning around to see what Claude was looking at, I noticed six men wearing the same blue uwagi jackets as the protesters at the base’s gate. They spotted us, too. Fearing that, through no fault of my own, there was another night in the brig ahead of me, I repeated Claude’s phrase, only in English.
“Shit.”
*****
CHAPTER 6
T he protesters saw us at the same time we saw them. It did not look as if they were expecting foreigners to find their beer garden so soon after arriving. They all started speaking to one another in hushed tones while throwing side-eye glances in our direction. They did not put any effort into hiding the fact that they were talking about us.
After reaching some consensus, two of them stepped out of sight, disappearing toward the bar. The rest marched toward our table. When they got there the men, bearing somber expressions, bowed at the waist and greeted us. “Konnichi wa.” Good afternoon.
I stood up and returned the gesture. Following my lead, my friends did the same. I then held out my hand and said, “Konnichi wa. Watashi wa Doyle Murphy.” My name is Doyle Murphy.
“Do…da…da…?” one of the protesters stammered, reminding me that there was no “l” sound in Japanese. To him, my first name was indecipherable gibberish. Pronouncing the “r” in Murphy was a little tricky too. I should add that it was no picnic for an American to pronounce a Japanese “r,” either.
To help him out, I tried to katakanize my name. Pointing to myself, I said, “Do-ru Mu-Ru-Fi.”
“Ahhhh.” Our protester said while taking my hand and shaking it with genuine warmth. “Murufi-san. Hajimemashita. Watashi wa Otsuka Hideki.”
“Hajimemashita,” I said. Glad to meet you.
Otsuka-san could tell my Japanese was atrocious. He spoke slowly to give me a fighting chance of understanding him. “You speak Japanese?”
“Sukoshi,” I answered. A little.
“Your friends speak Japanese too?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Then, I wirr try to speak Engrish.” Otsuka-san turned to our group and straightened his back. He looked like he was going to say something of great importance with a high degree of formality and gravitas. He did, but when it came out, it was entirely unintelligible.
Realizing that we had not understood a word that he had said, Otsuka-san prepared to repeat himself. Before he could get another word out of his mouth, however, his friends snuck up from behind. One of them slammed several bottles of Sapporo beer on the table hard enough to startle us. Finding that hilarious, he erupted in laughter. He then slapped Claude Metaire on the shoulder and cackled, “WEHR-COME TO JAPAN!”
*****
I joined the Navy to see the world and to discover cultures different from my own. The moment I learned the USS Belleau Wood was moving to Japan, I started reading everything I could about it. I was expecting the unexpected.
Still, I found myself surprised by the hospitality of Japanese protesters. Hours before, they were apoplectic about us trespassing within their country. Now they were buying us drinks in prodigious quantities. Ichiro Kida, the man who spoke the best English, tried to explain the contradiction.
“No, we do not want more American mi-ri-tary peo-po in Japan,” he said. “Would you want Chinese army peo-po occupying San Francisco?” If I had to guess, Kida-san was in his early thirties. He was a serious-looking man and stockier than most of the other Japanese we saw. He obviously worked out in some fashion and moved with the confidence of someone who knew how to take care of himself.
“No, I guess not.” I watched Tony Bard take his chopsticks and stick them into the rice he was eating so that they stood up straight. I reached over, pulled them out, and laid them down across the bowl. Tony looked at me, trying to figure out what I was doing.
“That makes the food an offering for the dead,” I explained. “It's bad luck and poor manners. Lay the hashi over the edge of the bowl like the Japanese guys are doing.”
Kida-san watched this and nodded his approval. “That does not mean we do not want you to visit us, to rearn about us or rike us; we just want to have con-tro over our country. The bases ah-so make us a target. We have ar-ready been attacked with nuke-re-ar weapons once. We do not want Russians or Chinese to bomb us again to get to the American Navy.”
“Wakarimasu,” I said. I understand.
Otsuka-san was closer to my age. He was a little taller than the other Japanese guys but still shorter than us Americans. Except for Dixie. Otsuka had a more typical build of a Japanese man, thin and wiry. I sensed that he wanted to improve his English skills as much as I wanted to improve my Japanese. He hung close to Kida-san and me. “How rong you study Japan ranguage?” he asked.
“One year,” I said in Japanese. In the simplest English I could muster, I added, “This is first time I try speaking.”
“Aaaaah,” They both said. “Is good for first time!” They were lying.
“Domo arigato. I still need much more practice.”
“Me too.” Otsuka-san smiled. “With my Engrish.”
“You rike Sapporo?” Kazuo Yabuta asked, pointing at the beer we were drinking. Yabuta-san was a stereotype breaker. He was a jovial man who laughed without reservation. Yabuta-san liked to drink, and more importantly, he enjoyed making the rest of us drink with him. His English was limited to fundamental phrases, but he had a way of communicating that had us in stitches. He spoke in single syllables, pantomime, and hilarious audio effects.
Yabuta-san was a very loud man that inadvertently called attention to himself. That tended to make the other Japanese uncomfortable. We Americans ate it up, though. It was impossible not to like the man, and he was the most popular of our new friends. “You rike Sapporo?” he asked again.
“Hai! Hai!” Dixie answered, showing that he had at least picked up the Japanese word for “yes.” Turning to me afterward, he asked, “Doyle, how do you say it’s delicious in Japanese?”
“Totemo oishii desu.”
Dixie tried to repeat what I said but slaughtered it. I do not know what he actually articulated, but whatever it was, Yabuta, Takahashi, Koshimizu, and Sasaki found it hilarious. When they finished laughing, Yabuta told him. “Japan good beer! Japan very good beer! Oh-dah Asahi now!”
“We drink Asahi.” Claude tried to explain. “Eet ees very good!”
“Oh! Oh!” Yabuta said, having decoded Metaire’s French Guianan accent for the first time. “Wakarimasu! Oh-dah Kirin! Oh-dah Kirin now!”
By then, waitresses were prowling the beer garden, so I caught one’s attention and ordered, “Kirin o kudasai.”
She asked how many, but I did not understand her. Otsuka-san answered for me. “Shi-chi,” he said. Seven.
When our beer arrived, Kida-san paid for it before I had the chance. Yabuta-san showed it off, filling up the glasses of his American guests before sitting back in anticipation. Dixie reached forward to try a drink, but I stopped him.
“Dude. Grab a bottle and fill their glasses first,” I told him, giving my guys another cultural lesson. “That’s the way it’s done here. You never fill your own glass, and you always make sure that none of theirs are empty. When you’re done drinking, leave the glass full in front of you.”
Again, Kida-san noticed this and nodded. He seemed to appreciate that I did my research. With the drinking etiquette established, we went through the Kirin like it was water. Having grown up on weak American beer, we found the Japanese version a pleasant surprise. We drank a lot of it.
At some point, Yabuta-san wanted to show off more Japanese booze. “Oh! Oh!” he said. “Oh-dah saké! Oh-dah saké now!”
I caught the waitress’s attention. “Sumi…sumi..sumimasen. Osaké o kudasai!” By this point, we had been through all the Japanese beers the garden offered several times. I was starting to forget the little Japanese I knew. After the saké, my English was getting sketchy too.
“Oh! Oh!” Yabuta-san said after the second round of saké, the one with the flak
es of gold floating in it. “Oh-dah shochu! Oh-dah shochu now!”
Following Yabuta-san’s suggestion, I tried to order seven bottles of shochu. The waitress gasped. Our Japanese friends burst out in laughter once again. Otsuka-san smiled and corrected my order to one. “Shochu is vay-dree strong. One bot-toh fine.”
We were now getting into the hard stuff. I asked for seven more beers as chasers. When I turned over my yen to our server, I realized that it was the first time I paid for anything since our new friends arrived.
When we finished the sho-chu, a form of Korean vodka, we were all absolutely pie-eyed. I was thinking things were getting ridiculous when Yabuta-san suggested we try a popular Japanese cocktail.
“Oh! Oh! Oh-dah chu-hai! Oh-dah chu-hai now!” A chu-hai was shochu mixed with tonic water and lime juice. It was tasty, but not what we needed. Dixie was stoned, looking weirdly around the area, trying to keep his head upright. Claude was obliterated. He was a fitness nut, not a drinker. Even Tony’s eyes were growing very heavy, and I sensed he would not be conscious long if we did not get him moving.
I needed to figure out a way to put the brakes on our drinking, but my own head was so muddled I had no idea how. Then Yabuta-san said, “Oh! Oh! You need drink omanko jūsu! Oh-dah omanko jūsu now!”
I couldn’t. I was wrecked. My friends were wrecked. Still, I felt that we would lose face if we did not at least try omanko jūsu. Once again, I got our waitress’s attention, and when she arrived, I said, “Omanko jūsu o kudasai.”
The waitress blushed and asked me to repeat myself. When I did, she turned even redder. She then said a lot of stuff that I could not even begin to understand before she shuffled away. She looked embarrassed and maybe even offended. Clearly, something had gone wrong.
I turned and looked at our hosts. Kida and Otsuka averted their eyes. Takahashi, Koshimizu, and Sasaki stared at me with very grave expressions. It looked like they disapproved of what I said. Yabuta looked like he was doing everything he could to keep from busting out in laughter. A moment later, an older woman I assumed to be our waitress’s boss showed up to ask me what I had ordered. “Omanko jūsu…?” I asked.
“You know what is omanko jūsu?” she asked me. She did not sound amused.
“Iye,” I sheepishly answered. No.
“Where you rearn ‘omanko jūsu’?”
I turned and looked at Yabuta-san, who immediately erupted into a fit of hysterical laughter. So did Takahashi, Koshimizu, and Sasaki. Kida and Otsuka cracked up too, despite making their best effort not to. This set off a very animated exchange between Yabuta-san and the beer garden supervisor that got us asked to leave. “What is omanko jūsu?” I asked Otsuka-san as we stumbled toward the exit.
“You no want know,” he answered.
I did, though. If I was getting banned from the beer garden, I had to understand why. “Kida-san, what is omanko jūsu?”
Kida smiled. “Do you know what jūsu means?”
I nodded. “Yes. It means juice.”
“Hai. It is juice. Omanko is a woman’s…”
I buried my face in my hand. “Never mind,” I told him. “I figured it out.”
After staggering out of the department store’s elevator and back into the ginza, we stood there swaying around each other for a moment. We were trying to keep our balance and figure out what to do next. Of course, it was Yabuta-san who made the suggestion. “We eat! Oh! Oh! You need try odori ebi! We go odori ebi now!”
I do not know where we went next. All I remember was that it was a very long walk, and part of it was through downtown Sasebo. There were flashing lights, sirens, and people yelling into megaphones. Their amplified voices bounced off the buildings, further disorienting us. Beautiful girls dressed as anime characters wove through the crowd on roller skates. They were trying to entice us into the nightclubs, restaurants, or whatever other business it was that they worked for. Near the base, the people we saw seemed pressured to conform. In this part of town, young people seemed perfectly willing to express themselves in ways both delectable and garish.
It took forever to reach our destination, which was good because we needed to walk the alcohol out of our system. By the time we arrived, only Claude Metaire was still hopelessly drunk.
Yabuta-san had chosen a traditional Japanese eatery for us to dine at. There were no chairs, and the tables were communal and close to the ground. You sat cross-legged on the floor while you ate. Our hosts were used to this. We Americans had a hard time sitting still, having to shift position constantly to keep our legs from falling asleep. We were also squeezed between two other groups of diners, which felt claustrophobic and added to our discomfort.
“Irassharimase!” a tiny older woman said as she got us all situated. Once we were seated, she used a set of wooden tongs to pass us each a steaming hot towel to wipe our face and hands on. If there was one Japanese custom that I grew to appreciate, it was that one. It was a refreshing way to rejuvenate oneself before eating.
Yabuta-san did all the ordering while Otsuka and I smoked my last two cigarettes. We then did another shot of shochu, the ten of us toasting, “Kampai!” I then excused myself to buy smokes from a vending machine I spotted on the way in. I returned as our appetizers arrived, three heaping bowls teeming with writhing live shrimp. Odori ebi.
I noticed that all eyes were upon me. I was the guy who made the effort to learn Japanese and familiarize myself with the customs of the land. That made me the man who was going to try it first. The Japanese knew I would likely be disgusted by live food but wanted to see how I would react. The Americans were watching me, too, hoping that I knew a graceful way to decline the dish. I didn’t.
All I could do was get it over with. Without hesitation, I picked up my hashi and went for it. I was proficient with chopsticks, but I discovered that picking up noodles was far easier than trying to grab food that was excitedly trying to get away from me. Our hosts found it hilarious watching me work, but they cheered me on as I sought a victim. When I finally caught one of the bastards, I popped it into my mouth without ceremony. Before I could think about it, I began chewing, washing it down with a long pull of Asahi.
“Aww, man,” I heard Claude groan. Metaire turned far more pale than a man of his complexion could reasonably be expected to. He then struggled to get to his feet. Once up, he bolted for the door with his hand over his mouth. Tony Bard followed him to see if he was alright.
Our hosts looked concerned, but after they saw Dixie trying to keep from laughing, they busted up too. They then said something between themselves that I missed. After that little discussion, each of them reached into a bowl, grabbed a shrimp, and ate it as I had. Dixie did too, though I caught him gagging as he swallowed.
When they finished, Kida-san leaned in and said, “That was very interesting. There is another way to do this, though. Would you like to see?”
My face flushed red, knowing that I messed up. My Japanese friends only ate a writhing live shrimp themselves to save me from embarrassment. It likely disgusted them just as much as it had disgusted me. I watched Kida-san grab another shrimp, separate its head from its tail, and shell it. He then used his hashi to dip the meat in one of the sauce cups before putting it in his mouth. After that, he stuck his tongue out at me to show the tail was still wriggling before chewing it up and swallowing it. “Odori ebi,” he said. “Dancing shrimp.” I had to admit; his method was far better than mine. Still, I do not think odori ebi will become a staple on American appetizer menus anytime soon.
Claude and Tony were never able to see odori ebi done the correct way. Ten minutes later, Bard stepped back into the restaurant, looking concerned. He also looked a little relieved to have found a way out of eating live shrimp. “Claude’s down, Doyle. He’s tossing his guts up into a garbage can outside.”
“You need me to help get him back to the ship?” I asked.
Tony shook his head. “No, Doyle. No way. You’re in your element here. You stay. You’re doing us proud.”
“Thanks, man. You know how to get back?”
Our leading petty officer shook his head. “No clue whatsoever. We’re going to take a cab.”
“Then make sure he’s done getting sick before you put him in a car.” A few months before, Claude made a Tijuana taxi driver pity-puke all over the inside of his own ride. I was in the front seat and barely escaped taking a direct hit.
Once Bard and Metaire left, plates of chicken yakitori came out. And then came gyoza. Both were delicious. After that came tuna yakitori, which, because I am not particularly fond of fish, was actually more challenging for me to swallow than that first shrimp.
When we finished our feast, our table was an overflowing mess. Our waitress slipped between Takahashi and me to clear our plates. Once her arms were full of dishes, she tried to pull away from the table but looked like she was going to hit me square in the forehead with the saucers. To let her by, I cocked my head to the side. As the mess passed above me, a moist scrap of food fell from one of the bowls and landed right in my ear.
At first, I was just mildly disgusted. I winced and reached for a napkin to clean myself up. Before I could grab one, though, I felt ten tiny legs emerge from that little morsel. In a very arachnid-esque fashion, they then started probing around my ear canal. I panicked. With one fluid motion, I raised my right arm and batted my ear with everything I had. The offending shrimp went flying across the table, where it struck Yabuta-san right in the center of his forehead. It then ricocheted, performed several aerial somersaults, and landed just shy of my dinner plate. It sat there staring at me, stunned, but poised and ready to strike again.
Now, shrimp do not look very formidable when all you see is their tails dangling from the side of a margarita glass. Seeing one whole just after you interrupted it from burrowing into your brain is a different matter altogether. They are primeval-looking creatures with appendages tipped with tiny lobster claws. They have long antennae, capable of picking up scents and vibrations deep underwater. Shrimp are also armor-plated and have the same emotionless eyes as any other cold-blooded killing machine. Staring at that little beast, I knew I had the advantage in size and strength, but it had unpredictability on its side. No matter how deep I looked into its little black eyes, I could not figure out what it would do next.