The White Man and the Pachinko Girl

by Vann Chow

  Why don't they start printing payouts like in Las Vegas? 1.4 million Yen, and how many clanks of balls hitting on metal trays and decibels would that mean? He felt guilty of breaking the harmony, well, the relative harmony of flashing video screens of high pitch digitalized salesladies of the sullen Pachinko parlor by piercing it with his unusual achievement.

  Statistically, the odds were against him being at least one to one hundred thousand. Hence, a piece of paper would not really justify the glory of the moment.

  As the sweat on his forehead dripped through his bushy brows into his eyes clouding his sight, he made out the face of Misa and her long white limbs extending across his lap to reach for the almost overflowing tray and scooping handful after handful of metal balls into trays she had brought over earlier. Smith joined in without thinking.

  The trays were being filled quickly. A male colleague standing behind her quickly replaced the filled ones with empty ones. It was an amazing sight, to see so many metal balls being spat out in one go. Smith mumbled some words of amazement to himself.

  Misa gave him a reassuring smile and said congratulations to him in Japanese. Smith tried to smile back, but she was already beckoning Tatsu over so he could help with carrying the filled trays to the counter. The smile on Smith’s face deteriorated into nothingness.

  Thump! The last of the trays hit the counter's surface. The metal balls filled up a total of 15 twelve by twenty pink plastic trays. That's how much 1.4 million Yen, or approximately fifteen thousand US dollars, weighed. It took the boy Tatsu, who proved himself to be more than a good-for-nothing, in this instance, many rounds to transfer them to the back of the store. They were laid out on the award redemption center and the manager, a skinny, shrewd looking man in black rimmed glass and black suit, was nervously scooping spoonful after spoonful into the counting machine. To Smith, it was getting a bit ridiculous, this whole extended ceremony of accounting and rewarding. Smith wondered if they had ever had such a big payout since their recent opening, in what appeared to be just last spring, according to the posters and brochures Smith was given plenty of time to read during the recounting.

  A lady in similar uniform was making calls with her back turned away from him. She murmured into the speaker of the beige color telephone mounted on the wall. Who was she talking to? And what was she talking about? Was it about me? Were the Yakuza coming to get him now? For looting their establishment out of sheer luck? A gambling parlor should be prepared to lose at any time if it was so readily winning from its patrons, though the current scene seemed to indicate to him a lack of a plan B.

  He walked over to the manager looking man and asked.

  “Am I going to get a check?” he said. “A check,” he pulled out a checkbook he happened to have as an example from the left side of his suit jacket's pocket. “Check is better. Do you get it? I don't want fifteen fucking trays of balls, or toys...no toys.” He pointed at the gifts locked safely in the glass display cases behind him. “ Kore wa, shirana i. None of these!”

  “ Ie. Ie. No, no, no.” The manager waved him off. Smith looked pitifully for help in English at the rest of his staff now crowding at the front of the redemption counter. They cringed one by one at the virtual death rays that seemed to shoot out of his eyes. The responsibility finally fell on to Misa, who was on duty in the area Smith was sitting.

  “Write your name here. And here...your...” Misa took the manager's instruction and started to translate what he was saying.

  Her English was not bad at all. It could also just have been an illusion Smith created in his head because he had more patience with her than he had ever been with others.

  “Phone number and address,” Smith finished her sentence as he saw her struggling with her words.

  “ Hai, hai... ” She smiled. He smiled back. “We...will call tsu .” She continued. “when okay a-ne... oka-ne. .. okay.” She made the gesture of okay with her fingers, like the gesture for number three.

  “The money is okay. Wakari mashida, ” he said in reply to encourage her. “But where do I get it?” He asked.

  “Here,” she turned around to ask her manager the same question in Japanese. “One moment. One moment.”

  And the lady who was talking suspiciously on the phone a moment ago came forward to him. He realized for the first time that they were almost at equal heights. Her chiseled face and protruding gave her an aurora of someone in powerful rank. The conspicuously long, up-curling eyelashes batted at him challengingly. As she drew up so close to him, he could almost feel the air breathed out from her small, straight pointy nose. He could now see her name, etched clearly, on the golden rectangular plate pinned to her lapel. A Miss Katsumi Saitou. Below her name NABUO Group was written in smaller characters. She produced an envelope in her hand silently, and after showing the front side of it to him for a few seconds, she tore the plastic tape that was sealing the envelope open and begun to present the content to him. The others at the parlor, including the staff, were just as curious as he was about the contents inside, that he could almost hear them draw a collective breath. Inside the envelope, there were three plastic cards that looked much like Visa cards each inserted into the three flaps of the package. The woman then proceeded to explain in Japanese to Smith, with Misa translating for him on his side, their quite impressive names and respective usages. –The black one is a VIP card to this parlor and its sister Pachinko parlors in other parts of the country. It seemed to be a lifetime membership card that entitled him to free drinks, free snacks, and internet in any parlor he chooses to visit. Though Smith had no idea whether it was still an excellent marketing idea at his age to get a reward that only works until the end of his lifetime, he was glad. He was reminded not to forget to sign the card. The second card was a white color card. That one was obvious, for as soon as she pointed to that card, the patch of gold that signified the computer chip within a typical V isa card caught and reflected the light from the ceiling quartz lamp, making him blind for a second. That must be where the 1.4 million Yen was stored, he thought. He recognized the seal of Mizuho Bank on the bottom of the card, and decided that he would go visit his personal banker the next morning to get clear on any rules and tax laws he may be subjected to given his new ‘source of income.' The last card, which was gray, Misa translated, was an insurance card. An insurance card? What kind of insurance? Smith asked her. She had a hard time explaining. On it, there was again the name NABUO Group , who appeared to own also an insurance business. Misa stuttered a great deal in her translation while Miss Katsumi was on a rant. Like heavy rain, she pelted on Misa what appeared to be technical terms related to his insurance policy that Misa was translating with visibly less confidence. Young people rarely had a clue about insurance. Their youth and imprudence were their best insurance, unlike an old fart like him who could break his hip any moment now, he thought to himself.

  He decided it would be best to obtain the details from the ultimate provider, instead of squeezing second-hand information from Misa, at a later time point, by asking his secretary who spoke fluent Japanese and English to call the service number on the back of the card. Whatever kind of insurance this was, it could only be a good compliment to what he had. He smiled internally for the thoughtfulness of the Japanese.

  Then the whole staff congratulated him heartwarmingly once more in unison with a long Japanese phrase, as a gesture of sending him out in good spirit. Knobs on the Pachinko machine stop spinning for once and patrons of the parlor clapped when Smith walked out of the door with his digitalized winnings safe and sound in his pocket. He tapped it twice and nodded to the people watching him cheerfully as he went, thanking them for the good spirit. At the threshold, he turned and bowed, something that he rarely did, but felt compelled by a force to do so, to the good nature Japanese people who lost so much of their money here, culminating in his ultimate win. He stole another glance at Misa, she smiled weakly at him. Behind her, the boy Tatsu was mumbling some crude gibberish.

  8. A Bli
nd Date

  It was less dramatic than he thought, the blind date that Marie Newton had set up for him. According to her sophisticated personality evaluation and matchmaking models advertised on the agency's website, he was 89% matching with an Australian woman called Aileen.” He liked Aileen's profile. Born and raised in Sydney, University-educated, Aileen was a professional, although the profile didn't say what kind. She was five feet seven 'with nice figure' according to the profile and was only 36 years old. More than a decade his junior.

  “It has gotta beat, Wesley.” He thought to himself. Of course, a second later he was also seized by the intimidating thoughts that he has to court a woman so much younger than him. What the hell was he going to say to her? Hope she's interested in international affairs, he thought sarcastically.

  Sunday came around like greased lightning. He put on the same suit – a charcoal designer suit from Napolitalian made of Merino wool – and matching pants he was supposed to wear this coming Monday. It was a defying act that shifted his weekly schedule for his work outfit between Monday to Friday forward by one day. He had developed a rotation system ever since he arrived in Japan to eliminate time and effort wasted every morning to decide on an outfit ever since his divorce. As his wife was no longer there to piece together item by item a matching workwear for him like she used to do, he had to take care of himself somehow.

  He dipped his hand into the softness of his silk ties, a messy collection of around fifteen ties he owned, heaped haplessly, crisscrossing each other in one of the drawers of the white shelf, and felt at once the feeling of being at home. It had its relieving effects, the sensation of incredibly smooth, silky fabric slipping over the back of his hand, and through the insides of his fingers. When he pressed the tips of his fingers together, he felt the vigor, the energy of the fabrics and weaving patterns, and by their subtle dissimilarities, he picked a tie that best fit his mood of the day without seeing the actual tie. By this method he avoided dwelling too long on them, yet when he looped today's lucky winner, a satin tie in chocolate brown silk with peach and brown petals with a hint of rust around his neck he experienced a mixed feeling of rage and self-pity.

  Debbie had bought it for his 50 th birthday, he loved it and wore it only on important occasions like no other tie he owned.

  Having a date with someone other than your ex-wife after being married for more than twenty-five years was an important occasion alright, but wearing a tie with such strong emotional value attached to it was a form of cowardice, a subconscious reluctance to let go.

  Forcefully, he pulled the tie off his neck and stuffed it, with considerable care, back into the bottom of the drawer and grabbed the first thing he found fumbling through the pile. A light blue bow tie.

  ***

  “No way!” Aileen Martin tossed her head back and laughed. “You're not buying me flowers, are you?” Aileen hid her face with her hands, which was all red all of a sudden. “Oh my God,” Smith had called the waiter selling roses in the restaurant over, “Do you know how cliché this is?” Aileen said, and continued to laugh, rather nervously. She lifted her wine glass for another sip of red wine.

  “Somehow I sensed that the beautiful lady would appreciate the gesture,” Smith was talking nonsense like a well-oiled machine. He had not done it since he was twenty.

  “You're one incredible man. I have never received roses on the first date, let alone,” Aileen held up the rickety looking, dried up roses that Smith just bought from the waiter, “roses bought from a...”

  Smith was stuffing his wallet back into his pant's pocket and could not help but chuckled at the poor state of his gift for the lady. He finished her sentence. “From a second rate Italian restaurant where you can't order food in Italian. But one thing they did right, it's to preserve the tradition of flower hawkers. They never fail to show up, in any Italian restaurant around the world, be it Italy, Spain, Germany or Japan. You see them everywhere.” Then he said in a hush, “And they are always such tackily dressed balding Italian man, with an aspiration to be an actor.”

  Aileen laughed. “This is mean!”

  “Ask the Italians what they think about the Americans or the New Zealanders. I can guarantee you it would be the most racist thing you've ever heard.”

  She pressed her hand against her stomach. It was starting to hurt from laughing. Smith was imitating the waiter's dramatic pitch at the moment. “He genuinely acted like a silent movie actor. He was all theatrics with his expression and rigid movements. It's a waste for him to be selling flowers in a restaurant, don't' you think?” Aileen turned to see if the man was still around.

  “Okay, okay, let's not continue to ridicule a good man for just doing his job.”

  “Sure,” he said. “So you said you work for the...?”

  “The International Human Rights Lawyers Association. The InterHRLA chapter based in Tokyo.”

  “Pardon, my poor memory. Acronyms are my nemesis. I never have the talent for information retention and age, I must say, had robbed me the little of what's left.” That made Aileen laughed again.

  “Don't be so harsh on yourself. I have always found myself in situations where I'd wish I could forget things.”

  “Well, working for a non-profit organization is not the most interesting job in the world. The problem with being professionals like us is that our knowledge and experience are so highly specialized that they are not applicable to the other and thereafter difficult to share, and elicit genuine interests from one another. Humans are hunters. We are programmed to absorb and retain information that is most valuable to the improvement of our chance of survival, and in the modern world, that would be our professional careers.”

  “Mind if I ask, why don't you go, I don't know, to Algeria, Bangladesh, Bangalore… to one of those Arab countries where polygamy was still practiced, and young women were exchanged for cows, or to Honduras where child labor is the sole reason for their GDP growth but come to Japan instead? If I look around here, no, I am not being disrespectful. Please don't be offended. But honestly, working on human rights in Japan, in Tokyo, what sort of impact do you expect to make? What sort of unsatisfactory excuse is that for a working vacation?”

  “You made me laughed all night, but nothing you said had been nearly as farcical as what you just said. Working on Human Rights issues in Japan is not as simple as it seems. Many issues are so deep-rooted many are blind to it. No one, for example, is being killed or banned flagrantly from being who he or she is by laws and that's how the Japanese government has been getting away with so much in the international arena. Japan was rarely listed in the Human Rights Watch Journal in the past ten years. Yet its status was not optimal. An example would be the homogeneity of the population. Less than 1.6% Japanese residents are foreign nationals, and locally born groups with non-Japanese origin are not allowed to have Japanese citizenship nor are they allowed to vote, and enjoy social benefits like the rest of them. Despite a British-like constitution drafted by the staff of the American Army, underwriting human rights and in particular called for unprecedented equality between people of different age, heritage, gender, etc. in postwar Japan, one knows a lot of work needs to be done on promoting these ideas into the minds of Japanese people when one just go take a stroll in the streets. We are facing a lot of difficulty in Japan in particular because, for one, Japanese are used to how things are, and they see no need for change. Secondly, the social protocol of not speaking about such evils openly in case it brought you or your family shame is keeping those dissenting voices down. But the deeper you dig, the more you found out and the more you realized that Japan is significantly lagging in human rights, and women's rights, in particular. And that's what I am here for. We need more local women to speak up, to bring on the momentum.”

  “Okay, there is a disproportionate amount of men versus women in any management around the world, and it is not innate to Asian society. How do you propose to fix this? The French's center right party has put forward legislation that
would see to it that women make up half the figures in France's leading boardrooms in the next five years, but guess what happened? The men simply recommended prominent mogul's wives to sit on the board. They have no experience and essentially you have two persons sitting on the board representing, most of the time, the same opinion. This is not an equal distribution of power. They are simply putting up a show. And in the end, these females became the model examples of why women are, pardon my language, less capable compared to their male counterparts, because they have gotten all the wrong people to stand at the forefront, handpicked, strategically, by a group of males who wanted to hold on to their power.”

  “We are entirely of the same opinion, Smith. The key to any legislation is to refine it over time with experience, and slowly eliminate gray areas where companies can play around with. That's the situation over there in Europe. In Japan, we have gotten the Peace Constitution that clearly spells out Women's Right. Its clauses are far more advanced and holistic than that portion of the Constitution of the United States, in a way. But get this, more than 50 years passed, there was not once the Constitution was amended. Life goes on in a parallel universe, and people accepted that things stayed the same way as it were, as if the constitution was never written. That's why we need an organization that is not attached to any political party to advocate for change. We work in more subtle ways, by provoking a lot of discussion in the society, appealing to the senses of the common people whose lives are restrained by the invisible chains of the biased social norm. Women's Rights covered a great deal of things. It covers, suffrage, the right to vote, right to education, equal access to information, equal access to employment opportunity, reproduction rights, abortion rights, elimination of sexual violence and enslavement against women and many, many more fronts, and it is very likely that we could only generate small, incremental change in one small part of the above areas. But the way we work is that we tried to improve the lives of women, one case at a time, one life at a time, and make sure each time we generate a lot of media coverage, not only in Japan but in Asia in general, to create pressure both in and outside of Japan. This has proven to be more effective than other more radical means. That's why I am here, as a lawyer to represent underprivileged clients, and under-informed legal advisers locally in Japan.”