by Tim Anderson
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 dirt
y 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.
I feel flushed as one usually does when walking from a porn shop out into public view, and then it hits me. Not only did I “go to tempting,” as Miho had so poetically put it, but I’d completely given myself over to tempting—swallowed it whole—and come away with the brown paper bag with the free “love oil” inside that I am now clutching tightly to my side. I think of the flyer Miho had given me with its friendly, approachable God wrapped in white. Then I think of Mr. 666 and wonder if he’s a top or a bottom. Is this wrong?
By way of divine punishment, on my way back to the station, I find myself back in the Straight Greaseball District, where the pack of young, sharp-dressed hoods are still gathered. One of them is quickly walking alongside an office lady on her way home with groceries, who wants none of his foolishness and wastes no time in outpacing him. Realizing he’s been outrun by a woman in heels, he stops, swishes his hair back into place, and, attempting to save face by opening his phone and pretending to take a call, swaggers back to his fellow navel-baring delinquents. Bada-bing.
As I skirt through the street towards what I can now see is the east entrance of the train station, one excitable Japanese guy chases me down and, his English obviously failing him, simply points to a flyer he’s holding in front of my face and says, “SEX!” Can’t really disagree, but I politely decline and move on, after which I am chased down by an African guy saying, “Come, man, come on! Hot ladies for you! You come to my bar!” I tell him no thanks, but he continues with his sales pitch. “HOT WOMEN, MAN!! HOT WOMEN!! ALL FOR YOU, MAN!! COME ON!” I speed up and wave him away, at which point he stops, stomps his feet, and yells in mortal frustration, “WHY NOT, MAN??!!” I want to turn around, stomp my foot, and bellow self-righteously, “Because I have too much respect for women!!” But this isn’t why.
I take the Yamanote train to Shinagawa Station, where I will transfer to the Tokaido Line and ride all the way to back down to Fujisawa. At Shinagawa the platform is a sea of people. The train soon comes, and as people pile in, two uniformed attendants standing by each pair of doors push, nay cram, the people in, forcing everyone on board to assume positions normally reserved for doctor visits. The carriage is a piece of modern art, each arm, newspaper, briefcase, set of headphones, chin, book, and elbow squeezing into each other like blood cells in a particularly narrow capillary. And just when you think no other living soul can possibly fit into the carriage, a stiff looking businessman leaps in and, as the doors shut, slowly morphs into whatever position the carriage allows (broken cigarette, leather slingback, praying mantis).
The train is so packed that every part of my body is being touched (not an altogether horrible sensation). When the train stops at Yokohama Station the people start flooding out, and I’m nearly strangled to death by my own bag (carrying my precious porn—an irony Miss Miho would have appreciated) because, though the strap is still over my shoulder, the bag and I are apparently separated by a few dozen people; those people, unfortunately for me, live in Yokohama. Thankfully, I’m able to pull it back to me without slicing anyone in half, and the rest of the ride isn’t nearly as intimate.
Arriving back at my apartment, I go immediately to my tiny room, flop onto the futon, open my bag, take out the magazine (an imported American one), tear off the shrink-wrap, open it, and gasp.
I gasp not with lust, amazement, or even amusement. It is with disillusionment and disgust that I turn the pages of this very expensive magazine and move my eyes over the glossy, full-color content. Every crotch shot, every hint of man-meat, every flash or flicker of cock and/or balls is scratched out. It is unthinkable. Yes, yes, a very lucky man at some porn importer has the dream job of thumbing through all the magazines coming into the country and taking a big, thick black marker, or sometimes a pencil eraser, to each and every hard, throbbing penis contained within. Such blatant disregard for art and those who buy it I have never witnessed. All those gorgeous photographs laid to waste because of some weird Japanese law against showing the crotch area to those who wish to pay good money to see it.
You can still make out some of the goods, but really, the whole point of porn is that it makes absolutely no demands on your imagination. It puts everything you want to see right in front of you so you can enjoy it briefly before getting on with your life.
I set the magazine down and, lying on my bed staring at the cracks in the ceiling, let out a frustrated laugh. I lean over and pull the flyer that Miss Miho had given me out of my back pocket and look at the illustrations on the front. There’s God again, smiling widely in his pristine white robe. When I’d looked at it before, he seemed like a benevolent, soft-featured God with a voice like Morgan Freeman’s. Now, it seems, he is smiling knowingly, like he’s just to
ld a great joke about a Jew, a priest, and a homosexual and is waiting for me to get it. Did he just wink at me?
A little ashamed of myself, I look over at my porn, its pages open to a photo spread of a farmhand asking his boss for a raise up against a wheelbarrow, a big, thick black blotch running through the best parts. I look back at God, his eyes twinkling, his mouth grinning with a self-satisfied “gotcha!”
Miho Johnson was right. God is always watching. Even when you’re hopelessly lost in Shinjuku.
I’ll be damned.
# of beers bought from vending machines: 22
# of times train has been late: 0
# of bows taken (big): 13
# of bows taken (small): 1,157
In which your new favorite protagonist takes a big, fat, meaty bite out of a new language and, in the process, realizes that the topic of oral sex is so unavoidable in this day and age that it sometimes just brings itself up in the classroom.
My tiny new Japanese cell phone may cause cancer, but it cures it, too. I bought it last night and have been playing with it for the better part of the morning. It’s sleek and silver, about the thickness of ten playing cards wrapped in tissue paper. None of the two thousand possible ringtones really appeal to me, so I’m happy to discover I can program in my own songs. The instruction manual includes a picture of a keyboard, each note corresponding to a certain button combination on the keypad, so naturally I’ve spent an hour programming in the theme song to Dallas. The dramatic crescendo could use some work, but I decide to do something else and save my emotional energy.
I’ve already read the two books I’d brought with me, so I start nosing around the place for any discarded literature. My roommate Sean, the heartbreaker of the household, had recently let me borrow some of his Playboys, but I’d lost interest after reading the interviews. Plus, a few too many of the pages were sticking together.