by Rachel Cohn
“Is this place for real?” I asked the boys.
“You haven’t even seen the main event yet,” said Nik.
Oscar looked at a text on his phone. “Middle of the second half and the British International School is ahead of ICS by four goals. The girls are going to be in a bad mood when they get here.”
“Sports are, like, your life, huh?” I asked Oscar. I didn’t mean the question offensively. Every interaction I’d had with him so far involved him checking sports scores on his phone or discussing the ICS polo team.
“I care about beautiful boys just as much. Too bad there aren’t any here.” He shoved Nik. There were other gay students at ICS-Tokyo, but Oscar was the only one I’d met so far who was so fully out and fully proud of his sexuality.
Nik placed his arm around my shoulder. “I’m too busy with a beautiful lady to be insulted.”
I didn’t have time to decide whether I liked Nik’s arm around my shoulder or not; we were called for the main show to start, another level down. The main stage area was surprisingly small, with two sets of bleacher seats with video screens covering the walls behind them, and an empty area in between the seats, about the size of a boxing ring. We were given glow lights, and then we sat down on the highest level of seats and waited for the show to begin.
The stage lit up with a dazzle of lasers and LED lights. Suddenly, a giant animatronic Godzilla emerged from the front of the stage, followed by a bevy of hot Japanese girls, burlesque dancers, and drummers. They performed pop tunes while images of African safaris played on wall-size screens behind each set of audience seats, flashing English words like Wild! and Crazy! Each number was weirder and more awesome than the one before it. The girls danced and fought with Godzilla, then an animatronic dinosaur, then guys in robot suits. Then the robots fought with dinosaurs to a soundtrack of pop music. The girls had laser lightsaber battles while singing and dancing.
Oscar popped some popcorn into his mouth. “This could only be better if they added go-go boys to the dance troupe.”
Nik had a huge smile on his face watching the action on the stage. Maybe because he was Slavic and always looked very intense and serious, or because Oscar was so ridiculously handsome, but I hadn’t noticed before how handsome Nik was. His buzz cut wasn’t as interesting as Ryuu Kimura’s black-blue flop of hair, but Nik had amazing high cheekbones, rosy cheeks, and probably the whitest set of teeth I’d ever seen. Either he was a master of teeth-cleaning skills, or he spent his father’s money on professional teeth whitening services. Whichever option it was, a smile looked good on him.
“What did you think?” Nik asked me after the show ended.
“I’ve never been as appalled by bad taste and entertained at the same time in my life,” I said.
“Ah,” Oscar said, looking at a text on his phone. “That’s because you’ve never seen the Ex-Brat girls after they lose a field hockey game.”
If I died in a freak accident while hurrying through Shibuya’s notorious “scramble” intersection, where thousands of pedestrians crossed from all directions at once when the WALK light shifted to green, I hoped whoever performed my funeral service would know I died satisfied. Shibuya felt like being in the center of the vertical world, with tall buildings flashing advertisements, neon lights, and level after level of stores and restaurants visible through glass windows. So many people, so hurried, so much to look at and experience. Fashionista women wearing skinny pants with stiletto pumps riding bikes down crowded sidewalks. Harajuku girls with pink hair and crazy outfits. Loud izakaya bars where men’s conversations and laughter spilled onto the street, and women walking by wearing kimonos with white socks tucked into flip-flops. Young people strutting around dressed in kosupure (“cosplay,” Nik translated) outfits from their favorite anime, like it was Halloween every day here.
TOO MUCH FUN.
I didn’t want to die, but if I did, I would tell the souls I met in the afterlife: Don’t feel bad about my premature end. I saw it all in my short time down in the upworld of Tokyo.
Meanwhile, Imogen literally stopped in the middle of the chaotic crosswalk while thousands of people scurried past to reach the curb before the light turned red, and cars streamed across from all directions again.
“What the hell are you doing, Im-san? Move!” pleaded Jhanvi, tugging desperately on Imogen’s arm.
“He’s everywhere,” Imogen groaned, gesturing up at one of the tall buildings that was covered in a collage of colors—blues, blacks, reds, whites, yellows. It presented an enormous electronic mural portrait of her father—who I’d learned in the last few days was not just a sculpter, but one of Japan’s most prominent pop culture artists. Akira Kato’s colorful dreadlocks and naked bod—except for a Sumo wrestler mawashi (loincloth)—were certainly . . . interesting. If Mrs. Takahara argued with Kenji in Japanese again about what I was supposed to wear at Destiny Club, I should flash her a photo of Imogen’s near-naked father plastered over the scramble, and let Mrs. T reassess what a proper dress code should be then.
Imogen’s father really was everywhere. I’d seen that same face displayed on trash cans, subway trains, newspaper advertisements. He might as well be on the Japanese yen, his face (and pudgy, exposed chest and tummy) were so familiar to Tokyoites at this point.
Imogen didn’t budge, so Nik and Oscar grabbed Imogen’s arms and carried her to the curb, arriving exactly as the pedestrian light turned to red, and cars and trucks and buses took command of the intersection again.
“Don’t do that!” Ntombi chided Imogen.
“Sorry,” Imogen grumbled, most insincerely. “I’ll be so glad when his exhibition is over.”
“How much longer?” asked Jhanvi.
“One week,” said Imogen, turning her attention to me. “I’m gonna celebrate so hard when it’s finally over, okay?”
“We can start celebrating now,” said Nik. He pulled out two beers from the inside of his jacket that he’d purchased at the train station. I still hadn’t gotten over how easy it was to buy beer here. It was sold in vending machines; no need for ID. Vending machines were everywhere in Japan—in alleyways, in front of konbini stores, on train platforms—selling everything from soft drinks, coffee, tea, cigarettes, candy, soup, and other hot food to sake and beer. “Who wants?”
Imogen raised her hand; the others declined. Nik handed over a can of Asahi to Imogen and opened the other for himself. An older Japanese lady passed them and scolded Imogen in Japanese, probably assuming Imogen didn’t speak the language. In fact, Imogen was the one Ex-Brat who did. She yelled back at the lady, who swatted Imogen with her shopping bag, and then hurried away toward the train station.
“What was that all about?” Oscar asked Imogen.
“Naughty, rude, drunk teenagers! The shame!” Imogen said. She clinked cans with Nik, they both chugged their beers, and then tossed the empties into an Akira Kato–plastered trash can. Imogen burped. “That was good.”
“Fuck my diet. I need a feast to soothe today’s loss,” said Jhanvi.
“The hunger situation is getting dire,” said Ntombi.
“Tokyu Food Show!” Oscar and Nik both said.
I eagerly followed the gang to their favorite local food spot in Shibuya Station, where another Japanese department store with a basement food hall offered dazzling displays of grilled eel, fried pork, fish salad, sushi, seafood-and-rice wraps, dumplings, mochi cakes, chocolates, and jellied confections.
“What’ll it be, Elle-san?” Nik asked me as he ate octopus on a stick.
“I like the food better when I see it in plastic first,” I joked. Another of my favorite sights in Japan were all the restaurants whose outside windows displayed perfect plastic versions—soups, meats, tempura, noodles—of the foods they served inside.
“Try this,” said Nik, offering me a piece of octopus.
I shook my head. “Ew. I think I’ll just have some mochi.”
Of the many benefits of moving across the world to live with a stranger fat
her who worked all the time was that I had no supervision of my nutritional choices. And Kenji had a sweet tooth like I did; he wasn’t going to nag me about protein and eating my greens like Mom used to, before the Beast.
“What time do you have to be home?” Imogen asked Ntombi, knowing that while Ntombi had a bit more free rein with her parents out of town for the weekend, she also had to negotiate a not-too-late curfew with her housekeeper in order to keep the nervous woman from having a worry-related heart attack.
“Ten tonight. How about you?” Ntombi asked me.
I shrugged. The other benefit of no supervision? No supervision.
Imogen said, “Let’s follow some gyaru and hang out wherever they go. So long as it doesn’t suck.”
“Gyaru?” I asked.
Jhanvi said, “The Japanese schoolgirls wearing short uniform skirts with street-fashion tops.”
Imogen said, “With fake eyelashes to make their eyes look really big, and dyed hair like bronze or pink or whatever.”
“With naughty little teddy bear knapsacks on their backs,” said Nik.
“I spy gyaru!” I exclaimed, totally in on this fun game. If anyone had told me two months ago that soon I’d have private-school friends, and we’d be tracking Japanese schoolgirls wearing crazy fashions through the streets of Tokyo, I would never have believed them. We followed a group of giggling gyaru up the escalator, back onto the street, and through a winding maze of blocks that led
to a tall building where the girls got on the elevator and the Ex-Brats stepped back to decide whether to follow. “Where do you think they went?” Imogen asked.
The floors were lit on a monitor over the door at the ground level, which showed the elevator stopping on floor eight. Imogen read the building’s directory, which was in Japanese. “Oh, karaoke! Let’s go, Ex-Brats.”
We took the elevator to the eighth floor, where Imogen handled the transaction with the counter clerk in Japanese. “The Hello Kitty room is the only one available right now. Sorry, Oscar!” she told him, not sorrily. “We all know about your pathological fear of the Sanrio store. Brace yourself.” Oscar laughed.
A clerk led us to a small room with a huge video monitor on its far wall, bench seating against the other walls, and a table with a menu for snacks and drinks in the middle. The whole room was plastered in Hello Kitty wallpaper, giving the space a pink, red, white, and bow-tied psychedelic effect, made more awesome by the Hello Kitty dolls on the benches and the Hello Kitty plates on the table. “You get first song choice, rookie,” Imogen told me.
I paused. I didn’t want to make an uncool pick, but I blurted out the first song that came into my mind. “ ‘Mr. Roboto’?”
I cringed at my quick, dumb choice. I only knew that Japan-themed song because Mom used to sing her favorite part, Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, to me when I played with a robot toy in the bathtub when I was little.
“Too obvious. Pass,” said Imogen, who chose “Hotline Bling” for the group instead.
The song came on with the lyrics spooling across the video screen, and everyone except me sang with joy and abandon. Mostly, I watched and mouthed along, entertained, but not ready to reveal what a terrible off-key singer I was. Imogen ordered popcorn and beer to be delivered to our room. I laughed at their silly song-stylings so hard I thought I was going to pee my pants, which made me finally ready to sing aloud, as I singsong announced, “I have to go to the bathroom!”
I left the karaoke room. Nik followed behind me. “I need the loo, too,” he said.
As we progressed down the cramped hallway, another karaoke room door swung open, and two drunk salarymen wandered out and went into the bathrooms ahead of us. Since we had to wait anyway, Nik motioned for me to join him in the drunk men’s karaoke room, where three other drunk dudes were sitting on a bench singing “Uptown Funk.”
“I’d like to funk you up,” Nik said into my ear, pulling me onto an empty bench.
I looked into his face. He had a hulky athlete’s body, very cut and muscled and on display in his tight polo shirts, with a wickedly cute face accentuated by smiling eyes and pink lips.
The drunk men sang harder and more flamboyantly for our benefit, like they were on Japanese Idol and they were in it to win it with their serenade to the gaijin expats. Nik had his own show to offer them. He leaned over to me and just like that, when I didn’t expect it at all, it happened.
My first real kiss.
Was there a nice way to say to a guy, I like you, but kissing you did nothing for me?
Nik sat next to me at the long, rectangular-shaped table in Marine Science class while our teacher exhibited different samples of seawater and tested for temperature, salinity, transparency, density, and pressure. Nik kept nudging at my side, like we were in on a little secret.
I was trying to take notes on the lecture, but Nik placed his hand over mine and wrote on the open page in my notebook. This class is so boring!
I agreed with him, but at this moment, I desperately wanted to focus on the lesson instead of his hulking figure sitting next to me. I removed my hand from under his.
I couldn’t believe I’d kissed Nik over the weekend. Or, more specifically, that he’d kissed me. I’m not entirely sure I invited him in for the lip smack. I didn’t not invite him, so it’s not like he forced himself on me, but when it happened, I was taken by surprise. I was flattered and curious, for sure. I was having so much fun, I wanted it to keep going. But I didn’t expect the kiss, and I didn’t expect the kiss would be so bland, or that his mouth would taste so unpleasantly like beer and garlic.
Did it feel sloppy because I was inexperienced or because it was just a bad kiss? My lips felt no sizzle of attraction. My mind was much more in control, going, Um, you seem to be kissing a boy right now. Try to act like you’re into it. Is that a tongue? Act like you know what you’re doing! Ew . . .
I’d never been attracted to girls, so I didn’t think I wasn’t into the kiss because of that. I knew the answer, regrettably, was simpler. I just wasn’t into Nik in that way. Disappointing. Kenji would be so impressed if I dated Alexei Zhzhonov’s son. I would be solidified in the Ex-Brats if Nik was my boyfriend. I’d be more than the new girl Imogen had taken in. I could possibly be the girlfriend of the richest guy in school. But the status wasn’t worth it to go out with a guy I wasn’t attracted to.
I hadn’t told the Ex-Brats that I’d kissed Nik. I didn’t want them to make a big deal of it when I already knew I didn’t want to go further with him. But I wondered if Nik had told them.
Why couldn’t I fake being more into him? Because I understood the difference between genuine attraction and zero chemistry.
I’d sort of kissed another boy two years earlier, and I’d definitely liked it. The summer before my freshman year of high school, just before Mom’s problems started, my swim team at the Y had won our meet. We were on our way to Ledo to celebrate. Reggie and I sat together at the back of the bus, as always. When everyone stood up to get off the bus, Reggie reached for my hand to keep me in my seat. “What’s up?” I said.
“You swam great today,” he said.
“So did you,” I said.
I’d known him for so long, almost like a brother. But suddenly the glance between us was different. Not at all like how siblings were supposed to look at each other. His hand that held mine was sweaty, and mine turned warm. For the first time, I noticed not just how sweet his face was, but how handsome. When his eyes looked into mine, I saw this person I’d known forever, but who suddenly looked different, and my heart pinged, YES! Neither of us pounced, as Nik did to me at karaoke. Instead, it was like Reg and I were in perfect sync. Our mouths moved closer and closer until boom, they touched. Total electricity. The best half-second of my life. So yeah, maybe that was my first real kiss, but it was so quick, I’d never felt like it counted.
“Has anyone seen my jacket?” Our coach had returned to the bus. Immediately, Reggie and I pulled apart and stood up, guiltily, even though
our “kiss” had been more like a quick peck. The coach saw us. “Let’s go, Zoellner and Coleman! Pizza time.”
Soon after, Reggie was placed in foster care, and then the Beast came into my life. We didn’t see each other much after that, and we never spoke about what had happened between us. I think we both knew we were better off as friends because our lives were too complicated for more. There was too much history between us. It would hurt too much to be torn apart if we let our friendship move to the next level and it didn’t work out.
Do you want to hang out at my house after school? Nik wrote in my notebook. We have a private screening room. My dad gets all the latest movies sent to him. We have a karaoke machine there, too.
I wrote back, I have too much homework, but thanks.
He waited a few minutes to answer, like he thought I’d change my mind. Then Nik drew a sad face onto my notebook. Next to it, he wrote, Got it.
Phew, I thought. That was easier than I expected. Brutal, but swift.
Dear Mom,
It’s so beautiful here in the fall. The trees look like bouquets of gold, red, green, and yellow lollipops outside the windows, with glitter from the sparkling electronic billboards on the buildings beyond the trees. I’m no longer in that awed stage where I can’t believe I live in this exotic place. The forty-ninth floor seems normal now. Walking on streets filled with mostly Japanese people seems normal. You wouldn’t believe how there could be so many people everywhere, but everything is so clean and orderly. My favorite thing is when I go to the store to buy food, and the counter clerks bow to me at the end of the transaction and wrap my purchases like they’re cherished Christmas presents instead of, like, a basic container of soba noodles.
I’m obsessed with the apples here. They’re so much sweeter and juicier than I remember back home. And I can’t stop drinking the apple juice in Japan. It’s become a joke on the swim team. Coach Tanya gives me an apple juice bottle whenever I best my times. So guess who has improved her 50M butterfly stroke by a solid four seconds?