My Almost Flawless Tokyo Dream Life

by Rachel Cohn

  “It’s just parents. It’s not that bad,” I called to Ryuu, who was sitting at the farthest corner high up in the bleachers in the basketball gymnasium, hunched over a book. Between the horror show of the Fuji-Q trip, and then that horrible conversation with Kenji afterward, I didn’t care if the Ex-Brats saw me talking to iced-out Ryuu at school.

  Parents mingled in the center of the room, eating hors d’oeuvres from trays brought around by waiters, drinking wine, and looking at their kids’ school projects—­dioramas, paintings, science experiments—placed throughout the large room. It was a few days after the Fuji-Q debacle, at an evening party for Parents’ Night, with the ICS-Tokyo parents getting tours of the classrooms, talking with their kids’ teachers, and seeing their precious progeny’s projects.

  As promised, Kenji Takahara was in attendance. Despite being in a room teeming with expats, some basic Japanese instinct had kicked in for me. Kenji acted like our tiff never happened; and I did the same. Courteous and nonconfrontational. We were back to being polite roommates.

  “It’s that bad,” Ryuu said.

  I said, “Your artwork is amazing. I had no idea you were an illustrator.” On the wall behind the basketball hoop hung a framed work of Ryuu’s, drawn to resemble a comic book cover. The manga-style illustration pictured a

  superhero-looking gopher dressed as a golfer, swinging a club on a parkland overlooking the Tokyo skyline, with the title Golpher.

  His brown eyes peeked from under his tousle of blue-black hair. “What happened this weekend? How come you weren’t at the swim meet?”

  “Because I’m a jerk,” I answered honestly. Despite what the Ex-Brats said, in my heart I felt confident that Ryuu Kimura didn’t suck as a human being. In fact, I thought exactly the opposite. I mean, I thought I knew Reggie Coleman. I thought he was my best friend until he dumped me, totally out of the blue, for a lazy, whiner swimmer who complained when her hair got wet . . . in a pool! So if my first impression of Ryuu was bad—and the Ex-Brats only tried to reinforce that impression—that didn’t mean Ryuu wasn’t a good person. I knew better. It’s impossible to really know someone until they truly let you in.

  “No, no, no,” came a familiar voice from behind. ­Imogen. “This is not a swim meet. Leave the moody loner alone, Elle. That’s why he’s all the way up here—he likes it that way. Come on. My folks want to meet you.”

  “Sayonara, Joushi,” said Ryuu, not looking up from his book.

  I let myself be led away. I almost said, I’ll come when I’m ready and don’t tell me not to talk to Ryuu. But with Kenji in attendance, I wanted to be on best behavior and avoid confrontation.

  Imogen broke through the swarm of people surrounding her parents, who held court at the center of the room. Her mom looked smaller than she appeared in magazines, and not nearly as couture fashion as I expected, more like boho chic yoga mom. Shar Kato wore simple leggings with cowboy boots, a white knit sweater, and a large diamond pendant necklace, with her brunette hair in a high ponytail and a minimum of makeup—just lip gloss and mascara. She had the same blue eyes as ­Imogen and a confident demeanor. She let her husband, Akira Kato, be the fashion plate of the event. He wore crimson-colored plaid cargo pants, with a proper white shirt and suit coat, and had a red top hat on his head. “You must be Elle,” Mrs. Kato said to me in a British accent, extending her hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you!” She had?

  “I haven’t heard anything about you,” teased Mr. Kato. “Should I have?”

  “Yes you have, Dad. You just weren’t paying attention,” said Imogen.

  “That sounds like me,” her dad agreed amiably.

  “Elle, you’ll have to come over one weekend so we can get to know you,” said Mrs. Kato. I was honored. Socializing at other people’s houses wasn’t common in Japan the way it is in America.

  “She’d love to!” said a new member to our group. No less than Kim Takahara. She introduced herself to the group as my aunt. I was shocked enough that Kenji was here tonight and hadn’t bailed for whatever was happening at Tak-Luxxe. But I almost passed out when Kim joined us. I was confused, until I realized she was working the parent crowd like a pro. She let Nik Zhzhonov’s mother explain an app on her phone that I knew Kim was perfectly proficient in already. I had never once seen Kim laugh, but when Jhanvi’s engineer dad told the worst joke ever, Kim responded like he was a professional comedian. She’d invited Ntombi’s mother to host an embassy reception at Destiny Club.

  Chloe Lehrer joined the group, sliding in alongside Kim and Kenji. “I’m needing parent chaperones for the junior-class trip to Kyoto this spring. Any volunteers here?”

  Radio silence from the Katos and Kenji. “I’d love to!” said Kim.

  “I could go,” Akira Kato pronounced, eyeing stunning Kim with blatant admiration. Awkward!

  “Please don’t,” Imogen said.

  Chloe said, “I see you’re all getting to know our new star swimmer! Elle, did you know Kim was also an excellent swimmer at Harvard?”

  Kim smiled. “I swam. But not on the school team.”

  Chloe said, “She could have swum on the team, but she chose not to. She was too busy taking extra language classes so she could complain about her housemates’ dirty laundry in their native tongues.”

  Kim said, “Thinking back, I suppose I should have joined. It’s not like I wasn’t up early enough for their practices.” Kim and Chloe laughed.

  “We were roommates as freshmen and I rowed crew,” said Chloe, even though no one had asked for an explanation. “I was always up at five a.m.”

  “No consideration,” teased Kim.

  “Dawn wake-up calls. That’s what friends are for,” Chloe sang.

  A school dean sang at Parents’ Night?

  Kim legit had friends?

  They were roomies at Harvard five hundred years ago? Gross.

  Kenji looked at his phone with concern. “There’s an emergency back at Tak-Luxxe. I’m afraid I need to return to the property immediately.” He leaned over and whispered into Kim’s ear. She nodded.

  I was disappointed but not surprised. I still couldn’t believe he’d shown up to begin with. I glanced at Kim, hoping she’d volunteer to go back to Tak-Luxxe in Kenji’s place and deal with the situation herself.

  “Go,” said Kim to Kenji. “I can handle things here.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said to Kenji. “I don’t need to be here if you’re not here.”

  Kim said, “You can’t leave, Elle. Stay so you can show me around your school.” But Kim’s eyes were honing in on Shar Kato a few feet away. Stay so you can help me schmooze your friend’s mom, Elle seemed to be the implicit message.

  Ryuu Kimura had finally been extracted from his bleacher seat and walked toward me with his parents on either side of him. They stuck out—the most Japanese people in this room of expats, both parents wearing navy suits. Ryuu approached our group like he was about to introduce me to them, Imogen be damned, and I started to smile.

  But Kim’s radar must have dinged an alarm, because she latched on to my arm and said, “I’d love to meet your teachers.” I stood firm, not about to be led away again.

  But Ryuu did not bring his parents to me. They walked on by, like they’d expected not to be introduced.

  I seriously wanted to mangle Kim’s beautiful face with a good old-fashioned punch to the nose.

  Nik Zhzhonov and his father—who looked like an older version of Nik—joined the group. Nik said, “Dad, this is my friend Elle. She moved here from Washington, DC, recently.”

  His dad looked me up and down in that same appraising way Nik had when we first met. “Lovely,” he opined, and extended his hand to shake mine. I weakly shook his, wishing I’d thought to bring some hand sanitizer.

  “She’s my niece!” Kim chirped. Oh, so “Aunt” Kim was finally acknowledging me as her niece? What a phony.

  “I see where she gets her good looks,” said Nik.

  I wanted to be anywhere the Zhzh
onovs weren’t. I said, “Oh, Auntie Kim, my Marine Science teacher, Jim, is over there. Let’s go say hi to him.” I said the word ­auntie with full sarcastic intent, then felt sad. I would love to have a true auntie—not someone only interested in her niece as a meaningful business connection at an elite private school.

  “Let me know if you want me to email you a list of those Tokyo restaurant recommendations,” Kim said to Nik’s father, holding up his business card. “And please, everyone—come to Destiny Club as my guest.”

  She handed out a few business cards of her own and bowed.

  On the way home, Kim only made my annoying night worse by chattering about everything she’d “accomplished at the party.” She’d gotten Akira Kato to consider designing a scuplture to be placed in Tak-Luxxe’s Sky Garden. She’d gotten Jhanvi Kapoor’s dad to agree to take a meeting to discuss job possibilities in the Tak-Luxxe empire. Nik Zhzhonov’s father said he was going to check out Destiny Club as a potential board meeting space. It hadn’t been Parents’ Night after all. It had been Kim’s Night. She’d totally stolen my chance to show Kenji the school and meet my teachers. Whatever “emergency” had happened, surely Kim could have handled it in Kenji’s place. But clearly seeing my school life in action was not Kenji’s priority.

  “Chloe never told me that Satoshi Kimura’s son went to ICS-Tokyo,” Kim said, referring to Ryuu’s father. “That was a surprise.”

  “Who cares where they send their son to school?” I asked.

  “That’s exactly right,” Kim said, completely misunderstanding me. “Kimura-san’s children can’t go to a proper Japanese school because of what he did. I hope you know Ryuu Kimura is not the sort of person you should be friends with at ICS.”

  “That’s absurd!” I protested, knowing I was a hypocrite because if it weren’t for the Ex-Brats not liking him, I would probably try to be better friends with Ryuu. But I did point out to Kim, “Whatever his father did isn’t his son’s fault.” She wasn’t listening, her attention lost to the business document she was reading. If whatever was happening with the government investigation of Tak-Luxxe caused a scandal, would Kim still be so dismissive of where Ryuu went to school? Would she worry about how the Takaharas’ business problems would tarnish me?

  My phone lit up on the car seat and I picked it up to read the message, not realizing it was actually Kim’s phone that buzzed. She hadn’t noticed it because she was busy typing on her laptop. The message was from Chloe Lehrer. See you later tonight. I’ll have the champagne and bathtub ready! I love you.

  What?!

  Kim was a lesbian? And Chloe Lehrer was her girlfriend. Of course! That’s why Chloe was always talking about Kim. I’d bet it was also the reason Kim divorced her husband as soon as her father died.

  Whatever Kim was reading on her laptop caused her to chew on her pinky cuticle anxiously. My annoyance with her dissipated. I felt sorry for her. Why be closeted in this day and age? It was so not necessary. Then again, if I had traditional Mrs. Takahara for a mother, I might not be so keen to come out, either.

  I told Kim, “I think your phone is going off.”

  Kim picked up her phone. “Probably my banker friend. Having drinks with him after I drop you back at Tak-Luxxe.”

  Riiiight. Sure.

  I wanted to tell her she didn’t need to lie to me, because I would only applaud her for having a girlfriend, but I didn’t. We weren’t close like that. Like family.

  I thought Kenji and I had an unspoken agreement to avoid confrontation after our little tiff in the driveway. Then came Parents’ Night.

  The next morning, I scarfed down a quick bowl of cereal in the kitchen before heading down to meet Akemi for our ride to school. Kenji wandered in, already dressed in a suit for work. It was unusual to see him before I left for school in the mornings. Usually he didn’t return from Destiny Club until about 2 a.m., and then he usually slept until 7 or 8 a.m. before returning to work again. He looked very, very tired. If I wasn’t still sore that he left the Parents’ Night prematurely, I might have offered to make him breakfast or coffee, like a good daughter.

  “Good morning.”

  He didn’t greet me. Instead, he reached into the fridge and grabbed an apple. He glanced at me and said, “I saw you talking to Satoshi Kimura’s son last night.”

  “So?” I said, wanting to add, And I saw you leave the only event you’ve ever attended for me after less than an hour there.

  Kenji said, “Imogen Kato and Nik Zhzhonov are the kinds of people you should be friends with. Not ­Kimura-san’s son.”

  Outrageous. No. Unacceptable. I didn’t care that the Ex-Brats made the same demand. As a principle, it wasn’t something I was going to accept from the father who’d abandoned me for the first sixteen years of my life.

  I scoffed. “He has a name. It’s Ryuu. He’s his own person. Whatever his father did wrong should not be a reflection on him.”

  Kenji shook his head as he retrieved a water bottle from the kitchen cabinet (drinking cold water from the fridge was a particularly American habit, I’d learned) and then walked toward the foyer.

  “Of course it is,” Kenji said. “Just as you are a reflection on the Takaharas. You live here. We send you to school at ICS.”

  I followed him to the foyer, where he was putting on his work shoes to leave the apartment. “That makes no sense at all. Whatever I do is about me. Just like whatever you do is about you.”

  “You are thinking like an American. You must learn to think like a Japanese person if you are going to live here.”

  “Should I live here?” I couldn’t believe I’d spoken my fear aloud. “I’m not sure I like your value system.”

  He didn’t seem at all concerned by my deepest anxiety, like it didn’t register with him at all. To him, we were having no more than a quick, awkward talk on an issue he felt the need to address to me. No more, no less. “If you plan to stay, you’d better learn it,” he said matter-of-factly. His phone buzzed with a call. He started to walk out the front door. Before he left, he looked at me with exasperation, like he was trying to make me understand something for which there was no actual logic. “Just don’t associate with that Ryuu Kimura. That’s all I’m saying. Don’t make it a big deal.”

  He answered his phone call, and the front door closed behind him.

  It was a big deal. To me.

  Uncle Masa couldn’t care less about the politics of who I should be friends with at ICS. He just wanted to hang out with me. We started our weekend in Taipei with a lovely walk. Then came the champagne.

  On Saturday morning, he’d chosen his favorite place in Taipei to show me, Chung-shan Park. We wandered on a beautiful walking path around a lake with spraying fountains, surrounded by trees, and under the shadow of Taipei’s iconic skyscraper, which was called Taipei 101. It was a great place for people-watching, with young couples on romantic walks, parents pushing babies in strollers, older people practicing tai chi, kids riding bikes, and nature lovers snapping photos of flowers. Best of all were the baobing—delicious shaved ices with a super-thin texture and condensed milk that added an extra sweet flavor. I topped my baobing with mango chunks, while Uncle Masa chose sweet potato chunks on his, an addition I never imagined could be delicious until I sampled his for myself.

  The swim meet wasn’t until the late afternoon, so the early part of our day was free for sightseeing. And, as it turned out, drunken revelations.

  We returned to the hotel for lunch, where I tried my first sip of champagne, sneaking a taste from Uncle Masa’s glass. It was tasty, but I didn’t dare drink more. Coach Tanya was sitting nearby with her boyfriend, watching over the team players who lounged in the rooftop hotel swimming pool before the big meet in a few hours.

  “So have you decided if you’ll move back to Tokyo when your Geneva assignment ends?” I asked Uncle Masa.

  He laughed. I didn’t realize I’d made a joke. Maybe he was feeling extra jovial. Uncle Masa was on his fourth glass of champagne, enjo
ying a rare day without work. “Family and work are better separate.” He took another sip and then added, “Working for Kenji is very risky.”

  “Risky how? He says you’re like a brother to him. I’m sure you’d be fine if you worked together.”

  “Kenji doesn’t need another brother.”

  That made no sense. “I know you’re just cousins—”

  “No, I mean, he had a brother who died. Kenji is at risk the same way.”

  “Wait. I had an uncle? How old was he when he died?”

  “Masaru was the oldest son, three years older than Kenji, their mother’s favorite. He died in a boating accident when he was nineteen. Drinking too much and lost control of the boat.”

  “I had no idea.” I felt a pang of sympathy for Mrs. Takahara. I couldn’t imagine how devastating it would feel to lose your child. Not like it was okay to be mean and bitter, but I could understand how a tragedy like that could turn a person that way.

  “Masaru was like a prince. Kenji worshipped him. And then Kenji became like him.”

  “Kenji is like a prince of the family,” I agreed.

  “No. A drunk.”

  “But he doesn’t drink anymore!”

  Uncle Masa was too tipsy to care about discretion. “But when he did, it was a huge problem. He drank too much, partied too much, made business deals with bad people. If I went to work with him, I’d have to clean up the messes he created.”

  My instinct was to believe Uncle Masa, but the logic didn’t add up. “Why would Kenji be put in charge of the family business if he wasn’t sober? His mother would never allow that. She’s too smart.”

  “She had no other choice. CEOs in Japan are not women. Kim was still left doing the hard work that Kenji got all the credit for. Until Kim and Noriko got him to stop.”

  “Stop what? Drinking?”

  “Yes. In exchange for their support to bring you to live with him in Tokyo, he agreed to stop drinking. And he did. For you.”

  I hadn’t realized the extent of the sacrifice Kenji made to bring me to Tokyo to live with him. Still, I was skeptical. “Did he ever go to rehab?”