“Look at this one,” I whisper to Oliver.
“Right, lovely, what does it say, then?”
I give him my scary-haka-look. He knows that I can’t read the Japanese kanji characters. “I might not be able to read, but I can tell you where every single stamp is from.” Oliver raises an eyebrow. “Ok, here we go.” I open up the accordion and tell him: every shrine-or-temple name, details about its unique architectural features, about the person who signed it. Oliver’s impressed.
“Why haven’t you got Meiji?” he asks.
“Meiji?”
“Yeah, Meiji Jingu. You know, the big shrine in Harajuku, on the other side of the bridge.”
“There’s not a shrine there.”
“Not a shrine there? Meiji is only the most important shrine in Tokyo. Ah, at last! A crack in her stone memory! Meiji! The kryptonite to Miss Perfect’s Encyclopedic Vault!” One of the monks shoos us out for being too loud, and I whisper as I tug my shoes on.
“Oliver, seriously, we never went to that one.”
“Sady, seriously, we did. Don’t you remember? Last year, Bao Yu and Luis tried to hammer on the huge drum in front and got chased out by the priests.”
“Uh, last year? HELLO.”
“Ah! You came this year. It seems like decades.”
I roll my eyes. “You were saying? Meiji?”
“Yeah, it’s brill, huge, though once you get inside, you still have to walk forever to get there.”
“Walk?”
“Yeah.”
“Ollie, remember? I told you my Dad’s shrine has a long stone path.”
“Right, but that was before I realized—Sades, it would make absolute sense. Your dad lived in Meguro, right? He’d just have to hop on the Yamanote, three stops and he’d be there.”
“We have to go!” I start pulling Oliver toward the subway.
“Indeed . . . though it’s closed now.”
“I thoroughly and completely blame you for this wild goose chase we’ve been on.”
“Blame accepted.”
“How are we going to get in?”
“Sades, you’re a loon, we can’t just break in to Meiji.”
“We can try!”
Oliver shakes his head. “You’re trouble.”
We walk all the way up Omotesando, the Fifth Avenue of Tokyo. I’ve walked it a million times, drooled over the shop windows and eaten terrible Japanese pizza at Shakey’s. Once, Oliver and I even went on a sort of date to this crêperie. I say sort of date because he ordered for both of us, after which I launched into a tirade about feminism and equality and women having a voice. He listened attentively and then reminded me that he ordered in Japanese, a language I don’t speak, that he’d been to France and knew what to order, and that I said that very day I liked surprises.
I said I was sorry. Basically Oliver is my best friend here, and I’m not about to ruin it by making out with him. Plus, Ollie loves food as much as I do.
We walk past the ramen place that has the fatty bone-marrow soup from up north, past the Choco-Cro that has amazing flaky hot croissants. Up the stairs to the overpass where he points to the treetops.
“That’s not Yoyogi Park?” I ask.
“Nope.” From up here, I see a white rolling fortress of fence stretched around a parking lot and in the distance a giant torii gate nestled in the trees. We head down the stairs to the bridge that’s usually swarming with Harajuku girls. Tonight it’s empty. We go up and rattle the gates a little.
We wander around the periphery, searching for some way in. Or really, we just wander around. I have no intention of actually going into the park after dark. It would be totally illegal. But I like when Oliver hoists me onto his shoulders to find “chinks in the armor of Meiji.”
And then a voice below us whispers, “I know the way.” From my great height, I see the ruffles of a Harajuku girl in a gingham Little Bo Peep outfit staring up at us.
I scramble down off Oliver’s shoulders, ignoring his ouches. Was she following us? Sneaky. Heat flares in my belly. I am not going to be friendly with a Harajuku girl. “Whatever, we’ll come back tomorrow.”
Oliver switches to Japanese and I’m surprised that she doesn’t fawn over him the way most Japanese girls do. She answers him in short gruff sentences.
“She talks like a boy,” Oliver whispers and I glare at him.
“What did she say?”
“She says you can squeeze through a hole in the fence behind the station.”
I get the creepy skin crawl feeling. The one I get when I’m home alone and the radiator bangs in our apartment building.
“Let’s just wait until tomorrow,” I say.
“Are you scared?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Oh, come on, it’ll be an adventure.”
“Yeah, getting deported is totally an adventure.”
“At eight p.m.?”
“More likely eight p.m. than midnight.”
“Okay then, we storm the gates at midnight.” Oliver throws his scrawny arm into the air and I have to smile.
“Except the train stops running at midnight,” I remind him.
“Well played.”
Throughout this whole negotiation, the Little Bo Peep girl narrows her eyes and ping-pongs between us. I can’t tell if she understands.
“Will you tell her thanks, though?” I say to Oliver.
“Meiji different at night,” says the Bo Peep girl directly to me.
I still have the creepy skin crawl feeling and am not about to be pressured by Little Bo Peep.
“Thanks, but, I have to go,” I say.
And then she says it. “Hu-ri-ku guy-jean.” At first I don’t understand what she’s saying. “Fu-rii-ku gaijin,” she says again and then I get it. She’s calling me a freak foreigner. It’s like being punched in the stomach. I don’t know if I want to cry or punch back, so I grab Oliver’s arm and break into a jog.
The next day it’s pouring.
The day after that I have to cram for an exam.
By the time three days have passed the whole thing seems like a dream, until Oliver passes me in the hall. “Chink in the armor at ten,” he says.
“Sure,” I say.
But I don’t show up. And when Oliver asks what happened, I can’t explain it to him. I can’t explain that I never want that sucker punch feeling again of being called a freak, and that as much as I want to see my dad’s shrine, I’m terrified of seeing the Harajuku girl again, terrified of her calling me out for the fraud that I am. It hits me that no matter how crazy they dress, they will always be Japanese, and that no matter how Japanese I feel inside, I’ll never really look Japanese to anyone here. I also can’t tell him how scared I am that it won’t even be my dad’s shrine, that I’ll never find it, that I’ll never find him. Instead I just say, “Oh, must have forgotten,” like I am so over our friendship.
Oliver and I stop speaking.
I really hate the Harajuku girl.
Sunday, our only day off from school, I get up early. I go to my favorite little mom-and-pop place that always serves the same Japanese breakfast special: a whole salty sanma fish, miso soup, pickled daikon, fresh rice, and my favorite, fermented natto beans with a raw egg. Most people think it’s disgusting, but it was my dad’s favorite, and I’m determined to like it. When I have these breakfasts I pretend I’m chatting with him on my cell. No one can understand what I’m saying anyway.
Today I tell him about Oliver being mad at me, and how I’ve abandoned the shrine hunt. I can’t tell if it’s his disappointment or mine, but I realize from his silence that I have to ganbatte—a Japanese word that roughly means, go get ’em. I have to visit Meiji.
I wait till after dark. If this even is my dad’s shrine, and there’s any chance my dad’s ghost is going to show himself, I have to be alone. To avoid the Harajuku girl, I go the long way to the shrine, getting off at Shibuya and walking through the neon-craziness of the crossing, through the park by the Olymp
ic stadium, past where the guys dress up as Elvises, to Meiji.
I snake around until I’m where she said the hole would be. And there it is, a neatly cut section of fence. I hesitate. I pretend to be bird watching, and then I slip right through. It’s a little brambly, but a few steps away I can see the torii gate up front: two giant tree trunks ascending the heavens. My breathing shortens in my chest and my legs tingle, ready to run. I flip open my phone. “I’m scared,” I whisper. No answer.
I take a deep breath and walk through the gates.
Everything goes quiet, like there’s a force field around the grounds. The air is still, waiting. I breathe in the green forest, lush compared with the anemic topiaries in pots outside the gates. Above me I can even see a few stars.
And then I hear it.
The sound of pebbles crunching under my feet.
Tears spring to my eyes.
I know this is my father’s shrine.
I walk down the long path, lit by the moon through leaves. The cicadas are going crazy and my heart beats a bass line. Being the only person here puts an electric grin on my face. I’m not nervous, not worried about being deported. Through the second gate and I know I belong here. This is my Japan, the Japan from my dad’s stories, this is home. It’s a long walk to the main shrine, but a magnet in my chest pulls me forward. Right before the main shrine, I wash my hands in cool water, then I walk through the last set of gates. The solid doors open up to a wide courtyard with a sacred tree where people have tied their wishes.
I imagine holding my dad’s big rough hand, and listening as he points out the carved gigantic doors, “like a castle,” and the giant drum, “I can see why your friends tried to play it,” and the bad luck tied to trees, “Never give in to bad luck, just keep try and luck change.”
I whip around—someone’s coming. I pull into the shadows of the souvenir booth.
A security guard walks past, boots clicking, pausing for a moment to survey the grounds. I try to become one with the wood of the booth, only raising my eyes when I’m sure he’s passed. A chill zaps through me as I catch a pair of shiny eyes gleaming in the darkness across from me, Japanese, like my dad’s. A finger raised to smiling lips. I’m yanked back in time to games of hide-and-seek with my father. That same gesture, a finger raised to smiling lips. I would refuse to hide alone and we’d sit in silence holding our breaths and smiling to the edge of laughter. I want to reach across to him now, but I can still hear the movement of the security guard. When we hid together I felt like I could hear his thoughts, or read them on his smiling face, Mom’s almost here, and shh, shh, shh. Sometimes we would turn hide-and-seek on its head and leap out to scare her. I’d know it was time to jump just by my dad’s widening eyes, one, two, three, they seemed to say. When we can no longer hear the click of his boots, the eyes flicker to the right and I notice a little side exit. one, two, three, they say and we’re up. I scan the grounds, nearly running, trying to be sure we aren’t spotted.
Shouts erupt from the main building. I break into a run and can hear my dad keeping pace behind me. I dart through the exit and am happy for that year on the track team. I don’t look back as the footsteps slam after me. If they see my face, I’m a goner. No more visits to Meiji, no more hanging out with my dad in his favorite place. I hear a chorus of my dad’s pebbles flying under my feet. His feet flying with mine. I’ve never run this fast. My breath is easy and strong. I hear the security guard mutter a curse as he trips, and am sure it’s my dad’s pebbles gathering up and pulling his feet from under him. I accelerate. Dad’s hands push me through the hole in the fence and we speed around the corner.
I turn around to greet him, and am met by blue gingham ruffles. The girl from the bridge. I’m surprised by how quickly my heart adjusts. I guess I knew it wasn’t him in there, and when she smiles I still see my dad’s on-the-verge-of-laughing-smile. Giggles fly up my chest and sing out our mouths as we pound down Takeshita Street, laughing hysterically. People are staring at us as we catch our breath.
“You’re right, it’s different at night.” I say.
And then she points to me, points to herself, and smiles big: “Fu-rii-ku, ne.” I smile too. Yeah. We’re both freaks.
Peace on Earth
by Suzanne Kamata
According to the Prime Minister, Japan and the United States are best friends. So why are my parents always arguing?
Just this morning, my father made breakfast—ojiya, which is miso soup mixed with leftover rice and an egg. He said, “Isn’t this better than hotcakes? All that sugar?”
Mom had made blueberry pancakes yesterday. She didn’t say anything, but sighed loudly and then looked longingly toward the row of breakfast cereals on the kitchen counter.
“Taiga-kun, what do you think?” Otosan said, looking at me.
I shrugged. I’ll eat anything and I like both kinds of breakfast—Mom’s American ones, and Otosan’s Japanese ones—but since he got started on this cooking kick, it seems like every meal is part of a competition between them. My sister Maya and I looked at each other across the table and rolled our eyes.
“Did you hear them last night?” Maya asks me later, as we ride our bikes to school.
“How could I not? Urusakatta, na,”—so annoying.
They’d been watching some DVD about World War II, and Otosan started going on about the atomic bomb. Then Mom jumped in and their voices got louder and louder.
“‘I think you should apologize to Ueno-san,’” Maya says, making her voice lower like Otosan’s.
Mrs. Ueno is our elderly next-door neighbor. She was in Nagasaki at the time of the bomb. She’s pretty cheerful, but her voice is a little strange—high and squeaky. Otosan says it’s because of radiation poisoning.
“‘Why do you always hold me responsible?’” I imitate Mom. “‘I didn’t drop that bomb. I would have been opposed to it, if I’d been alive then. I married you, didn’t I? Doesn’t that prove anything?’”
Maya laughs, but then she gets serious. “What do you think other parents fight about?”
I shrug, letting go of the handlebar for a second. “Which professional baseball team is the best?”
“Or maybe whose turn it is to take out the trash?” Maya guesses.
“Maybe if Mom and Otosan were from the same country, they’d always get along.”
“So, ka na?”—maybe.
That evening, the argument is about where to go for winter vacation. Mom wants to go back to the States to visit her family—Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Ann and Uncle Brad, my cousins.
“We haven’t seen them in almost two years,” she says.
“We need to save money,” Otosan says. “It’s too expensive to go all the way to Wisconsin, but we could take a trip somewhere closer to home. Any ideas, kids?”
Me, I don’t care where we go, or if we go or not. I’d be happy just to sleep in every day and hang out at the batting center with my friends. Or maybe I could get Chiaki, this girl in my homeroom, to go to karaoke with me.
“Hawaii?” Maya says. I guess it’s because she loves watching our parents’ wedding video. They got married on a plantation on Oahu, with a waterfall trickling down rocks and leis around their necks. They look really happy in that video. They’re not fighting. Instead, they’re feeding each other coconut wedding cake, dancing, and kissing.
“Hmmm.” Otosan rubs his forehead.
“Why don’t we go to Okinawa?” I suggest. Because of the army base, I know that there are lots of Americans there. Mom might feel sort of at home. And with all the palm trees and sugar cane fields, it’s probably sort of like Hawaii.
“Okinawa,” Otosan repeats, letting the idea sink in. He’s a high school teacher, and he’s been down there on school trips. The students at the school Maya and I attend usually go north to Hokkaido for skiing, so we’ve never been to Naha.
“Okinawa!” Mom says. “I’ve always wanted to go there!”
Mom likes to travel. Before she met Otosan, she�
�d been to half a dozen countries in Europe. She’d planned on spending a year or two teaching English in Japan before going on to Thailand, India, and various places in Africa. But she got stuck here, she says. She met Otosan and fell in love, and then she couldn’t leave. So now she only gets to go someplace if we all go together.
She has her bags packed a week before we’re scheduled to leave. I wait until the last minute, then jam a couple pairs of shorts, some T-shirts, boxers, my baseball mitt, and a couple of comic books into my backpack. Oh, and a bathing suit. Mom says it’ll be too cold for swimming in the ocean—the main reason most people from other parts of Japan go to Okinawa—but that our hotel has an indoor pool.
I’m looking forward to going to Okinawa because it’s home to the National High School baseball champions. Last summer, I watched every game they played, and I’m hoping that something in the air down there will rub off on me and turn me into a pitcher as amazing as their ace, Shimabukuro. Maybe the island food will make me stronger—all that bitter melon and ham.
On the plane, Mom thumbs through her guidebook. “Ooh,” she says. “A&W! They have root beer in Okinawa!”
“What’s A&W?” Maya asks.
“It’s an American restaurant chain. I worked at one when I was in high school. Wow, it’s been a long time. . . .”
“What’s root beer?” I ask. I’m too young to drink alcohol, so it’s not like I’ll get to try it.
“It’s a soft drink. Like cola, but different. We’ll have to try root beer floats! At A&W there’s a bell at the entrance. If you’re happy with the service, you ring the bell when you leave.”
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