Tune in Tokio

by Tim Anderson

  At this point Jimmy might sigh and say, “Spare me the double-talk. I need dates. When are you coming home?”

  “But…what will Tokyo say?” I wonder. “She loves me. Or at least tolerates me.” (OK, she finds me quite irritating.)

  I go over and sit down next to Jimmy on the edge of the rocks.

  “This is the most amazing place I’ve ever been,” he says.

  “Wow. And you’ve been to Kraków.”

  “I feel like I’m in one of those Kuniyoshi paintings.”

  “Me too. Who is he?”

  “A painter.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “You’re coming home, right?” he asks. “Soon, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need to know when.”

  I struggle to figure out what to say.

  “I really need to know when.”

  “OK. How about five months? Can you wait five more months?”

  He sighs, dips his hand in the cold water, and flicks droplets with his wet fingers.

  “Yeah, OK. I can do that. But I want a kimono. And not one of those cheap ones we were looking at at the Grand Asia Plaza. I want one that feels like flower petals against my skin. Got that? Flower petals.”

  I do some quick calculations in my head and try to remember the name of that cheap, secondhand kimono shop in Kichijyoji a student once told me about.

  “OK.”

  “OK.”

  “What if I found one that-”

  “Flower. Petals.”

  “OK.”

  Our Tokkaido Line train glides back into Tokyo’s Shinagawa Station, and I snap Jimmy out of the daze he fell into thirty minutes ago as he watched an old man across from us reading a big fat manga comic and picking his nose. We change to the Yamanote train, then to the Chuo Line, and finally reach Koenji. We slump back to my tiny room and collapse onto the bed.

  I awake slowly the next morning, wondering groggily what we should do on Jimmy’s last day. I know he’s had a great time, I know Tokyo has shown him her best, but his visit is still lacking that transcendental moment when the world explodes into a widescreen Technicolor and people start dancing around you Busby Berkeley-style. Hmmm. What could we do? Where could we go? Who could we see?

  “Oh my God! Fucking Itoya!” Jimmy cries, popping awake and jumping out of bed.

  “Who?”

  “Itoya! Itoya!”

  I stare at him with big dumb eyes.

  “The goddamn washi paper store! We’ve got to go there!”

  Itoya, of course. Everyone who knows anything about washi knows Itoya. What? You don’t know what washi is?

  Well, dummy, washi is a traditional Japanese paper made from rice or bamboo or some such type thing and then dyed and used to make things like art and stuff. Jimmy loves washi paper, and pretty much the only thing on his to-do list when he came here was to go twirl around Itoya, the famous washi paper store in Ginza, a plan that had completely escaped his mind once he’d gotten here and had his mind blown by how thin I am.

  So we scuttle eastwards to Ginza on a mission to get Jimmy some artfully made, tradition-bound transcendence.

  The first floor of Itoya is your standard stationary shop. (For me, it’s a big pile of “meh,” but those who are into stationary had better fasten their seatbelts.) It’s the second floor where the magic really happens, when the strings start to flutter and the horns start their low burbling. There, for the world to see (if the world could be crammed into a five-hundred-square-foot room) is roll upon roll upon roll, sheet upon sheet upon sheet, of wild, wonderful washi. All different colors and designs. And as soon as Jimmy sets foot in the room it’s like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Except it’s Jimmy and the Washi Paper Store.

  Upon our entrance, the floor staff immediately goes on full alert, nodding to each other that there’s a big whitey in the room and he may want to dirty up the place with his greasy American hands. Jimmy doesn’t care. Humming the love theme to Romeo and Juliet, he starts flipping through all the sheets on the closest countertop while I dedicate myself to explaining his behavior to the staff in my serviceable Japanese:

  “Don’t worry! Washi is his favorite paper!”

  “He came from America to see this washi!”

  “He is an artist with the washi!”

  The young male floor manager, looking exceedingly worried, starts following Jimmy around to make sure he doesn’t compromise the washi and its proud Japanese tradition.

  “He won’t drop the washi!” I assure him. “He is very famous in America for loving washi!”

  The manager asks Jimmy in extremely hesitant and uncertain English if he can help.

  “Do you have a darker blue version of this?” Jimmy asks, holding up a piece of blue washi, not bothering to adjust his vocabulary or speaking speed for his ESL audience. “Like something a little cloudier and ominous, like a storm is about to break out, you know, like there could be some thunder and lightning coming? That kind of blue.”

  The manager’s face falls.

  “He ask any darker blue washi!” I translate, and while the manager starts looking for a darker shade, I shadow Jimmy, making sure he’s careful not to breathe too hard on any of the paper.

  “Jimmy, you’ve got to speak more slowly and use easier words,” I tell him. “Also, look at him when you’re talking. And open your mouth a little wider.”

  “Oh,” he says. “Can’t you just translate what I say for him?” he says.

  As much as I want to tell him that my Japanese skills are indeed up to that demanding task-even though just a little over a year ago it had taken me the better part of two weeks to understand the grammar structure of the sentence, “The notebook is on the desk, and the pen is on the notebook”-I don’t think I should commit myself to it. But pride and the instinct to show off beg me to give it a try, so I do.

  “Uh, yeah, I guess I could do that.”

  “Great,” he says. “Can you tell him that I’d like to see the different types of green he has? With Japanese symbols on them.”

  “This is OK?” the manager says, holding up a sheet of dark blue.

  Jimmy nods.

  “Yes, that is good,” I venture in Japanese. “He also has an interest in seeing green things that you have here.”

  The manager smiles, sensing that, for the first time since he began helping us, he just might have the upper hand.

  “Green? Green washi, right?” he says, continuing our Japanese tête-à-tête.

  “Yes, kanji green washi.”

  “Also,” Jimmy interrupts in English, “ask him if they have paler colors with little flecks of other colors in them.”

  “Also,” I continue, “do you have bright colors and small various colors on the washi at the same time?”

  “And,” Jimmy continues, “do they have any with that little waving cat on them or like one of those demons you see at the temples? Or like those old crazy Noh masks! Ask him if they have Noh masks!”

  A single bead of sweat pierces through the skin of my left underarm, thus opening the floodgates for an all-out perspiration celebration.

  The manager hands Jimmy some green sheets decorated with various kanji characters and then starts trying to find some bright colors and small various colors on the washi at the same time. He hands more samples to Jimmy and waits expectantly for more instructions from me. He’s not ready to let us browse freely.

  “Are you going to ask him?” Jimmy persists.

  This charade really shouldn’t be allowed to continue. My ability to say where I am and where I want to go in Japanese is pretty flawless. My ability to request different kinds of washi paper according to Jimmy’s whims-for which I would have to remember the words to all the colors as well as come up with ways of saying “flecks” and “demons” and probably eventually “Arabian sunset” and “mother of pearl”-are negligible. There’s a bunch of washi here, and we are perfectly capable of sorting through it ourselves. But the Japanese are sometimes in
furiatingly unwilling to let foreigners touch and pick things out for themselves. Sure, sometimes gaijin break things or stain them or set things on fire, but only the clumsy ones. I really want Jimmy to search around, find what he wants, and proceed to the checkout. I just need this guy to relax and leave us alone.

  “He says,” I begin, addressing the gentleman assisting us in a conspiratorial tone, “that you are really handsome.”

  It turns out that if you ever want a pushy male shop assistant who strikes you as a little bit repressed to back off and leave you in peace, all you really need to do is tell him your boyfriend finds him physically attractive. No sooner do I say this than his face turns bright red and he launches into a series of short, nervous bows as he backs away and heads for the safety of the cashier’s counter.

  “Jimmy, just pick out what you like and let’s get it,” I say. “I’ve just sent a poor guy into a tailspin of homosexual panic.”

  “Oh shit,” Jimmy sighs. “Did you at least ask him how much these are per sheet?”

  Jimmy’s full-to-bursting bag shivers and shakes on the floor of the train from Ueno Station to Narita Airport. He flips through a copy of Vogue Nippon that someone had left on a bench at the station and comes to a page full of beautiful kimono patterns. He looks at me pointedly and starts circling ones he likes with his index finger.

  “You’re dreaming,” I say.

  “No,” he replies, sure of himself. “Predicting the future.”

  When we get to Narita, we walk slowly to the security checkpoint, trying our best to slow down the time and delay the inevitable goodbyes. In spite of himself, Jimmy has fallen for Tokyo, in his way. I don’t know if it was when we ate takoyaki octopus balls while walking through the smut district of Kabukicho, when we’d been photographed by excitable out-of-town junior high school students at the Edo-Tokyo Museum as if we were Brad and Angelina, or when we basked in the afterglow of a good, long karaoke session during which we’d taken on Chaka Kahn and Sheila E; but at some point, Jimmy began to look at the city as less of a threat and more as a great dream from which he would soon wake up.

  “This place is insane,” he said once as we passed a man walking his monkey in Yoyogi Park. “I see why you like it. It kind of suits you.”

  When we get to the security gate, we hug, and both of us tear up.

  “Come home,” he says.

  “I will.”

  He lets go, grabs his bag, and scuttles off to explain to passport control that, yes, he looks like a terrorist child molester in his passport picture, but no, he is neither of these things and nobody can prove anything. Just before he’s out of sight, he turns to me and mouths the words “flower petals” one last time. He slides through security and is on his way home.

  I slump in my seat on the train from Narita with a heavy heart. I’m headed back into Tokyo’s arms and feeling more conflicted than ever. My days with her are numbered now, I know. I’ve got to make our time together count. I’ve got to make her show me the things she’s been holding back.

  “I really need to see a Japanese lesbian,” I say to her when we are together again and I’m once again riding her Yamanote train westward. “You’ve never shown me one, and I think it’s about time. I’m not afraid. I feel ready.”

  She ignores me, and as the train rolls on toward Shinjuku I look at the teenage girl sitting across from me with an electro-shock hairstyle she has obviously achieved with the assistance of a hot iron and a fork. She’s a rebellious little thing, probably worrying her parents sick with her bad attitude, her mismatched socks, and her imprecisely applied lipstick and eyeliner. As she manically texts someone on her cell phone, I notice she’s carrying a fashionable tote bag embossed with a generic black stick figure standing next to a tree, like the figures in those traffic signs designating a crosswalk. Under the picture it reads, “It is forbidding to urinate here.”

  That’ll do for now, I guess.

  # of pounds lost: 28

  # of rumors heard about straight-as-an-arrow fellow teacher who went to Thailand, accidentally hooked up with a she-male, and now is very, very confused: 1

  14

  Is there no end to our hero’s talents?

  Jimmy’s visit changed me. Yes, after coming to the realization that, for the sake of my relationship, my days here are numbered, I saw that I’ve become too comfortable, too relaxed in my daily life. I’ve decided I need to branch out, that I haven’t tested these polluted Tokyo waters enough. I came here to make things happen for myself, after all. Great big things that will pay large emotional dividends. More and more I’m feeling the need to spread my wings, to escape from the daily grind of teaching the same lessons at the same school week after week, day after day, hour after hour. I want to fly, to explore, to see what else is out there for me in that vast Tokyo jungle. To follow its trail, capture it, clasp it to my breast, and proclaim triumphantly, “I know now what God wants for me!” Also, I want more money.

  Lucky for me, the opportunities are boundless for an enterprising young(ish) English instructor in Tokyo, especially if you know the right people. I’ve just gotten a job teaching English to corporate clients because I know the friend of a friend of the ex-boyfriend of a former associate of a guy named Mr. Takeda who has been put in charge of setting up and developing an English program for the employees of a famous Japanese maker of electronics, and the first thing he needs is a teacher. This friend of mine, Keiko, who knows the friend of the ex-boyfriend of the former associate of Mr. Takeda, told her friend to tell the ex-boyfriend of the former associate of Mr. Takeda that I was a very good teacher, very friendly, extremely competent, and that I speak a little Japanese. Mr. Takeda liked what he heard, so he told his former associate to tell the ex-boyfriend of the friend of Keiko to tell Keiko’s friend to tell Keiko to tell me that Mr. Takeda would be getting in touch with me to set up a meeting. I’m in a network!

  Mr. Takeda and I meet in Ginza one afternoon and go to a swanky Chinese restaurant where everything on the menu is more than I would typically pay for a pair of shoes. We discuss some of the broad ideas he has about the class. They include twice-weekly sessions with a specially designed English program involving both grammar instruction and real-world role plays like how to order a beer in an American bar. I will be responsible for choosing the text and planning the classes. Then he brings up the question of remuneration. Now, God knows I’m not a hard-nosed negotiator, and I usually have a really hard time answering this type of question. But I surprise myself with my forthrightness. Greed is the mother of motivation, and I am the big fat pig suckling at her enormous breast.

  “Six thousand yen an hour plus travel is my usual fee,” I say, as if I am in demand all across the city as one of the best English conversation teachers the great country of America has produced in years and am doing him a favor by even lunching with him in this dump. I steel myself for his reaction, expecting him to spit his half-chewed wanton back into his bowl.

  “OK, I just have to checking some numbers at office, for seeing if that is OK for with our budget.” As usual, I have probably undersold myself.

  We leave the restaurant and take a taxi to his office, where we discuss the specifics of my contract. He does some number crunching and figures out that my fee fits within the budget, so I have the job. We will have two classes a week, both beginner level, and each class will have about nine students. Mr. Takeda writes all of this information on the dry-erase board, numbering each point so as to maintain a semblance of order in this unknown territory into which he is stepping.

  “Oooo-kaaaay. Twooooooo begiiiiiiin-ah claaaasses. Niiiiiine stuuuuuudents to eeeeeach. Eh?” He stops writing and looks at me quizzically. “‘Nine students to each?’ Correct?”

  I smile and, with humanitarian gravitas, correct him. “Nine students in each.”

  “Oh, OK,” he says, making the correction. Then he starts making different lists, enumerating things I need to do, things he needs to do, things he needs to get his secretar
y to do, and things he will ask the students to do, all in preparation for the class. Then he makes another list that he titles “Salaly,” where he writes the specifics of my payment. Once he’s satisfied that he’s made as many lists as he can reasonably be expected to make, he presses a button at the bottom of the white board and out comes a printout of all the lists he just made on the board. He hands it to me and says, “Please.”

  I take it, and when he turns his back to erase the board, I kiss it.

  A few days later, Mr. Takeda e-mails me, saying he would like to introduce me at the next company meeting. It will be on Friday at ten a.m. Imagining that I will be introduced in a board meeting-type room with free-flowing green tea and tiny, semisweet doughnuts, I reply with no reservations that I am looking forward to meeting some of the staff.

  Friday arrives and I’m with Mr. Takeda in his office. He greets me with a smile and a firm, very un-Japanese handshake, and then we leave the building and walk to the head office building a few blocks away. Meetings are held every Friday, he tells me. The sign-up sheet will be posted later in the day, so he figures it’s a good opportunity for everyone to see me.

  “That’s great,” I beam.

  Wait, did he say “everyone”?

  Then he says he’ll be asking me to say a few words to the group-introduce myself briefly. “But,” he says, “no people can’t understand English, so maybe you can just talk in Japanese.”

  “Oh, OK,” I say calmly, trying not to drop to my knees, grab his hand, and beg him not to make me do this.

  I talk myself down. “You can do this, Tim. You’ve studied Japanese for over a year now. Sure, you never have to use it except when you’re ordering food or asking directions, and sure, you’ve had very few conversations in Japanese lasting longer than a few minutes, and yes, usually when you do have those conversations, the person you’re speaking to starts finishing all of your sentences for you, but hell, you can introduce and say a little about yourself in front of a few company bigwigs.”

  We walk into the meeting room, and it is much larger than the boardroom I was expecting. In fact, it’s the size of your typical school cafeteria. We enter from the back, and there are no less than a hundred employees standing up and facing the front of the room, where one man, presumably very important, is talking into a microphone and writing numbers on an overhead projector. All the employees look very sleepy. Many are holding themselves up with their hands against their chairs or on their desks. Mr. Takeda gestures for me to sit at an empty desk off to the side. I feel awkward sitting since the rest of the room is forced to stand, but I am a native English speaker, so I guess I have the right.