“Thank you, Chiasa. I should’ve told you. While I am here visiting Japan, I’ll be fasting during the day, from sunup to sunset,” I confided.
“For the whole week?” she asked, incredulous.
“For the whole month,” I said solemnly.
“Why?” she asked.
“I’m a Muslim. This is a holy month for us,” I said. She stood silent; her gray eyes widened some and one of her eyebrows lifted. She paused, thinking.
“That’s so fucking cool,” she said softly to herself. “I like that. Then I won’t eat or drink either. We’ll both eat together at sunset.”
* * *
After switching train cars and going three stops, we arrived at Ginza. We walked a while, through well-constructed, clean, and well-lit underground tunnels. The tunnels were so dope to me. It was clever to be moving underground, beneath the city. They stretched a distance and were not hot stinky, crowded holes in the earth like the subway system of New York, where the rats raced. We reached a steep sequence of stairs leading us up and out into what had to be the heart of Ginza.
From Shinjuku to Yoyogi to Ginza there was a quality leap, I swiftly noted. The other two prefectures were definitely not low-quality, but Ginza was obviously high-quality, like Fifth Avenue in New York or Fifty-Seventh Street, but better, cleaner, and more attractive and elegant. I could see that the top designers of the world had their flagship stores located here. This place was about big business and buildings and billboards, as multinational corporations squared off to see which one could post its name and logos up the highest with dominating widths. In between the corporate wars were unique Japanese boutiques and tailors and haberdashers and upscale restaurants and bakeries and art stores and timepiece workshops and retailers and acupuncture lofts and therapeutic massage spas and ice creameries and yogurt dens.
I got drawn in by an astronomy shop with impressive telescopes and powerful lenses. I had never owned one but the design of the shop and display of the unusual equipment caught my eye. It was an awesome concept and invention, a lens that brought beautiful shining stars close to the eye of the human holding the piece of equipment.
Every single car on the street seemed brand-new. The few that weren’t were so well cleaned and polished and free from dents and blemishes that they blended in. In Ginza, there wasn’t only a handful of hustlers riding large like back in Brooklyn. The whole prefecture of Ginza was bubbling with limousines, Crown Victorias, Benzes, Rolls-Royces, Mazeratis, and Lamborghinis.
The streets were wide and clean and free of potholes. The traffic was at a bare minimum and the flow of people was orderly but steady. Men wore suits, tweed jackets, linen, spring suedes, and comfortable cottons. Some rocked ascots, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Yves Saint Lauren belts and briefcases, designer ties or expensive traditional silks, robes, and slippers. Business shirts were crisp and ironed. The absence or presence of cufflinks and of course the quality of the silver, gold, and platinum ranked them, one from the other. Not one shoe was run-over or cheap, from the workers to the execs.
Women were almost unanimously dressed in expensive, well-tailored clothes of every style from both the European and Asian continents. There were fine silks and lace and cotton and linens, and even their denim was threaded better, cut better, styled better, the material a deeper blue and more durable-looking.
As we walked further, my eyes cast down only to be introduced to a high-heeled heaven. Every feminine shoe seemed an expression of personality and poise and even preference. Each lady in front of me and moving past me was petite. Here in Tokyo, “fashion model slim” was not relevant. In Ginza, every female of every age was slim and sleek and flowing with a unique style of her own that made it difficult to determine a trend.
It wasn’t long before I realized that I had not seen any white people, Americans or Europeans. I’m not saying that there were none here, but I didn’t see ’em. So many people, and each face clearly Japanese. Whether I glanced at the workers in the stores, the people in the streets, the executives moving about, the money earners, money spenders, the owners, buyers, or sellers, the limo drivers or limo passengers or even the window cleaners, they were all uniformly Japanese. This was Japan, and everything I saw confirmed that this was clearly their country!
“This whole area is Nakamura Plaza,” Chiasa said, as she stopped walking and gestured. “The building with the exact address that you are looking for is there across the street,” she pointed. “And the guy whose name you had on the paper, Naoko Nakamura, he should be there on the top floor.” She had her finger pointed toward the sky. “Let’s go,” she said confidently.
“Hold up,” I told her.
As I stood stiff, she said, “The paper you showed me said Naoko Nakamura, and this is Nakamura Plaza and over there is the Nakamura building. Usually here in Japan, the most important people have their offices located on the top floor of an office building or in a penthouse or co-op or condo. Isn’t it the same in New York?” she asked innocently. I didn’t answer, was no longer focused on her or her voice.
Looking up toward what I counted as the thirty-third and top floor, and then beyond into the white cloudless sky, I inhaled and wished that I was fighting this fight using my father’s mind—instead of my own. I needed to be backed up by my father’s empire and assets. I needed my father’s ingenuity and access to the world. I exhaled, my mouth drying some from the start of the fast. What would be my next move? What would my father do in this scenario that I was facing? What would my father advise me to do now? I felt like the black king on the chessboard with no frontline defense—no pawns—and no sideline defense—no bishops, no rooks, no knights. Meanwhile Naoko was chilling, the white king piece. Although his queen was dead—his wife, who was also Akemi’s mother—his knights, bishops, and rooks, and a billion pawns in his multimillion-dollar establishment were still securing him and assuring that he appeared monumental with an untouchable monopoly over my wife and his empire.
“What’s the plan?” Chiasa asked cautiously.
I turned my head in the opposite direction from where she was standing only to see a pack of teens and what I assumed was their chaperone gathered on the same side of the Nakamura building. An idea was forming.
“Do you know how to work the camera?” I asked her.
“I will in thirty seconds,” she answered. I handed it to her. She studied it. “Okay, I got it,” she said softly. “Let’s go make a movie. You be the director. I’ll shoot whatever you want me to shoot.” She smiled.
“Follow them in,” I said, using my head nod to point her eyes in the direction of the schoolgirls.
“But we are wearing different school uniforms,” she protested immediately.
“I didn’t say join them. Just follow them in. See if they are getting any kind of tour of the building. See if they give them any private information. If they do, you get it also. Use the camera to film the inside of the lobby—and everything that is going on.”
“But what are you looking for?” she asked.
“I need a printout of the building directory. Like the staff list. I need you to get in the parking deck. You can read the signs. Act like you’re lost. Find the executive parking and film the cars and plates of the executive vehicles.”
“You’re not going to do anything crazy, are you, or illegal?” she asked defiantly. Before I could answer, she added, “ ’Cause if you are, my fee has to be raised to the tenth power.” She smiled, but I knew she wasn’t joking. She seemed to want to let me know, in some subtle way, that she was down for whatever as long as she was dealt with fairly and paid her asking price. She didn’t have to worry. I would treat her right, naturally. Besides, I would not forget about her father; I didn’t need two madmen trying to destroy me at the same time.
“Nothing crazy, nothing illegal. I’m just collecting information. I’m just looking for something,” I told her solemnly.
“Are we looking for the girl whose little feet fit in those hundred-thousand-yen
heels?” she asked straight-faced. I didn’t answer. “That gotta be it,” she said coyly. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it done.” She left with the camera in hand and the power button on and the red record light all lit up.
As I stood thinking in the midst of the moving crowds, I believed I heard my father’s response to my frustrated call for guidance. The volume of the comings and goings of Ginza dropped down. I could only hear him. My father said to me, “Naoko Nakamura is an Asian elephant, known for his wisdom and intelligence. He’s too large to confront or directly charge into. He is mammoth. He’s someone you’ve got to go around. Stay out of his area or you’ll set off a stampede. Lay low in the tall grass. Give him the day. You take the night.” And his voice left as swiftly as it arrived.
So it was decided. I would not enter Naoko Nakamura’s building to demand to meet with him and ask, “Where is my wife?” Or enter into any diplomatic display of etiquette and approval, as my Umma had suggested.
My eyes followed the skyline. Having turned three hundred and sixty degrees twice, I selected a suitable target building and began walking.
At the astronomy boutique, I copped a powerful pair of waterproof, fogproof, shockproof Nikon binoculars for $250. When I got to my target, I eased on my sunglasses and entered like I belonged there. Confident, I strode in like a paying customer. Perched on the thirty-second floor of a building adjacent to Naoko Nakamura’s, I adjusted the button that put the powerful binocular lenses into focus. Although the windows of the Nakamura building, the top executive floors, were covered by expensive wooden vertical blinds preventing me from seeing in, I could see through all the other windows. I looked into his place, brought so close into my view that it cast the illusion that I could just extend my arm and touch it.
I learned very little. The Nakamura building was just that, a well-built tower of expensive offices and well-dressed employees. Sprinkled in between were high-end restaurants, tearooms, and lounges. Every now and then the lens would capture suited smokers gathered in a specific area or workers conferencing at the watercooler. I peeped also what seemed like a company gym stretched out over an entire floor with all kinds of equipment and in steady use. There was one place packed with pets and another floor with loads of lit-tle children—and their chaperones or teachers. No one was using the staircases. I assumed their elevators were in full rotation, but I could not see those. The parking decks were on the lowest floor. I could view tops of cars, but cement walls shielded the car bodies. I saw some medical offices and thought to myself, Here is a man who seems to have thought of everything, a veteran of years of “thought battles.” My mind began to race as I tried to determine what exact advantages I might have.
Akemi’s father was my opposite it seemed. He was high-profile like an elephant that stands thirteen feet tall and weighs 8,000 pounds. I told myself, He can’t avoid being seen. His every moment shakes the earth. He’s so high-profile, in fact, that he must be discussed and written about in Tokyo and throughout Japan all the time. Whatever business or events where he would appear must be reported, I figured. And further, if I could locate him at a specific place and time at a public event, perhaps my wife would be there also. I had to maneuver to use his high visibility against him, I concluded.
I left the hotel where I was posted as soon as I caught Chiasa in my lens outside the Nakamura building shooting footage of a gang of school kids, most of them holding two fingers up to form a peace sign. She looked happy and excited magnified in my lens. She was real comfortable giving them directions about how and where to stand. She even convinced a girl to climb on top of a statue.
* * *
“It’s done,” she assured me. “But we’ll have to go to my house to watch the footage. That’s the only way you can play the tape. And I got these.” She handed me a short stack of flyers, papers, and newsletters, as well as a map.
“Put ’em in your bag and hold ’em for me. We gotta get to Roppongi Hills,” I told her.
“Roppongi Hills,” she repeated. “Expensive taste,” she murmured. I pulled out the second Tokyo address I had for Naoko Nakamura. I was hoping it didn’t end up being a business complex like this one. I was still hoping to discover my wife there. As we moved through the streets of Ginza, Chiasa pointed out things in English and then told me the Japanese word for those things She began with the binoculars. Sougankyou she said.
sky—sora
tree—ki
car—kuruma
bus—basu
man—otoko
woman—jyosei
student—gakusei
store—misé
book—hon
window—mado
building—biru
motorcycle—baiku
police—keisatsu
When she said a word that I had already learned from flipping through my study cards, I would call it out before she could translate it. The little word game was helping my language lessons to stick.
When we both saw a kid drinking bottled water, Chiasa smiled and we both said, “Mizu.” Chiasa crossed both her forearms into an X to show me that she remembered that there’s no drinking anything until sunset.
On the amazingly clean train with the carpeted cushions, I viewed the digital commercials and professional postings but was unable to decipher exactly what the hell was going on. I stood challenging myself to try and figure out what product was actually being promoted through the Japanese ads. Chiasa broke my focus.
“Is she looking for you? Or is it only you looking for her?” Chiasa asked, as she sat and I stood over her on the train. Her questions were spoken slowly and softly, as though she was formulating the words at the same time these thoughts occurred in her mind. I knew for sure that she was piecing things together with each speck of information I told her or she observed. I liked that better than telling her my whole story up front.
“Is she an older lady or is she a teenager like us?” she continued. “What does she look like? I mean is there anything special about her or something that stands out, like a scar or a mole or something? Do you have a photo of her?”
“It doesn’t matter if she is looking for me because I’m looking for her,” I answered automatically. “When she sees me, all her feelings will be revealed.” I believed this and was waiting anxiously for Akemi’s live expressions. “She’s sixteen, same as you. She’s five feet nine inches in her hundred-thousand-yen heels and five-four when she takes them off. Her skin is flawless. She has no scars. She has a beauty mark on the inside of her right thigh,” I recalled and smiled. “Her soul is mysterious.” “Her spirit is sweet. Her smile is like sunrise,” I said aloud, but as I spoke, I was also thinking to myself, reminding myself of Akemi.
Chiasa sat silently for the remaining ride. In my silence I wondered, Is Akemi looking for me? Of course she is. That’s why she called each day for seven days, my apartment, the dojo, my sensei.
Does she know that I’m here in Tokyo? Would she believe that I would come to her home country? Did Iwa Ikeda let her know?
Akemi, I need you to leave me some clues, little traces of yourself, I thought. And I will leave you some clues also. Something to shake your heart and let you know, “Your man is here.”
* * *
“Roppongi is like Washington, DC,” Chiasa said, as we stepped from underground. “There are a lot of embassies here, like the Chinese embassy, the American embassy, and the Dutch embassy. And as you can see when you look around, here is where you will see a lot of people from different countries. Foreigners like Roppongi because of the nightclubs, hostess bars, and the girls.”
“How would you know that?” I asked her seriously.
“I had a friend who came here and got rich working at a hostess club. She needed a certain amount of money, so she said she was going to work as a hostess for two months. But then she liked the money so much, she never came back to school. She even missed her exams and her graduation.”
“Sounds like it paid much more than delivering pizz
as,” I said without thinking.
Chiasa stopped walking. “You and I are scheduled to fight tonight. I’ll get you back for that comment. You know that wasn’t right,” she corrected me, softly yet sternly, with no joke in it.
“You’re right. My bad. I take it back. I was completely wrong,” I said sincerely.
“Hostess bar work does pay more, but a girl has to dress in a nightgown or like a long, flowing, phony dress, and she has to drink liquor all night long even after she is already drunk. And she has to flirt with the customer so that he will stay in the club and keep ordering more drinks! If I would’ve worked with my friend, I would have earned my whole tuition for flight school in less than a month. But I don’t drink liquor, I don’t smoke, and I can’t flirt with a guy that I don’t really like. I’d rather fight him!” she said, caught up in her mounting emotion.
“Like how you want to fight me?” I asked.
She smiled, embarrassed for the first time. She paused and answered softly, “I don’t want to fight you because I don’t like you. That’s not my reason.”
I didn’t follow up and ask her why she did want to fight me.
“Besides, if I were a hostess, my father would kill him.”
“Kill who?”
“The customer! Any one of them or maybe even all of them. He would find him, kill him, kill the owner of the club, blow the club up, and if I did something like that, he would probably kill me too!” She said it calm and matter-of-fact.
“He made me promise to tell him before I give my virginity away. My father said the right man has to be strong enough to stand in front of him and explain why he wants permission to be with his daughter. If the one I choose can’t face my father, then I’ll have to walk away from him completely.” She gestured with her right hand, waving it across her neck to show me that a coward had no chance of winning her.
Midnight and the Meaning of Love Page 23