A Night in Tokyo

The bus cuts straight through at highway speed, splitting rice paddies. Rice stalks are lush and fill the country with green, that green that welcomed me here last year when I arrived. It’s a big green that was dropped to the valleys inorganically, like patchwork on this big tattered fabric strip of Japan. Nothing appears wholly natural here, even in the countryside. Rivers are cradled by concrete chutes, parks are manicured like poodles, and mountains are traversed by greedy electrical towers, their wires stretching coast to coast in every direction. Follow the wires and you’ll come to their connection at a heart, at the enormous, wild city. Tokyo.

Eight months ago I was climbing Mt. Fuji at night and Tokyo lurked behind me. The city seemed to surge and beat, a sparkling circulatory system all mashed together and swollen. It was too big. It seemed impossible. In the black void the city lights stretched on forever and the idea terrified me.

Now, riding the bus by daylight, I can see tenements—massive blocks, checkered with balconies—rising at the city limit. Colored garments and sunning futons fill the balconies.  The word “home” seems wrong for the buildings. Likelier words are compound or factory. I have trouble imagining children living there. Rather, I envision obese housewives in tank tops, sitting with old fans clicking and blowing behind them; and road workers smoking cigarettes in rooms like closets; and old men with sick, raspy coughs, pulling photos of youth out of beaten old boxes. I imagine them in the thousands, all together, buzzing inside the building like bees, filling the rooms with kitchen steam, humidity, disease—a rotten miasma.

Once the bus reaches the tenements the rice paddies stop and the sprawl of city begins. The bus descends into the heart and the buildings crowd each other and rise into the air. We exit the highway and there I am in the middle of it all, in the billions of people and the sharing of lives and the work and hell and pleasure of it.

Rain starts to fall and I wait to meet my friend Kenya. I take in urban art in the form of women. Beautiful women. Masterpieces of women. In skirts and heels and loose shirts. And I am stunned. Japanese women have a je ne sais quoi that I’m dying to understand. They are sexy and loud and demure and artistically refined all in one. They are ancient beauty and meretricious beauty. They are National Geographic beauty and Playboy beauty. Two days after my arrival to the city someone will explain wabisabi to me and that’s what they are; the women are a wabisabi kind of beauty. It’s the same awe I feel before breathtaking landscapes.

I fall in love multiple times over the course of minutes. The beautiful women pass and mix and braid themselves into the metropolitan stream. My eyes try to keep up before they disappear. Perhaps that’s what makes them so beautiful—impermanence.

The pace of the people and the cars and the flashing advertisements on a jumbo screen affect my homeostasis. I’m already thinking, “fast.” Kenya calls on the phone and says he’s at a different plaza and I say I’ll meet him there. I step into the stream of people and we move at the Tokyo pace, with no hesitation or consideration of where or why. Just move. Forward, always forward, always know where you’re going. Never get lost. Never stop.

I find where I am supposed to meet Kenya and he isn’t there yet. I do laps around the plaza, staying at the pace of the people, walking through groups of punks smoking, and high school kids, and people glued to their cell phone screens. I pause for a minute under an awning, but the pace of the city seems to have grown inside of my head like a parasite, and all I want to do is move.

Kenya is across the way. We connect glances and he begins to traverse the plaza slowly, weighting his cane and dragging his bad foot forward, making a kush sound. Then he weights his good foot, brings the cane forward and sets it down. The cane goes click against the pavement. The sounds are rhythmic—kush…click…kush…click...kush.

Kenya looks up at me and smiles. I move to greet him.

“Konnichiwa,” I say, bowing slightly.

“Konnichiwa,” he responds. “I got off at the other side of the station,” he starts to explain. “It took me awhile to get here.”

I tell him not to worry.

“Onaka tsuita?” he asks.

I am a little hungry, so I confirm. “Hai, onaka tsuiteru.”

He explains something in Japanese and I catch enough to understand that his roommates recommended a restaurant nearby. I assume that we will head there. We set ourselves to go back into the throng of moving people. The pedestrian walk signal flashes green and the people rush like horses from the starting gate. Kenya starts to cross, going kush… click…kush…click…kush…click.

I become aware of the traffic that’s waiting for the pedestrians to finish their exodus. The cars are threatening. The other pedestrians have all made it across and late comers dart past as the signal blinks imploringly. Three. Two. One. Kenya proceeds slowly, going kush…click…kush…click...kush.

We won’t make it in time. The crosswalk sign turns red and we still have a quarter of the way to go. I prepare for honks, curses, nudges. Kenya is indifferent and proceeds at his pace. The cars wait as if they all agreed to it beforehand. No one honks, no one curses. No one moves an inch forward until Kenya and I make it safely to the other end. In crossing I understand how disability can become rebellion; and I know that all good people are rebels. Kenya’s steps are a protest. Now they are a protest against the crazy pace of the city, against rushing and pushing and ignoring others. His pace says, “See me. Watch me and know that in this city too we must still look out for each other and care for each other. We do not have to rush. This pace can get us all along. Watch me and try to understand.”

I watch Kenya’s protest with admiration. It is a protest that started more than a decade ago, against the doctors that said he would never walk again. When I met him three years ago the protest was going in the wild streets of Peru, against kamikaze taxis and barking dogs. And only a week ago the protest was rising to a crescendo, signified when Kenya told me, “I jumped the other day. Maybe five centimeters. But I jumped.”

We walk down the urgent streets at Kenya’s pace—kush…click…kush…click…kush—and Kenya and I talk in Japanese as people rush past us. This new pace is the right pace. Whatever that was before, the rushing and scattering and fear, that was the wrong pace.

I try to understand everything Kenya says in Japanese, but I only get sixty percent or so. Something about a restaurant, and the 1950s. We come into view of a ten story building and Kenya says the restaurant is on the seventh floor. At the ground floor entrance of the building he says, “Let’s take the elevator.”

The restaurant is dim and the employees greet us loudly. “There is an honored customer here! Honored customer, welcome!” The walls are plastered with old posters, and rusted signs, and sambo dolls and plastic toys. This is what Kenya was talking about—1950s décor. An ancient TV plays a black and white cartoon. The music fits the anachronism, twangy like a Japanese grandfather. Everything is red and sepia and sixty year old paper and antique shop.

We sit at the counter and order drinks. Nama biru, terrible draft lager. We scan the menu written mostly in katakana and I still read like a three year old:

“Chi. Ki. N. Chi-ki-un…Oh. Chicken.”

The hiragana I read a bit faster. The kanji I can’t touch.

The waiter approaches with another menu and explains to Kenya, “This one is in English.” He hands it to me. And I’m defeated.

The risk of not understanding the entire menu is twofold: One, you only stick to the items that you can read, thus not experiencing new foods, or two, you take a blind stab at something and end up with grasshoppers or fly larvae. An English menu takes the risk out of it. But, insulted at the waiter’s insistence that I use the English menu, I parry with a surprise move. I look at the English menu items and point at what I want and order.

“I’ll have the grasshoppers and fly larvae, please.”

The waiter responds, “Ah! A little challenge, ne?!”

“Sou desu,” I confirm.

Kenya orders normal food.

When the items arrive it is clear which ones are mine. They made no effort to hide the principal ingredients. There they are piled on small plates—grasshoppers and fly larvae. My decision to order the items was faster than my realization that I’d have to eat them. When it all comes to me, I hesitate. I pinch a grasshopper between my chopsticks, lift it to my mouth and plop it into my tongue. I chew, feeling and hearing the little exoskeletons shatter. They’re actually quite tasty. I pick up a fly larva and plop that into my mouth. It is slightly chewy and does not taste good. I eat more grasshoppers and more larvae. The latter never improve their flavor. We order more terrible lager.

The conversation is a mix of Japanese and English. When I know the words in Japanese and can form the sentences correctly, I use Japanese. When I fail, I revert to English. Kenya seems to be doing the same only reversing the languages. We would both prefer to speak in our native tongues. With the confidence that the beer brings though I speak more Japanese and Kenya speaks more English. His English is much better than my Japanese. At first the conversation is its own entity not created by either of us and it can’t find its bearings in the bilingualism. But eventually a way is found and we chatter our own blend of language.

“I have been listening to the This American Life Podcast. Kiita koto aru?” Kenya asks.

“Aru. Aru.” I respond, “Demo saikin, kite inai. I haven’t really had time. Isogashii.”

“Honto? Nande?”

“Jaa, futsu, climbing gym ni iku to, This America Life kikunda. Demo I’ve had a lot of stuff to do for my Chuugoku trip so I just haven’t had time to.”

“Naruhodo.”

We finish our meal and there are still a few hours before I am supposed to meet Kenji. That’s Kenji, not Kenya. Kenji I met in Spain in 2006. In 2008 he lived in my apartment for two months in Colorado. Now he lives in Mexico but is coming home to Japan for a few weeks of vacation from a job that is killing him.

Kenya asks, “Kenji to, nan nen buri ni au?”

I don’t understand the question and I ask him to repeat.

“Nan nen buri?” he asks again.

I still don’t understand.

“Eto, how many years since you saw Kenji last?” he says.

“Ah! Yon nen mae. Four years ago.”

“Ja, dakara, nihongo de, yon nen buri,” Kenya teaches me the phrase. I type the new word into my smart phone and save it for study later on. The list of words I need to study for the week is nearing fifty.

Kenya and I head to Goruden Gai, Golden Street, in Shinjuku. It’s cool. Little, tiny, claustrophobic bars cram into each other like an overstuffed mail slot flipped horizontal. There are jazz bars, and hip hop bars, bars with tapas, bars with room for only two people, bars for foreigners and bars for old men. And all of them all empty save a few.

One bar catches Kenya’s eye. It has a green sign that says “Nanto Naku”, which means “Just Because” or “For Some Reason Or Other.” Cool. The bar has just enough room for six people to sit at stools at the counter—that’s it. There are already four people in the Nanto Naku and there is no more room for anything else except for Kenya and I and the bartender. For us to get to the two open stools at the back we have to slide through a narrow corridor between the patron’s backs and a wall shelving books and bric-a-brac. We do just that. And we sit down next to an open exit door, the breeze cooling our otherwise stifling cave.

Before we order drinks, Kenya asks where the restroom is. “Restroom?” I think. “There is no way that there is a restroom in this little cell.” But there is. The bartender, a pretty girl who is small in correct proportion to the size of the bar, tells Kenya that the bathroom is right behind us. I pull the ajar exit door back from the wall and find that, sure enough, the bathroom door is behind it. In order to open it Kenya has to shuffle off his stool, push it to its limit against the counter, shut the exit door and nudge me out of the way. He does this with surprising lithe and alacrity, despite the bad leg and a bum hand to boot. Before I know it, he’s shut himself inside the bathroom. Despite the closed door, I know that Kenya’s urine stream is only about a foot from my back.

When Kenya comes out of the bathroom, more door opening, stool shuffling and acrobatics ensue until he sits and we order a few cold ones. I can’t distinguish the difference between the beers we receive and the ones we were drinking at the restaurant. Every one, terrible beers.

Across the bar counter, on the back wall, are a row of Polaroids. Each one is of a different girl dressed in a skimpy costume and every photo is signed with a name and has drawings of hearts or stars or smiley faces. The rest of the bar is normal, dull even, making the pictures stand out. Though the other patrons aren’t paying any attention to the pictures, I can’t stop staring. I consider two things: One, which girl is the sexiest; and two, what kind of a life leads to becoming a tawdry Polaroid pinup in the Nanto Naku?

Kenya asks me, “Which one is your favorite?”

“The one in the blue nurse outfit,” I respond.

His favorite is the one in the black bikini.

Kenya wants to ask the cute bartender why the pictures are up there, but asking seems inappropriate for some reason. To hell with it. He guns up the courage and asks. It has to be a question that she gets asked all the time. I half expect her to say, “Just because” or “For some reason or other.”

“They’re strippers,” she explains in Japanese. “The owner of the bar has investments in a strip club nearby, so the girls come and leave their pictures up.”

“Ah. I see,” Kenya says.

The bartender looks at me and starts making conversation. I look her in the eyes as a kind of practice; always look intently at pretty women. But my pose of confidence bends and hunches as I struggle to keep up with the Japanese. With every phrase that I don’t understand I end up looking down at my beer instead of up at her.

Kenya has no problem. Kenya is a regular Don Juan. He’s making conversation about everything, about the joys of living in the countryside versus the city, about traveling around the world, about good alcohol and fine food. The bartender is interested and asks questions.

At a lull, she looks at me and asks, “Nihon ni, dore gurai iru?”

The question is a struggle for me. She’s either asking how long I’ve been in Japan or how long I plan to stay in Japan. To avoid answering the wrong one, I find a number that seems like a good answer for both.

“Ichi nen,” I say. One year.

She asks me more questions and I can keep up. I make eye contact with her again. Her eyes are strong and unwaivering. She smiles.

She asks, “Tokyo ni, itsu made iru?”

But I hear “itsuma de” which means absolutely nothing, and I don’t understand. I use fillers words, thinking words equivalent to “uh”, “well”, “hmmm” as I try to form a response.

“Sou desu ne, eto, anooo…” Epiphany doesn’t strike and I have to give it up. Like a parent Kenya repeats the question to me exactly like the bartender did only a bit slower. Now I can identify the break between itsu and made. It’s an easy question: How long are you going to be in Tokyo?

“Asatte made,” I say and look back down at my now empty glass of beer.

When Kenji calls he starts speaking Spanish. We’ve always spoken to each other in Spanish. The Japanese I was using with the bartender and Kenya is still at the forefront of my mind though and my conversation with Kenya becomes a mix of Spanish (bold) and Japanese (italics).

“Hola chaval, dónde estás?” I ask.

“Estoy cerca de la estación de Tokio. Vienes?” he says, wanting to know if I will meet him near Tokyo station.

Then my languages get all mixed up. “Si, voy. Demo ima, estamos en un bar. Nanto Naku to iu. Tabun terminamos en como san ju pun. Ii?”

“Ii da yo,” Kenji confirms, now in Japanese. “Mata ato de.”

“Jaa, hasta pronto,” I reply.

The plans are set. We’ll meet Kenji in half an hour near Tokyo Station.

Tokyo Station is white fluorescent in the night. In hallways and near stairwells homeless men occupy open cardboard boxes, like bed frames, that are surprisingly neat and organized. Every homeless man I see, though dressed in tattered, filthy clothes, has made his living space tidy. There is no trash strewn around them, no food wrappers or beer bottles littering the inside of the boxes. I want to call it comfortable destitution, but of course it isn’t. It’s just destitution. Destitution amidst commuters in business suits, and women in evening dresses, and teenagers with Mohawks, wearing leather. But the homeless men’s beds are clean, and they can sleep despite the wild city.

Kenji appears from a hallway, stumbling slightly.

“Josh!” he yells.

I don’t know how to greet my friend of six years properly. I would normally hug him, but in Japan hugs aren’t common. Bowing seems equally inappropriate, as does shaking his hand. But I don’t have to worry. Kenji opens his arms and embraces me.

“Pense que los hugs son dame en japón,” I say, surprised that he’s hugging me.

“Ya, pero soy mexicano ahora,” he replies. Hugs are okay.

I laugh.

We head to a restaurant to meet a group of Kenji’s friends, mostly men in white collared shirts and black slacks. They all came from the office. When I enter their booth I am greeted by “Heeeeeeiiii!” They’ve been looking forward to my arrival.

Kenji’s Spanish is fading, presumably because of how drunk he is. My Japanese is also suffering. Though I am not drunk yet, I am tired. It’s eleven at night and I’ve been in the rush of Tokyo all day.

Kenji makes me do a formal greeting with his friends. He says to me, “Aisatsu. Tienes que hacer el aisatsu.”

I think, “What the hell” and start right in with it. It comes out like, “Hello. Nice to meet you. I am Josh. Please be nice to me.”

I finish and they all cheer again, “Heeeeiiiiii!”

I sit down next to one of two women among the group.  Kenji asks me, “Es bonita, no?”

“Sí, muy bonita,” I respond.

Kenji looks at the woman and says in Japanese, “Josh thinks you are very pretty.” The woman giggles. “Right Josh?” he asks.

The woman glances at me and shakes her head. “No, no. I am not pretty,” she says.

“Yes you are,” I say in Japanese. “You are very pretty.”

She shakes her head and waves her hand back and forth. “No, no, no. I am not pretty.”

Our time at the restaurant is up and the waiter kicks us out in that Japanese way- "Umm, I'm sorry, but, ah. You have been here two hours now and uh. Sorry." Everyone knows to leave.

After the girls and a few of the others go home a remaining seven us gather in the street and think about what to do. It's late and I am tired.

"Cabaret Club," someone suggests.

We arrive at more of a bar than than a club. An empty bar. The only things suggestive of a "cabaret" are the bartender girls wearing Playboy Bunny outfits. They begin talking to us without pause. I’ve reverted back to English with Kenya, but the girls keep interrupting us and asking us questions in Japanese. My responses are short and curt. I don’t want to speak Japanese anymore. The girls keep prying and asking questions and they don’t stop. I ask Kenya about it and he explains that that is what we are paying them for—to make conversation with us.

“Men come to these bars to have women talk with them,” he explains. “You pay for the girl to serve you drinks and make conversation. You are paying for her drinks also.”

I notice the girl ask Kenji if she can serve herself another wine cooler on the rocks. Kenji waves his hand in affirmation. He tells her to fill my glass as well.

I clarify with Kenya, “So you pay for these girls just to have them talk to you and sound interested?”

“Yes,” he confirms. “It’s hard for Japanese men to talk to women. At bars like these the men know that the girls will be easy to talk to. The girls will be interested in them.”

“But they aren’t interested in them,” I continue to clarify. “It’s just their job.”

“The men know that too,” Kenya responds.

“And you have to buy their drinks?” I ask. “At the bar that they work at?”

“Yes,” Kenya says.

The girl comes back to me and starts asking me about traveling and teaching and rock climbing. It’s all in Japanese and I’m too tired to talk and I know that she doesn’t give a damn.

Ages pass until Kenji throws a hundred bucks onto the counter and we start to leave. The women walk us to the door, laughing and grabbing our arms. One asks for my email address so that she can practice her English with me. I write down a fake one and hand it to her and imagine her spending all night having meaningless conversations with men and going home and sending emails in English to a bunk address. We say goodbye and step out into the street as the sun is coming up.

Tokyo at sunrise is drunk and confused. We are not the only group awake in the early morning. Others talk loudly and sing and stumble their way home. One of our group says goodbye and walks off in his black pants and white collared shirt.  Kenji tells me that the guy is going straight back to his office. 

Kenji and I say goodbye to the others who make their ways home in the new day light. We find a capsule hotel in Kawasaki, and Kenji and I slide into two cubbies in a wall, each no bigger than a large refrigerator on its side. The capsule reminds me of when I lived in my truck and I feel comfortable. It’s six a.m. and as I fall asleep I think about how the city makes us more wild than any wilderness, how the city crams us together and how we sweat from the heat and how we smell and hear and touch each other. The flavors and weight intoxicate us and then our soft bodies meld into the concrete and the steel and the machines and flashing lights.