Countryside Livin'

Before I can see the sun, the clouds beyond the hills in the east turn a live, pulsating pink. Another day in the countryside. The sun rises over the hills and takes the pink away from the clouds and leaves the skies azure. The morning frost on harvested rice paddies turns to vapor and mists the air. It’s chilly on these mornings.

I kiss a sleeping Eriko on the forehead and say goodbye. This week we are speaking all Japanese so that I can improve. I get frustrated easier during such weeks and feel less of a man.

Eriko stirs slightly and opens her eyes.

“Itterashai,” she says, before falling back asleep.

“Ittekimasu,” I respond.

The kerosene heater in my tiny living room hums and blows heat infused with a hint of gas fume. What’ll kill me first, the fumes or the radiation? None of it. Silly thinking. There is nothing wrong with this place.

As I descend the outdoor staircase of my apartment building, a second grader on her way to school spots me and stares wide eyed. She is not one of my students, but I opt to quiz her English skills anyway.

“Hello,” I say.

She ponders, still wide eyed, and says shyly, “Ohayou gozaimasu.”

“How are you?” I ask.

She smiles and almost shouts, “I’m happy!” while putting both hands into the air. When she runs off, I am left with the impression of having topped out a long easy rock climb in the sun.

The children of the town do nothing but act like children and in doing so enrich every moment in town. During the weekend, I emerged out of the forest after a day of searching for hidden boulders and started down the road to my home. After a few minutes I heard the distinct pitter-patter of tiny feet following me. I peered over my shoulder and there stood a body all of one meter tall, a curious smile across his face. Again, as the girl had done, the boy was considering this silly foreigner walking through his family’s farmland.

He stared up at me and stated proudly, “I’m carrying money.”

“Oh yeah,” I responded. “How much?”

“This much.” He held out a bill enough to buy a good dinner and smiled a big smile. The air sent a mischievous breeze that stole the bill from the boy’s hand and sent it turning quickly up the road. In shock the boy ran after it and slammed his foot down on it. Got ya! He ran back to me and followed me down the road. I asked him questions but only got mumbles in return as the boy stared fixedly at his bill.

On another occasion, a group of boys, maybe five or six year olds, saw me coming out of the supermarket adjacent to my house.

“Look!” one shouted, pointing at me, beckoning his friends to witness the oddity too.

“Look at that guy! It’s a…It’s a…It’s a Chinese guy!” the boy shouted.

“Chigau yo!” I said laughing. “I’m not Chinese! I’m American.”

The boy looked confused. The only foreigners that he knew about before me where Chinese.

 

When I go to work in my K-Car, (the K stands for micro, I think), I listen to Buena Vista Social Club. Ibrahim Ferrer must have grown up in Japan too, in this countryside. The melody fits perfectly. I enter the middle school thinking in Spanish and when I greet people buen dia almost escapes my lips. I revert. Adjust. Guttural ‘gozaimaaaas.

The vice principal had a black eye and a busted up arm last week. Before that he was jovial and good natured. He used to ask me questions which I answered in Japanese and at the end of it I don’t think that he believed that I could speak any Japanese at all. Now he looks melancholy and removed. His hair is always disheveled and he does not ask me any questions anymore. I do not know what happened.

I am not a teacher here at the middle school. Let’s face it. That was the sacrifice for living in Japan. The dream is fading now, as it should, and in its place is another cage. Are you just replacing one cage with another every time you do this? Sure, as we all are if we aren’t living in trucks and climbing rocks every day. But don’t forget the interim. Don’t forget that before the boredom sets in your whole being was alive with challenge. Language, culture, food, people. When you escape one cage you get to be free for the interim and you get a chance to be better. What you become in the interim is what this is all about. Are you a good man yet? It was a good interim, but it’s over now. You’re just on daily routine.

The school day ends early and I am back on the serpentine valley rode watching the view flow against me. Old farmers riding bicycles and ladies at the rice paddies with sickles in hand and the fall colors behind them. I get out of my car and walk towards the apartment and I am stopped by a voice speaking Japanese.

“You have finished early today, Sensei,” says an old woman on her way to the supermarket.

“Yes. I have finished early,” I reply.

“Can you speak Japanese yet?” she asks.

“A little.”

“Ah. Not yet then, huh?”

“A little,” I say.

She smiles, different than the children smile, and hobbles off, bent over and happy. I walk up into my apartment, open the door that is always unlocked and slip into the living room where once again I will eat dinner, sleep, and awake again to my life in the Japanese countryside.

When There's No Plan B

For the last four months I’ve had visions of Buddhist monks in Himalayan mountains—Bhutan. We were ninety-nine percent sure I’d be there come January. Don’t daydream son. Stay in reality son. Ninety-nine isn’t a hundred.

Idle time at the junior high school, of which there is too much, had me squinting at a laptop screen patched with red robes, and bald heads, and elaborate masks, and mountain homes with wood smoke rising from the roof. The screen flashed and clicked and holograms played in my head and stayed with me long after the Shutdown wheel had disappeared to black.

You should’ve kept your mouth shut. You’ve been working on that—don’t get too excited too fast. Anything can fall through. You know that as well as anyone. Nothing holds. Especially when you cling to it. Why’d you hold so hard? You know better.

That weekend, at home, my phone screen held a blinding white message from would be future employers, with words like regrettably and unfortunate, and like that I had to let go. And when you cling hard, release is painful. You know that well too.

I sat gazing out from my window and sipped tea. Eriko was asleep in the loft above my kitchen. What to do? What to do?

Don’t be sad in front of Eriko. It’s not what the man does. Shrug it off. She was in the tsunami for Christ’s sake. You’ve got nothing to complain about. Dreams aren’t what you thought they were anyway. There is never just one. The next will be along soon. Let the cold ball swell inside of you, but only just enough, not enough to let it hurt badly, just enough to remind you that it’s there, that you cared about something. Then temper it. Make it small, infinitesimal. Keep it that way.

What’s next?

At night now other visions are playing. Visions of Rocky Mountains and arid winds blowing on canyon rock faces, and visions of brown and black and tan and white faces, and plaid shirts and bicycles. Visions of warm sun on humid grass in Wash Park, of university girls sunbathing in bikinis, of needy Adonises shouting loudly to their friends. Visions of what hoppy beer tastes like and dull hangovers and the dread of a lonely apartment. Of conversations jibing friends, of great distances, impossible distances, and of muscles taught while pulling onto boulders. They are visions that I try to make sense of.

 

You were supposed to be gone longer. The adventure isn’t over. You still need to move. It’s making it harder, sure, because It always makes it harder. You never let It win.

Reassess. And act mindfully. You have to become one of the good ones.

Is it time yet? By March it’ll almost be two years. It wasn’t supposed to be time, but what else have you got? What’s Plan B?

 

Flash Non-Fiction

Kindergarten. Day one:

 

“Joshua Sensei! Joshua Sensei!”

“Oh! Hello!”

“Hello.”

“How are you?”

“How are you?”

“No, I say, ‘How are you’. You say, ‘I’m happy!’ Okay? How are you?”

“How are you?”

“No, you say, ‘I’m happy’!”

“I’m happy!”

“Yeah. Good job! One more time. How are you?”

“How are you?”

“No, I say ‘How are you’, you say, ‘I’m happy! Okay? How are you?”

“How are you?”

“Uh. Okay. Let’s try colors. What color is this?”

“Ba-roo”

“Good! Blue! What about this?”

“Led”

“Nice. Red! What about this?”

“Gu-leen.”

“Green. Awesome! Good job! Okay, see you!”

“See you.”

“Bye-bye.”

“Bye-bye.”

 

Avalanches and Poison Ivy

I am my father’s son.

Last year my father told me that he was in an avalanche. He said that he set it off on purpose in order to test his knowledge of avalanche safety. When he jumped down hard onto the top of a cornice, it calved. He went down with it. In the tumult, he practiced what he had learned about surviving an avalanche. He back peddled his arms, like a swimmer, kept his head high, and tried to stay above the wet snow that poured down the mountain. When it was finished he was buried up to his neck, with one arm free. He dug himself out of the snow, looked up at the slope he just ridden down, then at the avalanche that he had caused, and assessed the event. Yes, he thought, I guess I do know about avalanche safety.

I have often returned from climbing at the boulders in the forest with a rash on my ankles and arms. It bubbles, turns a light, mostly inoccuous pink and spreads over the area for a few days before it gives up and retreats. It is always itchy but not painful. I asked a local forester if he knew what was causing it. He said lacquer trees. I looked up lacquer trees online but could not find anything that resembled the trees in the forest.

Returning to the forest I saw a vine that looked like poison ivy. Could this be the culprit, I wondered. I decided to test my knowledge of poison ivy by plucking a leaf from the vine, ripping it in half to expose the inner liquid, and dabbing it on my shoulder. The next morning a red rash appeared. Success, I thought. I know the plant that has been causing the rash! My experiment proved correct. But as the week progressed the rash grew worse, bubbling and pussing, turning deep red and black. A dark red line formed precisely where I had first dabbed the split leaf. The area itched and hurt and oozed yellow puss that wet my shirt sleeves. And though painful, I only thought, with pride, of the success of my experiment. Yes, I thought, definitely poison ivy.

Kindergarten, Day Eight

“Joshua Sensei!”

“Hello! How are you?”

“How are you?”

“I’m happy. How are you?”

“How are you?”

“No, I say, ‘How are you?’ You say, ‘I’m happy?’ Okay? How are you?”

“How are you?”

“Forget it.”

“Joshua Sensei- nan jin?”

“Okay, Japanese now? America-jin da yo.”

“How did you get here?”

“I came by car. Stop picking your nose and grabbing my shirt. That’s gross.”

“By car from America? Isn’t that far?”

“No, I didn’t come by car from America. I came  from Ishikawa-machi, where I live.”

“Oh, I see.”

“From America, I walked.”

“Eeeeehhhhhh??”

 

 

Bike Ride

The light of late afternoon is meant for me, it seems. It illuminates the street corner and the garden that extends like an annex connected to my apartment window, where I watch. Out there is my late afternoon Japan.

 

It’s not much to look at beyond the garden—a grocery store parking lot, the dull, cubed grocery store itself, and rural houses with tiled roofs whose corners curve up like burning paper. Each house has a garden and neatly trimmed trees, manicured like evergreen poodles. It’s all in perfect order.

 

I cannot see the sun low in the west. I watch the light growing on the tips of the cedar branches in the hills to the east instead. I can hear the laughter of young girls and the stamping of their feet. They’re chasing after their father, shouting at him to slow down while he peddles his bike away, pretending escape.

 

“No Papa, slow down!” they shout.

 

“Never! I am running away!” he shouts back.

 

“Don’t leave us papa,” they giggle, running after him.

 

The youngest daughter is in a child’s seat on the bike, behind her papa. She slaps at his back. “No papa! Wait for sister!” She laughs and doesn’t stop slapping his back. He laughs and keeps peddling.

 

He turns the corner where the garden ends and he too is illuminated by the comforting light of the sunset, the sun forever lowering in the west. His daughters dash and smile and laugh and run and say, “Slow down papa! Slow down!”

 

“Never!” he laughs, full of love and goodness and the warmth of the sun.

 

“Never daughters! I am running away!”

 

And they move past my view, down the road, as if running away.

 

 

 

 

Kindergarten, Day Twelve

 

“Joshua Sensei! Joshua Sensei!”

 

“Hello! How are you?”

 

“How are you?”

 

“No ‘How are you’ ‘How are you’. You say, ‘I’m happy!’”

 

“I’m happy!”

 

“Okay good. Now, How are you?”

 

“How are you?”

 

“Right, let’s speak in Japanese instead. Are you happy?”

 

“Yes, I’m happy! Joshua Sensei, guess what?"

 

“What?”

 

“I went with my papa to Koriyama, and my papa said that Mickey was going to be in Koriyama, and when we got to Koriyama Mickey was there!”

 

“Really? Cool! Did you take a picture with Mickey?”

 

“Yes!”

 

“Cool!”

 

“And guess what Joshua-Sensei.”

 

“What?”

 

“Joshua-Sensei, I like, uh. I like ghosts. And I like zombies.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah. I like ghosts and I like zombies. And that’s it.”

 

 

Eriko’s Question

 

Eriko makes dinner. I used to cook, a year ago maybe, when we first met, but now she cooks. I am tired at night and do not want to cook. I will do the dishes. Besides, she is a better chef than I, and we both enjoy her food more.

 

“This is delicious,” I tell her. “What’s your secret?”

 

“No secret. It’s just Japanese flavors—soy sauce, sake, sugar. You can put that with anything and it will taste nice.”

 

“But this is amazing. You must have some tricks that okaasan taught you. Your mother is a cook after all.”

 

“No. No tricks. Japanese cooking doesn’t have tricks.”

 

I’m not convinced. I eschew the etiquette I have acquired since being here and shovel juicy, thin sliced pork, and saturated eggplant and soft tofu into my mouth keeping the bowl just under my chin, scraping the chopsticks against the sides. Eriko sits beside me and looks up at me and smiles.

 

“Honto ni, oishii?” she asks.

 

“Yes, delicious.”

 

 

We climb the wooden ladder up to my loft and sit on the futon on the floor. We drink tea. Carla Bruni sings French to us from my phone. I don’t understand the French and only pay enough attention to let it relax me. It is a relief to care nothing about deciphering language when the hours are late in a foreign country; better still when there is a pretty woman sitting on my futon.

 

“Did you climb today?” Eriko asks.

 

“Yes. For three hours.”

 

“Do you want a massage?”

 

“Of course,” I say. “I always want a massage from you.”

 

I lay down and she begins to grab and knead my back. It is painful and it is good. When she started giving me massages she told me that she enjoyed giving them, that they relaxed her. She worked as a masseuse and enjoyed the work so much that she wants to start her own massage studio. I joke with her when I want a massage and ask, “Do you want to relax a little now?”

 

She kneads and pulls and stretches my back for twenty minutes or so. When she finishes I do not want to sit up. She leans back against the wall and drinks more tea.

 

“I think that you’re being so good to me because you don’t want me to leave,” I tell her.

 

“Of course,” she says. “I want to marry you.”

 

“You would be a great wife,” I say. “But you know that I don’t want to be married.”

 

“I know,” she says. “But I still want to marry you, and to have a baby.”

 

“A son,” I say.

 

“Yes. A son would be nice.”

 

“But I want to take my son to remote mountains," I say. "And teach him about those mountains and camp there with him for many days. There are not mountains like that in Japan.”

 

“I know,” she says.

 

“And he must be a rebel. In Japanese schools it will be hard for him to become a rebel,” I say.

 

“I know,” she says.

 

“But you would be a great wife, Eriko. And when I leave, you will be a great wife for a lucky man. And you will have babies and they will make you very happy.”

 

She smiles, thinking of her future children.

 

“And what will you do?” she asks. “When you leave, what will you do?”

 

 

I am not sure what I will do. I will not marry her, nor have that son, nor take him to those mountains. And Eriko will become like South America did-- where real experiences faded into illusory memories, dreamlike. I will wonder how real Japan was as I wonder now about the lake I camped at in Cochamo, and about the Quechua villagers in Peru, and about the sunset in El Chalten. And when I leave Japan I will wonder about Eriko, whether a woman like her existed, and whether we loved each other like I believed we did.

Don't Trust Men With Bad Eyes

Foreground: Good Eyes. Middle Ground: Bad Eyes.

 “Se ve la cagada del pájaro en el ojo del huevón.”

                                                        Un dicho

 

Culo.

That is, his name was Culo. Yes, I remember my Spanish. That was his name. Or at least, that’s what I called him.

Because I thought I heard someone call him that. And it seemed appropriate.

An asshole? No. Not really. But still, the name Culo fit.

He was an endearing kind of stupid.  He didn’t even mean well. No. He wanted to scam us, take our money. He just couldn’t figure out how. That’s what made him kind of endearing. Pitiful really when you think about it—a scam artist with no skill. When I found out that we were supposed to ride with him, in this busted up grey van, I almost pulled out of the deal. I really don’t trust guys like that.

We had seen him earlier, Crazy Pete and I, before we ended up riding with him. He was lurking around our group like a vulture. When we were trying to figure out how to get into Tibet, he came around and kind of sniffed at us, his gaze prodding us like we were carrion. He offered to take us all the way in.

I didn’t trust him though, like I said. He wore this tattered, dirty monk’s robe down from his hips, like a dress, but he wasn’t a monk. He also wore a thin, sagging, yellow tank top that was all stained and smelled like a sweaty body. He was really pushy, and got in our faces, pressuring us to let him take us into Tibet. We kept saying no. Mostly I didn’t trust his eyes. That’s what made me want to stop the whole deal—bad eyes.

I don’t know. Like a drug addict. Like those bigots you see on TV that feign virtue while preaching hate. Eyes that stare at you but don’t see you. Jumpy, ugly eyes. It’s a rule of mine never to trust anyone with those kinds of eyes. But I slipped up.

Because Crazy Pete and I really wanted to get into Tibet but people were saying it was impossible for foreigners. Monks had been burning themselves, self-immolations, and the Chinese police didn’t want any Westerners to accidently be witness to it. All Crazy Pete and I wanted to do was go climbing. There was a spot in the Himalayas that looked good.

We tried the bus—waited two hours in a line for the ticket booth to open and when it did, the line broke into a pushing mass that crowded up against the glass. We had to give our money to a Chinese guy, Singaporean actually, because we heard that they wouldn’t sell the tickets to western foreigners. The Singaporean guy got crushed into the crowd and we didn’t know what happened until he popped out at the other end and said, “They’re sold out.”

That’s when we started talking with the others, or Crazy Pete did rather, because I can’t speak Chinese, and tried to figure out how to get there. The Singaporean guy, Eric, told us about private vans that we could hire. We could get a group of us together and split the price. A driver would take us the thirteen hours into Tibet. It turned out to be way more than thirteen hours, but we didn’t know that then.

Eric’s Chinese was the best, what with being Singaporean and all, so he started bartering with the drivers. That’s when Culo came around. Eric seemed to ignore him like we had done. There’s a sense to those guys—bad vibes. Kimochi warui. Eric must have sensed it too. He ignored Culo and bartered with another guy instead, a guy with slicked back hair. A steady, confident guy. Eric got him down to three hundred quai for each of us. By then it was me, Crazy Pete, Eric and his wife, and a fat kid and his mother. They’re the reason we didn’t back out when we found out that Culo was our driver. They were all in. If Crazy Pete and I pulled out, they’d be stranded.

Yeah, that’s what I thought too. I thought the guy with the slicked back hair would be our driver. But he wasn’t. Right when it looked like we were all headed to the van with him he explained to Eric that three hundred quai wasn’t enough. For three hundred quai he wouldn’t take us. But Culo would. That’s how we got Culo. Right at the end, right when we all thought that it was a done deal and that everything was going to work out just fine, dumb ole Culo shows up and hops in the driver’s seat. There was no explanation. Nothing. Just us there, me and Crazy Pete in the way back, Eric, the mom, and the fat kid in front of us, Eric’s wife in the passenger seat and Culo at the wheel. And it was late morning. With what we thought was only thirteen hours ahead of us, we needed to get a move on. There was no time for protesting or second guessing.

Culo wasn’t in as much of a rush as us, apparently. Something that he definitely regretted later. We hadn’t been on the road more than half an hour when he pulled over and jumped out of the car without saying a word to any of us. He would do that. He would just pull over, hop out of the car and disappear for a while. We’d all look blankly at each other and ask, Where’d he go? What the hell’s he doing? Eventually, after five or ten minutes went by, we’d pile out of the van and just kind of stand there scratching our heads. Then, as suddenly as he would disappear, he’d come back, jump in the driver’s seat and tell us to hurry up and get back in. This happened three or four times over the course of the two days that we were on the road.

That’s right. It ended up taking two days.

The road was shit. Absolutely terrible. I once wrote a story about a combi ride in Peru that lasted eight hours and took this awful dirt rode over a 16,000 foot mountain pass. I was squeezed in there on this steel seat with not even a suggestion of cushioning on it, squeezed between campesinos and their chickens and babies that were vomiting while the others were farting and coughing. That was the worst ride of my life…until I took Culo’s van to Tibet. Culo’s van had a little more cushioning in the back, I’ll give it that. But the road was awful. I mean, we were in the Himalayas after all. The dirt road was all grooved and washboarded and loose. The suspension was shot. The entire trip, the whole two days of it, we got tossed around; leaping towards the ceiling with every big drop, constantly, erratically vibrating in the interim, banging our heads against the side windows. We had to keep the windows closed because of the dust that would fly in, so the heat was stifling. And we were crammed in there like sardines, the whole time listening to Culo’s clinking Tibetan music.

About an hour in Culo does his thing again—stops the car and just leaves. He came back with two more passengers, hitch-hikers, a young couple. The guy said he wasn’t her boyfriend, but I think he was. At least he was trying to become her boyfriend. Anyway, Culo comes back with them and they’re bartering away. Culo says three hundred and they say two fifty and Culo refuses. He even gets back in the car and starts to drive away, but then stops and considers. He looks back at Eric and asks, “What do you think? Is two fifty a good price?”

Eric laughed at him. Because what does Eric care about the deal that Culo makes? Here Culo is, about to cram two more people into our rackety old van and he’s asking Eric for advice on the price!

Culo ends up taking in the two hitch-hikers, squeezing us all in there, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. The fat kid played video games the whole time. He didn’t complain for the whole two days. Good on him, what with being a “Little Emperor” and all. I just took the perspective of, Well, we decided on this. Might as well put up with it for as long as it lasts.

Another one of Culo's random stops. This time, to wash his hair.

It lasted much longer than we anticipated. I know, I told you that already. Two days instead of thirteen hours. I just want you to know how ridiculous that difference is. Especially when you’re in a claustrophobia inducing, steaming van that’s tossing and turning like an earthquake even though we were going, what, maybe an average of thirty kilometers an hour. Thirty kilometers an hour is a crawl. Culo didn’t know how to use the van’s momentum, perhaps the only aspect of the van’s chemistry that could have been advantageous. On the downhill, Culo’d try to floor it, but of course all the crashing and dipping and banging would slow him down. Then, right before the hills, he would bring the speed way down. He’d stall out of course. Over and over again—hill, slow, stall. He could never get the van going again after that. The “ace up his sleeve” was he’d get out of the van, find a big rock, jam it under the back tire, get back in, rev the engine to redline, and then try to peel out from the jammed rock. It worked about fifty percent of the time. The rest of the time he’d say, “Xia che”, which I quickly learned meant “get out and push”. We’d all pile out, give the van a shove and Culo would be off.

I mean way off. He always drove unusually far away from us. We’d have to walk for five or so minutes to catch up with him. And when we’d get there, back to the van, Culo, in his always taciturn way, wouldn’t say a thing. He’d just wait for us to all get in, even hurry us to do so, and start going again. Then we’d be back vibrating and banging our way down the road. One time, when he told us “Xia che” and we all got out, he drove completely out of sight. I thought that he had abandoned us for good. All of our stuff was in the van. I didn’t even have a bottle of water with me. It took us fifteen minutes of walking to get back to the van where Culo was waiting with that dumb smile of his. Eric was pissed. When he caught up with the van he started yelling at Culo, “I’m only paying two fifty! We’re gonna have to walk half the trip! What’d you pick the other two up for anyway? Can’t you see that the van’s weighed down now? I’ve had it. When we get to Tibet, you’re only getting two fifty from me.”

Culo yelled something back, in that big Tibetan kind of way. If your only vision of Tibetans is like mine was before getting there, that they’re all quiet, humble monks, you’re wrong. Most of the Tibetans that we saw were big, dark guys, dirty and hard from the Himalayas. They’d come charging up to each other, yelling. Actually, most of what I thought was yelling was actually just the way the Tibetan language sounds, but man, there was nothing quiet and humble about it. Tibet was what I imagine the Old West to be like, I mean the real Old West, where life was hard and everybody was looking out for themselves only, and it was all dust and tumbleweeds and dry mountain wind, and people look at each other sideways and spit and grunt. That’s the kind of guy Culo was. He growled something back at Eric and we all got back in the van.

I agreed with Eric, about the two fifty thing. We were getting screwed and it seemed like monetary punishment was in order for Culo. I said the same thing to him. “Culo”, I said. “Me too. Two fifty. You can’t keep making us walk like this”. It was all in English though so of course he didn’t understand. I knew he wouldn’t, but I thought I’d vent somehow.  I didn’t actually mind the walking, but I knew that the others did, especially the mom. And especially the fat kid. My protests didn’t matter; Culo just laughed at me. I laughed back.

The worst part of the trip was when Culo finally confessed that it was going to take more than thirteen hours. By that point we had already figured out that it was going to take more than thirteen hours. We figured this out because we had been in the van for fifteen. Leave it to Culo for that kind of an update. He told us that there was a town about two hours away that we could stop at for the night. It would be another two hours the next day, he said, to get to Tibet. With the promise of a respite only two hours away, our minds prepared for relief. It’s funny how your head can measure time and kind of ration out your patience and tolerance for that period, knowing that after that time you won’t have to worry anymore. But when the two hour mark passed, and our tolerance  and patience ran dry, no such relief came. Another three hours later, we were still driving and Culo, making a decision inspired by what delirium I know not, opted to gun the van through a section of road that was foot deep mud. All the other vans ahead of us went around this mud pit, but Culo, good ole Culo, tried to go straight through.

Of course the van got stuck. That van couldn’t even get moving on a dry road without jamming a rock under the tire and kicking out all of the passengers. It beached onto the mud like a fat man doing a belly flop, and stayed there, immobile, wheels spinning but going nowhere.

Once again, “Xia che” was yelled and we piled out and pushed the van back out of the mud. Only this time, much to Culo’s dismay, and adding to the rest of our building angst, when we got the van out of the mud, we noticed it left a puddle of black oil, about five quarts worth. Right. That’s all the oil it’s got. The van wasn’t going anywhere.

It was nearly 1 a.m. Crazy Pete and I had started the day at 5 a.m. the day before, when we got in line for the bus. We hadn’t slept for almost 24 hours. Big semis and busses rolled by us and we were left in the darkness, our hazard lights blinking like a lonely radar signal in the middle of the Himalayas.

When Culo saw the oil he started cursing in Tibetan, or what I assume was cursing, and pacing back and forth. He took a jack out of the van, placed it into the soft mud and tried to jack up the van. Of course it didn’t work. The jack just dug itself deeper into the mud. We tried explaining this to Culo but it took a while for his brain to comprehend the physics of it all. Eventually we got him to put a big flat stone under the jack, which dispersed the weight enough to allow the jack to lift the van. Culo, in the most intrepid state that we ever saw him, crawled in the mud under the van and began tinkering away. He grunted for people to hand him things—a rag, a hammer. Eventually he pulls out the oil filter. I’m thinking, if the oil pan is punctured, changing the oil filter isn’t going to do a thing; as if I have any knowledge of what the van needs at all. Culo screws in a new oil filter, immerges from out of the mud, pulls back the driver’s seat to reveal the engine, and pours in a full bottle of oil. When he finished with the bottle, he tossed it over this concrete retaining wall, out into the night.

We had all been standing out in the lonely cold of the Himalayas for nearly an hour. There was a pious silence as Culo put the keys into the ignition and turned. The engine started clean, and revved a horrible, choked roar. But that was normal. It looked as if it might just hold up. We backed the van up a little and checked for any clean, leaking oil, but we saw nothing. From what we could tell, the idiot had done it; Culo fixed the leak.

But we still had a few hours to go. And just because the leak was fixed didn’t mean that Culo was suddenly an angel. He did get us into that mess to begin with. And though we were grateful for the van to be moving again, it still jarred and shook us every mile of our way to the hotel. It was, however, a kind of home stretch. We knew that the hotel was coming, sometime. It had to come, if not simply just for the fact that we were moving forward, it had to come.

It was amid thoughts such as these, thoughts of desperate need to find a hotel, thoughts of escaping the confines of the van’s back seat and of finally plopping down into a bed, that Culo pulled over to the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, and turned the van off. All of us, being half crazed from sleep deprivation ourselves, didn’t really understand why Culo had done such a thing. We especially didn’t understand when, again, without a word, he put his jacket over his head and reclined forward onto the steering wheel.

Culo, had decided to sleep. When we woke up enough to realize his sudden decision, we shook him awake and asked what he was doing. He lifted his jacket slightly from over his head, looked back at us, and confirmed, “Sleeping,” to which he covered his head up again and rested back on the steering wheel.

We couldn’t believe it. We immediately woke him up. “No Culo, we’re making it to a hotel,” we told him. “Well, I’m not driving there,” he said. “Of course you’re driving there, Culo. You’re the driver. That’s what we hired you to do. We’re not even in Tibet yet and you told us it would be thirteen hours.”

It’s amazing that we didn’t become hysterical. Culo gazed back up at us and seemed to consider his options. He arrived at this conclusion: “Does someone else want to drive?”

The van scoffed, and laughed and tried to convince Culo that no, no one else was going to drive. Culo was going to drive. But Culo, very nonchalantly, respectfully even, pulled his jacket back over his head and lay back down on the steering wheel.

“I’ll do it,” I said. I squeezed past the others in the back seat, and jumped out of the van’s sliding door. I walked up to the driver’s side, to Culo sleeping under his jacket, and opened the door. “Okay, Culo. I’ll do it. I’ll drive the rest of the way,” I said in English. Culo’s jacket ruffled a bit and he pulled it off of his head. He looked me up and down, and said what I think was, “You?” Then he turned and spoke to the others in his broken Chinese, to which they translated back to me. “He says forget it. He’d rather drive us the rest of the way than have you drive.”

I started to like Culo then.

It was still another hour at least before we made it to the hotel. We got stuck in mud again, and had to xia che and walk, et cetera, et cetera. Other drivers who were navigating the mud and got out to inspect it, commented on Culo’s driving as they watched him try and get through. In summation, they all agreed, “This guy sucks.”

When we finally made it to the hotel, how many hours later I’m not sure, Culo pulled up outside of the building and started honking and yelling, trying to get someone to come out and help us. It was the middle of the night, or early morning rather, and Culo was yelling and honking like he was at a soccer game. The first hotel was full, so we had to drive even further to another one that had space for all of us. When we finally got into our room, that had this really tacky red wall paper with a pattern of big golden roses all over it, Crazy Pete and I crashed. Though you can imagine what shape our bodies were in from being in the backseat for the entirety of the drive, we both fell asleep right away.

In the morning we realized that we never ate dinner the night before because Culo never made a stop where we could buy any food. By the time we woke up we were starving. We were incapable of coherent conversation with each other as we stumbled into a restaurant and waited savagely for dumplings.

 

Of course Culo was late to pick us up. We didn’t get going until early afternoon. Culo was in good spirits though, smiling that aloof smile. Luckily, the road from the town with the hotel to Tibet was much better—paved. Still, while Culo promised it would only take two hours, it took five. We weren’t surprised.

We made it to Tibet. Eventually. It was one of those Thank-God-that’s-over feelings. We had to unfold ourselves from our sitting positions, like a babies fresh out of a hot, dusty, mechanical womb. Eric and I ended up paying Culo the full three hundred, I think because we were both too tired to argue. It was also the easiest and fastest way to get rid of Culo. It’s funny though, when it was time to part ways, I kind of had this feeling of having bonded with Culo. We had been through so much together. I expected some reciprocity in the feeling, but when I said goodbye to him, “Alright Culo, see you later,” he just grunted at me, got back into the van and drove off.

Crazy Pete and I went climbing that evening. We got to sit in a hot springs for a while and work out some of the skeletal damage suffered from the journey. Just when I thought I had completely relaxed, and I could begin to breathe in the joy of having actually made it to Tibet, Crazy Pete brought up a point that I had yet to consider:

"You know,” he said. “That’s only half the battle. I mean, we still have to get back.”

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.