Geisha, Interrupted

My Fifteen Mortifying Minutes

of fame, or something resembling it, came and went in the form of an interview on a US radio show just recently. The podcast is available online, but I still can`t bring myself to listen to it. I`m sure that even if I didn`t sound stupid on the air (which I`m pretty certain I did), there is no escaping my own self-criticism, so I am better off just not clicking there.

Memoirists are self-obsessed by trade, and memoirists with blogs are even worse. This really makes me wonder why I`m so deathly afraid of my own voice. It doesn`t make a whole lot of sense.

All in all, this whole debacle would be so much easier and tolerable if I could have been drunk the whole time.
Drunk, my own voice sounds great. Sober, it`s unbearable (and one of the hardest things I`ve learn in sobriety was that I`m not as phenomenal a karaoke singer as I`d once assumed.) Oh well.

I`ll give you the link anyway.

From what I hear, you have to fast forward through some guy talking about airline safety first.

4 Minutes in Tokyo

It`s 1:45 am, and we are violently roused from our sleep.  The bed is shaking in all directions, seemingly at once, and the light fixture above us is swinging back and forth.  It is not swaying lightly, like it would during a more moderate quake,  but whirling with momentum, as if possessed.  "This one`s pretty strong," T says to me as I cling to him; he is the only stable body in the room.  I am silent.  I can never speak during these first stages of an earthquake.  I am too busy waiting to know whether the tremors will taper off or or become even more violent.  And when they get worse, I can`t help but wonder if this is, in fact, "it."  "It," you know, is the one that everyone worries about, the one that is overdue, the one in which Mother Nature is supposed to crush all our pretensions of stability, and show the world that a global mega-city is really more of a suggestion than a constant.

It`s 1:46 am, and the shaking is long over.  T gets up to turn off the gas valve, then comes back to bed.  We lie there in silence, waiting, for the sounds of sirens, helecoptors, or any sign that the rest of Tokyo is not so ok.  Yet the night remains quiet; no noise is good noise.  Silently, we`ve survived again. 

It`s 1:47 am, and T checks the internet from the palm of his hand. 
"6.7 off of Ibaraki," he says. 
A 6.7, centered north of the capital and out to sea, I process the information.  That`s nothing.  A  6.7  could have been devastating elsewhere, but this city is practically built upon springs, I remember.  It, would have had to be more in the neighborhood of a magnitude 8 or 9.
"Tsunami warning?" I ask, knowing that we`d been forgetting something.
"Hold on," he waits a few moments for the data to come in, "Nope," he replies, "No tsunami."
"Okay then," I say softly, "good night again, love."

It`s 1:48 am, and I am already drifting back into a carefree, dreamless sleep. 

all the wiser

Here are five random things I realized while I was away:

1) When I am in New York City, I walk about four or five times faster than I do when I am anywhere else in the world.  T brought this to my attention when we got back to Tokyo, where my pace seemed to slacken automatically.  When asked why this was the case, I responded that "Maybe it`s because, in New York, I am always trying to get the hell out of wherever it is I am."

2) There are cherry blossom trees all over the neighborhood where I grew up.  I was fascinated to realize this as I looked out the window of of my parents` car, on the way to their house in Long Island.  Granted these blossoms as not awesome as those in Japan; still, how could I have never known they existed before?  Well for one, their forecasted date of blossoming had not been a top story on the nightly news for many weeks prior. The Japanese really are far more appreciative of nature sometimes; people are acutely aware of each subtle change in season and what it symbolizes.

3) Most of the perves you encounter while walking down the street in America, the kind who very visibly look you up and down as if it`s any of their business, are young-ish aged men.  In Japan however, most young men are very shy when they see an attractive woman, so they are more likely to hide or run away.  This leaves all the perving to the senior citizens, who seem to have finally gotten over this characteristically (cute, but not entirely sexy) Japanese humility.  I far prefer the Japanese species of perv, largely because I stand a far greater chance at kicking his shriveled ass, should it ever come to that.

4) I love vending machines!  I missed them immensely while I was away!  When dealing exclusively with vending machines, there`s no need to speak with the so-polite-it-makes-you-uncomfortable (Japan) or the angry-at-the-world-and-that`s-somehow-your-fault (New York)  service industry professionals in either part of the world.

5) American television, whether it is taken out of context or not, is far dumber than Japanese TV.  And that says a lot.  I will post more later about the adventures in American television that I endured throughout my sojourn.

No really, I will.  I am back.

I 愛 Entertainment Weekly

The following review is pasted from last week`s issue of my new favorite magazine:

downside up girl

Some months ago, Jade was telling me about a famous Japanese folktale which I - never having been a child growing up in Japan- had never heard of before.  This is likely why I found the story so fascinating.  It was about a boy named Urashimataro who saved the life of a turtle, prompting the turtle to take Urashimataro on his back to a palace under the sea. There, the boy lived a life of luxury and decadence in the company of a princess.  After three days however, Urashimataro missed his mother and wanted to go back up to the land.  On his departure, the princess gave him a box and told him never to open it (of course).  Urashimataro took the box and returned to his native land.  There, he was shocked to learn that 100 years had gone by on the land in what had been only three days under the sea.  At this point Urashimataro naturally opened the box, which released a magic spell that turned the boy into an old man.

The folktale suggests that time passes differently in different places, in different environments or contexts.  I`ve been thinking about Urashimataro (whose name, when translated badly, means "upside-down-island-boy") a lot lately.

I was so much like Urashimataro that time 3 or so years ago when I actually attempted to move back to America, after spending quite a few decadent years in Japan just after college.  I came back and everyone had grown up and gotten real jobs and knew how to act like adults in this culture.  And it sucked.  So instead of opening Urashimataro`s box, I went running back to Japan.

But now, years later, the situation has completely reversed itself.  I feel as I have changes so much while living in Tokyo the past couple of years, but everything here has stayed the same.  I am the anti-urashimataro (downside-up-trench-girl?).  In the year-and-change I`ve spent sober, I`ve built a really stable life for myself back in Japan.  And it`s awesome.  I love my life in Tokyo.  But it just doesn`t exist here.  At all.  Having been drunk or high all the time has not left much of a life for me to come back to.  It is like early sobriety for me all over again. I feel like I have to build my American life up again from scratch.  But to be honest, I`m not really trying that hard to do so.  So much has been happening that I don`t really feel as if I`m here or there.

Oh yeah, and I got married last week.  It kicked ass. 

and i`m off...

So I`m leaving Tokyo tomorrow for a 3 week sojourn in America, where, if all goes according to plan, I will get married and launch a book.  Little things like that.  I haven`t been back there since the summer of 2006, and I`ve never been back as a sober and generally unfuckedup person.  That said, I am bracing myself for a reverse culture shock of unprecedented proportions. 

And it`s already started, for example, I am totally scared that I`m going to get shot as soon as I get off the plane.  So much is evidence that I watch the news in Japanese, and that I haven`t set foot out of these islands in far too long.  When I tell Japanese people that I`m originally from New York,  they usually ask me if I own a gun, if my family owns guns or if my friends have their own guns.  At this point I have to explain that not all Americans own guns, it just seems like it because we are getting shot at all the time.

Of all the things I could be worrying about. 

Anyways...off I go!

Rest In Peace

I hope you`re in a better place now.

The Things That You Find In The Drain

   

(click on pictures for larger images)

again.

Jade was going to work at the club on Friday night, when she noticed many TV cameras and news reporters surrounding a neighboring bar. The below article is presumably the reason why they all came out. Although this story is far too close for comfort, I will update it further as soon as I figure out what`s going on.

FILIPINO BAR HOSTESS LIKELY VICTIM
Severed body part found in Tokyo condo

A paper bag containing a severed body part believed to be from a Filipino bar hostess was found Thursday night in her high-rise apartment in Minato Ward, police said Friday.

Police guard the entrance to a high-rise condominium on the Odaiba waterfront in Minato Ward, Tokyo, Friday after a woman's body part was found there the previous night.

The bag contained a 30-sq.-cm piece of human flesh believed to have come from the woman's waist, which was apparently severed by a knife. A blood-soaked futon was found in the kitchen, they said.

The unit, on the 26th floor of a building near the Odaiba waterfront, is shared by a Japanese man and several Filipino women who work at the same bar in the Roppongi district, according to police, who are withholding all names at this point.

The man, in his 40s, is believed employed to keep tabs on the hostesses, who may be working at the bar illegally.

One of the women, in her 20s, failed to report to work Thursday night, so another woman, 20, went to look for her.

When she returned home she encountered the man carrying a severed body part and fled to a nearby police box to report the incident at around 9:55 p.m., police said.

But the man was gone by the time police arrived at the flat.

Police said they suspect the severed body part belongs to the missing hostess and are searching for the man, but have so far been unable to locate him.

The presumed victim was asleep when the other hostesses left the condo at around 8 a.m. Thursday.

A male employee at the Roppongi bar said, "She never failed to call whenever she took a day off, but she didn't (phone) on April 3."

The Heaven Reunion: Part 2

Jade and I met up in Ginza early last Sunday. I'd just received my first hardcover copy of my book from my publisher, and I wanted to show Jade before we were scheduled to meet Mari and Isabelle.  And if I could muster enough courage, I'd show the book to my other former co-workers at some point during the course of the day.

The mere thought of showing them my book scared me to death.  Yet the other option- hoping that they'd never find out about it- was becoming less and less plausible. 

"The Japanese subtitle is really cool," Jade said, pointing to the cover of the book which read: 夜に咲く花.

"You should know," I assumed she was joking with me "you wrote it."

"I wrote it?" she is not kidding after all, "me?"

"When I first ran the cover art by you last year," I said, "don't you remember?"

Jade had agreed with me that literal translation of "bar flower" (酒場華) looked a bit awkward and suggested I ask them to change it to something that was less literal but might actually make sense to a Japanese person, that is, 夜に咲く花 (yoru ni saku hana): flower that blooms at night.

"Wow," she said, hardly fazed by what she'd forgotten, "I'm so awesome!"

Jade is the first to admit that her memory is highly selective and basically sucks.  I often envy such a memory, as I envision that my life would be far less painful without the recurring and vivid recollections of a past that I'd rather forget.  But at the same time, people need to remember how much the past hurts in order not to repeat it.  Case in point: Jade is still hostessing.

After I put the book away, she and I started to chat about how weird it was going to be to see Mari again after all this time.  I wondered aloud whether we shouldn't be a little frightened.  Jade and I have discussed this woman extensively throughout the course of our bestfriendship, and we both admit that we were scared to death of Mari for at least the first few weeks we were working below her.  Mari seemed to have an off switch, which she used to shut herself off emotionally on most nights of the week.  It was her seemingly frozen countenance that scared us the most during those first weeks.

In that way as well, Mari was the complete antithesis of Destiny.  When Destiny hires you to work for her, she gives you a speech about how she is your 'big sister' now and you can turn to her whenever you have a problem.  And then, slowly but surely, Destiny reveals herself to be the devil incarnate.  On the other hand, it takes some time to realize that Mama Mari's seeming lack of emotion is a survival mechanism in the world of bar hostessing, since she's actually quite warm-hearted at her core. 

First Isabelle arrived, then Mari.  Mari was ravishing as ever, if surprisingly short in her moderately flat shoes.  The Mama Mari in my memory (and in my memoir, consequently) towers over me in her stilettos.  Yet without her heels, Mari is five foot four.

Mari and I embraced.  She gripped my shoulders with her hands and studied my face. 

Lea ga kawaranai ne, she said. Lea, you haven't changed at all.

Among bar girls who are growing older by the minute, this is one of the highest complements you can give someone: you haven't changed at all.  It means that you have not yet begun to wither.

Luckily for me, Mari was wrong.

(to be continued)