Geisha, Interrupted

Moving Right Along

In my recent efforts to hightail it the hell out of the `self-absorbed-memoir genre,` I`ve been starting to do some preliminary research for a possible historical fiction project. Lately, I`ve been really drawn to reading about the lives of some high ranking courtesans (well-dressed prostitutes) inside the gated Yoshiwara pleasure quarters during the Edo period and onward.

In the 1720 Yoshiwara Marukagami, a book that has been likened, by a scholars to a "Who`s Who Among Courtesans," one can actually find critical reviews of Yoshiwara prostitutes (written in a critical spirit comparable to one that still exists today with respect to more contemporary forms of entertainment!)  Since the "Who`s Who" is obviously written by a patron, this gives a severely limited glimpse of the women themselves.  Still, check out the common element I`ve noticed in the description of each five star whore.

Name: Takao

Rating: supreme very best

Critical excerpt: "Her luminous eyes look like pear blossoms touched by raindrops..."

Name: Usugumo

Rating: supreme very best

Critical excerpt: "She is not yet sixteen and has the aura of a budding cherry blossom in early spring..."

Name: Otowa

Rating: supreme very best

Critical excerpt: "She resembles a large white peony on a sunny day..."

Name: Hatsugiku

Rating: supreme very best

Critical excerpt: "She stands out like a magnificent chrysanthemum in a field of autumn grass..."

Name: Shiraito

Rating: peerless very best

Critical excerpt:  "This spring, at eighteen, she is like a walking flower..."

The comparison to a woman of pleasure to a transient flower blossom feels more apt in this particular context than it has in anything I`ve ever seen or known, because the average Yoshiwara courtesan lived to be only twenty-two years old.

Twenty-two!

But enough about flowers.  For the same story, I am consequently researching to the activities of secret Christian missionaries, whose presence was outlawed by the shogun during the Edo period. Or maybe I`m more interested in the American missionary families who arrived en masse to convert the heathens during early Meiji.  Then again, I tend to get convinced that whatever history I`m reading at the moment is the best context for my characters.

Preliminary research, that part of the creative process where the finished product is still a blur of indistinct characters and contexts, has got to be the most exciting stage of writing there is.  The more research I do, the more characters come running through my head. And the ones who stay for a while begin to feel so much like real people.  They chase after each other playfully in circles, slipping and falling, laughing at themselves and wanting to grow.

On days that I am not with you here, I am with them.

Well I`m either with them or with a shojo manga turned anime series, of which I recently agreed to translate 25 full episodes.  The episodes are long and the project will take months, yet the cartoon itself is cool and fun enough that I probably won`t be making fun of the scripts on here (like I`ve done with with some other translation work), in the interest of keeping my job secure.

Life is good.  Friggin` busy as hell, but good.

Let`s Enjoy Angerful Islam

There is an unwritten rule in Japanese media, fashion and advertising which states that if a text isn`t written in the Japanese language, then it is rendered meaningless. In fact, Japan is well known for it`s creative use of foreign countries` languages for decoration rather than communication, thus providing an endless source of amusement for the foreigners whose languages and cultures get playfully butchered. 

All this is fine, as long as we remember never to publish anything in Arabic.  Not everyone thinks it`s funny when the Japanese mess up.

Muslims Complain Japanese Cartoon Insulted Koran, Kyodo Reports 

May 22 (Bloomberg) -- A Japanese cartoon depicting a character reading the Koran while ordering the execution of the animation's hero and friends sparked protests on Islamic Web sites, Kyodo News reported today.

The scene from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, adapted from a comic strip published from 1987 to 2003, generated angry responses on more than 300 Arab and Islamic Internet forums, with many accusing Japan of insulting the Koran, Kyodo said.

The scene depicts Muslims as terrorists, Kyodo cited Sheikh Abdul Hamid Attrash, chairman of the Fatwa Committee at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, as saying. An unidentified official at Shueisha Inc., a Japanese publisher involved in the cartoon's movie version, told Kyodo the Koran's use was ``a simple mistake'' stemming from employees' inability to read Arabic.

Cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb in his turban were published in 2005 in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, prompting protests in Muslim communities worldwide and consumer boycotts of Danish products.

Charlie Wilson`s Fantastic Suit Factory

 So I`m wondering... in this 
city where Cameron Diaz is best known as the "softbank phone girl"  and Tommy Lee Jones is most acclaimed for his work in the "Boss Coffee"  billboard campaign, am I the only one who, by way of hurried sideways glances, first assumed that Tom Hanks was launching his own men`s clothing line???

At Long Last, The Heaven Reunion Part 3

That Sunday afternoon over a month ago, I sat eating Thai food in Ginza, with Jade, Mari and Isabelle.  We chatted away like four women who hadn`t been reunited since our club closed down, some two years earlier.

There was plenty of fodder for small talk: I was getting married in just weeks and Jade was going to be my maid of honor.  We were already packing for New York.  Isabelle, like me, had retired from hostessing and settled for a more stable though far less exciting day job in a Japanese company.  Mari had been out of the night work scene for a year, during which time she`d established an mini-empire which may or may not involve the abundant import and export of Hello Kitty merchandise. 

Ginza Mamas are certainly the resourceful types, even when they are not Ginza Mamas anymore.  It may as well have been written on Mari`s face, which appeared softer and more gentle than its ever been, that she was no longer a night worker.  I far preferred the present countenance to the tight, suspicious and all-knowing expression that`s required of any Ginza Mama.

I was contemplating as much when, without warning, the conversation veered out of control, toward my least favorite topic in all the world.

"How`s your book coming along?" Isabelle asked me, right in front of Mari. 

Crash.

"Umm...ah...Book?"  To lessen the impact, I harnessed an old skill that I picked up long ago on the hostess circuit: feigning complete retardation. "Who told you about a book?"  I asked her, wide-eyed and dumb.

Isabelle nodded toward Jade.  I turned to Jade as well, glaring, panicked.  Jade  elbowed me under the table, hard, a silent reminder that acting retarded will only work on men.

"It`s not that big of a deal," Jade raised her eyebrows and said through her teeth.

"Fine," I glared back. 

After some awkward pauses I somehow managed to take my book out of hiding and pass it around the table.

My fears were unmerited. Isabelle and Mari seemed honestly and genuinely proud of me, for getting my memoir published.  And they were impressed.  Hostesses, after all, are not usually the type to get off their pampered asses and write a book about all the crazy shit they`ve seen in this city after dark.  (If they did, though, memoirs in general would be a lot more interesting.)

Well, they haven`t read it yet. I noted to myself, qualifying.

"So who`s in your memoir?" Isabelle asked. 

"Everyone!" Exclaimed Jade.  For no sane reason, I wanted to kill my best friend just then.

"There were definitely enough crazy happenings at our bar to write a book," someone added. 

"But only a fraction of them made it into the memoir," I qualified. "It would have been like 1000 pages if I`d included everything."

"Remember when you used to get so drunk and shout how much you loved me?"  Mari asked, putting the past in perspective and laughing.

"Well I`m not drunk anymore," I responded "so I don`t have the confidence to scream..." 

"GOOD!"  Interrupted Jade.

"Shut up!" I snapped affectionately, turning my attention back to Mari. 

"But I do still love you." 

Cartoon Wife

"So now that you`re married," the twelve-year-old girl I tutor asks me, "do you want to become like a Japanese housewife?"

"What do you mean by that?" I ask, raising my eyebrows.  This could get interesting.

"You know," she says "you pat the kids on the back as you send them off to school...you make lunches and cook dinner for your husband...you clean the house and wear an apron all the time..."

I have no clue where she picked up these ideas.  Her mother, after all, is a real-estate agent.

"and take a nap in the afternoon...and eat lots of doughnuts and sweets...and go shopping with the baby tied to you all the time...and gossip with the neighbors..."

She`s spitting all this out in rapid succession.  As much as I enjoy talking to this girl, her monologues may be likened best to an express circus train on its way nowhere.

"and you budget the family`s money... but secretly keep some of your husband`s salary for yourself... then use to buy clothes for yourself at the department store..."

"OK," I stop her, finally, "where did you get all these ideas?"

"A cartoon!" she states matter-of-factly, without pausing to think at all.

"Which cartoon?" my eyes widen.

"Crayon Shin-chan!"

Of course, Crayon shin-chan.  Shin-chan is a somewhat inappropriate children`s cartoon that no Japanese parents want their kids to watch.  This makes the show`s high ratings all the more curious.  The cartoon depicts a stereotypically average Japanese family, saving the fact that their 5-year-old son is a raging, Cartman-esque brat with an pimp`s vocabulary.

A lot of the jokes don`t translate well, but here it is anyway.

"You didn`t answer my question," my student has gotten impatient. "Are you going to be a housewife?"

"Well...no," I respond.  "Do you want to be a housewife when you grow up?"

"Um," for the first time in our long-winded dialogue, she actually pauses to think.

"No."

Put The Camera Down And Help That Woman, Please.

In Japan, it is especially painful to look on as our neighboring Asian nations- most recently China and Myanmar- are devastated by natural disasters. 

Just last week a 6.8 magnitude quake shook Japan, resulting in a few minor injuries and zero deaths. The non-existent death toll had nothing to do with luck: God does not watch over Japan more than he does any other country in the world, and Mother Nature even seems to harbor a special hatred just for us.  The truth is, we have resources that others do not.  Living here, I witness first hand the extent to which nature`s blows may be softened by advanced architecture and municipal preparedness.

In the seas surrounding Japan, a highly advanced tsunami warning system is in place, one that alerts Japanese residents of a tidal wave within seconds after an undersea quake.  That said, it was immensely disturbing to witness as so many other Asian countries did not get the memo when a quake struck beneath the Indian Ocean in 2004.

It is all the more painful to watch something so tragic when you know first-hand that it didn`t have to be that way.  It is really too bad that Japan is so busy bickering with her neighbors (largely over events that took place during the Second World War) to tackle bigger issues and share her wealth of knowledge with those who are suffering right now.

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.