Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries (14 page)

Vaginas.

Flushed and dizzy, I sit back down and catch my breath. Looking from vagina to vagina, I note how they differ in shape, size, and overall presentation. Here’s an impeccably kept one, the hairs tended like a prized garden or perhaps just naturally minimal. On the other hand, the one over there is a veritable festival of fur tangles, an overgrown patch of briars and brambles. All of the vaginas are wet, though, which makes me wonder what they are thinking about.

“What about
him
?” one of them says.

“Hmm. Yeah, he’ll do,” another pipes in.

“Come on, girls,” says the really hairy one. “Look at him. He’s totally gay.”

“You think?”

“Oh my God, yes! Look at his nose. That is one gay nose. And see how scared he is, looking at us?”

“Every guy who comes in here looks like that,” the well-trimmed one suggests. (Brazilian?)

“Yeah, but not like this. He’s trembling. Watch this, watch this. Hey, little man,” she says to me. “Boo!”

I jump.

“What a chump.”

“Maybe he’s just really sensitive.”

“Oh please. That’s good old-fashioned mortal fear.”

“
,” a Japanese vagina agrees. “
Ha, ha, ha!!”

“Yeah, and didn’t you see him dancing earlier? No straight man dances like that.”

Wait, is that a compliment?

“Shut up, all of you,” the giant vagina bellows from behind me. I stand up and face her. “Sit down, little man.” I sit. “Give it a rest, bitches,” she continues. “Stop fucking with him. He’s obviously just curious.”

“Hey, Tim!” Rachel shouts, and I whip my head around to see her smiling face looking down at me. Apparently she’s decided to take a break from her ferocious body-rock and join me and the vaginas.

“Oh, Rachel! Thank God! Sit down! These vaginas have been talking my ear off.”

Rachel looks around at the luminous, disembodied female genitalia surrounding us.

“Wow. These are cool.”

I want to tell her that a few of them are actually quite rude, but I figure they can probably hear me, and I definitely don’t want the big one to jump off the wall and get all
vagina dentata
on me.

“There are so many of them,” she says, lighting a cigarette. “I wonder whose they are.”

With Rachel here, I start to calm down and think clearly again. Come on, Tim, these vaginas are nothing to be afraid of. They’re people just like you and me. And why shouldn’t I use this opportunity—access to so many good vaginas—to learn a little something. About myself and others. Mainly others. Others’ vaginas. Since this is probably the last time I will ever be in a room with so many useful visual aids, and since I do have a few unanswered questions about their form and function, I should turn to Rachel and pose a few.

“So, Rachel,” I say, pointing up to the giant vagina behind us, “where the hell is this clitoris thing I keep hearing about?”

I’m not likely to ever launch my own search, and this is one of the few chances I will ever have to find out without being unseemly. She gazes up at the Big Vagina and, extending her hand, points it out to me.

There it is. The elusive clitoris, peeking out from its hiding place like Nessie, saying hello to the world, confirming its existence.

“That’s it? That’s what guys have such a hard time finding? It’s right there, for God’s sake.” Sure, it’s about ten times its normal size in the picture, but still, if it were a snake…

“Yep,” she answers. “That’s it.”

“But why do guys have such a difficult time tracking it down?”

She takes a long suck from her cigarette and, exhaling a cloud of purple smoke, says to me, in the tone of a mother getting tired of her son’s relentless questions, “Because they just don’t care, Tim.”

Needless to say, this answer fails to satisfy me. There are bound to be some guys who care, some who have dedicated a decent number of naked moments searching and searching to no avail. So what’s the story with clitoriseseses? Are they shy? Temperamental? Passive-aggressive?

And why am I the only person in here asking these questions? Every man in this club should be in here taking notes and plotting maps.

Rachel finishes her cigarette, gives me a little hug, and sets off for the dance floor again, leaving me to enjoy some quality time alone with the vaginas. I stand up and walk around to each of them, examining their nooks and crannies and seeing if I can pick out the clitoris. I tilt my head and zoom in and out, trying to make sense of the shadows and light and the variable contours and textures.

And damn if every vagina isn’t completely different. I think I see a few clitorises, but I can’t say with any certainty. Each vagina seems to make its own rules and reveal what it wants to reveal. I give up and return to the simplicity of the dance floor. As I leave I hear the vaginas behind me get chatty once again.

“Well there he goes, still blissful in his ignorance,” one of them says.

“I felt him staring into my very soul,” intones another.

“You were too much for him, Priscilla. Look at him, so desperate to get back to the other dicks on the dance floor.”

“
,” the Japanese vagina coos.

“He’ll not sleep a wink tonight,” proclaims the giant one, tugging on a cigarette, sounding not unlike Bette Davis.

After a few minutes of dancing in the corner, my eyes adjust to the darkness level. I look straight at the wall in front of me and see that I’ve been dancing in front of an eight-foot figure drawing of a completely naked man with his completely erect penis in his hands. He has a head but no face, and it is tilted back in a pose of sexual ecstasy.

Is it an artful commentary on the objectification of the male body? An examination of the erotic nature of anonymity? Who cares?

“Now
this
,
this
is more like it,” I think as I do the electric slide right up beside it. It’s a beautiful drawing, anatomically devoid of mystery. And there is no tricky clitoris to complicate my life. I name him Fred and ask him to dance.

We boogie for the rest of the night as the ladies in the Vagina Room look on in extreme disapproval.

Ahhh, Ginza. Tokyo’s own Fifth Avenue, and the shopping district of choice for Hotlips from
M*A*S*H
. For sheer unabashed opulence and unnecessarily high prices, no area in Tokyo can compare to this district on the eastern side of the metropolis, not far from the Imperial Palace, with its wide shopping avenues, costly window displays, and surely the most gorgeously dressed people in all of Japan. There is something about paying ten dollars for a sit-down cup of coffee in a chartreuse café that makes one feel strangely alive. And broke with nothing to show for it.

Where did Hotlips like to go when she went to “the Ginza,” as she put it? Ginza is home to the most expensive shopping block in the world, so there was surely plenty to choose from. Ginza is also home to the country’s most depressed and disillusioned window shoppers. Me, for example, eyeing some shirts at the Mitsukoshi store that I couldn’t begin to fit into, much less afford. I look down at my sleeves and am reminded of the last time I tried to buy myself clothes in this city. I had spilled coffee on my shirt at work, so during my lunch break I went across the street from our Shinjuku branch and bought this new one. It fit perfectly, except for the waist, shoulders, sleeves, and neck.

The world-famous Kabuki-za theatre is also here, which of course is ground zero for kabuki aficionados across the globe. (There’s got to be dozens. Dozens of dozens.) I work at the Lane Ginza branch a few times a week, and the school is right down the road from the theatre. I’ve often daydreamed of running into some of the kabuki folk while lunching at one of my regular haunts, like Soup Friends, a café near my school that sells soups you never would’ve imagined yourself eating.

I’ll be dipping French rolls into my tiny bowl of carrot, radish, and octopus noodle soup and cramming new Japanese verbs into my head when I look up and there at the counter I see two imposing and stern-looking kabuki actors looking at the menu hungrily, probably exhausted and famished from the lengthy double love suicide they’ve just committed at the matinee performance. They of course don’t use conventional Japanese vernacular; they speak in antiquated kabuki verses that the counter clerks will struggle to understand.

When he places his order for, say, the vegetarian rice ball chili, the more effeminate of the two, dressed in a scarlet robe with gold trim and about thirty-seven folds and tucks, uses grand and graceful gestures and a high-pitched sing-song squeal. Ordering the green tea gazpacho, his more masculine fellow thespian, enveloped in a gray kimono with angry bulls emblazoned on it and sporting a hairstyle resembling the club symbol on a deck of cards, moves like a marionette and speaks in a deep, cranky monotone, proving who carries the sword in
their
family. When told he cannot get it without cilantro, he becomes agitated, gesticulating wildly in a fit of guttural yelping. Fortunately, his more refined companion succeeds in calming him down with a three-hour lullaby about doomed lovers who slice each other up real good on a mountaintop. At this point they saunter regally to their seats, see me, the Western sophisticate and dedicated student of Japanese, at my table, and bow. I say, “
” and their ears ring. The feminine one breaks into tears, and the man draws his sword, chops his companion’s head off, and slices himself open.

At least once a week I go with my coworkers in Ginza, Kenji and Midori, to a café where we sit for an hour and have what is called a “language exchange.” Theoretically, this involves two or more people meeting, often through the classifieds, and going to a café to converse in the languages each wishes to improve—usually Japanese and English. Half the time they speak English, then after a while they’ll switch to Japanese. Alternatively, and more commonly, a “language exchange” involves a Western male and a Japanese female meeting and speaking a few words here and there in whatever language is easiest before bagging the whole thing and leaving the café to go get it on somewhere.

But Kenji, Midori, and I are honest-to-God language exchangers. There is no sexual tension between us that I’m aware of, though I suppose I should never say never. Kenji, always dressed in the requisite gray suit, is twenty-eight and handsome, if a little uptight. He is an accountant at Lane and spends most of his days looking at numbers, so he looks at our meetings as a nice change of pace. It is my goal not only to have him speaking better English as a result of our weekly exchanges, but to loosen up, to relax, and to talk about his innermost feelings, his dreams, his favorite numbers, and movies. And if he wants to reach over and plant a big, wet kiss on my soft, willing lips at some point by way of a thank you, well that’s just fine.

Midori might get a kick out of this. She is a receptionist at Lane. The most bored-looking receptionist I’ve ever seen. It’s why I’ve taken to her so quickly. Every day she sits at the main desk listlessly waiting for the phone to ring or a student to walk in while she doodles on a big notepad. When the phone does ring, she answers in the professional, friendly, buoyant lilt so typical of Japanese receptionists. Once she’s transferred the call or answered the caller’s question, she replaces the receiver and goes back to her doodling. Her desk has no computer. Behind her on the wall is the giant and shiny Lane logo, veritably announcing her as company spokeswoman. Her sole function is to serve as greeter, over the telephone and face to face when people walk into the school. Saying “good morning” and “good day” and “good evening” to people all day in a pleasant and welcoming tone as they file in can really take it out of a person.

Mornings are very slow, and it is these times when she appears to be counting the cracks in the wall while contemplating grad school or joining the circus.

One morning I sat down next to her. She looked like she could use a little excitement, and I thought perhaps I could help her look for some.

“Midori-san, how do you say, ‘I’m so dang bored’ in Japanese?”

She laughed and asked, “What means
dang
?” From those first words grew our language exchange idea. Midori recruited Kenji after hearing that he was interested in taking English classes but couldn’t really afford them, even with his Lane discount.

So we started meeting after work once a week. Since their English is far better than my Japanese, we have pretty decent conversations in English for a while on a wide range of subjects (travel, music, world events, their insecurity about their English skills) before moving on to Japanese, where the conversation tends to gasp and sputter over more basic and yawn-worthy subjects like favorite foods, least favorite foods, favorite seasons, least favorite seasons, favorite sports, least favorite sports, and my insecurity about my Japanese skills (more than justified).

Tonight we meet as usual in front of the Sony building at Sukiyabashi Crossing and then walk toward our regular café, Doutor. Doutor is a Japanese coffee chain that serves the most unremarkable, tiniest cup of coffee I’ve ever regretted buying. A typical Doutor store is full of dozing salarymen who always somehow manage to smoke a pack of cigarettes during their naps. But the Doutor in the center of Ginza is housed at the bottom of a swanky, ten-story cylindrical building (with the obligatory giant television screen on top), and it has the much fancier name of Le Café Doutor. Oui-
oui
, uh-
huh
. So that’s where we go.

The sun is setting on Ginza. Some folks are getting off work and heading with their colleagues and bosses to an izakaya or karaoke box for some heavy drinking and awkward flirting, and the evening shopping traffic is peaking. On the street, the distinct and theatrical sound of classical music wafts through the air, and looking up ahead, we see that a small group of people have gathered in a semicircle around a gentleman with his head down as he sways to the Mozart erupting around him.

As we approach, we can see that the man everyone is watching with such fascination is actually operating a two-foot marionette dressed in a tuxedo and playing a violin, with dramatic wisps of gray hair sprouting from his head and making him look like a two-foot Strauss. We stop and watch for a few minutes, enjoying the bizarre sophistication of standing on an opulent shopping street and being serenaded on the violin by a puppet.

We continue on and huddle into le café, order some coffees, and sit down by a window, where we can enjoy our illuminating conversation while still being able to see people narrowly avoid slamming their Matsuya or Mitsukoshi shopping bags into each other outside.

We ease into the English part of the chat, with Kenji asking me what I think about our bucho, or Japanese boss, at the school. I reply that he seems really nice and always wears cool ties. Midori says she hates having to go drinking with him and all the other Japanese staff because he always drinks too much and starts hugging everyone. And sweating.

We talk about a variety of things for the next forty-five minutes: the popularity of the Seattle Mariners’ Japanese outfielder Ichiro, the Japanese love of comics, scuba diving. We’ve just switched over to Japanese and started talking about hot tea when I see
her
walk into the café.

She wears a pink silk kimono embossed with cherry blossoms, and she walks in traditional Japanese wooden sandals that look about as accommodating and comfortable as slabs of concrete. She walks up to the counter with the clipped, restricted stride typical of women wrapped in kimono. The skin of her face is a shock of white next to her pitch-black hair and eyebrows. Her lips are painted crimson in the middle, while the sides of both lips remain light pink, eventually fading into the powder white of her cheeks. She looks to be about sixty.

She is the personification of Japanese grace and dignity: a vision of beauty, of an aging sensuality, of an over-the-top willingness to be physically uncomfortable that is so unique to Japan. I struggle trying to watch her while also keeping up with our Japanese conversation as it veers towards the topic of coffee and then to a hard-to-follow (for me) debate about the merits of hot drinks over cold drinks during winter and summer.

At the counter, the lady smiles brightly with her whole face, nodding and bowing slightly as she gives her order to the employee. I watch as she takes out her small pink money purse with her gloved hands, produces some coins, and offers them gingerly to the cashier.

I know it’s time for me to put my two cents’ worth into the conversation since I haven’t said a whole lot since we’d switched to Japanese, so I offer a perfunctory remark.

“Cold drink good and but better than your hot drink for my summer.”

Kenji and Midori nod at me and smile, wondering what I’ve just said, but my gaze quickly turns back to that of the regal lady, who is now bringing her tray towards us. There is an empty table next to us by the window, and she is headed straight for it, this vision in pink silk. I wonder what she smells like. Flowers? Jasmine tea? Bubble gum?

She sits down, and I notice she has a cup of Japanese green tea and a miniature brass pitcher on her tray. She takes a tiny spoon from the tray and stirs the cup before bringing it to her lips for the briefest of tastes and then replacing it on its saucer. Afterwards she puts her hands together with her elbows on the table and gazes out into the Ginza street traffic.

I am so in awe that I haven’t even realized that Kenji has asked me a question.

“Tim-san! Are you OK?”

“Oh, sorry,” I reply in Japanese. “I watched that woman drinking her tea. She’s very beautiful.”

Kenji and Midori smile a little uncomfortably, and I quickly realize why. We are speaking Japanese, and though it would have been our own secret language had we been at a café in, say, Boise or Cairo, here it is far from a secret language, and everyone has understood what I just said. I’ve been so used to being able to say whatever I want wherever I want without worrying about the natives understanding me, it’s become second nature to just blurt it all out without thinking. Also, I think I’d spoken a little too loudly, as if I were addressing the audience at a pep rally, say.

I look over at the woman, who is still gazing out into the street. If she heard me, she has given no indication. Returning to our Japanese conversation, I apologize to my fellow conversationalists and ask if they’ve seen any good movies recently.