Tim Anderson - Tune in Tokio

Between his exclamations of “Oooooooooh, I wish I were invisible” and “Aaaaaaaaah, I want to go back to Wales,” we get his story.

In class, they’d been discussing Japanese food, and the students had asked Bob what food he really doesn’t like. Bob answered that he really doesn’t care for bean paste, a perfectly reasonable answer. It’s the answer I would have given and, in fact, had given when I’d stuck my head in. Unfortunately, he’d used the wrong word for bean paste. Instead of “anko,” which means bean paste, he’d said “manko.” Manko means pussy. He’d just told the class he really didn’t like eating pussy.

And I had too.

All the teachers squeal and cover their mouths.

Right on cue, in walks Jill with a smirk on her face, oblivious to the atmosphere of confusion and despair engulfing us all and still intent on bringing the American empire down, colloquialism by colloquialism.

“You know my least favorite American word?” she squeaks. We are dying to know, absolutely can’t wait for her to tell us.

“ Mom . Why don’t you just say mum ?”

I wrack my brain trying to think of a good reason why we Americans refer to our mothers in such a venomous and disrespectful way. But I’m too appalled right now to take this bait.

I flop into a chair and look sadly at my Japanese book, wondering if there’s a handy way to politely apologize not only for saying the word “pussy” at least four times in a ten-second period, but also for expressing that I don’t really like eating it.

I decide maybe I should go down to Burger King and get some fries. I’ve got a really horrible taste in my mouth.

# of kanji characters studied: 40

# of kanji characters forgotten: 34

# of sexually inappropriate things said to Tokyo’s cashiers when just trying to be nice:?

In which a small prayer is offered to the God of Large Things.

I wake up in my neighbor Julia’s apartment with the taste of moldy vodka and tonkotsu ramen on my breath. I’m not usually much of a drinker, but I make special exceptions when everyone else is doing it. Last night everyone else was doing it.

I rise up and see Ruth, Julia’s roommate, passed out on the floor perpendicular to me. Turning left I see Julia in the kitchen heating the kettle and looking like she would very much prefer to be dead.

Last night we’d made our very first entrance into the kaleidoscope of Tokyo nightlife. We’d felt we deserved it. Collectively we have taught hundreds of lessons at MOBA over the first few weeks. We were tired of being polite and encouraging, tired of speaking broken English. We wanted to speak dirty English. Nasty English. Get-your-booty-on-the-dance-floor-baby-and-shake-that-ass English. It was time to make our way into the city for some booze and boogie.

It was off to Tokyo, to the neon-soaked streets and the sake-soaked locals. While getting dressed and lubing ourselves up with cocktails, we’d made a modest list of things we wanted to accomplish during our evening out:

1. Drinks with some kogyaru (“cool girls”) in some DJ bar in Shibuya. They should have bleached hair, fake tans, boots that give a whole new meaning to the word “platform,” sparkly, raccoon-style eye makeup, and bright white lipstick making their lips look frozen to their burnt faces.

2. More drinks, maybe some dancing to irritating house music?

3. Street performers! Let’s see some street performers!

4. Drugs? Yeah, should try to find drugs.

5. Random dance floor groping.

6. House party on the top floor of the Park Hyatt Hotel in Shinjuku; green tea slammers; handstand contest, which we will win.

7. Our prize: a four-hour access ticket to penthouse suite on the fifty-ninth floor; pillow fight.

8. Trannies, clowns, geishas, geisha trannies, Jaeger shots, Red Rover.

9. Pie.

Yes, we’d figured it would go something like that.

To our complete and utter amazement, it didn’t. Julia and Ruth got wasted before we even left Fujisawa and had to be dragged up to Tokyo by Charlie and me, who were a half hour more sober. It was an epic journey that involved falling down train station staircases (and being stepped on and over by impatient commuters), many emergency trips to the nearest bathroom, and much drunken apologizing to people for being in the way, being loud and Western, and being too tall.

We ended up dancing (kind of) at a club in Shibuya that was hosting a hip-hop night where the crowd and the dress code were a good five to ten years our junior.

“Yeeeahhh!” a disembodied MC shouted into a mic, doing his best impression of Chuck D, as we headed to the dance floor. It must be said, it is exceedingly difficult to dance to hip-hop with any credibility when you’re a white guy weaned on New Wave and Euro-pop like I am. I lack the swagger, the confidence, the massive low-swinging balls to pull off successful hip-hop moves. Amid all the oversized hoodies, giant sneakers, and sideways baseball caps, we all felt more like chaperones at a dance than young kids out for the night. So we hit the bar and drank more to make ourselves feel younger. Once we were walking and stumbling into walls like three-year-olds, we figured we were young enough and, after a few more attempts at dancing, left.

We finished our evening at a ramen shop, Julia and Ruth passed out with their heads on the counters, Charlie trying to eat with one chopstick, and me sitting and waxing on and on about how cute the shop employees were behind the counter.

“Look at them, oh my God, kawaii city! Look!! With their little hats and their giant ladles. See? He’s holding that giant ladle in his tiny, adorable little hand! Charlie! Ruth! I want one of those hats! Julia! Don’t you want a hat?! Oh my God, I just wanna eat them up!!”

I can still taste the ramen in my nasty mouth as I hear a muffled attempt at speaking.

“Large night, eh?” I hear Charlie mumble from the corner, where he’s been sleeping rolled up like a cat. He is right. It was a large, large night. Rubbing my eyes, I see Julia has the scars on her legs to prove it.

I peel myself off the floor and walk over to the kitchen table, damning the daylight, damning vodka, damning ramen, and, most passionately, damning hip-hop to hell. I try not to open my eyes too wide for fear that the birds fluttering their wings inside my head might get antsy and flap harder.

Magazines, yesterday’s newspaper, and photos are strewn about on the kitchen table. I pick up the pictures to have a look. There’s Ruth in front of a beautiful Japanese garden. There’s Ruth ladling water over her hands, presumably at a shrine of some sort. There’s a blurry Ruth in close-up squinting to cover up her nasty case of red-eye and holding a hand out toward the camera. There’s Ruth standing and smiling in front of a giant Buddha statue. Upon seeing this last one, my heart skips a beat: I do so love humongous statues.

“Wow, what is this ?”

“It’s the Big Buddha in Kamakura,” Julia strains to say as she sits down and lowers her head onto the table. “Close to here,” she mumbles.

“Really?! Where?” I demand.

“That way.” She points out the window.

Wow. The Big Buddha. A giant, glorious statue offering the promise of enlightenment and inner peace, sitting among the beauty and languor of a lush and reassuringly symmetrical Japanese temple ground. The perfect antidote to last night’s asymmetrical booze opera.

Mankind has had a long and storied obsession with creating giant structures of humans, gods, and mythical beasts to pass the time. You have your Sphinx, you’ve got your Statue of Liberty, your Christ the Redeemer, and your Michelangelo’s David, all of which are testament to man’s endless desire to painstakingly construct and then sit back and gaze upon giant representations of the mythic, the massive, the messianic, and the supple and drop-dead gorgeous.