Tim Anderson - Tune in Tokio

But my new best friend is Rachel from California. She’s the girl next door. Not in that bobby sox-wearing, let’s-go-to-thehop kind of way; she lives in the room next to me. I loved her immediately because, since she’s from California, she has a disposition at least as sunny as mine. She is an ex-MOBA teacher who now works at Lane, a school with four branches in Tokyo.

When I move in, I have to pay a deposit and a month’s rent in advance, but thankfully no “key money,” which is a customary monetary gift of at least three months’ rent that new tenants in Japan offer their new landlord just for being such a great guy. I avoid this odious practice by going through an agency that specializes in finding housing for poor, helpless gaijin. Unfortunately, I am also paying for my Fujisawa apartment, so right now, I’m paying two rents. And eating lots of Cup Noodle.

Because of my lack of cash flow, I had to move all of my stuff myself using only my hands and the train. A sane and more financially solvent person would have loaded all of their stuff into a cab and put any of the overflow into boxes and had them sent through his local convenience store delivery service (because there is absolutely nothing you can’t do at a freaking convenience store here). But all of this costs money, and I have zero disposable income. I’m borrowing money from teachers at the school just to eat, and if I could have gotten away with it, I would have walked around Fujisawa Station with a cane, a pair of Speedos, some dark glasses, and a coffee cup made of tin begging people for spare yen for a few hours a day. Unfortunately, if you’re a white man in Japan-even one with a limp and a vision impairment-you are (correctly) assumed to be making the big bucks, because more likely than not you are an English teacher. So that shit wouldn’t fly here. I simply had to bite the bullet and move everything myself. And though I could’ve done without having to wheel my TV/DVD player behind me on a little trolley down a five-lane city street from Shinagawa Station to my new place, I got through everything all right, and the TV only fell over twice.

Soon after I move in, I’m hanging out with Rachel on the couch in the tiny sitting room/kitchen while Chain-Smoking Jerry gives Keiko a lecture about the first Thanksgiving and what it means to Americans and Canadians alike. As he exhales a huge plume of smoke in our direction while relating the history of maize cultivation in North America, Rachel tells me that her language school is looking to hire a few new teachers.

“I’m such a dork, I totally forgot to tell you about it,” she apologizes.

“Oh my God, get me a job! Get me a job immediately !” I demand.

“Totally, yeah, I’ll put in a good word for you.”

And with that brief exchange I am on my way to a new teaching position at two of Lane’s schools in Shinjuku and Ginza. I send in my résumé, and a few days later they call me in for an interview.

This interview is a little different. While Drew, the head teacher, does ask me about my interests and hobbies, the Lane folks seem a little more preoccupied than MOBA with their teachers having a decent command of the English language. To that end, there is an hour-long, ten-page exercise that tests my knowledge of English grammar, from comma splices to misplaced modifiers to restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses. Although it’s a bit of a harrowing experience struggling to recall how affected and effected are different, and although I seriously doubt the need for the general Japanese population to know what distinguishes a simile from a metaphor, it is comforting to know that the school is interested in hiring me for my thorough knowledge of the language and not just my American passport, valid working visa, and jazz hands. Still, I’m more than a little worried about how I’d performed on the test.

I get a call the next day from Craig, the other head teacher, offering me a job with the school.

“Really?! Did you not look at the grammar test?” I say.

He says no, they did, and that I made a pretty good showing, actually. In fact, I received the highest score they’ve ever seen. Those Latin classes served a purpose after all.

I am ecstatic. Not only because I will be working in central Tokyo, but because I will be making more money, have more vacation time, have all national holidays off (at MOBA, national holidays have been our busiest days), and, most importantly, I will never ever have to see or hear Jill again, ever, as long as I live, ever.

“You bitch! You’re leaving me alone with that cow?!” Donna says after I sing her the good news to the tune of “America” from West Side Story during one of our after-hours drinking binges. We’ve grown very close in our time at MOBA together. We’d initially bonded out of our mutual loathing of Jill, only later discovering we also had a mutual love for text messaging, sukiyaki, and men in uniform.

But she wishes me well, and we promise each other that our life together is not over. Sitting at our favorite Kamiooka izakaya bar getting sloppy on foamy mugs of beer, we make a solemn vow that we will, as Donna put it, “go somewhere fucking fabulous on holiday together and be complete pigs.” We toast to it, clinking our glasses together and spilling beer onto our tiny plates of complimentary pickled relish.

All settled in Tokyo now, I decide it’s high time I hatch the next part of my big “I’m Waking Up to Myself” party: yes, it’s time to go out in public with my viola. I place an ad in the English-language Metropolis magazine looking for people to play music with. It would be nice, I figure, to have a regular quartet, marching band, or heavy metal orchestra to meet with, and it’s been a while since I last played music with other people, considering I typically play by myself in my apartment when nobody else is home with the shades drawn and a rolled-up towel pushed up against the bottom of the door. But even though I’ve played for years, I’m still a little lacking in confidence, and this insecurity may have seeped into the wording of my ad:

AMATEUR VIOLA PLAYER, AMERICAN

SEEKS OTHER AMATEUR MUSICIANS TO PLAY MUSIC JUST FOR FUN.

MUST BE AMATEUR. FOR FUN.

I think my ad also suffered from bad placement, since it was positioned right under an ad reading:

HI! FEMALE SINGER/DRUMMER HERE!

AUSTRALIAN, BLOND, EARLY 20’S

SEEKS PATIENT, UNDERSTANDING GUITAR TEACHER FOR PRIVATE INSTRUCTION.

I CAN TEACH YOU ENGLISH!!

I’d guess 99 percent of the people looking for musicians to work with that week answered her ad. But I do get a few responses:

Hello,

I’m writing to your ad. I like viola player. I sing, but not so well.

Let’s make a music!

Hide Saito

Dear Mr. Viola,

I play the bass and like a rock music. You like a rock? I’m not sure viola okay for this kind of style music. Maybe we try. You e-mail me.

Kenji

P.S. You like the Genesis?

Hmm. Not too promising. I’d sooner peel off my own face than play Genesis songs on the viola. Then I get an e-mail from a piano player named Toru in Yokohama.

Dear Tim:

My name is Toru and I play the piano. I saw your ad and I would be very interested in playing music with you. If you are interested, please write. Thank you.

Wow. He writes English better than I do. I write him back, and we strike up an e-mail friendship. A few weeks later we meet in Shibuya for coffee to get to know each other and discuss what music we should play. I learn that he’s been teaching himself English for about twelve years, starting when he was thirteen, and he’d improved by practicing on his foreign friends. He suggests we try the Brahms sonatas for viola and piano. Blissful in my ignorance, I quickly agree, and we are off to the Yamaha store to buy some sheet music. Toru already has the piano music, so we just need the sheets for viola, which he quickly finds among the thousands and thousands of papers on the shelf and hands to me with a smile.