Tim Anderson - Tune in Tokio

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.

# of bowls of miso soup eaten: 414

# of pounds lost: 22

# of looks of disapproval from the natives: 1,156

Who proves that no matter where on God’s earth you are, crazy rich people are hilaaaarious.

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, “