Tim Anderson - Tune in Tokio

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.

Midori launches into a rave about a movie that she saw the other day on DVD, John Malkovich’s Hole , which I can only assume is the unfortunate Japanese title for Being John Malkovich . I notice that the woman, pouring herself another cup of tea from her pitcher, has broken into a tranquil smile.

I return my gaze to our table and see Kenji, who generally prefers the more straightforward movie fare offered by your Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Bruce Willises, furrowing his brow at Midori’s explanation of the movie, which, if I hadn’t seen the movie myself, would’ve had me on the floor swimming the back-stroke, as it’s well beyond the limits of my understanding of the Japanese language.

Then we hear a dirty, low-pitched giggle coming from the next table. Midori stops talking. I look over at the woman drinking her tea. She sits like she’s been sitting for some time now, smiling serenely and stirring her tea. She does not have the appearance of someone who has just sniggered like she’s been told a really good blonde joke. Midori continues in Japanese.

“And the brown-haired woman has sex with John Malkovich, but actually, she is having sex with Cameron Diaz because she’s inside his head,” she explains. (I’m assuming, here.) I have never seen Kenji look so conflicted. He is suspended between the erotic curiosity straight men the world over exhibit when hearing about sex with two women involved, and frustration that none of this shit makes any sense.

Then there’s another giggle from the next table, this one more guttural and phlegm-shifting. Again we look over, and again the woman is stirring her tea, although this time a little more urgently. Her expression is now more an amused smirk than a smile of placid contentment, and she is nodding her head defiantly. She begins mumbling to herself as she clinks her teaspoon against her porcelain cup.

“And, um,” Midori continues in Japanese, “then Cameron Diaz falls out of the sky and onto the side of the road in New Jersey…”

Clank! The woman throws her spoon onto her saucer and now sits with her arms folded around her middle, laughing mightily like an evil Santa. She picks up her spoon again and stirs like her life depends on it, all the while mumbling to herself things that I, maddeningly, cannot understand yet. I have to know.

“And her husband and she start fighting when he finds out she was in John Malkovich’s head, and…”

“Can we switch to English for a minute?” I interrupt, in English.

“OK,” Midori concedes.

“What is she saying? Can you hear her?”

Midori, who has been doing her level best to ignore the woman next to us, looks at Kenji, and they both smile sheepishly.

“I can’t hear everything she say,” Kenji begins, “but I hear her say something about, how do you say…shit of dogs?”

“Oh, I see, dogshit,” I reply. “What do you think she means? Is someone eating dogshit?” I look eagerly from Kenji to Midori and back to Kenji again.

There’s a bit of a pause while Midori and Kenji decide without speaking who will do the explaining. All the while the woman continues her rant, her laugh upgraded to a cackle.

“She say she, um, gonna make someone to eat the dogshit,” Midori says, warming to the subject, definitely not bored anymore.

“Uh-huh,” I nod sagely. “Do you know why? Did she give a reason?”

“I can’t be sure,” Kenji begins, also getting a kick out of our dirty topic, “but I think I hear her say a few names. And also ‘God.’

”

“Sorry, no,” she says, deflating my hopes. I’ve never felt such irritation at my lack of skill in the Japanese language. The woman next to me is either a) having some kind of nervous breakdown, or b) already batshit crazy, and I can’t properly eavesdrop. The language barrier is made of glass, allowing me to see but not understand.

All I can do is watch as she increases her volume and takes to picking up and slamming down the objects on her table. At one point, she shoves the table away from her, as if it had just told her she looks fat in that kimono. The teapot, teacup, and various condiment containers topple and crash into one another as the table teeters from side to side. She stands, her pink cherry blossom kimono still wrapped artfully around her, her face still immaculately painted, her white gloves none the worse for wear. She grabs her small bag, walks with her clipped stride to the door, opens it, and with a smile and a bow in the direction of the employees at the counter, departs into the night.

“Thank you! Come again!” they beam.

It is a suggestion she appears to take a little too seriously, as, mere minutes after leaving, the Empress is back for another cup of tea, smiling and bowing at the counter staff, looking the picture of Ginza classiness. She sits again at the same table and stirs her tea, that familiar smile on her face all the while.

“So, Midori-san, Cameron Diaz is lesbian?” Kenji asks in English, returning to our discussion.

“Only in movie, I think,” Midori answered.

“Ah, in movie only. Does she make other movie like this?” he asks as he gets out a pen to write down the names of the other movies in which Cameron Diaz appears as a lesbian.

They continue discussing lesbianism as I look over at Mood-Swing Diva to see what she’s up to. Sure enough, her expression has changed in the manner of that clown’s face in Poltergeist : she looks ready to toss her teacup right through the window, pick up some shards of glass, and pick a fight with a few pedestrians. Two seconds later her face again softens and she lets out an evil laugh, perhaps having just thought of a new and exciting way to kill a person. She stirs her tea, places her hands in her lap, and closes her eyes for a few moments: a Buddha in drag. Then she screws up her face, looking like she’s going to cough. Her tongue curls inside her open mouth, and her throat expands.