Tim Anderson - Tune in Tokio

“Yes, it is true,” I say. “Sometimes twice. You know, depending.”

I begin to look forward to my Wednesday afternoons with Naomi. Without fail, I am shocked, embarrassed, and mortified at the things she comes out with. But I am never bored. And that, in the end, is the bottom line. After teaching for so long, I am nothing if not bored stupid. And just when my fire was about to expire, Naomi came into my life. She is giving me what I am in desperate need of: fear.

The next week Takehiro and Shizue are both absent from class. The rest of the students file in, Tomo sitting next to Naomi, Kayoko choosing a seat over in the corner, Kumiko between them.

“So, hello everyone. Let’s get started. Someone give me a topic.”

Ever since Naomi reared her tawdry head in my class, I’ve noticed the other students are much more eager to suggest a topic at the beginning of class. This is probably so they can avoid discussing anal warts or assisted suicide at the suggestion of Naomi, but it’s progress nonetheless.

“How about difference of Japanese and American culture?” Kayoko says.

“OK, that’s a great suggestion. Thank you, Kayoko. Everyone, please get together with your partner and let’s talk about it!” Good Lord, I’m turning into Oprah.

As usual, I allow the students to do their talking while I go write the grammar points we’ll be covering on the board. When I’m finished, I pull my chair up to Kumiko and Kayoko to have a listen. They are both giggling and covering their mouths with their hands.

“I so surprised! I no understand why they say!” Kumiko manages to say through tears and quiet chuckling.

“I know!” says Kayoko. “I go to post office in New York and lady was talking so fast I,, can’t understand, so I say, ‘Please speak slowly,’ and she scream at me and I still not understanding, so she calls next person and not talk to me again!”

Confident they are enjoying their conversation, I stand and carry my chair over to Naomi and Tomo. Naomi, of course, is speaking, while a wide-eyed Tomo, who has never looked so engaged, hangs on her every probably disgusting word.

“I just think it is very stupid, don’t you, Tomo-kun?”

Tomo doesn’t answer. He smiles uncomfortably and then looks at me, desperate for me to help him say the right thing.

“What are you guys talking about?” I ask, desperate to know the reasons behind Tomo’s horror/arousal.

“I was talking about the difference between Japanese and America pornography,” Naomi begins. “I explain to him about how in the America they show everything, but in Japan, they cover the private parts with those little blocks, you know Timsensei?”

“Yes, pixels,” I say a little too quickly.

“Pixels,” she says, writing the new word down in her notebook. “They cover with pixels, and you can’t see very well unless you look careful. It stupid. Japan treat us like children. Don’t you think that, Tim-sensei?”

I do think that. I’ve said this before. I’ll say it again. The pixelation of Japanese pornography goes against the very thing that makes pornography great. But should I say it now? In class? In front of impressionable Tomo, who is looking more and more like he wants Naomi to walk him home on a leash?

“Yes, it’s strange, but…”

“So you have seen Japanese porn movie?” she asks, her lips curling into a smile on one side.

I look over at Kayoko and Kumiko, still laughing about being completely shat on by cranky New Yorkers, and look back at Tomo, who is composing his marriage proposal to Naomi in his head, and I think, “Oh, screw it.”

“Yes, of course. Hasn’t everybody ?”

Naomi nods her head and smiles. Tomo makes a mental note to educate himself about the world of American porn. Kayoko and Kumiko laugh and snort.

And as mysteriously as she appeared in my life, Naomi was gone. Was she just a vision? A figment of my desperate imagination? A guardian angel sent from heaven’s red-light district to do the community service she was sentenced to for flashing Jesus and the Buddha at last year’s Christmas party? Nah, she was promoted to the next level, which I don’t teach. The next week, when I look down at my class roster and her name is not there, I die a little inside.

But though I’m saddened by her departure, I know that her legacy will live on. Naomi changed the atmosphere forever with her constant indecent proposals. She stirred things up and made seemingly straightforward questions like “What’s the best drink to have with ramen?” dangerous.

Now there will be no more talk of menstrual cycles and their effect on one’s cooking; no more impromptu speeches like the one about that country in Africa that, allegedly, had outlawed sex for two years because of the AIDS epidemic (“I think it would be impossible,” she said); no more sexual harassment; and no more manipulation of the text for her own nefarious ends. No more piss, no more vinegar.

And just like that, it’s back to conversations about Japanese society, vacations, and dreary answers to appalling opening questions like “If today were your birthday, where would you be, who would you be with, what would you be doing, and why?” Of course, I could follow Naomi’s example, throw caution to the wind, and offer questions like “Why is it that in Japan, it is horribly rude to blow your nose in public, yet sniffing, snorting, chewing, and swallowing, or spitting out one’s own snot with the forcefulness and volume of a morning radio DJ is perfectly all right?” But that would cause more problems than it would solve. And I’d probably be asked to repeat the question more slowly.

So my classes have gone back to being placid affairs, with the occasional bit of accidental rude language. (“My son is a really good cock,” Shizue would say, meaning, of course, “cook.”) Tomo has lost his innocence and has probably moved on from Salinger to The Story of O . Kayoko comes to class unafraid, knowing that, until she herself is promoted to the next level, she won’t find herself on the wrong end of Naomi’s sadistic gaze. Kumiko still checks herself in her mirror six times per class.

But even though Naomi is gone from my class, her spirit can sometimes still be felt. One day, Shizue suggests we discuss our thoughts on Japanese tabloid newspapers, and another time, Kumiko proposes the topic of “sexiest Hollywood actors,” neither of which would have been possible pre-Naomi.

Naomi is now wreaking havoc in the next level, no doubt trying to get people to discuss the prime minister’s favorite sexual positions or whether or not adult incest is a victimless crime. I envy the teacher of that class and would kill to be sitting there as he or she naïvely replies, “Sure, why not?” to those two magical words that are guaranteed to open up a world of smut and disorder: “Anything OK?”

# of teriyaki burgers eaten: 13

# of Saturday nights spent on mushrooms watching the three competing giant TV screens at Shibuya Crossing: 1

In which our hero/Christ figure realizes with a shudder that Hello Kitty could be spending her nights stalking and anally raping Disney characters with baseball bats and no one would care as long as she still wore a wide-eyed expression of pure innocence and a cute pink dress the next morning.

It’s early morning, and the sun is only just beginning to consider poking its way above the jagged Tokyo horizon. Giant black pterodactyls scavenge for scraps from the trash bags lining the concrete outside, dwarfing the trash collectors who are doing their best to remove the millions of pounds of waste and sludge left for them the night before. And me, I’m on my bed shivering, having just woken up from a horrible, horrible early-morning dream in which I was being brutally attacked in my bed by Tare Panda, the wide-eyed, oval-faced character from the Hello Kitty School of Aggressive Cuteness who’s weaseled his way into every corner of Japanese popular culture, from advertisements to greeting cards to cell phone accessories, threatening to usurp Miss Kitty as the national mascot. It was trying to cute me to death.