Tim Anderson - Tune in Tokio

When you walk into a low-end American restaurant, you are lucky to be greeted with a smile or any degree of enthusiasm by any employee. They’re usually too busy talking to their coworkers about how they’re supposed to be on break and how this is such bullshit that they haven’t had their break and when the fuck are they gonna get their break? When you enter a food joint here-no matter if it’s the grimiest of noodle bars-you are met with the welcoming screams and cries of the entire staff, starting with a few of the floor people and trailing around the place until every person employed by the restaurant has greeted you loudly with an ear-piercing “HELLO! WELCOME! GOOD AFTERNOON! PLEASE SIT DOWN! HELLO! WELCOME! GOOD AFTERNOON! PLEASE SIT DOWN!” Then just when you think you’re safe, you get up to leave, trip the wire, and set off the alarm of “THANK YOU! PLEASE COME AGAIN! THANK YOU! PLEASE COME AGAIN! THANK YOU PLEASE COME AGAIN!” Sometimes it’s enough to make you long for the days of being completely ignored by the cashier at the drugstore as she prattles on and on to her coworker about how her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend is a total slutmunch.

No matter how well you think you know this place, no matter how much you think you’ve got your finger on the pulse of the Japanese psyche, you will always be trumped, be it by rice and miso soup, pixilated pornography, Dance Dance Revolution, or thirteen-year-old girls swooning over animated images of young men falling in love with each other and doing it all night.

After the concert, Rachel and I go out for a sayonara dinner in Shibuya, and as a goodbye gift, she gives me a wallet and a framed picture of me sitting in the Vagina Room. Rachel has been telling me for months, ever since she found out I was planning to leave, that I’m not really going to leave, that I will chicken out at the last minute and try to move in with her in the studio apartment she recently rented in Okubo.

“Are you excited about not going home?” she asks as we feast at a table by the window of our favorite Indian curry shop. “The Chemical Brothers are playing a show next week.” Then she sings in her best falsetto, “I can get us into the after party…”

“I’m torn,” I say, fumbling with my cool new holographic wallet. “I really want to go home to Jimmy, and, you know, find something new and different to do with my life, like, I don’t know, study dog grooming or something. You know, I’ve got to get serious. I’m not going to be young and handsome forever, and eventually I’m going to lose…”

She looks at me with sad, puppy-dog eyes.

“Oh my God, really? Where are the Chemical Brothers playing?”

I look out at the bustling city around me, the city that helped once again unlock my sense of adventure and awe as it smacked me affectionately in the face every morning and said, “Time for breakfast rice and salmon!”

“I’ll tell you what, though, I am going to continue studying Japanese,” I say.

“Really?”

“Yeah. You know, I’ve already dedicated so much time to it. I figure, well, why not?”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Rachel replies, thinking maybe she should start taking some lessons. “Then again, you know, why ?”

She has a point. Japanese will be about as useful to me back home as a Hello Kitty diaphragm. I guess it’s my way of clinging to my Japanese experience and making sure it stays with me even after I’m gone. Whatever, I plan to continue my study of the language at least until I get my first job back home as a temporary substitute data entry clerk.

I hang out at Rachel’s place in Okubo until about three a.m., say goodbye, and walk down her tiny side street towards Shinjuku Station. I will wander around for a few hours until the station opens and I can get on the first Yamanote train. Maybe I’ll take it around a few times and enjoy the view of the city waking up. Perhaps I’ll fall asleep on the shoulder of a drunk, sweaty salaryman and then get beaten awake with an umbrella by a 103-year-old obaasan, who will then kick me out of my seat so her older sister can sit down.

On my way to the station, three different Korean prostitutes offer me “massages,” and I politely decline. It’s an honor just to be asked. Just a few feet beyond where the third prostitute approached me is a bike stand where two policemen struggle to wrestle what must be a stolen bike free from its chain.

I do have some regrets. I’m still in debt. I still have no great job prospects or get-rich-quick schemes. And the closest I came to meeting a Japanese lesbian was when I saw an older woman on a passing train sporting a classic feathered Alabama mullet.

Most disappointing of all, I was never asked to be on Japanese television. But really, once you’re on Japanese television, where is there to go but down? Anyway, you can’t have everything, and besides, once I get home and brush up on my English, the world will be mine for the taking.

As I hunch down into the seat of the 5:35 train, I think about the sign I saw posted on that glass door leading to Mos Burger:

Always close a door behind you.

Sound advice, but I think maybe I’ll leave this one open.

I absolutely must get on my knees to grope all of those who offered encouragement along the way as this project morphed from a series of mass e-mails to a series of longer mass e-mails to an excitable and overwrought outline and finally to a manuscript that would need to be hacked and carved into this, its final perfected form that could probably still use some work.

Muchos arigatos, first of all, to Terry Goodman, my editor at AmazonEncore, for discovering Tune in Tokyo and enthusiastically bringing it aboard the Amazon Publishing train. Not only is Terry the reason you are reading this now, he is also the recipient of the 2010 Holly Golightly Award for Most Appropriate Surname. Congratulations, Terry!

Thanks to Jane Hobson Snyder for encouraging me to develop my stories into a book; to Janet Reid and Kristen Elde, whose contributions to and feedback on this manuscript have been heroic to say the least; to Valerie Tomaselli and Hilary Poole for their most excellent support.

Special thanks to my sister Laurie, who has always encouraged me to continue with my writing even though it would likely embarrass our mother.

To my boyfriend Jimmy, who never had a doubt that this book would make us rich beyond imagining and allow us to live like the gays we see on the teevee. (Sadly, Jimmy is often wrong.)

An extra special thanks to Kristin Matwiczyk (www.kmatw.com), who created the original version of the mammal head you see on the cover.

Many thanks to Aiko Ogata and Junjiroh Sumikawa for their translation assistance.

Also, to the city of Tokyo, without which the title of this book would only make partial sense:

To Toru, Rachel, Josephine, Shunsuke, Akiko, Sato-kun, Mamta, Suzie, Charlie, Bronwyn, Julia, Ruth, Tony, Tami, Holly, and Grant, as well.

And to you, the reader who heard about Tune In Tokyo through a friend of a friend of a friend of an ex-fuckbuddy or weed dealer and took a chance on it. I hope you had fun.