Tim Anderson - Tune in Tokio

I feel flushed as one usually does when walking from a porn shop out into public view, and then it hits me. Not only did I “go to tempting,” as Miho had so poetically put it, but I’d completely given myself over to tempting-swallowed it whole-and come away with the brown paper bag with the free “love oil” inside that I am now clutching tightly to my side. I think of the flyer Miho had given me with its friendly, approachable God wrapped in white. Then I think of Mr. 666 and wonder if he’s a top or a bottom. Is this wrong?

By way of divine punishment, on my way back to the station, I find myself back in the Straight Greaseball District, where the pack of young, sharp-dressed hoods are still gathered. One of them is quickly walking alongside an office lady on her way home with groceries, who wants none of his foolishness and wastes no time in outpacing him. Realizing he’s been outrun by a woman in heels, he stops, swishes his hair back into place, and, attempting to save face by opening his phone and pretending to take a call, swaggers back to his fellow navel-baring delinquents. Bada-bing.

As I skirt through the street towards what I can now see is the east entrance of the train station, one excitable Japanese guy chases me down and, his English obviously failing him, simply points to a flyer he’s holding in front of my face and says, “SEX!” Can’t really disagree, but I politely decline and move on, after which I am chased down by an African guy saying, “Come, man, come on! Hot ladies for you! You come to my bar!” I tell him no thanks, but he continues with his sales pitch. “HOT WOMEN, MAN!! HOT WOMEN!! ALL FOR YOU, MAN!! COME ON!” I speed up and wave him away, at which point he stops, stomps his feet, and yells in mortal frustration, “WHY NOT, MAN??!!” I want to turn around, stomp my foot, and bellow self-righteously, “Because I have too much respect for women!!” But this isn’t why.

I take the Yamanote train to Shinagawa Station, where I will transfer to the Tokaido Line and ride all the way to back down to Fujisawa. At Shinagawa the platform is a sea of people. The train soon comes, and as people pile in, two uniformed attendants standing by each pair of doors push, nay cram, the people in, forcing everyone on board to assume positions normally reserved for doctor visits. The carriage is a piece of modern art, each arm, newspaper, briefcase, set of headphones, chin, book, and elbow squeezing into each other like blood cells in a particularly narrow capillary. And just when you think no other living soul can possibly fit into the carriage, a stiff looking businessman leaps in and, as the doors shut, slowly morphs into whatever position the carriage allows (broken cigarette, leather slingback, praying mantis).

The train is so packed that every part of my body is being touched (not an altogether horrible sensation). When the train stops at Yokohama Station the people start flooding out, and I’m nearly strangled to death by my own bag (carrying my precious porn-an irony Miss Miho would have appreciated) because, though the strap is still over my shoulder, the bag and I are apparently separated by a few dozen people; those people, unfortunately for me, live in Yokohama. Thankfully, I’m able to pull it back to me without slicing anyone in half, and the rest of the ride isn’t nearly as intimate.

Arriving back at my apartment, I go immediately to my tiny room, flop onto the futon, open my bag, take out the magazine (an imported American one), tear off the shrink-wrap, open it, and gasp.

I gasp not with lust, amazement, or even amusement. It is with disillusionment and disgust that I turn the pages of this very expensive magazine and move my eyes over the glossy, full-color content. Every crotch shot, every hint of man-meat, every flash or flicker of cock and/or balls is scratched out. It is unthinkable. Yes, yes, a very lucky man at some porn importer has the dream job of thumbing through all the magazines coming into the country and taking a big, thick black marker, or sometimes a pencil eraser, to each and every hard, throbbing penis contained within. Such blatant disregard for art and those who buy it I have never witnessed. All those gorgeous photographs laid to waste because of some weird Japanese law against showing the crotch area to those who wish to pay good money to see it.

You can still make out some of the goods, but really, the whole point of porn is that it makes absolutely no demands on your imagination. It puts everything you want to see right in front of you so you can enjoy it briefly before getting on with your life.

I set the magazine down and, lying on my bed staring at the cracks in the ceiling, let out a frustrated laugh. I lean over and pull the flyer that Miss Miho had given me out of my back pocket and look at the illustrations on the front. There’s God again, smiling widely in his pristine white robe. When I’d looked at it before, he seemed like a benevolent, soft-featured God with a voice like Morgan Freeman’s. Now, it seems, he is smiling knowingly, like he’s just told a great joke about a Jew, a priest, and a homosexual and is waiting for me to get it. Did he just wink at me?

A little ashamed of myself, I look over at my porn, its pages open to a photo spread of a farmhand asking his boss for a raise up against a wheelbarrow, a big, thick black blotch running through the best parts. I look back at God, his eyes twinkling, his mouth grinning with a self-satisfied “gotcha!”

Miho Johnson was right. God is always watching. Even when you’re hopelessly lost in Shinjuku.

I’ll be damned.

# of beers bought from vending machines: 22

# of times train has been late: 0

# of bows taken (big): 13

# of bows taken (small): 1,157

In which your new favorite protagonist takes a big, fat, meaty bite out of a new language and, in the process, realizes that the topic of oral sex is so unavoidable in this day and age that it sometimes just brings itself up in the classroom.

My tiny new Japanese cell phone may cause cancer, but it cures it, too. I bought it last night and have been playing with it for the better part of the morning. It’s sleek and silver, about the thickness of ten playing cards wrapped in tissue paper. None of the two thousand possible ringtones really appeal to me, so I’m happy to discover I can program in my own songs. The instruction manual includes a picture of a keyboard, each note corresponding to a certain button combination on the keypad, so naturally I’ve spent an hour programming in the theme song to Dallas . The dramatic crescendo could use some work, but I decide to do something else and save my emotional energy.

I’ve already read the two books I’d brought with me, so I start nosing around the place for any discarded literature. My roommate Sean, the heartbreaker of the household, had recently let me borrow some of his Playboy s, but I’d lost interest after reading the interviews. Plus, a few too many of the pages were sticking together.

I thumb through the day’s Daily Yomiuri newspaper before remembering that my other roommate, Ewan, has a shelf full of books in his room, the only traditional tatami room in our small, Western-style apartment. Ewan is a thirty-nine-year-old Australian introvert, possibly the only introvert Australia has ever produced and exported. He is tall and thin, with an angular, friendly face like that of a marionette or that elf who wants to be a dentist in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer . He’s soft-spoken, loves pasta and chopping up vegetables, and has never been married. Yep, that’s about all I know.