(VI) SLUMBER PARTY!

(VI) SLUMBER PARTY!

 

I'm yukata-clad at one in the morning, surrounded by similarly-attired businessmen drinking vending-machine beer, reading dirty comic books and smoking like factories. We are watching an NHK program involving martial arts and ambulance drivers.

I am in a capsule hotel lounge in one of the seedier neighborhoods of Osaka where everything is pink and hearty. The hotel is one big salaryman slumber party, a five-story affair riddled with lounges, pachinko and game rooms. There are massage chairs and vending machines that sold everything from underwear to Cup Noodle. There is a sushi bar and a room staffed with masseuses around the clock.

Capsule hotels are lodging on the cheap for tomato-faced businessmen who missed the last train home. ¥2,500 buys a cushioned plastic pod that resembles a plus-size microwave. My microwave is equipped with TV, climate control, alarm, and a coin slot: ten minutes of dirty movies for a hundred yen. These berths are stacked in long, dim halls like warm morgues.

There's a bath on the first floor with robes, towels, toothbrushes, razors, hair dryers, Q-tips, potions, powders, and gels. There is a main tub which holds at least fifty, a cold tub, a sauna, and a tub with electrified panels that shocked me when I got close to the sides. This was apparently intentional. Supposedly it is some form of massage, but it was hard to tolerate for more than a few seconds.

Lively Christmas music blared on every floor, even in the bath. It took everything to the next level, that Christmas music did. I twitched spastically in the electrocuting tub while a light-rock version of "Ode To Joy" screamed from a speaker above me.

I needed a numbingly, punishingly, apocalyptically hot bath.

Today I saw Naoko for the first time in six years. Naoko and I were together for almost two years, and tried to make it work even when I went back home. Unsuccessfully, in the end. She visited me in Minneapolis, but by the end we both knew it wouldn't work anymore. We still email a few times a year, and write the occasional letter.

We met at Big Man, our old meeting place. I hadn't expected to be nervous but I was visibly shaking. Every possible scenario, imaginable or unimaginable, went through my mind. What if we had nothing to say to each other? What if she brought a boyfriend? What if she had gone bald? I wasn't even sure I would recognize her again. I stared hard at passing girls. One looked like Naoko might, if she had bad skin, greasy hair and a scowl. I blinked for a moment, alarmed, but she walked past.

I knew her the moment I saw her walking across Hankyu Station. I couldn't stop smiling. She stopped inches away, looking up at me, and I stared at her for a moment.

"Hisashi buri," she said. It's been a while.

It has indeed.

Naoko had been replaced by her cool, elegant twin sister. She carried herself more assuredly and her hair was longer, but her face was the same. Two little freckles over her right eye. Dimples. I couldn't stop looking at her at first. We walked slowly to the station, chatting easily.

We went to the Osaka Aquarium, where I saw animals I've never seen before: a whale shark, a sun fish, huge crabs. My favorites were the jellyfish, alien science experiments in cylindrical tanks: tentacles of pasta, conifer forests, lace. Naoko liked best any fish that was ugly, and tried to take pictures of them with her phone.

"C'mon, ugly," she would say with a grin. "Cheezu." But the ugly fish were wily and camera-shy, and neither of us got a decent picture.

We went to a coffee shop afterwards. There were a few moments of not unpleasant silence. Everything felt very natural, like six days had passed rather than six years. I was glad to see her again.

Then she picked up from where we left off: the plane ride from Minneapolis to Japan, six years ago.The plane had malfunctioned after an hour in the air and returned to Minneapolis. I had already gone home, so she spent three hours alone in the airport. I had known part of this story but didn't remember that the plane had actually taken off. I thought it had malfunctioned on the ground and she had returned to the terminal to find me already gone. For six years I felt guilty about leaving before the plane took off, but I had not, after all.

Naoko had missed her connection in Seattle and the airport put her up in a hotel. A weird man approached her in the airport and told her to come with him, but she ran away and spent the rest of the night in her room watching MTV.

"That must have been a rough night," I said.

"It wasn't great," she agreed. "But I have good memories of it, for some reason. It was like, 'I am living'."

" I know exactly what you mean."

We went to an Italian place for dinner. Naoko seemed darker than before, though it would be hard for me to say how. Older and wiser, perhaps; she's seen a few things that I will never know about. I resisted asking about the ring on the fourth finger of her right hand, which sometimes indicates the presence of a boyfriend. I didn't want to know. Her life no longer involves me , and I was surprised how difficult that realization was. I had somehow hoped she had been on pause since last we met, though of course she hasn't. I certainly haven't.

After dinner we walked to a deserted bar with vinyl booths and abundant cushions. It was about eleven and I was weary and bleak, bleary and weak . The previous night spent chatting with Mr. T had worn me down. I began to feel awkward. I was out of things to say, and the most uncomfortable songs kept playing one after another. I wanted to throw my hands up in exasperation when I heard the opening strains of "I'm In Love With My Ex." I swear someone was doing it deliberately.

Eventually I decided it was time I found a hotel. "I'd offer to let you sleep at my apartment tonight," Naoko said, "but I don't think it's going to work."

I didn't want to sleep at her apartment. It would have been weird, I told myself

We walked to Shinsaibashi station. My train was waiting at the platform so I didn't get a goodbye. I said, "I've got to get on," and she nodded. Then I got on the train and couldn't help but watch her from the window. She watched me too, but then looked away, watching something to her left.

As I dragged my obnoxious luggage through Umeda I passed the sushi restaurant where Naoko and I went on our third date. I had only eaten egg sushi, because I didn't like fish. I had forgotten this detail until Naoko reminded me of it earlier today. Now I stared into the window of this same sushi restaurant, remembering it clearly.

I grew grimmer when I realized that I had no idea if there were any vacancies in Umeda at midnight on a Friday. I didn't even know if I could find the capsule hotel again after eight years. But the hotel was exactly where I remembered. Some things never change.

(IV) HOLED UP in KYOTO

(IV) HOLED UP in KYOTO

I took a train to Kyoto. First time on the Kawaramachi line in eight years, but after a certain point these “first times” don't mean much. I barely remembered the Kawaramachi line, anyway.

Kyoto is a chilled-out town, small but crammed with history. The Allies spared it during World War II because of its historical significance, so Old Japan is strong still. Everywhere, dark wood and sliding doors, tiled roofs and impossibly tiny streets dotted with shrines.

My plan was to find a capsule hotel near the club where my friend was playing. I knew hotels would be sparse in that residential area, but for some reason I lugged my wheeled suitcase out to the edges of Kyoto anyway, vainly hoping there'd be something. Sure enough, there wasn't a hotel to be found. The sun had set and I didn't have any ideas except to return to Kawaramachi, find a hotel and come back again for the music.

Instead I dragged my suitcase several blocks to a police station. Policemen in Japan are talking maps as much as anything else and these kind guys were happy to not only suggest a hotel, but also to call and make me a reservation. They warned the clerk that I was a gaijin but apparently that wasn't a deal-breaker and I was allowed to pollute the hotel for one night.

I trudged still further through the dark. My suitcase made a dull grinding sound and fought me with every step. When I found the proper miniscule street, exactly four wrong turns later, I was heartily sick of walking, suitcases on wheels and Kyoto in general. I checked into my hotel and brushed my teeth in my bathroom, a seamless, molded plastic pod, then left again.

Actually Kyoto is a lovely little town, if you like your little towns chock-full of old eateries and strange stores full of arcana: tea sets, kimono cloth, futons and the like. I would have liked to spend more time in Kyoto. The neighborhoods I passed through on my way to the club were heavy with a tranquility that's hard to find in Tokyo. Stores closed early and streets seemed pitch black after Tokyo's barrage of neon and fluorescents. Every restaurant near the club was shuttered and dark except for a mediocre curry place, but I love mediocre Japanese curry. There's nothing better for brisk fall nights than huge plates of cheap, spicy curry.

Zac Baran, the club, was a dark bar with its name branded into unsanded wood walls. I still don't know what “Zac Baran” means. There was an awkward moment at the bar. The bartender indicated a coffee can bearing the words “Charge: ¥1,500”. I had seen this on the sign outside and had the exact amount ready in my pocket. I pulled it out and dropped it in. Too fast. The bartender heard the clank of the ¥500 piece but didn't see the ¥1000 note drop from my hand. He pointed to “1” on the sign. I tried to assure him that I had put it in but he looked skeptical. I had been too quick for him.

If it had been First Avenue he would have just grunted and I would have to pay again, but he was trusting and finally nodded, telling me to take any open chair. Every table was partially occupied so I had to take a seat at a table with a couple already sitting at it. It had been a while since I had been able to listen to some live jazz, and I enjoyed it immensely. But for the first half hour I had difficulty concentrating on the music because I couldn't let go of the fact that the bartender might think I was cheating him.

I know that there will be many times in my life that I look back and say, “if only I was in Kyoto again for a night of curry, jazz and whiskey.” Occasional melancholy, loneliness, hours of aimless wandering—these are things I will remember fondly.

Memory attaches itself to odd things in odd ways. I vividly remember Chicago, where I went last fall with my parents. It was fun but not earth-shattering, just a pleasant way to spend the Thanksgiving weekend. Yet now, though I'm in Tokyo, I keep thinking how nice it would be to be back in Chicago instead. I even remember the drive through dreary Wisconsin fondly. It could be the season. Fall = Chicago. Next year, no doubt, fall will = Tokyo, even though this has been a lousy fall.

Another random thing to remember is when I was sick in Osaka, about this time eight years ago. I had to be driven home from school and Yoshi, my host brother, made me rice with tea and seaweed. Then we rented Princess Mononoke and I stayed up until midnight watching it, wrapped in several blankets. Cozy, cozy, is all I remember. I've forgotten the fever, the faces in the ceiling, the unsteady walk to school where they took one look at me and sent me to the nurse.

It's strange that I get wistful for unhappy times. I guess any strong emotion stands in sharp relief against the flatline of my life. Tonight I paid attention to every detail I could, to give myself plenty of memory to mull over. That's all I can do: stoke that fire with as much fuel as possible, so it will burn longer and hotter.

(III) HOMELESS in KANSAI

(III) HOMELESS in KANSAI

 

Weariness is setting in.

I visited my old neighborhoods in the northern suburbs, Minami Senri, Yamada and Senri Chuo, again looking for some connection that wasn't coming in clearly. I wanted a hello, or a goodbye, or something other than, "Here I am again. Was it really like this?"

Senri Chuo's surreally pink plaza had been repainted sea green, a marginally better choice. Except for a few new buildings everything was the same, quiet and residential as before. Though the weather was beautiful the end of fall was evident. Things were dying.

I had seen it again. There was nothing left to do here.

On the train to a semi-downtown district called Shinsaibashi I gave in to a dull heaviness and fell asleep. I had only slept for about four hours on the bus. When I got to Shinsaibashi I called Mr. Tokuoka, my old Rotarian counselor, who had offered to let me stay at his place.

"Pippu. Are you coming tomorrow?" he asked. I blinked in surprise. Hadn't he read my email?

"Actually I'm in Shinsaibashi right now," I said.

"You're here already?" He laughed. "What are you doing right now?"

"Wandering around on my own."

"Are you staying at my place tomorrow night?"

"Tomorrow night? Uh, that would be great, if it's still OK. Thanks."

"What are you doing tonight?"

"I don't really know. A capsule hotel, I guess."

"Ah. Well, you can stay at my house tomorrow."

"Uh, thank you."

"Pippu. Do you want to have dinner tonight?"

"Definitely."

"Oh, wait... I'm booked. How about lunch?"

"Sure, absolutely."

"Oh, wait. I'm booked as well." He chuckled wryly. "Looks like today's off."

"Oh. No problem, I'll call you tomorrow."

"Yes, do that."

We said "hai," about a dozen times and hung up. I can never get the hang of ending Japanese phone conversations. "Yes, yes, thank you, yes, well then, excuse me, well, yes, excuse me, thank you, yes, *click*." It goes something like that.

I had thought I would be staying the night at Mr. T's house tonight, but it looked like I would have to come up with other plans. I didn't blame Mr. T for this. When he had offered to let me stay at his house he never specified how many nights. I had emailed him the days I would be here and, when I never heard back from him, had just hoped that he would be able to accommodate me. I frequently misunderstand Mr. T. What can you expect from someone who says "yes" nine times when they mean "goodbye?"

Well, the improv spirit is strong in me and I decided to enjoy the adventure. It wasn't such a problem. I've always wanted to stay at a capsule hotel. But loneliness set in as I realized I was on my own today.

Nothing in Shinsaibashi looked familiar. All the narrow streets looked the same, lined with hip boutiques and hemmed in by power lines above. I was too broke to shop, so I wandered about feeling low. I knew She was working somewhere nearby, and that was tantalizing and terrifying. What if I ran into Her? Then what? I honestly didn't know what.

The weariness of traveling and the sudden change in plans had gotten me down. I couldn't shake it. I ate some takoyaki (fried octopus ball) and okonomiyaki for lunch, both Osaka specialties. They were delicious. Then I began the long walk back to Umeda through miles of covered arcades.

I was more depressed back in Umeda. I went to a temple I remembered, just a sandbox and a few shrines in the heart of downtown. It was a blip of serenity amidst the noise. (More memories, of Christmas and friends and Her.) After contemplating the coins in my pocket I decided that the most auspicious donation was ¥130 and dropped them in the wooden grate of the collection box. I bowed, clapped my hands twice and sent up a prayer for... something. I didn't know what to ask for, so I requested bartender's choice.

I called a friend in Kyoto and decided to head that way to see him play some jazz in the evening. I would spend the night in Kyoto as well, instead of Osaka. I had never slept in Kyoto, and Osaka would be too depressing. I was already melancholy, alone in my old home like a soldier whose friends have all been killed. I could imagine the evening getting unbearable; I would probably go out and get drunk alone for lack of anything better to do. I might end up calling Her, probably in tears, and make things weird.

No. I would have the next two nights in Osaka. I would spend this one strange night on my own in Kyoto and avoid the ghosts of my friends.

The crazy year in Osaka was all the more intense because we knew exactly when it would end. Every month meant one less remained. In December the first round fell, three friends who came eight months before the rest of us, and we began to understand how fleeting this happiness was. Not that we were always happy, but that never matters in hindsight.

The blade was above our heads the whole time, the date of our execution printed on plane tickets we kept with our passports. It made everything exhilarating and poignant, but we could never quite comprehend the inevitable until it finally came. Suddenly we were back home dealing with old lives that were exactly the same as before and yet completely different. It felt like Osaka had never happened. It had been a dream that we were rapidly forgetting along with our Japanese.

It was no less a dream when it was happening. It never felt real, nothing ever does. Today is a dream too, full of yesterday and tomorrow. But if I can't live in the present and yet hardly remember the past then where the hell am I? I've been dreaming my life away.

Well, tonight I am in Kansai, and I like Kansai, especially the people. Though Osaka is smaller I still find mind-boggling numbers of restaurants and bars in a single block. How can so many restaurants sustain themselves? So lonely, all those streets full of signs and open doors and people barking "Irasshaimase!" to lure me inside.

Of course they're only lonely because I'm on my own. With friends, everything is different. But alone—there's nothing for me in Umeda tonight. I'll drink whiskey in a jazz club in Kyoto and that will be fine. Enjoy this. Soon I'll be awake.

(II) ALONE in OSAKA

(II) ALONE in OSAKA

The largest creature in the world, by area, is a fungus in Oregon known as Armillaria ostoyae. What scientists took to be many different fungi of the same species is actually the same organism spreading mycelium for 2,200 acres below the ground. Its mass is greater than that of several blue whales.

I'm thinking of that fungus as I walk underground. I'm in Umeda, one of Osaka's main downtown centers, in a labyrinthine mall-and-subway system that spreads for several square miles. This network of halls, corridors and capillaries lies under Umeda and extends escalators, elevator shafts and stairways to the surface to respire. At these points the membrane is porous, and I can cross over and explore the narrow warrens for the first time in eight years.

In my personal running monologue—which is ponderous and rambling, the majority of which I spare my gentle readers—I have come to Osaka to make peace with it. But that's not quite accurate. "Make peace" implies coming to terms with a dead estranged brother or something. But it's more like seeing someone I used to love long ago. Especially considering who I will meet in forty-eight hours.

Yet I can't shake the idea that I'm here to make peace with Osaka, and in another sense that's not completely off the mark. There is a loss involved in coming back, eight years later. Things have changed.

Some things are constants. I still wear long coal-colored coats. I still am scruffy and wild-haired. I still wear headphones everywhere like they were grafted to my body—this go-round it's a set of wondrous Audio Technica noise-cancelers that I bought specifically to soundtrack this pilgrimage. My reflection, in a Jaguar boutique's plate glass, hasn't changed much since 1999.

Umeda hasn't changed drastically either. Yet things are different. I have lost things only to gain other things. My old friends, for instance. They're still my friends, but they're no longer waiting for me in Umeda, enraged at my 45-minute tardiness. Instead of wandering drunk at midnight I find myself clear-headed and wide-eyed at seven-thirty in the morning.

I saw Hankyu station's huge TV, Big Man, under which we used to meet. There were gaps in my memory. Had this hallway always been here? Was that ceiling always so low? It didn't quite seem like the same place. It's true: you can never go back. I visited my old haunts hoping for that sweetspot of nostalgia, that pang of memory connecting the past to the geographic present, but it didn't hit me. It rarely does when I go looking for it.

And yet—there. That was the coffee shop where we took refuge on New Year's Day, exhausted from partying all night and watching the first sunrise of the millennium from Osaka Castle. There was the ramen joint I loved. There was the music shop I visited, dreaming of playing the drums someday. And I did learn to play the drums, but not until after Osaka.

Here—Shakey's Pizza, home of the weird pizza buffet and the bottomless pitcher of Asahi Super Dry. Here were the cramped alleyways and covered arcades where we took purikura, a Japanese contraction of "print club": dozens of tiny group photographs on gaudily-decorated stickers. No one does purikura anymore, and the familiar booths were gone.

I walked over the footbridge where we drank beer in a circle of fourteen. (Were we really so brazen?) I passed the gaijin club we always went to, though no one liked it. I visited the out-of-the-way lobby in MBS tower where homeless people were suffered to congregate in the winter. We ragged urchins huddled there too, pouring Kahlua into cups of milk and slugging it down without ice.

I came to the Yodo River. It was wide and placid as ever, an assertion of sea level, of point zero from which the city rose or sank. Concrete columns thicker than redwoods rose from the river and blossomed into a canopy of highways several stories above me. On the opposite side there was construction, dozens of massed workers gathered in the sun for the morning briefing. I'm sure that moments earlier they had been singing the company song and doing ceremonial calisthenics. They wore various riffs on the laborer's uniform: helmet, fluorescent vest, enormous baggy trousers, and heavy rubber shoes with a separate big toe.

As I crossed the river and turned to walk along it, they broke up and walked down the other side of the street. Tribes of construction worker intermingled: blue pants and green pants, white helmet and pink helmet, young and old. I half-expected them to erupt into a spanner brawl, tribe on tribe. Or better yet, a musical number, the Bridge-Building Boogie, fluttery pants high-kicking. Or maybe both, a West Side Story-style dance-off. The Cats versus the Carp.

I could cross another item off the list of things I'd always meant to do again. See the Yodogawa: check. I've wanted to come back to Umeda ever since I left it. Finally I have, and for that I am grateful, though I only vaguely recognize it now. It isn't quite connecting with my memories of it. I was hoping for that crack hit of nostalgia, that movie moment where the soundtrack swells and the heavens open. But I guess what I remember most was the people in it and the things we did. It's not the same alone.

(I) MIDNIGHT in SHINJUKU

This is somehow familiar, like watching my own movie. Once again I'm one of many on a cramped, neon-flooded street, staring at Japanese faces and smelling Japanese city: food, piss and exhaust.

Kabuki-cho in Shinjuku is lit like the rainbows in a puddle, thousands of restaurants packed into a few square blocks. I eat at a standing sushi restaurant appropriately named "Standing Sushi Restaurant." Instead of plates, they placed the sushi on long leaves.

Outside, glowing vertical signs climb the sides of buildings, advertising entertainment of every stripe. Hyperrealistic plastic food in store windows, women in doorways that spill red light.

"You wanna massage?" one asks me.

Maybe if you hadn't asked me in English, I want to growl at her. Being addressed in English irritates me. My English might be more expensive than your massage. But I walk on to the bus stop.

I'm returning to Osaka, my old home, for the first time in eight years. From my bus window I see passengers massed on the Shinjuku sidewalk. Behind them looms a half-finished rocket-like tower with latticed metal fins that run the height of its convex glass core. Banks of blue-white lights illuminate the site like a bomb blast on freeze-frame.

The bus eases through a Skyscraper District jammed with cars at midnight on a Tuesday. On a sidewalk, homeless man sweeps leaves into piles with his foot and kicks them into the bushes. Keeping Shinjuku beautiful.

And Shinjuku is beautiful. New Japanese Affluence is visible on an unimaginable scale in Tokyo. Artfully-designed towers rise every year, all black marble and potted trees. I teach so many rich men at work that it's easy to imagine Japan is all owners, financiers, hipster ad men, fashion magazine editors.

But beneath these people crouch the less-fortunate, who unquestioningly perform drudgery for twelve hours a day because Japan needs them to do it. Millions live in tenement hives in distant, inconvenient semi-suburbs. Inequality seems inevitable. Someone must commute two hours to sweep these marble sidewalks blurring past.

Storefronts line the street. A clothing store called Second House, with a neon sign that says I (HEART) NY MORE THAN EVER. A restaurant called Casa Brillante. Mercedes Benz dealer. Yanase, whose purpose I can only guess at. Bar Recover, in the basement of an apartment building. In fifteen minutes I have passed more apartments then exist in all of Minneapolis.

There are kilometers of road work. From an overpass I look down into a ravine-like street strung with blue Christmas lights. Tokyo doesn't flow like Minneapolis, which is to say reasonably straight and predictable. It's all switchbacks, curves, splits, shortcuts, overpasses, underpasses, footbridges, deadends, one-ways, alleys, suballeys, untersuballeys, walkways, crawlways.

I wonder what neighborhood I'm in. There's a Honda dealer in a Greek-looking building. Eneos Gas Station. More construction. Hello Storage's waving disembodied hand logo. Denso. Vending machines vending machines vending machines. A sudden rash of Japanese restaurants: udon, soba, soba, udon. Pippini Italian Restaurant. A bar with wooden screens over the windows. Natural Lawson, an all-organic convenience store.

We're on an overpass again, this time over a second overpass. We've been passing road work for twenty minutes now, and we're not driving slowly. Road cones are a bright orange, illuminated from within. I imagine Japanese construction warehouses in the off-season: twenty thousand cones stacked tidily on polished floors.

In a city this size no one can win. There's always a nicer apartment or a better restaurant. No one can pass the entire highway. In Minneapolis I had a sense that there was a top to rise to, but that sense is gone now.

We're seven stories above the ground on an elevated highway. A red sea strobes before me, hundreds of buildings tipped with blinking red lights for aviation safety. A lonely white tower flicks past and on the top floor I see two Budweiser signs that match the red points. Anonymous, imagined strangers sit in that bar, discussing trivialities that will never be resolved.

In this huge pond there's always a bigger fish. Excellence is more commonplace, magnetically attracted to wealth and status. Minneapolis was more black and white, good and bad, wrong and right, in and out. People could agree on some things. But group consensus is impossible when the group is this large. It's impossible to get any sense of unanimity. I can only do what I think is best, which is what I should have been doing anyway.

Everyone in the bus is sleeping but I am wide awake. I should be tired, I suppose. All in good time.