More Coffee, More Time

What the hell am I supposed to do now. Oh shit oh shit oh shit….Shirt, that’s it…shirt. Underwear, good idea, duh. Pants! Can’t go out without pants. Just go, go quickly but quietly so she doesn’t wake up.
I manage to get out of the apartment without waking her or Yuske up. I can still feel my heart racing even faster. I start walking fast, thinking if I walk fast I can definitely get away from the shitty feeling that’s about to hit me. I retreat to the subway that’ll take me to the shopping district. I need food; I need to sober up now. Of course what just happened was pretty sobering. The air is circulating in the subway and it feels cool as the sweat evaporates from my skin. Kyoto in the summer is at best warm and humid and at worst a giant rice cooker. The subway is a little crowded, especially for a Monday night and this late. I look at my watch and realize it actually isn’t all that late.
That’s right, we got drunk early. It wouldn’t have happened so soon, drinking spread out over a night but Yuske always drinks too fast around her. He’s in love with her, has been since the first day of University. I remember him confiding in me that he was in love but didn’t want to talk to her. Yuske’s always been a bit afraid of girls. Not me, I’m at ease around them. They’re just girls after all. I’m not a player, really. I was the first one to talk to her, inviting her along for drinks. She was with a group of friends and we brought a few other guys. It wasn’t really a go-kon but it may as well have been one.
The subway stops at my stop and I get off along with a few other people. There’s noise and fire. It’s still the Gion Matsuri*. Sometimes I feel like that festival drags on too long. There are a few younger girls in yukata* who giggle as I walk past. Their giggling makes me uncomfortable, more so than I’d expected. The street noise, the press of bodies gives me a headache. I can’t stand other people touching me, though my whole life I’ve been pressed by people, squeezing into small spaces. An elevator where you don’t have 8 people breathing down your neck isn’t a full elevator. A street without a herd of people propelling your forward is a lonely, deserted street.
Holly’s is open so I head inside and order an iced coffee from the smiling woman behind the counter. The room feels cooler and I realize I’ve been sweating again. Who wouldn’t be sweating in this heat. Yeah, it’s just the heat that’s made me sweat I tell myself. The window seat looks nice and I plunk down to watch the people go by. It’s a usual night in the commercial district, business men, college students, young girls in short skirts, a few uniforms, some gaikokujin* speaking languages that I know aren’t English. I take a sip of my coffee and run my hands through my hair. Before I can stop myself my head falls forward. FUCK! I can feel my head screaming, making my temples throb. I wipe my hands across my face, just really smearing the sweat around. They still smell like her, like girl.
How the hell did it happen? I didn’t think I was that drunk, or was drunk enough rather. Yuske passed out on her couch after we’d helped him in. I’m getting us two glasses of water and she’s laughing and she’s getting closer and I’m kissing her like an asshole and Yuske just snores away and we get into the bedroom and can’t even really get our clothes off and…and…fuck me… I hate myself. I try to focus on the coffee because my throat starts to get lumpy and my eyes burn. I’m a man and men don’t cry. One could also say men don’t fuck their best friend’s crush. I need a story, a cover, something. I don’t want to see her again, I don’t want to see Yuske again. Maybe I should become a monk and retire from the world. At 11:00 on a Monday night that idea seems awfully appealing. The straw makes the finished noise. I’m out of coffee.
I order another coffee because right now it’s the only thing I know to do. I’m slowly replacing the alcohol with iced coffee. The caffeine fighting the alcohol fatigue; the post sex fatigue. I know no matter how many cups of coffee I have the answer to my predicament won’t come. Just sitting here in Holly’s staring at people who go by, wiping my hands down with the packaged moist towels, won’t change anything. As I said earlier, I have no fucking idea what the hell I am supposed to do. We fucked, Yuske missed it.
I need more coffee because I need more time.
Gokon- a match making party with an even number of girls and guys
Matsuri- festival
Yukata- a light cotton cousin to kimono worn in the summer for festivals
Gaikokujin- the polite term for foreigner. Kanji are “other country person”.
I didn’t see this guy on a train but as I was walking past Holly’s Café in Kyoto. He looked utterly lost and dejected and we managed to make eye contact as I walked past. I didn’t have my notebook handy so I tried to memorize the details. He looked like he needed a friend but I don’t have the Japanese to ask him what was wrong.

Are you even listening???

Are you even listening?
He just wanted to talk because it’s always just talk. They always want us to just talk but that gives the false impression that we’re actually having a conversation. Don’t be fooled, we aren't. With my friends real conversation is a lost art, kind of like chadoo*. People kind of know how to do it but it’s only a pale imitation of what conversation used to be like before people started learning that I knew how to listen. Once they knew I could listen they stopped letting me tlak. What bugs me is that I didn’t notice it until recently. I’ve slowly lost my share in the conversation. I’m more often just witnessing someone’s verbal masturbation. Oh good grief I’m an ecchi magazine. I need a shower.
I don’t know where I learned to listen. I think somewhere along the way people decided I was a good listener because I didn't have much to say when I was younger. It was good then, to be praised for my listening. But as I got older and my listening got me more friends; I started to have more to say. It’s at the point now where I’m having my side of the conversation in my head and somehow when there’s finally space to speak all that comes out is “nnn”* or “hai”*. Then again it’s not like I have any big problems compared to the people who call me to just talk. Wlel maybe theirs aren’t big problems either as they tend to be the kind of problems that just need a little release, like a fantasy that becomes less potent once you act on it. They just need to tell me what’s going on and then it’s over, a little better even. They clap me on the shoulder, promise to buy me coffee next time. They tell me if I need anything to let them know.
But I don’t know if I need anything. I’ve just lost the ability to say what I need. I’m so used to having conversations in my head, like I am now, that I’ve forgotten how to have a real one. I suppose the lost art of conversation is lost on me as well. In a lot of ways conversations are tiring when I do manage to actually have them. It’s a lot less energy to just sit back and listen. It’s the precieving that takes a lot of energy, or rather the trying not to notice. When you’re the focus of everyone’s verbal fap fest you end up noticing a lot about human behavior. If I passed the test I’d major in psychology but there’s no way I’d do this for a living. But the bad side is that once you see how people act it’s a lot easier to infer what people aren’t saying. There are lines to read between that you didn’t even realize existed. It’s the way that Aya sits around Kochi, the sigh over a cup of coffee, the thrust of a filled rice bowl. It’s all pregnant with meaning that I really wish I didn’t get. It gets caught up in this complicated web that they wove in my head. Aya likes Kochi but Koichi is more into her best friend Arisa who is into Kochi but not as much as she’s into Kazu. Kazu sighs over the coffee because he’s too absorbed in baseball to deal with it all and he just wants to hit the damn ball. The rice bowl is actually unrealated to my school drama it’s a family drama. Something is wrong between my parents and it’s the one thing I can’t figure out. I want to know what’s going on but my parents keep things close to their chest so until the shoe drops I’ll never know. It would be best if I’d just never noticed and continued in my blissful world where my parents marriage is just like everyone elses marriage. Then again maybe it is but none of my friends ever talk about their families. Romantic drama is inheriently more important that family drama. It gets higher ratings after all.
I’m tired of making sense of the world and I want to retire from it in a lot of ways. I feel like an old emperor. I am in the world with no real power. My role is ceremonial, though that makes it sound nicer than my masturbation metaphor so I’ll follow this one instead. It sounds like something you could work into a conversation and people would thinkit was really cool and insightful. Then I’d pull out a cigarette and be even cooler. I’m a legend in my own mind. I’m a great conversationalist in my own head, probably because I even listen to myself. These thoughts want to come out but at the same time they don’t. To be forceful, to tell Aya I really don’t give a flying fuck about if Kochi will even like her back, to scream at my parents to just have it out, to yell that I have something to say, isn’t something I’m used to. I’m not content to watch the world but at this point its my own option. Anything else and people get impatient and ask “Are you even listening???”
Chadoo- tea ceremony
Nnn- “ummhmm” used to indicate that you are listening to someone but not nessicarily agreement
Hai- “Yes” again in this case it’s used to indicate that you’re listening.
On what looked to be a fairly fruitless train ride to Mitaki I saw this guy get on. He was walking with another guy but looked like he couldn’t wait to get away. I had to try not to stare because he leaned against the door of the train in an open display of frustration and I really wanted to know what was bothering him. He just closed his eyes and didn’t seem to be sleeping because he was standing up. Maybe he was just looking for some quiet.

Keitai* Family

People leave things on the Shinkansen* sometimes. It just happens. They’re busy, grabbing their boxes of omiyage*, their senior’s bags and their backpack and the thing they were carrying just gets lost. Usually it’s something unimportant, a manga book or a magazine. They’re expensive but not returnable and not something I’m sure they’ll really miss. I mean, the guy (it’s always men. Women never leave things on the Shinkansen) will get home and realize somewhere between Tokyo and Fukuoka he lost his manga. No problem, he’ll just go around the corner to 7-11 and pick up a new one. But sometimes, they do leave something important that I can return.
Today is one of those days. I’m wandering through car 5 on my way to Hakata, the end of this line before I switch cars and head home. I make my way through the cabin as fast as I can because I really hate it when customers ask me questions, but an oba-san* gets my attention. She hands me a black folded cell Keitai and tells me that the man sitting next to her lost it. I accept it with the most professional of assurances and head back to my station concealing my private glee.
Keitais are fairly easy to return but more importantly, they’re fun. It’s boring on the Shinkansen. Nothing really happens, few people are ever drunk or unruley and they’re almost impossible to scam. I get bored pretty easily and sometimes I like to think about people. When I get someone’s Keitai that they’ve left on the Shinkansen it really gets me thinking. I open the Keitai and the most telling thing about a person is their background picture. If a guy has some anime or manga character on his Keitai, he’s probably an otaku and why would he splurge on a Shinkansen ticket? If it’s a pretty pop star he’s probably single (I know this because mine is this right now.). I sometimes get Keitais with pictures of young girls who aren’t pop stars. It always pisses me off when it belongs to an old guy who stammers something as he takes his Keitai back. Today’s Keitai has one of the cutest pictures I’ve ever seen. It’s a young wife, shoulder length hair that curls just perfectly under to frame her round face. In her arms is a pudgy little baby that from all the pink has to be a girl. They smile at the man taking the picture with Keitai Wife making Keitai Baby wave. They look immensely happy and I’m jealous for a moment. This happiness that the photo conveys, it can’t be real. It only exists in teenage girls love comics. I’ve seen too many men smelling faintly like a love hotel to think that such happiness exists.
I check the contacts, it’s the only way to be certain. His wife is listed under wife, naturally. Sometimes it’s wife, sometimes it’s family but never their name. I scroll past the various men’s names. Some are friends from college, some from high school, one or two that you met through work who started at the same time you did. You dutifully have your senpai’s* name in your Keitai, naturally but it doesn’t say who it is so I imagine it’s one of the names listed alone in his contacts list. Just as I’m getting so annoyed I want to throw the Keitai in the trash I finally see it. A woman’s name. But the mix I feel doesn’t settle as well as I hoped. I’m pleased, in a perverse way, that this man is cheating on his wife and family, he’s normal, their happiness is a front like so many other peoples’, like my genial smile. I snap back to the Keitai Family and I feel an emotion that I don’t normally connect with. It’s righteous anger. I mean, I get annoyed with people, I get frustrated but I’m never angry on behalf of someone else. I am so utterly pissed off that such a man can have such a gorgeous Keitai Wife and cute Keitai Baby and still fuck around with some woman, probably a woman at his office or something else. I’m at the point where I can’t see straight and prepare a grand sweeping speech I will give this guy about how little he deserves even a fraction of the happiness he experiences simply by waking up in the morning next to Keitai Wife.
But I hate feeling angry, it’s uncomfortable to get that angry in long sleeve uniform. I try to calm down. In my world, I’m the husband of Keitai Wife and Keitai Baby (their names don’t form in my head as clearly as their images do). It was I who snapped this photo before I headed out to Tokyo on a business meeting. I wouldn’t see them for a whole week and the thought of being separated from my Keitai Wife and new Keitai Baby was something I couldn’t bear. So I snapped this picture to keep me company; and then kissed my Keitai Wife and Keitai Baby. I promised to call them everyday and I did. I was worried Keitai Baby would say his first words while I was gone but I was lucky and he didn’t. Hearing Keitai Wife made me miss her even more. Every Conbini* bento* I ate made me want her miso soup even more. Ever night when I went to sleep on the western bed I missed Keitai Wife sleeping next to me. I excitedly got on the Shinkansen to head home, back to Okayama. On the way a thin haggard looking conductor takes my ticket but even he can’t dampen my happiness because I’m going home to Keitai Wife with a Tokyo Cheese Cake and Keitai Baby with a Tokyo Kitty-Chan* toy.
I do something I have never done before. I usually call the person’s company or the person’s wife to alert said person of their lost cell phone. Sometimes they pick it up, sometimes we mail it, sometimes we drop it off at the closest station and they come and get it. But today I break protocol on behalf of my beloved Keitai Wife and Keitai Baby. I open the contacts again and call the woman’s name.
Her voice is pleasant with a tired quality. “I would be tired too if I was waiting for my married lover to come do unspeakable things to me” I think to myself.
I somehow stammer out pleasantries but she sounds confused. She’s probably trying to cover for the fact she’s been caught. I smirk even wider to think of the fight this will cause, the end of their little tryst.
Then the hammer falls along with this entire fantasy I’ve built up. Her little brother is so forgetful. Ototo-chan?!* Is this another lie? After I tell her where his phone can be picked up, I hang up and check the contact information. How was I so stupid as to miss it before? As clear as day it says “Nee-san” and my palm smacks my forehead. I really am an utterly pathetic person. I close the phone and try to put the world away, the fantasy away. I manage to suppress it brilliantly until I’m almost home. I feel more worn out from this shift probably all the energy I spent trying not to want Keitai Wife and Keitai Baby.
I open my door and feebly say “Todaima”*.
Somewhere in the house I swear I hear a sweet musical female voice saying “Okarinasai”*. Keitai Wife is waiting for me, if only for a moment longer.

Keitai/keitai denwa- cell phone
Shinkansen- The Bullet Train, a high speed train.
Omiyage- presents brought back when someone goes on a trip. They’re usually a local specialty that can be bought at train stations.
Oba-san- Grandmother, collective term from a woman past middle age.
Senpai- the “senior” is the best English translation, this person is also a mentor at work
Conbini- convenience store
Bento- boxed lunch
Kitty-Chan- Hello Kitty
Ototo-chan- affectionate term for Little Brother
Nee-san- older sister
Todaima/Okarinasai- “I’m home” “Welcome Home”
On the Shinkansen back from Kyoto a man left his cell phone on the Shinkansen. He didn’t interest me but our conductor did. He had a very interesting smile as he held the phone and I was trying to imagine what the smile was about. It was actually a bit more of an impish grin than I make it in this story.

Green Eyes' Fantasy

Being so close hurts, but only a little. It’s a kind of hurt I don’t mind. At least I’m close to him. The train isn’t crowded but we both have a habit of standing too close to each other. I sometimes entertain the notion that he’s standing close out of some unconscious attraction to me.

But that’s probably not the case. He’s standing close to me because he thinks of me like a brother. For him, there’s no sexual tension in standing so close to me that all it would take would be for the train to lurch suddenly and we’d kiss. Or maybe the distance isn’t that close but I really wish it was. As much as it hurts I like being this close to him because it’s almost like we’re a couple, almost like we’re together.

I think about it a lot, we see each other everyday. We started at the same company at the same time and became friends. I probably liked him even then but romantic feelings didn’t enter into my head until I had that dream. I’d tried to shake it off. It’s always akward having sex dreams about people you know. The dream self becomes so meshed with the real self that you start wondering if that person has the same desire to have sex with you that they did in the dream. It was more like things started to fall into place for me than this huge revelation. I’m not gay, I mean I don’t think I am. I still want the wife and the kids and the T5* house, the Japanese dream. It’s just this phase, it’s just a close friendship. It’s natural for me to have a crush on him isn’t it? It’s something that’ll go away when I meet the right girl right?

That at least helps me deal with it. Thinking if I just found the right girl my feelings for him would go back to being normal. I’ve been on a few dates but I think I’m always comparing them to him. I kind of take it out on them that they aren’t him. It’s not fair, to them or to society. It’s not fair that I take up their Saturday nights with what feels like a charade. It’s not fair that on the rare occasion one gets me back to her apartment I can’t really think about having sex with them. I’m just not interested. But again, that probably just means they aren’t the right girl. It’s nothing permanent right? No, it’s not. It’s just him really, not other guys.

The fantasy, that’s really all it is, that we could be together in the way that I want is desentigrating. His wife had a baby recently and while I don’t hate her or the baby, it just puts this logical obstacle in my fantasy I have to go around. I mean, before the baby I could just pretend he’d left his wife or that he’d never met her to begin with. But now, with the baby, I can’t dislodge him from the family. His baby makes me feel even more abnormal. The way I want to do things isn’t the way you’re supposed to want to do things. It’s not a part of myself I like. Though that would mean these feelings are really mine, a genuine part of me and in a way that means it’s not a phase. CHIGAOU!* DAME!*

But that doesn’t stop me from dreaming about waking up and seeing him, kissing him. It doesn’t stop me from wondering if he gets close to me on trains because he wants the same thing I do. We’re standing on the train and I find my eyes zeroing in on his lips. He smiles a bit, talking about the baby crawling. His smile makes him look a lot younger than he is. It’s a nice smile, though still very brotherly. But I’ve found in my experience there’s a fine line with him between brotherly and romantically.

It’s always the same plan. I go to a party for work thinking about kissing him, about getting him too drunk so he has to lean on me and we kiss and then we’ll be together. Or I’ll be cured, depends on if I’ve had a date that week or not. I start drinking for the variety of reasons and I always forget that I can’t hold my liquor. I’ve never been good at knowing my limits and before I know it I’m the one passed out on a bench while he’s walking me back to my apartment. He leans down and looks at me, his face getting a bit too close. If the world wasn’t spinning and I wasn’t trying desprately not to throw up it would be the perfect opportunity to kiss him. I try to make a sentence but it comes out drunken sludge that isn’t taken seriously. He laughs and helps me to my feet like a good aneki*. This is another part where the line becomes blurred. I like it when he takes care of me when I’m drunk because it feels like so much more than being in a sibling type friendship. It’s the one time I feel like I truly welcome my feelings about him, when I’m not embarrassed about this phase or fantasy or orientation. Whatever the hell I am and this is. We stumbled back to my apartment which isn’t far from his and that’s where I lose the night.

And then I wake up pissed as hell with a headache. It’s over and I know he’s waking up at home with his wife and kid. I’m back to being a freak. Everything is cool, he remembered to help me turn on the air-con. I can’t feel his warmth on me but my hands smell like his cologne and hair gel. I search desprately through my memory for what happened when I got home. Did I finally kiss him, threading my fingers through his hair? Did he suck me off and that’s why my hands smell like his hair? Or did I pull it as I fucked him? Answer is mostly likely D none of the above and that’s a mixed bag. The scent’s not strong enough or anywhere else on my bed but it’s just enough and I respond hating that it feels good, hating that I can’t make this legitimate and I finish feeling both relieved and utterly pathetic. This fantasy, because in the cold hard light of day that’s all it will ever be, has it’s roots planted deep in me. It feels like an invasive species, destroying what is supposed to be my way of thinking. I can’t be this way. This too shall pass. It is right now, as I pull another tissue out, that I really hate him with a searing purity. I hate that he gets a baby and a wife, the norm. I hate that he gets approval and that he doesn’t have to deal with this jealousy, this wanting.

If this fantasy’s vines rose any higher, my eyes would be green.

Chiagou- wrong, bad. The kanji are also the same as different.

Dame- A very strong “no” has the “it’s bad” connotation.

Aneki- Older brother

I saw these two younger men in suits standing together on a train. The train wasn’t really crowded but they still stood very close to each other. I couldn’t really say if one had feelings for the other but their closeness was interesting to me. I purposely stayed away from defining him as being gay, straight, or bi because he doesn’t really know himself in the story. Figuring out that part of yourself can be complicated esp. in a society that tends to treat being gay as a phase rather than a legitimate orientation or meets the revelation that one is not straight with violence and hatred (and the various degrees in between). Obveously being a Kinsey 3 and having straight privledge I don’t think I can really accurately put into words what someone like the person in my story would feel. I really hope it doesn’t offend anyone. If it does leave me a note and I’ll take it off.

Bus Stop

You’re back and legs ache this morning, like every morning. You run a hand through your hair, it’s thinning, another piece falls out. It’s a hairnet day. You wear it like a helmet, trying to protect what little hair you have left. But at least you can still get up today. You need to make the house ready in case your son visits on his way home from the bus center. He’s a good boy in spite of running away to Tokyo after a fight with your husband, long since departed. The house is feels empty and hot. You have your breakfast, okayu*, just like you used to make when he was sick. It’s about all you can really take now, a few of your teeth have just clear fallen out. In a way it’s like being a little girl again. You mutter to yourself as you work, thinking about what you need to do today. You’ve got to go to the store and buy more rice, always more rice. You can never have enough rice.

Then it’s your special time, the bus time. You’ll get on the bus and ride it over and over again until the end of the line. It’s the same routine everyday, you have the notes to remind yourself. Your son drives the bus all around the city and never makes you get off because you’re his mother and he loves you. You think he knows it’s you but is afraid to say it because he wants you to think he’s still sulking in Tokyo. He doesn’t want you to know that he was the first to break, a stubborn boy just like his father. I won’t tell him that I know it’s him. You think pleasantly to yourself as you try to will yourself to clean a little, who knows, today might be the day that he says to you “Okasan* let me help you carry your rice back home.” And you will make him tea just like you did when he was studying for high school exams and he will drink it and ask you to make all his favorite foods, miso soup with a few shiitake mushrooms, you’ll even make katsudon*, just the way he liked it. It was only a special treat then but for his homecoming nothing is too good. You look in the fridge and remind yourself that you only need to buy more rice today. Because you can never have too much rice. You collect your plastic bags and go to the store.

It’s a good grocery store with good prices. You buy white miso, panko*, fresh shiitake mushrooms; you won’t have time to soak dried ones and a decent cut of pork to make tonkatsu* out of. After collecting the last of the katsudon ingredients you pick up a small bag of rice. The bigger ones are too heavy for you and you won’t be able to make it to the bus stop. They store will insist on calling a taxi if you pick up a bigger bag. They don’t listen to you when they say your son, the bus driver will help you once you get on the bus. Why do young people always think they know best? Why do they always smile at you in a strange way? You pay cash like everyone else and load the bags until they feel like they might burst. They won’t. These plastics bags can last for weeks, they are good a sturdy, like you.

Kyoto is always hot in the summer, and humid. The humidity sticks to you, trying to make you stop. The benches for other bus stops seem to be calling you but you must be strong. If you sit down now you might not get up again; at least that’s what the cramping in your legs tell you. With the strength of mountains you move centimeter by centimeter to your son’s stop. You don’t sit on the bench because you know you will have difficulty getting up from it and then your son will have to come assist you and he will be so startled that he won’t come home with you today. If he knows you know he’ll flee back to Tokyo tonight.

His bus comes. You know it’s him. It’s mostly empty as this is the start of the line. Your house is closer to the second stop but it’s anything for a few more minutes on this line with him. You take the step up, none of the young people in headphones offer to help, as if you’d accept. You are not some decrepit old woman. You take a seat closest that’s up the first stair your right as you enter the bus. No one sits by you. They all look relived that you didn’t try to sit in the priority seats. What do college students need priority seats for?

At each stop the bus gets more crowded, people talking in different languages, but they all blend together. You can’t tell one from the other. You put your bags in the seat next to you. No one sits by you and no one can. You close your eyes and start to sleep. It’s a dreamless sleep punctuated by background noise of your son announcing the stops. Somewhere along the way you sleep deeper than you intended. There is a warm hand on your shoulder. You look up in your surprise to see it’s a bus driver…who is not your son.

It’s all clear for a moment. Your son would be sixty-one by now, retired or getting ready to. He’s never called or written, never came back from Tokyo. Your brain tries to wrap itself around this reality testing. You assure the bus driver that you don’t need an ambulance, you don’ t live far from here and will make it home ok. You get off the bus and stand for a bit, thrown into utter confusion about where you are and why you are there. You don/t even like katsudon, it’s too rich for your stomach to take.

Feeling even more exhausted you stare out at the cars passing on the busy street. Another bus comes, going back to your home. Your son is driving this bus and the relief you feel is immense. Ha, must have gotten on the wrong bus. You really are getting old, more forgetful. Of course he wouldn’t have been on that bus, how could he help you carry your rice home if he finished his route at this stop?

Beaming, you get on the bus and take a seat up the first stair to your right.

Okayu- soft rice, a dish usually given to sick or older people Okasan- mother

Katsudon- a deep fried pork cutlet and egg over rice

Panko- Japanese bread crumbs

Tonkatsu- a deep fried pork cutlet

On a bus in Kyoto there was a very disheveled woman sitting in the seat next to where I was standing. Sometimes she was sleeping sometimes she was mumbling to herself. She kept grocery bags in her seat even though the driver told everyone to move their stuff since the bus was utterly packed. I didn’t see where she got on or where she got off.

Isho ni asobi!

The world is big and hot and you are out in it. Even though it’s the late afternoon it’s still really hot. You see a few women walk by with umbrellas but it isn’t raining. Adults are really silly sometimes. You fluff your skirt a little and one or two of them say kawaii*. You do it again in encore and keep walking on, humming the doreaman* theme. It’s almost too hot for an adventure but the key word is almost. It’s never too hot for an adventure and even if it is you have enough money for some shaved ice which will make any adventure an adventure worth having. You bounce a bit more in your step in order to cool off a bit. You want to create your own wind. If you were melon pan chan* you could fly and that would be a bit like wind. You would like to fly.

If you flew you wouldn’t have to walk in these shoes which are really too big for you. They clonck on the concrete to announce your presence to everyone in the neighborhood. You could never be a spy with this noise. You’ll have to tell haha* that these are not good adventure shoes. You need shoes that fit but she says you grow to much and need shoes you can wear for a long time. Your new brother needs more shoes.

Watching mommy get fat was weird. You wonder how your brother got there and why he made mommy fat. She complained about it but ate a lot of weird things. She always made breakfast weird and it just didn’t taste the same. But now your brother is here with his loud crying and his tiny hands and his smelly diapers. You stopped needing diapers and that’s why you get to go on adventures and he has to stay at home. He just takes up space!!! So you go on adventures to get away from him and his space that he takes up. Stupid baby.

You don’t get what’s so great about a baby or why everyone fusses over every little thing he does. You can do more than giggle and poop and no one seems to care. You feel a bit funny but you can’t place what it is (and you won’t be able to place it until you’re older). You used to go on adventures with haha or daddy or maybe even sobo-chan if she came to visit. But now all anyone wants to do is play with the baby. You have to make your own adventures. NO one even said anything when you said “itekimasu” and left the house. They would have been so proud of you for coming up with that because you’ve never said it before. But no, the baby was crying and not saying anything so no one cared what you did. You stomp your feet louder at the thought of the stupid baby. Maybe one of those ladies with the umbrellas will come back and take you home with them. That would be nice. They’ll take you home and no one will notice until you’re a superhero saving the whole world and that stupid baby is just continuing on his way, being a stupid baby. Then your parents will say “Oh no! what have we done! We traded a super hero for that stupid baby.” And you’ll let them come play with you still as long as they promise to never make you go on adventures by yourself again.

It’s getting warmer now and every superhero needs their fuel. You go into the Conbini by yourself, like a big girl, and pick out an ice cream. Your haha always gives you enough for an ice cream cup and you save it until you’re on your way home from kindergarden with mommy. But she does it less and less. You walk home with friends now that the stupid baby’s at home. Apparently it’s too hot to take it for walks. But other mothers bring their babies to pick up your classmates. Your parents baby must be especially stupid. But the ice cream tastes good and in that moment all is forgiven. It’s coolness and sweetness spreads down to your toes almost making you shiver. Your stomach still growls and you don’t have money for chips or yakitori. You thank the clerk who gives you a look you won’t understand until you’re working an arubaito in a Conbini and you see a small child buying ice cream like it actually has financial freedom.

For now you have to go back to the stupid baby. Every superhero needs it’s nemesis after all. And if your nemesis is a stupid baby, it’s even easy to win against it. So lets play together stupid baby, so that I can defeat you when I’m older.

Ishoni asobi- let’s play together! (a bit childish)

Haha- mother, my mother, mom

Sobo-chan- your grandma, kind of liked memaw (I’m from the south leave me alone)

Arubaito- part time job.

I saw this little girl through the window of the bus. She flounced past some women with parasols, her shoes were indeed too big for her. She looked full of determination. I couldn’t even get her to wave at me (my hobby is getting babies and small children to wave at me, I know it’s weird.) She was also out walking by herself which surprised me because she couldn’t be much older than a first or 2^nd year in elementary school (if I’m generous). I wondered where she was going and I hope she didn’t faint because it was REALLY hot.

Safe Adrenaline

Will this light never change? I’m sitting next to Tsubasa who’s chatting away about the modifications to his bike. But I’m not really listening. It’s too fucking hot in this suit in this weather to listen to anything. My hands tap my theighs. I want to go, to get the wind moving through my jacket. I’m biking away from where I should be but it’s good. More air here if that makes sense. I can’t wait for the light to change, to watch the city open up to me, every time like a new sexual experience. I’ve done it, biked into the heart of the city and watched the office buildings give way to inviting shopping districts which move to decimated parks and then to quiet neighborhoods, many times. I’m a biking cassanova. Oh man that’s a stupid thing to say. It sounds like something Tsubasa would say.

He’s still talking. He’s wearing cooler clothes. He looks like the kind of person people expect to see on a bike. He even works at a convience store. It’s odd that we’re still friends after all this time. If it wasn’t for bikes we probably wouldn’t have that much in common. But the prospect of living with Tsubasa is better than living at home with my mom. I highly doubt she’d let me keep a bike. Knowing her she’d probably drive me to work everyday.

Like us, our bikes are very different. Tsubasa’s bike is the kind of bike you get with a Conbini salary and a bookstore salary. He works two jobs to put gas in his bike and help with rent. I pay most of the rent. He’d have to sell the bike without me. I’m indespensible to him. It kind of makes up for the fact that I’m so easily replaceable at work. The light changes and I fight every urge to quickly accelerate and just leave Tsubasa in the dust. No, that wouldn’t be any fun and above all else it would be dangerous. Granted, riding a bike has a certain element of danger but in and of itself it isn’t too bad. Accelerating too quickly at the busy intersection of Hiroshima station around a curve of waiting taxis and streetcars, that’s bad dangerous. I like my adrenaline like I like my bike: safe.

It is a safe bike. I’ve put every instrument on it I could find. I know exactly how quickly I’m accelerating, the speed I’m currently going, everything. I’m even thinking of putting in a GPS but I don’t really use my bike to go anywhere but around the city. I can’t take my bike to work, no where to park. Some men in my office have affairs, I have my bike. I ride past the love hotels they seacret with my helmet down so they won’t know it’s be and my affair going past theirs. I’d like my bike to not be my dirty little secret. If I had my way, I’d take her to work (at least I think it’s a her. I haven’t really named her, but calling it “it” makes no sense). One of these days I’m going to take her on a holiday to Miyajima. I’ll bike all the way out to Miyajima port and we’ll ride to the beach and I’ll camp out. I’ll be away from the city, we’ll be free.

My string of green lights ends and I’m stopping again. I’m not free, not really. Even on her. She’s safe, the kind of bike I’m expected to have if I were a bike owner. I have intstraments that tell me everything. I’m even biking in a suit with a huge helmet. That’s why Tsubasa annoys me, even with his financial worries, he’s free. That’s why I sometimes contemplate moving out, then he’d have to worry. Then he would finally not feel safe in a way that scares him. He’d have to sell his bike, find a new apartment, a new life. But knowing him he wouldn’t really care about starting over. He’d live in a cardboard box as long as he had his bike. I hate that he gives himself so hole heartedly to things, including me. The trust he has, that I’m really his friend, that I’ll pay a little more of the rent, that I won’t just pick up my toys and go home, make me sad. He trust his bike, as rickety as it is and the bike gives him speed. I don’t trust anything, that’s why I have my instruments. That’s why I can’t take my bike on a romantic camping trip to Miyajima. I told a friend at work I felt free on my bike, that I liked the rush. I’m not free and my bike is not reckless. My bike, me, we’re safe with well regulated adrenaline pumping through us.

The city rolls back her shoulders and lets us in. I get annoyed that Tsubasa goes first.

On the way back from the train station I saw a guy in a suit on a huge bike waiting next to my taxi. It looked like one of the bikes I’d seen driving the distance from Illinois to Kentucky. He and his friend, on a much smaller bike with less bells and whistles, seemed to race out to the center of the city. We parted ways when I went toward the bus center and they continued past. His friend looked like he was having more fun but to be fair, if I were in a three piece suit in the summer heat, I’d be pretty uncomfortable too.

If I can't hear the music

I had a concert today. It wasn’t anything to write home about, just a basic sonata they give to all the second year students for your first sonata. You don’t have to be particularly talented to play it. I mean, you have to be talented to play piano but it’s no more talent than you exhibited in high school. It’s even earily similar to the piece I played to get into this music school.

I’m a stealth music student in my suit and tie. No one on this train can probably even guess that I’m a budding pianist who has absolutely no aspiration to join a company like my thusly attired fellow riders. No, mine is a greater fate. I’ll become famous, a big success, playing collaborative concerts with people who I really consider my peers. I don’t feel like I’m peers with the people in my music school. I get annoyed; it feels like they’re only in it as a hobby. Many of them have this defeated look in their eyes. Music school is their last chance to enjoy their extracurricular activity before the buckle down, get an 8-12 job at some faceless company. Up on their high office buildings they’ll only head copiers, staplers, and faked aisatsu*. They won’t hear the music.

No, music is not all around you or in you. Banging on a trash can in what kind of sounds like a beat for a song isn’t music. I hate this ubran symphony Stomp crap. It’s noise but it’s not music. At least I think so and I think my peers who don’t know me yet will agree with me. My “friends” call me a snob, asking why I won’t open myself up to new experiences with music. Why should I? Music is something that inspires, that moves me to do something higher. It transports me onto a stage with adoring fans, away from this sardine train. Sardine Train…that sounds like a title my little sister would like. But she’s a high school student and it’s a well known fact that high school girls have no taste in music.

After all, she sings her own songs, making up some poppy ditty about her hair ribbon that she sings in her ear bleeding voice. She asked me to write a song once but that’s not my place. I am not a composer; I am not a conductor; anymore than I am a high school girl. I song I could try and clumsily bang out on the piano, sometimes banging my head on the precious keys in frustration would be no more music than the earlier mentioned office building. If I’m trying to make my own music, I can’t hear what the music is telling me.

And besides, since when is it wrong to be a snob? How is only listeing to the greats of the piano world any different than the woman next to me who insists on wearing one brand from one store. How is demanding that my music actually be music any different than demanding a Coach bag? Double standards make me mad. This train makes me mad because it’s loud. It means I have to turn my headphones up which could damage my hearing. I’d rather be dead than deaf. If I couldn’t hear music, well, let’s just say life would become less than suitable.

Time to focus on the piano. I close my eyes and listen to the music, my hands moving across the keys ina fluid bounce up and down the scales. My concert, only containing a few of my “friends”, my mother, and none of my peers, plays back. I shouldn’t play piano on the train, I shouldn’t push down the invisible pedals but I can hear it. They can’t hear it but to be quite frank, they’re a bigger audience than I just had. Someday when I’m playing sold out venues in Europe they’ll think back on the man playing piano on the train and they’ll wonder why they must pay so much to hear the music I play.

But for now, only I hear the music.

Aisatsu- greetings, pleasantries, VERY important in Japan.

There was a man on the train who was wearing a suit and glasses but carried a beaten brown bag. He reluctantly sat next to me and halfway through the train ride I noticed that he was moving his feet and hands like he was playing piano. I wasn’t on the train long but it looked like he would have given a good concert. He also looked extremely put off by everything (probably being on a train in August and having the only seat be next to someone you don’t want to sit by probably didn’t help. Seriously people, I don’t bite and I shower!!)

Ronin Test Warrior

He stared at the scoreboard; it was really all he could do at that point. A mild panic seized him, his blood turning cold. He looks again at his number and again at the board. Maybe there is a mistake. Maybe he just misread his number. He’s sure his name has to be up there, it just has to be. He searches again, feeling more defeated than anything else. It’s his third time looking and he’s now certain that he will not find his name.

He doesn’t really have the words for what he feels, in Japanese or in English because at that moment he doesn’t feel like any word is the right word. He sighs and walks away, trying to keep his head high, to hide his shame. No one in the crowd has to know that he didn’t get in, if he just keeps up the front for a little longer people will think he’s just passed the test. He forces his smile which seemed to come easy before now. Around him are the joyful noises of people whose prayers were to pass this test were answered. Each sound only strengthens his resolve to smile, to look happy so that they will think that he is like them and not like the other half of the crowd, some crying, and some staring blankly into space.

What is he going to tell his family? What is he going to do next? Get a job at a company? No, those tests have already passed. Get a job at a store? No, he’d be bored. He always had a sense that he wanted college, that it’s something he would be good at. A part of it is his desire; a part of it is being pushed by his family. No matter what they call it, temporary employee, non-contracted employee, student devoting his time to study, he would still be the same meaning “ronin”. The word sticks in his throat, the bus he’s on suddenly becomes too small. His face burns a little with shame but his tan makes it difficult for others to see; easier for him to hide his shame.

No one is home when he returns; his mother is probably at the store. He goes to his room and throws his bag against the wall. He kicks his tennis racket and clinches his fists but nothing seems to get rid of that looming mixed feeling. He can’t stand it, the combination of self-pity, of self-loathing, of himself. The voices of his teachers, who had begrudgingly put their faith in him to pass the test, bounced off the walls in a scolding symphony.

Defeated, exhausted, seppuku ready, he flops down on his bed and picks up a comic, attempting to distract himself. It’s a boy’s adventure manga, a samurai story. Ronin, a retainer without a lord. He feels his world shrinking. He feels alone, as if he is the only one who failed the test. He knows he isn’t that there were many students crying or simply lowering their heads in disgrace. At one point, before the Edo period, being a ronin was not such a disgrace, you could move freely from lord to lord. But in the Edo period, like today, you want to be a part of the kumi*, the group. You don’t want to be masterless. He stops for a moment and thinks about the hero of his comic. An honorable ronin who wears the term proudly because in a way, it is also freedom. He can now fully devote himself to the tests, a juku* junky. He is not a ronin whose lord has been killed and therefore must end his life. Rather, he is a ronin who is searching for his lord. Now that he has no other battles to fight he can fully devote him to finding his lord.

And this time, he will not fail to find him.

I was discussing tests with a coworker who told me about how he spent a year as a rounin, a person who fails an entrance exam but then takes the year off to study and saw a very sad but determined boy on the bus. They kind of combined into this story.

Ronin-as stated, a samurai without a lord. In modern Japan it also means a student who has failed entrance exams and will spend the next year studying.

Kumi- a group retainers, also used for classes in Japanese high schools (though when attached to a name like 1-A it is pronounced gumi)

Juku- cram school.

The Killing Time Shuffle

Turn the music on, turn it up loud. If it’s not up loud enough to damage your hearing you can’t hear it over the noise of the train. The familiar clicking and clacking of the Kabe line. There’s never a seat on this stupid train at this time of day. Bored, bored out of your mind. Or at least that’s the affect. If you look like a bored, dangerous youth no one will bother you. It’s loud outside, and inside your head so you turn the music up. The train comes and again, the familiar anti-sexual press of bodies into the train car. Like always, there’s no seat for you. Grab a handle and just hold on. It’s funny to see the women in high heels that toddle and fall as if they aren’t used to their legs. The next song clicks on and it’s not one you want to hear. Shuffle through your Shuffle to find the right song but even when you find it, it’s still not what you want to hear. It’s still not the right song. Suddenly your music collection seems very small. Next to you are a few other denizens of the Kabe line, most wearing headphones or pouring themselves into manga. It’s just another way to kill time in that way that most of your day is killing time. You’re killing 4 years worth of time at Daigaku* that you’ve killed countless hours from birth trying to get into. And here you are, riding the Kabe line, pissed as hell that you can’t sleep on public transit because some parasite single* in a bank uniform just HAS to sit down.

Again the music switches, shuffling the randomness but again it’s not a song you want to hear. What’s the point of a shuffle setting if it never chooses anything worth listening to? The train lurches and keeps going, the only people getting off at the first stop are the people who were standing, still no place to sit. There’s an itch to move, to tap your feet, drum your fingers, anything really. The music has a steady beat that moves into you, twisting your muscles making you want to dance.

Dancing on a train, ridiculous. The most you do is turn towards the woman next to you who hangs, like you do, from the ring. She’s wearing tennis shoes, practical, your age. Maybe even your school. She’s listening to music too, probably tuning out the world just like you. Slowly you twist a little, ever so slightly. She isn’t looking at you but at her MP3 player. You go back to looking at yours, you don’t care, it’s a train. Trains, the ultimate cock-block. And you don’t speak; you just sneak glances at her from the corner of your eye.

But she notices and turns to you. It’s like there is no one else in the train. Her body cheated out to you and you see the punky clothes she wears, who knew hanging could be sexier than clinging?

It happens in a moment, she’s pushed you down on an empty seat and climbed on top of you kissing you and it feels so good and your head phones are turned up so loud you can’t hear her breathing or the gasps of the other passengers and you really don’t care that you’re on a train the place you hate the most and really this won’t lead to anything just killing time between stops but and she kind of looks like you so it’s a bit like making out with yourself that would make a good song oh what a way to kill time and you hope she doesn’t stop.

The train stops, second stop, Mitake. The girl and a few others get off. Still no seat for you. You really did just fantasize about making out with a random chick on the train. You see her leave, she doesn’t look back and you go back to not caring. At least it passed another 10 minutes.

Why is the music never right?

I was on a train to Mitake and happened to grab one of the last seats. In front of me I saw a punkish looking boy who was constantly flipping through his i-pod shuffle (at least I think it was a shuffle). The only time he looked up was when a girl dressed in a similar fashion with similar mannerisms. As soon as she got off the train he curled himself back in and went back to ignoring the world. But for a moment he turned to her and seemed to vaguely interact with h is surroundings.

Daigaku- university, the kanji literally mean Big School.

Parasite Single- women in Japan who are older who don't marry and live with their parents while working.

Cuddle umbrella

He's so forgetful! It's a good thing I remembered my umbrella because he didn't remember his. But it's okay because at least we have one and it's not plastic like all those other people walking past. They have no style, or they're forgetful.

We walk down the Hondori out of the rain again. They sky is dark, but it's always dark during the rainy season. It's not hot, like it should be in July. I'm glad I have this day off with him. We look very smart together. He's only a little bit taller than me. I worry that I'm too tall for a girl and that no one else will want me. I slouch a little, something I'm used to.

But I'm not on the Hondori next to my forgetful boyfriend. I'm standing with my classmates at the closing ceremony before winter vacation. It's freezing in the gym and my uniform doesn't have pockets to keep a heating pack in. My mother wanted me to wear one under my coat but if Risa were to see me wearing a heating pack like an old woman she'd never let me hear the end of it. I'm looking over my classmates, a head taller than some. My legs feel weak, awkward under me. I close my eyes for a moment, trying to will myself to be shorter. I picture myself shrinking down, slowly getting lower to the ground. Everyone turns to look at me, smiles on their faces. They are so proud, so happy for me to be on their level at last. The girls in my class who sometimes crack jokes about my height all smile and the boys in my class all get nervous around me, but it's a good kind of nervous. I've become kawaii* at last, a daisy instead of a sunflower. There's a tap on my shoulder and the only real thought in my head is how sad I am that I'm still a sunflower. That the girls will still crack jokes about my height and that the boys are only nervous around me because I'm freakishly the same height as them.

"Let's go to Parco." He says pulling my hand a little. Has he been talking this whole time and I've zoned out? Great, then I'll be the un-kawaii tall girl who ignores her boyfriend. At least I have one good feature; I always remember my umbrella. To get to Parco we must walk through the downpour, past the Starbucks where all the people looking in the window will no doubt think me an oddity, though many of them will never say it out loud.

But in a moment of fierce pride in my one shining positive quality, I wrap my arm around him and darw him in close to me under my umbrella. To those who will stare, this looks odd. I should at least give them the illusion that he is the one who remembers the umbrella. But if I am also without an umbrella, what am I? I'm just an un-kawaii sunflower who forces her long suffering boyfriend to shelter her. But he is nervous around me in a good way so I will wrap my arms around him and make sure he stays dry.


This was inspired by a couple I saw on the hondori. Usually when a couple is huddled under an umbrella the man is pulling the woman under the umbrella. This was the first time in Japan I'd seen a woman holding the man under the umbrella. They were about the same height, the woman looking a bit taller in her heels. This first attempt's a bit clunky, still trying to find the tone.

Welcome

The lives of other people fascinate me. What fascinates me even more is the possible lives of complete strangers. A person on a bus, a new coworker, even the person behind me in traffic. I can't help but wonder what a person's life has been like up to the point they see me or even more interestingly what their life is like after I've seen them. While I doubt my presence actually makes a difference in the lives of people who I have no to minimal interaction with, it's nice to wonder. Sometimes their lives turn into fantasy, a salary man superhero a la Hiro Nakamura. Sometimes they're mundane lives and I put imaginary thoughts in thier heads as they go about daily activities. Anyway, this blog is intended to be a collection of what the created lives of people I see. I'm not a writer, I have no special training so please, take it all with a large shaker of salt.