|
It threatened to become oppressively hot this month, but then a typhoon
came and gave Nihon-jin, Gai-jin and Gann-jin alike a temporary reprieve.
The following is a rough collection of rougher notes I hammered out the
last few months, usually at odd hours of the night.
A letter from a concerned mother:
Dear, David.
I wonder if you are in Japan. Or you may be enjoying your vacation at
somewhere in Japan.
May I ask a favor of you?
My daughter , Y is studying English to study music in college in USA next
year.
I think she will ask you about helping her study later, but before that, we
have something to ask you.
One of my friend , who stayed in USA with her family for a while, told me
that living alone especially a girl is too dangerous. I said to her that
my daughter is going to live in dormitory in college. She says it will be
more dangerous. Because most of student use drug and it will be impossible
to keep away from experiencing drug.
If she was Y's mother, she would ask dependable friend and his /her
family.
We didn't care which state Y should choose. But if it is necessary to ask
reliable someone for taking care, I think we can ask my husband's friend
who lives in Albany .
Could you give us some advice ? If you send e-mail, please write to " Y
".
Sincerely
X-san
*****************************
Two weeks ago I was walking around Niigata with Mark Frank getting a little
drunk on the street about 11:30. We're standing on a brightly lit neon
district and this huge bald ogre about 55 to 60 walks out of a mizu-shokai
(bar) and tries to get on his ten-speed. First of all, ten-speeds are a
rare sight over here. You almost never see them--just the industrial
bikes, or mountain bikes which have only been becoming popular in the last
few years. Anyway this enormous drunk (who looks like The Thing or Joe
from Resevoir Dogs replete with rolls of fat running up the back of his
neck and skull) standing on the sidewalk hoists one tree trunk of a leg
over the bike and sits down on the saddle--we almost expect to see the
frame buckle under him. Then he tries to get his right foot onto the pedal
for about 30 long seconds. Finally, it connects and he's off! But only
for about 5 seconds before he veers of to the left and falls not into but
ONTO a long row of industrial bikes parked along the street. As he lands
face-up across three of the bikes there's an extended crashing sound as
rest of the row goes down. He lays there for a moment. A street hustler
runs over to help him but he rufuses the assist, makes it to his feet like
a fallen redwood righting itself, then for a finale, picks the bike up by
the handlebars and the rear stay and waves it wildly overhead, laughing
boisterously. The hustler backs off...
I'm getting hungry. I wish Setsuko would call. I left a message with her
that I wanted to go to the "crazy yaki-tori-ya" she likes. Yaki-tori yaki
means cooked over fire and tori means bird usually chicken. Yaki-tori
sticks of grilled bird served on a stick. Ya means place of business. For
example hon-ya means bookstore and Izekai-ya means bar and grill. The ya
she likes refused me service when I went there alone, one man and two women
standing in the doorway, arms crossed into Xs and saying "dame" which in
this context means "Hit the road foreign scum, we don't want your kind
stinking up our nice zenophobic establishment. Later they apologized when
she took me there herself, but it's too late; the damage is done. Ah well,
I guess everyone needs someone to look down on. Now, when the waitresses
see me on my bicycle they always wave hello. I smile, wave, and reply
"Konnichiwa, (hello) I'm going to burn your restaurant down before I leave
Isesaki!" They reply, HAI DOMO (yes, thank you very much). One of the
waitresses is actually out of her mind and sometimes I see her walking down
the street talking to herself. Last week I saw her at the train crossing,
laughing hysterically. I saw at the near the train station early this
morning, but slipped around her unnoticed; several hours later, however,
she spotted me and tried to shake my hand about thirty times. The poor
unfortunate almost made me miss my train.
There's a store in Isesaki called Dog of the Bay. You run into all manner
of funny phonetic mistakes for business names here. Of course there was
the Wooden Nickel restaurant in Springfield, and I never could figure that
one. It's like naming your clothing store the Rip Off. Well, the Wooden
Nickel went down the drain and a dance club called Water Works moved in.
Here, "entertainment clubs" where sad and lonely men pay alot of money to
have a conversation with a woman are called Mizu Shobai (literally, "water
business"). There's a knick-knack store called Blue Moon, that presumably
sells rarities, but upon looking in through the window I saw only normal
household items. Another place called Knock on Wood. Wonder what they
would sell there. In Kiryu city several days ago I did a double take when
I passed a clothing store called "Penny Rain." The Arizona Sandwich shop
too. I steer clear of there though; anything with an American name is
usually ex-pen-sive an un-in-ter-est-ing. What would I do with a SANDWICH
anyway? It has been so long since I ate one of those, I'm not sure if I'd
remember how A toy store with a teddy bear in a box, on which is written
in colorful letters, "Someday I will send you a beautiful picture." What's
a bear going to take a picture of? And why would it need to send a
picture. Where's it going. I don't want to buy a bear that's just going
to run off. Loyalty is a very important trait in Teddy Bears. Teenagers
running around in t-shirts with the number 69 printed on the front. I
recently read Murakami Ryu's 69. Junior High school students with BITCH
notebooks. Recently, a feminist organization criticized the manafacterer,
specifially in reference to a rather distasteful t-shirt involving a
handgun and the outline of two figures one male and one female. The
feminists tried to point out that maybe this wasn't a very nice attitude to
instill in the mind of the Japanese youth, but this advance thinking didn't
get very far. (I found a BITCH lighter in the parking lot outside a
karaoke bar one night, but the fluid was "all used up, just like my ability
to walk in a straight line that night as I recall. I do a unusual version
of the Carpenters' "Superstar," Sonic Youth style, slow, subdued and
mournful.)
|
|
