Authors: S. Michael Choi
"Oh don't invite Julian, he's such a weirdo!"
Soren is on his cell phone.
"What?"
A pause.
"Oh it's his film that came out?"
Pause.
"Well I guess he has to be there then."
I sit at the kitchen counter, suppressing a grin and nursing a Fuzzy Navel.
After his call ends, Soren comes over.
"Isn't there some way to have a party for somebody but not actually invite them?"
"Yeah, I definitely think so.
Especially if it's like a birthday party, then you know, you can like bring out a cake, and instead of the person blowing out the candles, everyone can just do it."
"Say, there's an idea!"
Soren considers for a moment.
"Seriously though, what else do you know about what's going on?
I'd really like to keep a mile away from Julian, he's gone all weird from living here too long."
"Well, there's this new guy at work, Brad, and I promised to show him around.
He said he knew some people visiting and I can find out what's up."
"He cool?"
"
California
surfer.
Lemme make a call."
"OK."
So, I make the call.
We are, however, disappointed.
Half-a-dozen text messages and voice calls streaming across the great Kanto plain later, it's clear there's already too much momentum forming for at least starting off with the indie filmmaker's night out with his artsy friends.
We could try to get something else started in Shibuya maybe, playing on the seeds of an existing trio looking to get more time in J-pop sugarhigh central, but clearly the best choice is to at least start off the evening at Lush, and then we see what happens from there.
"Oh well, at least I can stay in Roppongi tonight,“ says Soren, looking at the bright side of things. "Oh wait, dry cleaning."
Soren looks over at Chairman Mao.
"Ahhh!
It's gonna close.
Ritchie, do me a favor?"
He's already racing out the door.
"Wha?"
"I gotta go pick up my dry cleaning, so go meet Ayako in front of Almond's?
You guys all go over to Lush together, and I'll meet you guys there." Almond's coffeeshop is on the way.
Arriving at the intersection, I spot Ayako immediately.
As stated, she's tall and extraordinarily beautiful, and when she looks and smiles, my knees weaken just for a moment: it's like the sun shining.
But I don't betray it.
I smile back, and raise my hand in casual greeting.
"Yo, Ayako!"
"Hey Ritchie.
My friends coming fifu-teen minutes."
"No problem.
So how are things with you?"
"Great.
Have we decided what we going to do yet?"
"Well, it looks like there's some filmmaker who just released a film and people want to go to his thing first, but then after that, I think it's pretty open."
"Cool. I like movie!"
Ayako's friends show up almost immediately thereafter.
While cute, they don't quite eclipse the shining supernova that is Ayako Ishibashi, J-girl goddess.
One might suspect they are almost chosen by Ayako to frame and complement her looks, two retainers who don't outshine the queen.
But, perhaps as a consequence of being more down to earth, they are friendly and cool and speak decent English, and in half Japanese, half-English, we muddle through some cheerful small-talk as we walk over to Lush and people already streaming in, the indie black-clad artsy people who already have a table, and some group of somebody's friends also arriving as we arrive just as my cell phone buzzes to announce an incoming text.
"WHERE U AT?"
It's Brad.
"COME ON OVER," I text back.
"LUSH ON ROPPONGI-DORI."
The August heat hangs heavy on the street, and tonight, girls in kimono and sunglasses clop down the sidewalk in their wooden sandals, geta, giving a cultural edge to the general street sleaze that prevails.
I sit back and order a gin and tonic and the girls get frozen margaritas.
From the next table over: "Are you hunting tonight?"
"The predator always hunts."
Laughter.
Hands waving at arriving friends.
"So I worry about Soren these days," comments Ayako, perhaps a trifle wistfully.
"Oh yeah?"
"Like he get in car accident, maybe living too much stress in life, it's not good."
"I'm sure it's just a phase.
City life is kinda intense, I guess."
"Somebody needs to take care Soren.
Somebody who really cares him."
"I think you're a great influence."
My words, however, don't seem to have any impact.
Ayako continues to look a wistful, and she toys with the umbrella in her tropical drink.
Our attention is then drawn to the artsy table, with the arrival of the night's man of the hour, the filmmaker Julian Hara.
"Hey Julian!"
"The maestro arrives!" "Welcome!"
The artsy types with their ironic 1950s glasses and hipster dress shirts welcome their friend with glad cries full of themselves and pleased.
"You wanna go and congratulate the filmmaker?"
I whisper over to Ayako.
"Okay." She says.
"Let's go after he settles down."
For the moment before we go over, I study this figure of local fame and my impressions are less than completely favorable.
Julian's thin as a reed, with a sort of neurotic look to his appearance and sallow skin.
He is the epitome of that unsuccessful adoption of Japanese thin-boy fashions.
Everything in terms of the torso is dead on—completely stylized Japanese UNIQLO sleek, but there's something weird about the way his black-curly haired head is perched on the whole deal, an out-of-place, nerdy, sallow speckled complexion off-putting lego-head on top of a thin torso that's otherwise pure Roppongi hipster.
It's almost as if he can't quite shake off the person he really is, that the head is the real Julian, still Canadian geek, resisting the fashion evolution brought about by exposure to
Japan
(girlfriend?) to the point of an up-to-date wardrobe so that the body is neat hipster. Wiry black hair and ectomorph's build: the art-school loser.
I think Julian gives a tiny flinch when he notices Ayako and me walking over to him.
(Or is it that everyone
inside at Lush, actually, gives a little but real, detectable reaction when I walk in with J-goddess in tow…)
"So, Julian, congratulations on the release of your film.
I'll have to get a copy from you."
"Um, thank you.
Um, it's underlying aesthetic truth to e-e-essential entropy of um, things, vision of p-p-post-apocalyptic
Tokyo
, um, being in now, s-s-subterranean truths."
I look for a second at the film-maker with the strangely nerdy head spouting off.
"Uh, okay.
Well, sounds like I can't miss it then."
Ayako beams at the nervous Julian.
"I'll definitely check it out."
"Um, thank you."
And there's a moment of awkwardness and then that's that.
Brad, my new colleague, arrives next.
Unfortunately, he's going to turn out to be one of those people who can't stand the country for some reason and will return home to
California
within three months, but tonight, he outdoes himself.
He shows up with his promised friends and they turn out to be three hot girls and this backpacking girl from
Australia
he picked up off the street about five hours ago.
We all pull up chairs around our table and start chattering away, as our waitress brings another round of iced drinks, wet with condensation from the summer heat.
Brad's backpacking friend: "Hey, so everyone just has to wear a uniform while they're in school?"
"Yeah, it's just the way it is in this country."
"But it's Saturday."
"Yeah, but they think it's stylish and flattering so they wear it even on weekends.
And some schools still have Saturday morning sessions."
"No way, that's far out.
This country is weird!"
It is easy to get caught up in the excitement of a new arrival and of course, our own time in-country is at this point measured in months.
The conversation can be truly endless: all the spectacle and all the phenomena and all the theories, and the impact of the mass media telling us What Japan Is in all those convulated ways everyone has, those theories that everyone starts making up when nine months living abroad turns you into some sort of Japan expert.
Without even realizing it, an hour or two passes into the evening when I go to the bathroom and I notice that Soren's arrived in a fresh new shirt just pressed from the cleaners.
"So there I was with the little aspiring actress girl and we were both getting pretty drunk, and then Miki, remember Miki?"
His audience eases in closer to hear the story.
"Miki had always liked me, but then she started licking me on my other cheek, and I was like, okay."
We smile.
"Then all of a sudden, Takashi-he hadn't said a word all evening, he was just being grumpy, suddenly has this, like spasm, this freakout, and he says, 'Solen alleady habu girlfliend!
Solen alleady habu girlfriend!'
And he just looked exactly like this little angry Japanese general, this little Tojo getting all heated."
General laughter erupts.
"I couldn't control myself.
I laughed out my drink through my nose."
"That's Takashi.
He's our little white-trash Japanese."
"Aw shut up, you're Euro-trash French, Devra."
"That I am.
That I am."
"I hate Japanese men.
One time I was sitting there peacefully on the train and an old guy whipped out his penis and started masturbating in front of me."
A general cringe.
"If you ask around, every Western girl in her twenties who's been here at least three months, and I mean every single one, has been either groped or stalked or flashed by some Japanese perv at some point.
These people are freakin’ perverts."
I feel the need to intervene.
"Yeah, but it's the safest country in the world for women to walk around at night.
You can't say that about
New York
or
London
."
"You just don't understand.
It was disgusting.
I don't care if I can walk around at night if I'm not safe on the train in broad daylight."
"What did the other passengers do?" pipes in an girl.
"Nothing.
That's it!
They just pretended not to see what was going on."
The males present nod their sympathies.
There may, however, be the faintest of amused smiles flickering on their faces for the briefest of deniable moments.
"I think Japanese guys are all gay.
Or at least eighty percent.
Come on, how else do you explain those little handbags some of them carry?
The salon hair-does?"