I looked the machines over searching for a company name or phone number. I wanted to jot it down in my notebook and maybe take a serious look into the business of it. I found a metal plate with information on it, all written in kanji and completely incomprehensible to me.
I pushed off. But I knew I’d be back. I planned to hold on to the idea. As I moved, my mind kept coming up with estimates on how much each machine cost, how much it cost to stock it, and guesses about how many people flowed through this Shinjuku area day and night, night and day.
In this city of lights, every single store was lit up with bright colors that popped. It was impossible to overlook those brilliant reds blaring, some blinking, some neon. There were hot pinks and electric blues and blinding yellow-gold lights as well. On the building tops were gigantic television screens flashing advertisements, the product changing every few seconds. There were people hired to hand out cards and flyers and tissue packs with ads plastered across the backside. There were dancing girls in go-go shorts and leather boots singing jingles to draw in customers. The lights were not in just one section. They went on as far as my eyes could see in every direction.
I was passing by late-night bookstores. Imagine that, a place where readers could chill and read no matter the time of night. These bookstores were packed, not empty like Marty Bookbinder’s. And in the slow walk I was on, it seemed that there were as many bookstores in Shinjuku as the hood had liquor stores and churches.
The streets were lined with vendors manning food carts. They had raised umbrellas and hung lanterns and brought in stools seated close to the ground, they also sat on upside-down crates. There were small portable tables with stacks of chopsticks and sauces in glasses placed on each one. I couldn’t tell you what food they were serving. I looked but I didn’t recognize it. The main thing was, businesswise, people were eating it up eagerly. Several couples were seated side by side enjoying. I wondered if these carts were considered licensed and legal, or if at a certain moment they would have to break it all down and pack it up and start hauling and running like in New York, where random vendors live a dog’s life and get got for their products by crooked cops who steal their merchandise from them and still hand them a high-priced ticket for a “city code violation.” But I didn’t see nobody running and I didn’t see no cops! Everyone was working or walking calmly, serving customers or minding their business and keeping it moving. I respected that.
I thought it was an oversized arcade, but it wasn’t. It was a spot called “Pachinko.” It took me about three and half minutes to figure out this was their gambling spot. Strange hustle, I thought. There were about three hundred fifty men sitting in front of individual machines that looked like pinball machines, with a bucket filled with tiny silver balls. They kept feeding the machines with the balls in hopes of a jackpot. But it looked like they never reached the jackpot. A lot of these men appeared to be businessmen who hadn’t been home from work since they’d left probably early this morning. Still wearing their suits, they had their briefcases and one or two bags of groceries sitting beside them. There was nothing between them and that pachinko machine except tobacco clouds, as they smoked more and more with each try for fast money.
Rows and rows of restaurants were squeezed into tight spaces. I laughed at joints that were legit “eat in” spots, so small that they only had three tables and six chairs. I tried to do the math on how many guests they had to turn all day to make their money back with only a six-person capacity. Some small spots had no tables but had instead one long counter for their customers to eat on and six stools. Their customers all ate facing the wall, not too cool for families and couples, I figured.
The architecture and craftsmanship of each of these shops was dope, though. And each one has its own style. Some were made all from glass. I could stand outside and see everything that was going on inside. I could see the cooks, who were mostly males wearing either white chef jackets or long chef aprons, their pants wide and baggy but cinched by a drawstring at the waist and ankles. Most of them covered their heads with white hand towels wrapped half like a turban and half like how some Brooklyn cats rock it in the summer or after a game. I could watch them chopping vegetables, grilling fish, and boiling pots of water and stirring soups with a paddle ’cause the iron kettles were so wide and deep. Right next door would be a restaurant made only of wood, no glass. I could not read the kanji signs that identified who they were and what they were selling, but when the doors slid open, I could see the crowd seated elbow to elbow and could tell whatever it was, it was in high demand. Noodle shops were easy to recognize. They were packed with mostly men, each of them seeming not to be with the other, all their backs bent over and faces close to their bowls.
On the streets of northern Sudan, where I’m from, many men moved with men and their sons or their fathers. So a place where men and women moved in separate packs, at separate times, to separate places, was not unfamiliar to me.
It didn’t take long for me to note that in many cases, I stood taller than the front door of these establishments. The seats were so close together and people so uniformly slim that I thought I might be too broad and muscular to fit into their shoulder-to-shoulder seating pattern. This made me feel bigger than life and dominant, like this character named Gulliver whose story I once read.
I was a foreigner watching each of them and all of their things and ways so closely, yet not one of them was watching me. I felt like a black leopard in the chicken coop or even out in the wetlands where the gazelles gathered, while I was camouflaged by the night. Not that I was on the prowl or the attack, but I was definitely capable of being provoked.
* * *
Before I rounded the bend to the side alley where the hostel was supposed to be located, I saw one half-wooden, half-glass shop on the corner, where there was a full pig’s leg with the black hoof still attached, hoisted and mounted on the same counter where the customers sat eating. The cook stood on the opposite side of the counter and carved slices of the pork and placed it in boxed plates for the customer to eat. It got me more alert. I always know, as a Muslim, I have to be mindful of any eating place because of the difference between what we are forbidden to eat and what others accept. I knew the international symbol for halal restaurants and stores. Tomorrow at sunset, when my first day of fasting came to a close, and during the time leading up to sunset, I would be looking out for that symbol before sitting down to eat anything. I had already walked almost two miles and I had not seen one halal shop so far.
A narrow alley, completely different from the wide main street that I walked down, led me to my Shinjuku hostel. There were no noises in the alley. It was lit with dimmer light and colors and very peaceful. It was completely clean, no garbage anywhere, no piss in the corners or even globs of gum mashed into the ground. There were no tossed or empty bottles or cigarette butts. There was no dog shit or dogs, there were no mounds of mucous or spit on the curb.
There was a cool breeze, like there often is in the warm spring when the sun has been down for hours. I stood still for some seconds, let the breeze move over me and the silence soothe me. I took a deep breath, thinking this is how Tokyo feels after being here for less than one hour. It was an unfamiliar feeling from my seven years in America. The Japanese were conducting business or being served. There was not one menacing glare. There was not one man who exuded a threat. I had not seen one cop or even thought about my guns. Maybe when I woke up tomorrow, it would all change. But for now, I was feeling alright.
* * *
In my temporary room, the heavy and attractive door slid open from right to left. It was well built and perfectly on track. I inspected it carefully. I didn’t know if it was because my Southern Sudanese grandfather was a craftsman, who worked with wood and made and built all types of things, that I always paid attention to the quality and craftsmanship of everything. I just knew that it was something I did.
As soon as I shut the door behind me, I noticed and then confirmed that it act
ually had no lock on it. It was not that the door was damaged or broken. It simply was not designed with a lock on either side.
A quick walk back down the hallway, I asked about the lock. The same security guard who had let me in and performed a deep bow to greet me when I first arrived, explained in a series of mostly gestures that the front door to the hostel was locked and secure. The only way for anyone to enter was with the electronic key, the same kind he had given me after I paid for a two-night stay. Or I could be buzzed in, but he assured me that he was in full control of the buzzer and that there was twenty-four hour security. Therefore, there was no reason for the individual guest room doors to be locked.
The Sudan in me observed his humanity and understood his manner and believed in the honor system. The Brooklyn in me did not, could, would not, refused. Back inside the room, I put my duffel bag up on my bed. I unpacked only the items I would need for one night. Even though the two-night fee I had already paid was nonrefundable, I decided I would be up and out of here in the morning with my mind set on finding a better spot to chill while I carried out my plans to link back up with Akemi.
I don’t exactly know what kind of impact being transported from empire to empire has on the human body. But I do know that it does have an impact. To snatch my energy back and regain my focus, I pushed the bed all the way into the corner. I moved the desk all the way over and slid the chair underneath. With a wide-enough space now, I did 200 push-ups, 250 sit-ups, and 150 deep knee bends. I sparred an imaginary rival and I didn’t let up until I defeated him. When I did, I collapsed onto the hard floor, dragged myself to the wall, and sat with my back pressed against it, my knees bent below me and my body balanced on my toes. I would remain this way until I thought everything through.
With my injured shoulder tightening up some more and eighteen minutes into thought, I concluded that when the girl Iwa Ikeda heard the airport announcement that came over the loudspeaker in Japanese, she realized that I was somewhere in Japan. Maybe she even deciphered that I was calling from Narita Airport. For some reason, she was willing to help me and Akemi in the beginning, at least to connect over the telephone. I figured that was easy for her as long as I was seven thousand miles away, but not in person. She must’ve never expected me to come here. My arrival had shocked her, surprised her, or maybe disappointed her. She was like the others. She had underestimated me.
More troubling to me was that I never got to find out if my wife was actually there at Iwa Ikeda’s house waiting to talk with me when I called, like I had requested her to be in my previous voice mail that I left days ago. Did this girl Iwa only need to turn around and hand Akemi the phone, but instead had smiled at her and said, “It’s nobody. It was the wrong number”? If Akemi was there waiting, could the girl have pretended that I never kept my word and called?
Or maybe she never gave her my initial message in the first place. And who was this Iwa anyway and how close a friendship did she and Akemi share? How good a friend could she be if she knew Akemi’s true heart and still sabotaged her?
The voice in the human mind that purposely tries to argue in the opposite direction of life and love suggested that maybe Akemi was at fault somewhere in all of this. Maybe she wanted my call but not my visit. But I shut that voice down. The devil is a liar.
Under a dim lamp, I pulled out those three addresses once more. One was in Ginza, which was close by and a prefecture of Tokyo, and the other in Roppongi Hills, which was also part of Tokyo, and the last one was three hours away in Kyoto. I needed to solidify my strategy. Should I attempt to meet and talk with her father first, as Umma suggested, and anticipate that he would allow me to see Akemi afterward? Or should I seek Akemi out face to face first and then confront her father soon after?
Chiasa said that all schools were closed in Japan for Golden Week. This meant that the school address that I had in Kyoto wouldn’t work at this moment. I needed to check with Chiasa and find out exactly when the schools reopened. For now, the other two Tokyo addresses were my only option. I just had to be careful not to do anything that gave Akemi’s father the upper hand. After all, he wanted to steal her away from me permanently, didn’t he?
After dealing with my study cards, flipping, reciting, and memorizing, I wanted to go back outside to explore the Tokyo night. Easily, I could get over to Ginza and peep and feel out the place where the address was located. Was it Nakamura’s house, their Tokyo apartment, or his office? But I couldn’t leave my luggage in an unlocked room. I wouldn’t gamble with my Tims, Clarks, Laurens, or my gear, compounded by the value of my Umma’s gifts and the items that belonged to my wife.
I took out the book that Sensei had given to me concerning Akemi’s father. Sensei was right, I needed real information on this guy to know what I was up against. “Know thy enemy,” Sun Tzu had written in his book The Art of War, which Sensei required me to read when I was twelve years young. It took me some time, a lot of thought and vocabulary word checking in the Webster’s Dictionary, but I read it.
So I cracked open the old but well-kept pages of Never Surrender, the softcover book, a biography written about my wife’s father.
FOREWORD
Born on August 9, 1945, the same day that America dropped a two-ton bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, three days after America dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, Naoko Nakamura is said to have revenge embedded in his soul. He never got the chance to meet his father, an ammunitions mogul who was evaporated by the American bomb, the grand finale to an unprecedented bombing campaign that made most of Japan a heap of toxic ashes scattered around impromptu graveyards. Instantly his father’s body liquefied. After it evaporated, only his teeth remained to identify him and confirm his death.
Hisashi Nakamura’s teeth were discovered more than a year after the atomic blast. They were lodged in the cement of a Nagasaki sidewalk, much like the prints of dinosaurs and other ancient creatures that have been excavated from rocks. He did leave a will, however, in which Naoko Nakamura, his only son, was bequeathed several hundred acres of prime property in various locations throughout Japan. Naoko Nakamura, according to the will, was to receive deed to the properties on his twentieth birthday, at which time he would become their legal owner.
During his early years, Naoko Nakamura was an erudite student obsessed with military history, military training, political science, and strategies of amassing power. As the majority of Japanese were rebuilding and busy actively forging friendships with America, as well as social and cultural exchanges and partnerships, Naoko Nakamura was patiently plotting and planning his own financial and political wealth and quietly ensuring his influence.
Known for being inflexible, calculating, and cold in both his business and personal dealings, Naoko Nakamura parted ways and severed ties even with his own mother. Enraged that Hana Nakamura, while he was still a child, had sold off prime portions of his father’s properties to the American government, which then used the properties to erect and expand American military bases in Japan, Naoko at age twenty grabbed what remained of his inheritance and discontinued his communication with her, even becoming estranged from his two stepbrothers born of her second marriage.
Within a year, Naoko Nakamura was rumored to have formed a secret and financial alliance with Yakuza boss Omote Tora, wherein Naoko laundered hundreds of millions of yen for the gangster. These illicit revenues formed the foundation of Naoko Nakamura’s wealth. It also won Naoko pivotal friendships and solid connections because of his ability to access, appropriate, lend, and borrow huge sums of capital. Naoko Nakamura and Omote Tora both deny that any secret alliance existed between them, yet Naoko benefited from the rumor of being aligned with “major muscle.” They have never been seen or photographed together in any public or private setting.
By 1970, when he was twenty-five, Naoko Nakamura’s company, the Pan Asian Corporation, was poised to take over several key lucrative Asian markets where Americans had dominated in the past. Using a brand of “Asian solidarit
y” that his critics considered a false cover and a method of increasing his own wealth, Naoko grabbed the ghost of the past to forge forward and dominate.
When I finished reading the Foreword, I had circled six words: excavated, bequeathed, erudite, estranged, laundered, and illicit. Immediately I looked them up and wrote them down in my pocket notebook after committing their meaning to my memory. As I sat thinking, there was one major point in the book that stood out in my mind: “He never got the chance to meet his father.” I thought to myself that this one fact could easily make any boy half a man. As I tried to imagine never having met my own father, I couldn’t. I couldn’t erase the deep love or powerful lessons that came to me directly from my father in person. I tried to subtract the parts of me that came from my father, but nothing was left over. As I tried to push myself to imagine it, my thoughts simply exploded and I didn’t want to know. Maybe if I had not ever met my father, I’d just be crazy like those Brooklyn boys in my American hood.
“Inflexible, calculating, and cold …” the author had described Nakamura. I didn’t need to write that down. I would remember that description for as long as he would remember that atomic bomb.
Heavy-minded, I lay down with my back purposely pressed against my luggage. If there were an intruder here at Shinjuku Uchi bent on robbery, he would have to be clever enough to get past me as I slept and behind me to remove my fifty-pound duffel bag without me waking. Impossible, I assured myself. When I lay down, something in my duffel was poking me. I got up and grabbed the bag and un-hooked the top. When I looked in and felt around, I could tell it was Akemi’s five-inch heels that were digging into my back. I snatched them out and also removed her hardback diary. I placed the shoes on my desktop, stood them side by side. I lay her diary down at first. Then I picked it back up, flipping through the first few pages.