The New Samurai

  “Wow! Look at this!” said Tara. “They’ve got pictures of all the different rooms we can choose. Oh my God! Look at that!”

  Sam was looking.

  She nudged him in the ribs and he remembered to close his mouth.

  “Well, it’s your birthday, which room do you want?”

  That was a leading question, one which Sam wasn’t sure how to answer. He examined the choices: a room decorated with Lolita-style anime characters, equipped with mirrored ceiling, rotating bed and a karaoke machine (?); a dungeon with some scary looking leather S&M gear (a big no); a room that looked like a seventies disco, complete with mirror ball and a John Travolta-style suit for an additional ¥1000 (again, no); a medieval manor with stuffed knight’s horse (he hoped it was stuffed); a spaceship with aliens watching from the alcoves (alien probes – a big turn off); something that looked like a Victorian dining room, with a maid’s outfit. He swallowed.

  “Er...”

  His eyes were drawn with increasing amazement to the ‘underwater’ room, where mermaids frolicked pornographically on a massive TV screen; and then to a room that attempted to resemble a traditional Japanese bedroom, except for the suit of samurai armour and large sword mounted on the wall.

  “Um...”

  “Oh, look,” she said, laughing, “we can book a ‘rest’ for two hours or a ‘stay’ which is overnight.” She looked at the expression on his face. “Oh, okay, overnight; that’s what I thought, too.”

  She looked at him again, obviously trying not to laugh at him. “So, which room do you want?”

  There was another room that was a wince-inducing candy-pink and yellow, and one that was almost completely silver. (No and no.)

  His eyes drifted back to the traditional Japanese room again. The armour looked interesting, but best of all it had an enormous spa bath, probably with enough room for several people, although he was only interested in one person joining him for a soak.

  “That one,” he said, pointing.

  Tara smiled but said nothing. Sam would have given a small fortune to know what she was thinking. He hoped he hadn’t embarrassed himself too much.

  Tara pushed a button next to the photograph and the light went out, showing that the room had been booked.

  Then she knocked on a tiny window and an anonymous hand took her outstretched wad of notes. They were given a key card, told to check out before 8am and that was it. No face, no names, no pack drill. And separate exits, should they be required later.

  They followed the sign to a tiny, two-person lift, which whisked them straight to their floor with no stops, and no opportunity for anyone else to get in or even to see them. Discretion was everything. It gave the evening a clandestine air that was both exciting and slightly intimidating.

  The corridor and door to their room were nondescript, like hotels the world over. Only a small sign in Kanji and English instructing them to remove their shoes before entering showed that they were still in Japan.

  Tara swiped the key card across the lock and the door swung open.

  Sam threw his bag into the room, grabbed Tara’s and flung it in after, listening to it land with a thud. He remembered too late that she probably had her laptop in the bag. Oh well.

  Then he swept her into his arms and carried her into the room, as she laughed happily, kicking the door closed behind them.

  “You’re such a romantic!” she said, teasingly.

  “Mmm,” he said, into her neck.

  The room was large by Japanese standards. The floor was hardwood with comfortable cushions scattered at strategic points. Painted screens decorated the room and it was only in passing that Sam realised the scenes depicted Geishas in varying stages of undress and engagement.

  The suit of samurai armour was propped disconsolately against one wall, as if humiliated to end its life in such a place.

  The room was also uncomfortably warm, making clothes something of an unnecessary accessory. Which was probably the point.

  Sam’s eyes were focused on the enormous futon bed in the centre of the room, arranged between artful wisps of fine net curtains hanging from the ceiling. Behind the bed, a complicated modern headboard looked like the command centre for Houston Mission Control.

  He’d get to that later: right now he was simply planning on making it as far as the bed. He almost threw Tara onto the futon then pulled his shirt over his head, too eager to bother with buttons. Tara laughed out loud but showed him anything a Brit could do, an Aussie could go one better.

  “How are you liking your birthday present so far?” she said, several hours later.

  “Definitely on my top ten list of best birthdays,” he said, smiling.

  “Only in the top ten?”

  “Okay, top five. Above three.”

  She smiled. “Okay, that sounds better. Shall we explore?”

  He looked at her. “As in, leave the bed?”

  She grinned. “Yeah, but not for long.”

  The bathroom was extraordinary, the tiled bath huge and surrounded with mock marble pillars, completed by underwater mood lighting and Jacuzzi jets. Large bottles of scented bubble bath were lined up along one wall.

  Another wall was covered with an enormous flat screen, silently playing some American soft porn movie.

  “I’m turning that off!” said Tara with a snort.

  It took a while to figure out how to operate the controls. But if the TV seemed complicated, the toilet should probably have come with a user manual. Sam figured it was a good thing he’d learned some kanji.

  “We’ve got to try out the bath,” said Tara. “I could swim a few laps in that!”

  She turned on the huge, geyser-like taps, and the water roared out, sending clouds of steam into the room.

  “Huh. I didn’t need to turn off the TV after all,” she said, “I can’t see it anyway now.”

  The bathroom also had a pair of dressing gowns, numerous towels, a hairdryer and a chemist shop’s worth of beauty products including shampoo, moisturiser, razors and sachets of perfumed hand wipes.

  “I wonder what this control does?” said Sam.

  He pressed a button and suddenly the TV blinked into life again, blaring out a karaoke version of a Japanese pop song.

  “You know, Paul would love this!” said Tara, throwing a sly look at Sam.

  “That’s something I meant to ask you about,” said Sam, ignoring the jibe. “How did you know about this place?”

  Tara grinned. “Helen told me about it. It’s where she and Malcolm stayed. She said they tried a different room every night.”

  “Oh,” said Sam. Too much information.

  Tara laughed at his expression.

  It turned out that the bed’s headboard was another way of operating the karaoke, as well as air-conditioning, heating and it contained a playlist of romantic songs. Another switch turned the bed into a giant massage machine which sounded fun but actually made Tara feel a bit queasy after a few minutes of experimentation.

  Finally, after pushing every other button in the room and finding out how the drinks dispenser worked, the bath was ready.

  “Mmm, this is the life,” sighed Tara, sinking neck deep into the foaming suds.

  “Do you want me to wash your back?” Sam offered chivalrously.

  “Yeah, to start with,” said Tara, smiling back up at him.

  He pressed his fingers into her soapy shoulders, massaging gently.

  The hotel didn’t have any windows so it was only the alarm on Sam’s watch that told him when it was morning.

  “Damn,” he groaned.

  He really didn’t feel like getting up. Apart from the fact that he hadn’t got much sleep, every muscle ached, and he felt like he’d been tackled by the entire English rugby squad.

  Tara didn’t look in much better shape, dark smudges under her eyes, her short hair standing on end.

  “Happy unbirthday,” she said, kissing him fiercely.

  He sighed. “No more birthday?”

&nbs
p; “Nope, back to reality.”

  “Oh well, it was a great birthday. Thanks, Tara. Definitely in the top two.”

  “Hmm,” she said, her eyes narrowing dangerously.

  Then she slapped him on the chest. “Get up you lazy galah! We’ve got precisely 20 minutes to get dressed and get to the subway.”

  “That’s long enough,” said Sam, grabbing her hand and pulling her back to the futon. And he still hadn’t tried on the samurai armour.

  Chapter 11 – October

  “Patterson-san?”

  Sam turned to see Ms Amori staring at him, a frown on her stiff face.

  He groaned inwardly: he must have found some new way to annoy her, unknowingly. She certainly hadn’t been happy when he’d turned up at school with a bruise on his cheek some months back, and he suspected she had been the one who had reported him to his employers at the language college, but he couldn’t guess what misdeed was on her current checklist.

  “Patterson-san: at the end of this month we take our senior students who are preparing for juken – college placement exams – on an educational visit to Nagasaki in Kyushu. The visit will comprise five days.”

  Sam had heard the students talking about the visit with enthusiasm, but had thought nothing more of it.

  “We visit the Peace Park, of course,” she continued, “the hypocentre, Dejima and attend an evening performance of the opera ‘Madam Butterfly’.”

  Sam nodded, hoping he looked vaguely intelligent instead of confused and educationally subnormal, which was what he usually felt when Ms Amori fixed him with her penetrating gaze.

  “The students have made an unusual request,” she said, her frown deepening. “They have requested that you accompany them as their homeroom tutor.” She paused. “We have not previously enjoyed the attendance of one of our overseas teachers to accompany this visit but... Tanaka-san feels that the view of a Westerner would add to the depth of the students’ experience.”

  From the look on her face, Ms Amori didn’t seem to think it possible that Sam’s presence could deepen anyone’s experience but, of course, she would never have considered contradicting her head teacher’s decision.

  “You will be available for this visit, Patterson-san.”

  Sam wasn’t sure if it was an order or a request; probably the former. And he wasn’t averse to seeing more of Japan, quite the opposite, especially as the school would be paying. But it meant being away from Tara for nearly a week, and with her plans to leave Japan at the end of the year, and his continuing uncertainty of where his future lay, the days seemed to be slipping away faster and faster. But he didn’t feel he could say ‘no’ to the request either.

  “I would be honoured, Amori-san,” he said, formally.

  Which wasn’t untrue either: he was pleased that his students had asked for him to be one of the supervisory teachers included on the trip. It really was an unusual honour.

  Ms Amori nodded stiffly and handed him a manila envelope and a heavy, hardback book.

  “You will find enclosed the itinerary and a short history of Nagasaki, which it is strongly recommended that you read and digest,” she said, curtly. “Good day, Patterson-san.”

  She nodded briefly and stalked off.

  The ‘short history’ weighed about ten pounds. Sam sighed: his free time had just got a lot less.

  “Lucky much!” said Tara when he told her about the trip that evening.

  He was sitting at his desk marking homework when she came in from her own classes.

  “You’re so lucky, Sam. Nobody else has been paid to go on holiday with their school!”

  He shrugged, smiling at her. “Yeah, it should be pretty easy – the kids are good. It’s not like doing a school trip back home.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Go on,” said Tara.

  “You mean apart from searching all the luggage to make sure none of them have packed alcohol; stopping them smoking; stopping them sneaking off to have underage sex; trying not to lose them when you’re out in public; trying to protect the public from them – yeah, this should be a piece of cake by comparison.”

  Tara laughed. “And I suppose you were such a good boy when you went on school trips?”

  “Of course!”

  “Liar!” she said, smacking him on the arm. “And you still haven’t told me the story about when you slept with your teacher!”

  He pulled her onto his knee and kissed her, starting at her throat and working his way upwards. It was an effective way of ending her questions. Her breath was warm on his cheek.

  After a moment she pulled away, reluctantly.

  “You’re changing the subject!”

  Sam smiled impishly and kissed her again.

  She pushed him away and leaned back, her eyes warm and excited.

  “Can you hold that thought?” she said, smiling. “I’ve got a ton of work to mark, too, and lessons to prepare for tomorrow. And you,” she held up the heavy book on Nagasaki, “have got a book to read.”

  He sighed, kissed her once more and released her. “Okay. Definitely holding that thought. You want me to go and get something for dinner?” he added.

  “Yeah, that would be good. But not noodles – I’m sick of noodles. A burger, maybe?”

  He pulled a face. The local burgers left something to be desired. He wondered what they really put in them. Horse meat?

  “What about tempura? We haven’t had that for a while.”

  “Okay. If you like.” She shrugged. “See you later. Now get reading!”

  “Tara,” he called after her. “I’m still holding that thought!”

  He heard her laughter as she strolled down the corridor.

  Sam’s Blog

  Hi all!

  This is the weekend that I became a monk and joined a monastery. okay, not quite, before Keith has an aneurism.

  We got the train out to Nikko, a town about 70 miles north of Tokyo. It’s famous for having been a training ground for Buddhist monks centuries ago and also houses the mausoleum of a warlord called Tokugawa Ieyesu, who died about 400 years ago. He was the first shogun and the man who really united the warring clans.

  I’ve never really got my head round the whole Shinto versus Buddhism thing, especially as lots of Japanese seem to follow both religions (!), so I asked Yoshi to explain.

  As far as I can make out from what he said (as this is a greatly edited version), Shinto is the religion of this life and is used for births, marriages, and festivals, with gods residing in the natural world. Buddhism is for the next life, so most funerals are Buddhist, and this religion stresses the impermanence of the natural world. Are you with me so far? Shinto is ‘the way of the gods’ and is the indigenous religion and seems to be tied up with a lot of folklore, local customs and rural rituals. Buddhism is the imported religion, but they seem combined in many ways and even share sacred places with shrines and temples built together. The gods are ‘kami’ and seem a lot like the Greek ones, needing offerings of food and money to appease them.

  Anyway, Nikko is a popular place for Tokyoites to go for the weekend and drive along the 15 miles of the famous cedar avenue, planted over 400 years ago (it’s the national tree of Japan), or wander through the wooded foothills. Luckily we were travelling slightly out of season so it wasn’t as busy as it can get. It’s also a lot colder than Tokyo because it’s much higher up. It wasn’t until later that we realised why this was going to be a big deal.

  Paul has two things to tick off his must-do-before-going-home list: take part in a tea ceremony and stay in a Buddhist monastery. Why a Roman Catholic from Brooklyn would have ‘become a Buddhist monk’ on his must-do list is a mystery: but he wasn’t saying and I didn’t ask. I guess we’ve managed to tick off the second one on his list now.

  Well, after a long but enjoyable day of shrine-hopping and just soaking up the atmosphere of these huge forests of cedar where the tombstones were covered in moss, we were ready for a rest. We’d booked into a temple that has
guest lodgings called a shokubu, with the most beautiful garden. A monk called Tani showed us around and invited us to join him in an outdoor meditation, which he called zazen.

  Yoshi and Helen were really getting into it and I have to say it was quite calming and easy to let the mind sort of wander off (no comments, please), but sitting still is so not Paul’s forte. He kept fidgeting, which was kind of annoying, but then his stomach started rumbling and that finished it for me. Paul and Tara started giggling so we just got up and walked away, leaving them to it. Helen gave us a bollocking later, saying we could have offended Yoshi. I hope we didn’t – he seemed pretty cool about it, but then again, I’ve never seen Yoshi lose his temper – I’m not sure he has one. Maybe it’s because he’s from the mountains and they’re just more chilled out up there.

  There were two other gaijin there who were staying on an extended vacation, studying meditation and calligraphy and other stuff, Sonia and Cliff from Pittsburgh. We all joined together for the evening meal (vegetarian, of course). The food was simple but pretty good (although Paul would have said there wasn’t enough of it, but I suppose abstinence is sort of the point). We had konyaku (which Yoshi translated as ‘devil’s tongue jelly’, which seemed deeply inappropriate, but he swore that’s what it was); yuba (tofu skin), as delicious as it sounds; and koyadofu (freeze dried tofu). After a night there I felt like a real carnivore and would have killed for a burger – even a horse-meat burger – which is probably why the monks need to do so much meditation.

  Then we were shown to our rooms – separate for men and women, of course. You should have seen Paul’s face, although I don’t know what he was expecting. There was one large room for the four of us (Yoshi, Paul, Cliff and me) with tatami mats on the floor, sliding doors made from rice paper and thin futons that were spread straight onto the floor. Apparently in the winter they offer guests gas heaters but there weren’t any when we were there and it was freezing! By 2 am I was cold enough to have shared a futon with Paul and Yoshi, if it weren’t for the fact that Paul’s teeth were chattering so loudly it kept everyone awake anyway.