Entire books have been written about Japanese-English. Some of it is bizarre, some of it is almost logical in a non-linear, Japanese sort of way, and a few instances are even poetic. I met an American fellow once whose greatest treasure was a small antique tea box. On the back, in English, was a list of the benefits to be gained from a cup. The list was as follows:
The Advantage of Tea
(A) on auxiliary the memory of writingses-say
(B) in increasing the prevailness of poetry
(C) For lossing the fret of mind
(D) By Assisting the discourse of gentility.
(E) With refreshing the spirit of heart
(F) On Digesting the prevention of stomach
(G) To growing the sperm of body
(H) In exempting the sadness of lone,
(I) For Driving the evilness of lone
Naturally, I immediately tried to buy the tea box from the American, but he wouldn’t relent, no matter how much yen I waved in his face. It was a beautiful box as well, decorated in dragons and faded gold kanji and elaborate patterns. It still had the faint scent of tea. And who among us, in drinking a cup of Japanese tea, has not felt an increase in the prevailness of poetry? Or the prevention of stomach? And who, in turn, has not sensed the sadness of lone being exempted?
8
I WALKED and walked and walked, trying to escape Niigata City and failing. It was a muggy, cinderblock-and-concrete sort of day, the type that seems to move at half speed and double humidity. The morning traffic began suddenly, coming around the corner like the start of the Indy 500. But fortunately a small pickup truck plucked me out of harm’s way just a moment before the traffic engulfed me. “Thanks,” I said. The driver yawned at me.
He was a very tired, very frazzled, very fatigued-looking fisherman who kept threatening to fall asleep at the wheel as we drove out of the city. His head bobbed slowly down, his chin sagging toward his chest, and then, with a startled jerk, he was upright, gripping the steering wheel with excessive force and peering intently at the road ahead. So, as you can imagine, I talked a lot during the ride. “Boy, that Niigata! Some city, eh?!” Fisherman: “Hm? Oh, yeah, ’s great.” Then his eyelids would start to droop and my voice would become even more desperately cheerful. “How about those fish! I bet you catch a lot of fish! Tell me about the fish!”
He dropped me outside the city limits on drab, colourless plains beside the banks of the Agano, a river so thick and silty brown, you could have floated coins on it.
On hearing a lone buzz building up behind me, I turned to see a car approaching, drifting erratically across the centre line. I held out my thumb and the car slowed down to inspect me. Inside were two scruffy-looking young men. They laughed at me and returned my thumbs-up gesture as they passed. I spun around, livid, and I was about to give them a farewell, up-yours, arm salute when I saw the car skid to a stop and then lurch into reverse. It came swinging wildly back toward me, and I had to leap into the ditch to avoid it.
“Fuck you!” said the passenger, leaning over the driver and shouting down at me. “Fuck you fuck you fuck you.”
I said nothing. What could I say? I stood there looking at their grinning faces until finally, in Japanese, the driver said, “So, where are you going?”
“North.”
“So are we!” he shouted, giddy over such a strange congruence of events. Here I was, walking on the same side of the street as them, and we were both going in the same direction. Amazing.
“Get in!” they shouted. “Welcome, welcome. Fuck!”
They were harmless. A pair of disheveled construction workers, baggy-eyed and baggy-trousered, who had been out on a bender and were only now going home. Their eyes were bleary and red from their self-inflicted sleep-deprivation, and their breath reeked of late nights and seedy bars. “We haven’t been to bed yet,” the driver announced proudly. “Here! Have a beer.” The sun was barely up.
The driver, who couldn’t have been more than nineteen, was named Shintaro Kobayashi, though his friends called him Koba-chan. He had a thin smudge of hair on his upper lip that, in the right light, might have been mistaken for a moustache, and fine, almost petite features. His cohort and passenger was Hisao Hasegawa. Hisao—the one who kept saying “fuck you”—was in his mid-twenties and definitely the drunker of the two. He had heavier features and thick, waved hair. Hisao was Koba-chan’s foreman, and he was wearing those split-toed rubber boots, still common in Japan, which give the workers such a medieval air.
Koba-chan drove without a seat belt, with his leg up on the seat and a can of beer in one hand and the steering wheel in the other.
They had spent their night bar-hopping and had ended up at an inn where beautiful young girls (or old battle-axe matrons—who could tell when you were having so much fun?) had plied them with drinks and sexual innuendoes. What began as a rowdy work-crew celebration had eventually whittled down to just the two of them. “Japanese hostess,” said Hisao in sudden English. “Number one the world, sexy good! Oh, yeah!”
The boys had made a night of it, but though there may have been some good-natured groping (often as not, it was the hostesses who groped the customers), there had been no assignations. I could tell this because they were both so rumpled and smelly. In Japan, brothels are known as “soaplands,” and the specialty is a complete lathering up, followed by a naked body wash. If a husband comes home smelling fresh and clean and well washed, his wife will launch into an attack. But if he comes home reeking of cheap perfume and cigarettes, she will relax, secure in the knowledge that any fun he had was innocent. I knew a Japanese man who was addicted to soaplands in Fukuoka, and before running home he would splash whiskey over his face and furiously puff on cigarettes and then blow smoke over his clothes.
At some point during the night, Hisao had fallen into a leaden sleep and Koba-chan had been unable to rouse him. With the dawn, the hostess had relieved them of the burdensome weight of all that yen bulking up their wallets and had then unceremoniously dumped them on the front step—literally rolling Hisao out the door. Koba-chan, it was decided, was the less intoxicated, so he was now driving Hisao home to his waiting girlfriend. It was actually Hisao’s car we were travelling in. For all their slovenly attire and unwashed charm, the car was spotless and tidy.
We soon came into their hometown of Toyosaka. “Bye-bye America!” said Hisao in way of farewell. They stopped at a convenience store and loaded me up with snacks and drinks. I was just about to depart when, with a gallant flourish, Hisao decided that they would take me out of the city and onto open highway. And once we were rolling down the highway, he decided that what I really wanted to see was the construction site where he and Koba-chan were currently working. The site turned out to be a sprawling four-storey home on the edge of a rice field. The building was just a skeleton of two-by-fours, but the heavy roof was already in place (Japanese carpenters work from the top down). They pulled off the road, pointed proudly at the company logo on the large scrap containers parked out front, and insisted I climb the scaffolding with them.
The scaffolding was a rickety structure of bamboo and planks lashed together without nails, which only added to the medieval atmosphere as Hisao and Koba-chan scaled it in their baggy pants and cotton shirts, folded and tied like yukatas. Hisao’s cloven-toed work boots heightened the effect. Koba-chan, meanwhile, was wearing pink plastic slippers (taken from one of last night’s serving girls, by accident apparently). The slippers were several sizes too small but, even with these impediments, Koba-chan managed to scamper out across the building’s frame, four stories high. He was surprisingly nimble, with only a beer and a cigarette to balance him and pink plastic slippers to supply a grip. He stood out there, teetering in the air, while I stood on the scaffolding—well, clung to it, really.
“You ever get scared?” I shouted.
“Nah.” (He was young and not yet aware of his own tenuous mortality.) “Why don’t you come out?” he said, waving for me to join him on the narr
ow rafters. I declined. He persisted.
Hisao declined as well. “Too drunk to stand,” he said. “Might fall.” The air was blowing through and around the building’s frames, carrying with it the smell of wood shavings and dust. I looked down to the foundation and imagined myself splatting against the cement like a bug against a windshield. Then, because I am a male and very stupid, I decided to join Koba-chan on the crossbeams. I walked out, high-wire fashion, and posed, hands on hips, as I scanned the construction site. There was nothing between me and a drop of certain death except air and attitude. “Very good,” I said. “Very good.” But my voice was wavering and my knees started to buckle, so I retreated to the scaffolding, feeling exhilarated, manly, and foolish (not an uncommon combination of emotions).
“Anybody ever fall?” I asked, once we were back on solid ground.
“Once,” said Koba-chan. “On another site. My first week on the job. I saw a man slip and fall. Did you know,” he asked with genuine fascination, “that the human body—it bounces.” Then, mustering all of the bravado inherent in being nineteen, he said, “We can’t fear death!”
Hisao, feeling chastised by this, said glumly, “I had too much to drink. I could have fallen.”
It was sad, really, that the most sensible person there was also the drunkest.
—
When I told Koba-chan and Hisao that I was following the cherry blossoms across Japan, they didn’t call me sissy boy and give me a wedgie or a headlock noogie. “Cherry blossoms,” they said. “Good idea.” These two ruffians, these two hard-drinking, girl-chasing, rowdy boys, took my quest for flowers very seriously.
“The cherry blossoms have been late this year,” said Koba-chan with a solemn nod. Hisao concurred. “It has been terrible. We haven’t gone cherry blossom viewing even once.”
So they decided to find me some sakura. There had to be a tree somewhere that had started to bloom. They took me first to the castle grounds of Shibata, the next city down the road, but there were no flowers there, not even a hint of pink, so instead, following a wild tip from Hisao, Koba-chan drove farther inland, into the hills, to a temple that Hisao remembered from his youth. “My dad used to bring us here.”
And sure enough, there in the temple yard was a spindly tree adorned with flowers. Koba-chan and Hisao stood beside it, proudly, and urged me to capture the moment on film. They were so pleased with themselves that I didn’t have the heart to say no. I snapped several slides of them clowning around and clambering about the tree, until finally I had to say something.
I cleared my throat. “Ah, guys? That’s actually a plum tree.”
They stopped cold in mid-clamber. “Can’t be,” they said. But it was. A lady of the temple came out, all smiles and politeness, to ask us to stop molesting her tree. Her plum tree. Plums bloom earlier than sakura in the first scrub days of spring and, although the two sometimes overlap, this was definitely not a cherry tree.
“Well,” said Hisao, turning to the lady of the temple and clearly miffed at having his bubble popped. “Where are the sakura, then?” It was as though she were personally at fault for the fact that the Cherry Blossom Front was so late this year.
She said, “Sometimes the sakura arrive sooner in the higher mountains than they do here.”
This didn’t make much sense to me, but it was all the encouragement that Koba-chan and Hisao needed. Off we went, farther and farther from their original destination. What had once been a short drive home for them had now turned into a crusade. We were on a mission.
“Don’t worry,” said Hisao. “We’ll find them.”
It was a long drive, over an hour. But we sang songs and our conversation ranged over a wide variety of topics: (a) drinking, (b) women, and (c) drinking with women, the latter topic being met with special enthusiasm. The beer kept coming and by the time the sun reached its noontime zenith, I was pickled.
High above the plains, the landscape became more alpine. Forests hemmed us in. The highway narrowed and we began ascending the mountainside in a series of long zigs and sudden zags, as though following a staircase to the top of the world. My ears popped, then plugged, then popped again. The air became cold and thin.
“Are you sure there will be sakura way up here?”
“Of course!” shouted Hisao.
“Maybe,” said Koba-chan.
A Shinto shrine overlooked the entire vista. Heady on the thinned atmosphere and invigorated on beer and clean air, we scaled the steps to the main building. Sure enough, there was a cherry tree out front.
It had a faint hint of blossoms, the tiniest touch of pink. This was insufferably coy for a bunch of he-men like us, so Koba-chan pulled a bud from the branch and pried it open. Inside was a delicate tuft of flower, no bigger than a pea. “Sakura!” they called out in triumph, and we all stood around to marvel at the beauty.
Flushed with victory, Hisao decided—and Koba-chan agreed—that the only thing for us to do now was to go to a hot spring and drink a lot of beer and have a long soak and find some pretty maids to dally with. All for one and one for all!
“There is a hot spring, farther along this mountain pass. Hot springs are great for hangovers,” said Hisao, forgetting that I wasn’t the one who had been drinking all night.
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
But Koba-chan soured the mood by saying, “Shouldn’t you call Akiko first and ask if it’s okay?” Akiko, I deduced, was Hisao’s girlfriend.
“Ask?” sputtered Hisao. “Ask? I don’t ask, I tell!” Then, slipping again into his limited store of English, he said, “I am Japanese man! Japanese man is strong!”
We drove into the riverside village of Kurokawa and pulled over so that Hisao could use the phone.
“I’m gonna tell her I won’t be back till late,” he said, emphasizing the word tell. “Japanese man! Very strong!”
The phone call took longer than we expected. From the car, we could see Hisao gesticulating like an Italian mime, and when he hadn’t hung up after ten minutes, we got out to stretch our legs. Koba-chan lit a cigarette and sat on the hood.
Hisao returned looking sheepish. “I’m sorry,” he said, unable to look me in the eye. “We have to leave you here. I have to go home.”
What about Japanese man number one? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t. Hisao’s pride had suffered enough, and it was all Koba-chan could do not to start laughing.
“But—” Hisao said, brightening suddenly. “We’ll help you get a ride, won’t we, Koba-chan?”
“Yes, yes,” said Koba-chan. “We’ll help.”
“Really, you don’t have to.”
But they took up hitchhiking as enthusiastically as they had cherry blossoms. They “helped” me by trying to flag down traffic. They waved their thumbs in the air and jumped around, laughing, shouting, and leaping up on each other’s backs. They even lunged into oncoming traffic, thumbs out, causing vehicles to swerve.
“Really, guys,” I said. “You don’t have to help.”
“Oh, no, we don’t mind, do we, Koba-chan?”
“Actually,” I said, growing nervous as ride after ride disappeared, many gaping with shocked expressions as they passed, “Japanese drivers stop for foreigners, but they rarely stop for other Japanese. You see—”
Hisao tut-tutted my objections. They were having a great time annoying traffic. Their antics became sillier and sillier, but still no one stopped. Eventually the novelty wore off, and Hisao said with disgust, “I apologize. Japanese people are very bad.”
Koba-chan agreed. “This is awful. They should help a foreigner like you who is visiting our area.”
“Well,” I said, “we tried. You can go now. Don’t worry about me, I’m sure I’ll—”
“But no one is stopping,” said Hisao almost plaintively. “What will you do?” He glanced at his watch, thoughts of Akiko flashing panic across his face.
“Why don’t I give you my number,” said Koba-chan. “And later this evening, if you still haven’t gott
en a ride, call me and I’ll come fetch you.”
“Yes!” said Hisao. This was clearly a face-saving device, as well as a chance to plan a second night’s revelry. “Call us and we’ll take you drinking!”
Koba-chan wrote out his number and Hisao gave me a spine-rattling thump on the back. “We’ll drink!” he said. “We’ll see girls! I am Japanese man! Fuck you!”
I grasped Hisao’s hand warmly in my own. “Fuck you, too,” I said. It was a touching moment.
Within five minutes of their having left, I caught a ride.
9
ACCORDING TO THE MAP I was following, Atsumi was (technically) a town, but it felt more like a village, what with the ramshackle homes and rickety piers and fishing shacks crowded in along the water’s edge. Off the coast, shimmering in a cold haze, was Awajima, an island completely shrouded in seagulls. Waves rolled in from a pewter-grey sea, bringing with them the smell of salt water and the cries of reeling birds.