Tune in Tokio

recharge, who are convinced that living for a few solid years in a country that is completely devoid of Big Gulps and commercials for Plavix might just allow us to find ourselves; there are the nerds who have been obsessed with Japan since childhood and refuse to leave the country until they can properly read a daily newspaper (these are the ones who end up in Kyoto and will be there until they die); there are the artists, writers, photographers, musicians, and/or actors (not to mention architects, entrepreneurs, and other professionals) who for one reason or another have found their niche in Tokyo and feed off it for creative inspiration; there are the folks who use Tokyo as their base so they can travel easily to other parts of Asia; then there are the guys like my former roommate Sean whose number-one priority and sole reason for being in the country is to screw Japanese girls. But no matter what brought and keeps us here, we all have one thing in common, and that is that the moment we walk out of our doors and into the Japanese world outside, we are different, special, and interesting without even trying. Even if we are the most retarded people to ever emerge from our hometowns, here in Japan, where 99.9 percent of the people are Japanese, we are mysterious and exotic. And in my case, unnecessarily tall.

I saw my first GaijinMan when I was living in Fujisawa and almost stopped dead in my tracks. He had oily black hair parted on the side and combed over. He had a face speckled with acne. He had patches of beard scattered here and there. He had a briefcase with papers sticking out of it. Most amazing of all, he had an impeccably dressed, porcelain-skinned, drop-dead gorgeous Japanese girl on his arm. And she was smiling and intermittently leaning her head down on his shoulder as they walked.

“What the-” I said, doing a double take as I passed them on the street. I was deeply troubled, wondering if the earth was still round and pigs still unable to fly.

But I eventually came to grips with the fact that GaijinMan, though not nearly as prevalent, is as much a part of contemporary Tokyo as giant television screens, mangled English signs that say things like “Happy Merry Christmas Day,” and cell phones that double as stereos, personal computers, porn interfaces, and best friends.

Almost every straight white guy I know has a stunning Japanese girlfriend. Every guy. Whether he looks like Steve McQueen or Steve Buscemi. These are guys who would be resoundingly dateless back home, guys who go to Star Trek conventions, guys who talk through their noses and use the word “prototypical” in everyday conversations.

Yes, sometimes it seems like obtaining a Japanese girlfriend here is about as difficult as catching a cold. If you stay out long enough, you’re bound to get one. Now, this is not meant to disparage Japanese girls. I love them. They are beautiful creatures and are surely the most sublimely and ridiculously dressed girls on the planet. They must have their reasons for accepting dates from all these Barney Rubbles. But what’s really going on here? Is there that much of a discrepancy between Japanese and Western concepts of good-looking? The answer is an emphatic maybe. I ask my roommate Akiko, who has a thing for black guys, what she thinks of some of the beautiful women walking around with unattractive Western men one day when we are sitting outside a kissaten (coffee shop) in Koenji. As if conjured by my very words, an absolute doll-baby of a young woman with flowers in her hair approaches holding the hand of a short white guy wearing orange shorts and Birkenstocks with socks and sporting an impressive potbelly. And a Mickey Mouse watch.

“Like them,” I say, pointing to them with my big nose.

“Oh, she not so pretty, I think,” Akiko replies.

“Nu-uh! Are you serious? She’s beautiful!”

“Mmm, not so beautiful. A little cute. Looks a little stupid.”

“OK, but still, look at the guy she’s with, Akiko! Look at him! Isn’t it amazing how brazenly unattractive he is?”

“What means brazenly?”

“Umm, like, you know, openly.”

She looks back at him as they pass, adopts the expression of a disapproving aunt, and says, “Yeah, he need shower. Or, how do you say…makeover.”

Though she does admit that the guy is far from a twenty-four-hour sex bomb, I am surprised she doesn’t feel the imbalance of the match as deeply as I do.

“She rebellious, I think,” Akiko says upon further consideration. “Maybe want to make her parents anger.”

I can see the confrontation with her mother right now. She sits at her vanity applying lipstick when her mother rushes in pleading, “Chieko, darling, why you date ugly white man?! He wear tuxedo T-shirt!”

“Shush, Mother,” Chieko hisses as she applies another flower to her hair. “He take me nice restaurant! We go hot spring this weekend!”

Then the doorbell rings and it’s her still-unshowered date, standing at the door in a jacket, tie, and jean shorts. Mother answers the door, takes one look at his flip-flops, and jumps out the window.

Rebellion or not, whenever I see an Asian babe with one of these schmucks, I want to take her by the hand, pull her to the side of the street, thump her on the forehead, and say, “Look, maybe you don’t realize this, but this guy is a former president, vice president, and treasurer of his high school geometry team, and I think they still have weekly meetings!!”

The sensitive nerd in me at first wanted to congratulate these guys on their great luck. After all, I’m sure many of them have never been properly laid and, hey, everyone deserves a little hot loving. But my initial good wishes are turning to nerve-prickling dread and massive irritation the more I have to deal with the GaijinMen at Lane.

Yes, we have several of our very own GaijinMen haunting the classrooms, the hallways, and the teachers’ room with their puffed-up egos and idiotic hairstyles. The other day I was walking through the lobby of the school, where lots of students gather between classes to chat with each other and with teachers passing through. The Lane G- Men love sitting out in the lobby during their lunch hour or whenever they have a free moment because it affords them the opportunity to chat with the lovely girlies who gather around any available teacher just bursting with questions about English.

I hear GaijinMan Brody explaining the word freaking to a girl and her friend who are confused by its use in the sentence, “This is freaking ridiculous!” which they heard one of the teachers saying as he stormed out of their classroom earlier that day.

Brody is a mama’s boy from Vermont who probably needs help buying train tickets, putting his glasses on the right way, and eating steak. And he should definitely never be encouraged to explain anything because, as cutting off someone’s head customarily leads to torrential blood flow from the neck, asking Brody a question about anything, however small and insignificant, invariably leads to a flood of unnecessary sentences, tangents, biblical references, and literary allusions that are impossible to stem. And you, the unfortunate captive audience, must ride it out until you can back out of the room far enough to make a quick getaway when he blinks.

“Well, it has several different meanings, really,” the professor explains with a confident smile. “It comes from the word freak, which means a strange or abnormal person. Freaking is usually used as an adjective. Often we use it as a slangy alternative to the terms really or very when we are describing something.” He folds his arms and smiles, pleased with himself. He’s only just begun.

“Desclibing,” one of the girls, Ai, says with a quizzical look, probably having understood about 20 percent of what he’d just said. “What means desclibing?”

“Well,” he replies, clearing his throat, “for example, if I were describing, say, you ladies, I would say, ‘You are really smart and beautiful.’” Then he winks. Oh my God, he winks.

Ai smiles, giggles, and covers her mouth with her hand so as not to offend Sensei Brody with the unseemly sight of the inside of her mouth. Takako, her friend, nods vaguely.

“Or,” Casanova continues, “I might say, ‘That’s a very pretty dress you are wearing, Takako.’”

Takako smiles faintly, betraying a hint of annoyance. She isn’t buying it. She knows where it’s at. (Note to self: befriend Takako.) But Ai is swallowing Brody’s manipulative, flimsy charm hook, line, and sinker.

“Ah, sank you,” Ai says for an unimpressed Takako.

“You’re very freaking welcome,” Brody says with a cheesy grin.

The conversation continues, but I can’t bear any more, so I duck into the teachers’ room where I see Rachel and Josephine sitting at the table grading papers.

“I’ll give you one guess as to what Brody’s doing in the lobby,” I say.

“Talking nothing but crap?” Rachel offers.

“Slinging a bunch of bollocks?” Josephine rebounds.

They are both right.