She’s much taller than I would have thought (seven feet at least) and, I gotta say, I see a most beguiling, loveable evil in her small black eyes and li’l yellow nose. She smacks me in the face. Her open hand is sooooo soft. She smacks me again and again, alternating slaps with soft caresses of my face and, wow, honestly, it’s like being made love to by a giant feather pillow.
“Hello Kitty, I wanna be your dog!” No! No! Must…be…strong! Think of un-cute things: Evil clowns! The Cuban Missile Crisis! Ann Coulter being interviewed in a bikini on
I click my heels together three times, open my eyes, and Hello Kitty is gone. I discover I am in absolutely everyone’s way as they push and shove me aside to enter the station. I come back to myself, look around to make sure I’m no longer being followed, and step into the station.
On the Chuo Line train home, I keel over in my seat, my hands clutching plastic CD bags. I begin to sink into sleep, ready to dream of more exquisite abuse at the hands of Miss Kitty, when my sinking eyes catch a glimpse of a familiar English word on the T-shirt of a woman sitting opposite me.
She is an elderly woman, maybe sixty-five, with a stoic and inscrutable face, sleepy eyes, and a faraway gaze. She is dressed casually in high-water slacks and a Bermuda hat. Her T-shirt says “Bitch.” I swear to God.
She looks adorable.
11
I have recently come into possession of a videotape with very dark powers. This video could wreak unspeakable havoc if it fell into the wrong hands, which it did when I got it from Rachel the other night. We were sitting around on the floor of her small flat in Ogikubo desperately trying to get stoned off some really, really weak weed and talking about things we missed about our homeland.
“Pop-Tarts,” I sigh.
“Antiperspirant,” she coos.
“Squeeze cheese.”
“Jon Stewart.”
We look at each other wistfully and say, in unison, “Mexicans!”
“You know what?” Rachel starts, sheepishly. “I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I really miss
“Oh, Rachel,” I respond, shaking my head with profound disappointment.
I’ve always considered myself free of certain curious traits shared by a good number of my fellow Americans: a high tolerance threshold for precocious children in television commercials, sitcoms, and movies; the biological need to wear baseball hats; the tendency to order sandwiches bigger than one’s head-these kinds of things. And I know for a fact that the same would be true of the need to see people fighting tooth and nail, embarrassing themselves, putting their lives in danger, and offing each other one by one on prime time.
It’s not that the idea of people flung together on television to make each other’s lives miserable doesn’t appeal to me. Of course it does. I am human, after all. Humiliation television is a staple of Japanese TV, and I’ve enjoyed watching some of the late-night shows that deal with this very issue. I can’t really understand what’s going on, but I’m able to catch on with the help of Akiko, my roommate and interpreter. One of the best I’ve seen gathers together a different group of four or five up-and-coming female teen “idols” every week-always cute models or pop stars-and makes them choose who among them is a) the bitchiest, b) the least talented, c) the ugliest, and d) the stupidest. The announcer reads the results of each vote, people cheer, and the camera zooms in on the unfortunate winner, who does her best to save face and laugh it off, bowing her head repeatedly.
“She just voted ugliest girl,” Akiko would explain, completely straight-faced.
One time there was one girl who won all four. All four. Yet when the camera zoomed in on her face, she may as well have just been told she would have to wait thirty minutes for a table by the window. She nodded, looked a little disappointed, and quietly waited for the camera to leave her the fuck alone. Then she probably went home and threw herself belly-first onto her pink sword with the satin trimming on the sheath.
I guess the reason I enjoy watching the Japanese get up to all this foolishness is because they’re generally so pathologically shy, their reactions to such awful circumstances as being hung upside down by their toenails and whipped with udon noodles or forced to mud-wrestle a businessman who happens to be wearing only Speedos and a wristwatch make for compelling viewing. The contestants, who often appear to have found themselves on television by accident, nod answers to questions and explain slowly and thoughtfully their feelings about what has happened to them as the sadistic laughter of the audience and panel of hosts roll in. Americans, on the other hand, believe in the manifest destiny of stardom. We’ll do shocking things to get noticed, we relish the spotlight we’re given, and we don’t really know when to shut up once we have it. We love to talk about absolutely nothing important and to cry while doing so. We enjoy the attention way too much. The Japanese just seem to endure it.
“Oh, please, don’t be such a snob,” Rachel chides. “It’s really cool and totally addictive. It’s like a drug, I swear, especially when you have a tape and you can watch them all back-to-back.”
The two magic words: addictive, drug.
“Oh my God, you have a tape?!” I shout, tapping my arm, looking for a vein.
She reaches into the cupboard under her television and pulls out an old-school videocassette labeled on the side, “Survivor Season 1: Chronic.” She hands it to me, and I can feel myself already surrendering to its sweet, sweet oblivion.
You see, I know my tendency to get sucked in by appalling television shows. I get my emotions tangled in their ridiculously threaded and highly unlikely plotlines and find it impossible to tear myself away. I watched one Friday episode of
Though I try to keep an emotional distance from the proceedings, it’s not easy, what with my attachments and aversions to certain people quickly forming and the hand-wringing uncertainty of the outcome. It’s frightening, but I quickly find myself seduced by the show. All my previous dismissals of it fade more and more with each new immunity challenge. I am an expatriate obsessed. And I am able to indulge my obsession uninterrupted, for I have the entire series on video, from start to finish. No commercial breaks, no waiting long weeks to find out who will be the next to be crushed under the weight of all the backstabbing, allegiance switching, and general inhumanity. It all happens in an action-packed, two-day holiday from work. By the end of the videotape, my eyes are swollen and blood-red, my mouth is covered with potato chip crumbs, I’m inadvertently blowing drool bubbles when I exhale, and I’ve lost the ability to move my toes. I stumble bleary-eyed out into the kitchen and out the front door. I don’t know where I am or how I got here. I catch a reflection of myself in the neighbor’s kitchen window. Wow, I look horrible. Like a ninety-year-old woman. Then I realize it is a ninety-year-old woman I’m staring at. Grumpy old Miss Ueno, doing dishes, gazing out the window, and giving me her obligatory daily look of suspicion and disapproval. I wave to her and quietly vote her off the island.
“I need the next tape!” I say to Rachel calmly. “Give it to me! Where is it?!”
“I knew you’d love it,” Rachel sings.
“I don’t just love it. I
She doesn’t. I gasp.
“You know what, though?” she offers. “Just watch the same season again. It’s really fun because you know when everyone’s going to be kicked off and you can look forward to it.”
So, like any junkie, I go back for sloppy seconds.
I again watch the episodes straight through in a marathon effort that tests nothing more than my ability to sit
