“Really?”
“Yeah, she said you treat her like a redheaded bastard cat and you need to at least send her some Japanese catnip or something. She also called your momma a bitch. She’s pretty pissed.”
“Aw, bless her. So, have you got anything positive to say about your trip so far?”
“Actually, yes,” he begins, looking out the window. “The quality of light is just brilliant, and the trees actually look exactly like they do in the Japanese watercolors I’ve seen.”
“Good, good.”
“And the way all these rice paddies and fields are laid out, it kind of reminds me of a painting Van Gogh did of the French countryside.”
“I’m sure the French would slap in you in the face for saying that.”
“Whatever. I’d slap them right back.”
We get to my apartment in Koenji and unload all of Jimmy’s stuff. Then we spend a manic ten minutes having gay sex and then we take a big gay nap. When I wake up, Jimmy’s rifling through his bag searching for something.
“What’re you looking for?” I ask, rubbing my eyes.
Jimmy pulls a fork out of a balled-up pair of socks. “Found it. Can we go eat?”
We eat at a local Yoshinoya restaurant, a cheap fast-food chain where the specialty is what is called “beef bowls”-thin slices of seasoned beef over rice. Jimmy cannot hide his enthusiasm for the ordering protocol, which involves very little human contact and admirable efficiency: you walk in, put your money into a machine, push a button, get a receipt, sit down at a semicircular counter, and hand the receipt to the enthusiastic worker behind the counter. Your beef bowl and miso soup will be with you in a matter of seconds.
“Is Jimmy impressed?” I ask as he digs in with his fork.
“Yes, he is. Pass me the ginger.”
One point for my mistress Tokyo: she makes a quick, sensible, delicious meal.
After our late lunch we take the train to Shibuya because I want to show Jimmy Tokyo’s crazy side, the side that cakes its face with panda makeup, bleaches it’s hair until it looks like a pile of straw, and slips on its pencil skirt, rainbow knee-socks, and foot-high platform boots and thinks that’s a perfectly reasonable state in which to face the world.
We exit Shibuya Station along with 2.3 million other people, 90 percent of whom are at least ten years younger than us. Shibuya is where the young people of the greater Tokyo area come to play videogames, smoke cigarettes, visit “love hotels,” and, in a financial pinch, sell their underwear to appreciative and deep-pocketed salarymen. I ask Jimmy if he feels like doing any of these things.
“You know,” I prod, “to try and fit in with everyone else.”
“I might be willing to sell my underwear,” he says after a minute of reflection, “but let’s wait till Thursday and see how my money’s holding out. I’d like to get a few more days’ wear out of it.”
“Gross.”
As we pass under the three giant television screens the sole purpose of which appears to be to give the nation epilepsy, Jimmy breathlessly gasps, “It’s like
“Isn’t it? Or at least
In Shibuya we do what the both of us were put on this earth to do: record shop. Tokyo has the best record shopping any indie pop-grime-jazz-krautrock-acid fusion-dream-pop-dub-trip-hopafrobeat-grunge-eurotrash- neujazz-freakbeat-hip-hop-electroglitchpop-freak folk-old school-electro-minimalist-reggae-dance-hall-girl group- lounge-punk-goth-new wave-house-new world-old world new world-shoegazer-noise pop-new wave revivalist-folk- electro-folk-rhythm and blues-Jpop-gospel-French pop-Bulgarian noise opera fanboy could hope for. That band from Perth from the eighties that only released one single but it’s the best song you ever heard? It’s here somewhere. And you know your friend who is in that god-awful band that somehow found the time in its busy schedule of totally sucking to put a CD together? Tokyo’s got that CD. That song you’ve been kicking around in your head for a few years but have never committed to tape? Also here. And it’s expensive.
We go to my favorite store, Disk Union, where the narrow aisles present a tough but rewarding challenge for any customer with a waist over thirty inches. We wade in and look around, twisting and angling our heads so as to read the titles and allow people by, but Jimmy ultimately succumbs to a crippling claustrophobia before even getting to the Momus and David Sylvian sections, and he takes his leave after just forty-five minutes of browsing. I reluctantly put back on the shelf a Madonna twelve-inch on skin-colored vinyl and follow him out.
“Well,” I say, trying to assuage Jimmy’s guilt over forcing us to leave the record store so prematurely, “there’s a CD shop for big fatties just around the corner.”
“Great, let’s go there.”
We browse in a few more spacious record stores, and Jimmy excitedly finds something. He gasps, holds it up, and walks determinedly toward me. I look at it and realize that this find is something that could mark a turning point in his trip: a Japan-only release of a best-of by Japanese electro pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra.
“We wants it,” he hisses in his best Gollum. “We neeeeeeeds it!” He nudges my shoulder over and over with his head.
“OK, but if I buy this for you, you have to use chopsticks at our next meal. And greet the waitress in Japanese.”
“Whatever.”
“And you have to eat whatever I put in front of you.”
He considers this last point with a pensive and dreamy glare.
“OK,” he finally agrees. “But don’t get pissed if I puke in your lap.”
We meet my friend Shunsuke and his friend Chieko for lunch at an izakaya in Shibuya. It doesn’t take long for the two of them to start chatting like old friends, even though Jimmy keeps calling Shunsuke Shinjuku, as in:
“So, Shinjuku, how long have you lived in Tokyo?”
or
“Shinjuku, have you ever been to the U.S.?”
or
“So, Shinjuku, you like Celine Dion. Why is that?”
“Jimmy, his name is Shunsuke!” I finally correct him. “Shun-suke! Shunsuke.”
“It OK,” Shunsuke says, laughing. “I just make new name for Jimmy. I call him Miami. Is OK?”
“Sure,” Jimmy says. “Better than Kernersville.”
Our waitress arrives, breathless, stressed, and with no time for small talk. A perfect candidate for Jimmy to bludgeon with his newly acquired Japanese.
“Jimmy,” I say, holding up the expensive CD I just bought him and nodding in the direction of the waitress.
“Cone nishy wa,” he says with a big smile.
Shunsuke translates for her.
“
,” he says. “He’s trying to say hello.”
She smiles, bows slightly, and says “sank yuu” to Jimmy. He looks at Shunsuke.
“Thanks, Shinjuku.”
“You’re welcome, Miami.”
We order a number of small dishes to share, the way real Japanese folk do. I make sure that one of these dishes is the one on the menu that looks like a plate full of fried popcorn shrimp from Red Lobster. Jimmy loves popcorn shrimp, as do I. I’ve had this dish before, two weeks into my Japan odyssey, and it really altered my perception of what I can voluntarily put in my mouth, chew, and swallow. It was fried chicken gristle, and it felt like eating deep-fried knuckle. As an American Southerner, I stand firmly behind any food that is deep-fried. It’s part of who I am. So even though I had a profound distrust of this new dish, I continued popping those little suckers into my mouth and negotiating them into my stomach. Ick. I couldn’t stand it. But I ate more. So gross. Then I ate more. Revolting and unequivocally foul. I couldn’t stop eating. Wanted more. What a horrid culinary delight! Disgustingly delicious! I finished the plate myself. No food had ever filled me with such a fervid ambivalence. I haven’t tasted that crunchy gristle since, but I am dying to witness the awakening of Jimmy to its existence. He’s a
