60. Buddies

As a stranger in a land as strange as Japan where enduring and satisfying human relationships can sometimes be difficult to come by, necessity often forces you into tenuous friendships with people you might not associate with otherwise. More often than not, the only thing bringing a group of gaijin together is the aversion to drinking alone.

It was no different with me. 

I had an odd collection of drinking buddies, like a drawer full of mismatched socks, I had picked up over the years. We would meet, get shit-faced on cheap beers at gaijin watering holes or, better yet, pig out at inexpensive izakaya with all-you-can-eat, all-you-can-drink deals, and score the occasional skank.

I have to admit it had been fun in a sophomoric sort of way for a while, but it could never be a fraction as fulfilling as the time I was now spending with dé Dale, drinking Zacapa and meeting, beautiful women, yes, but also getting to know men who were going places and doing things with their talents and connections. Shōhei and his partner, for instance, would open an upscale restaurant in a years’ time that would be the launching pad for a chain of fine dining establishments located throughout the Kantō and Kansai region,[1] making the two of them millionaires many times over and celebrities in their own right before their mid thirties.

And talking about bending reality, in those first few months alone since dé Dale and I had become friends, my mind had already been twisted into a pretzel. No one had, or ever would, come nearly as close to influencing how I lived or thought as the Frenchman did over the next several years. He would lead me out of the labyrinth of frustration my life had become.

“By the way, I have to go to Tōkyō next week for a show,” dé Dale said, leaning in close, his voice becoming a whisper. “I’m going to be meeting some mates from Colombia.”

“Colombia?”

“If you’ve been a good boy, Santa may pay you an early visit this year.”

If my face had been lit up like a pachinko machine before with that first sip of Zacapa, I wonder what it must have looked like when I learned that it was going to snow this spring: Jackpot!

“Won’t be cheap,” dé Dale said, taking a sip of his rum, “but I assure you it will be well worth it. Interested?”

Interested? Like a kid eager for Christmas morning, I was. I nodded my head, yes.

[1]The Kantō region includes the Tōkyō metropolis and six neighboring prefectures—Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Chiba, and Kanagawa. The Kansai region lies in the southern-central part of Japan’s main island Honshū and includes the prefectures of Mie, Nara, Wakayama, Kyōto, Ōsaka, Hyōgo, and Shiga.

The first posting/chapter in this series can be found here.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.

33. Matori

Cool as a cucumber, the cop in the wrap-around sunglasses explains that he is Ozawa from Matori, the Mayaku Torishimari Kyoku (麻薬取締局), the Japanese equivalent of the DEA. He also has a piece of paper: a warrant to search my apartment.

“I understand,” I say. “I’ll get out of your way, then.”

What else am I supposed to tell the man? This sure ain’t the United States where you demand to see your lawyer; no, the only thing you can do is let them go about their business and hope against hope they don’t find what it is they are looking for.

As they begin searching my apartment, I go to a back room and sit down heavily on the sofa.

Ozawa follows behind me, taking a seat near mine, while an older cop in a baggy double-breasted suit sits down next to me.

“Do you know why we’re here?” Ozawa asks.

“No.”

“You have no idea?” He says, giving the older cop a look that speaks volumes about the contempt he must feel for the gaijin[1] in his presence.

“No. None at all,” I reply.

Ozawa doesn’t seem to buy it. He pushes his sunglasses up on to the top of his shaved head and rubs his eyes. Looking long and hard at me, he says, “You can’t think of any reason that would have all of us storming in here?”

The guy has the build of a wrestler, the hands of a strangler. He’s also got a good 20 to 30 pounds more meat on his bones than I do. If he wanted to knock me about, there wouldn’t be anything I could do but try my best to enjoy it.

“A mistake?” I offer.

“A mistake?”

The cop in the double-breasted suit chuckles; Ozawa looks away in disgust.

Another cop with longish hair and acid-washed jeans is standing a few feet away, filming me on a small video camera.

“Yes, a mistake,” I say. “My neighbor down the hall in four-oh-five is yakuza. People are always confusing our apartments.”

“Are you trying to make a fool of us?” Ozawa yells.

“No, no, no, not at all. It’s just that you asked . . . Never mind. I’m sorry.”

[1] Gaijin (外人, lit. “Outside Person”) is a contraction of gaikokujin (外国人, lit. “Outside Country Person) which is Japanese for “foreigner”. Many Japanese, aware that some non-Japanese residents take offence at being called gaijin will bend over backwards to not use the word “foreigner” when speaking English. Instead, they’ll say something silly like “other country people”. To which I’ll say, “Oh, you mean ‘foreigner’, right?”

Some foreign residents of Japan take umbrage at being called gaijin, likening it to an African American being called a “nigger”, but the word isn’t nearly as emotionally charged as that.

The first posting/chapter in this series can be found here.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.

 

14. Gauntlet

About fifty yards long and three yards wide, the corridor is lined with small, barred windows and piss-yellow steel doors on the left side, a bank of windows on the right. As I make my way towards the bathroom, I see that most of the cells are cramped single-occupancy hutches like my own.

Halfway down the cell block, however, there are two cells side-by-side which are three times larger. Each accommodates four prisoners who are locked up behind a chain-linked fence. Judging by the elaborate tattoos that cover their torsos and thighs like an exoskeleton, many of the men moldering in the larger cells are yakuza.

In the first of these two cells, a middle-aged man sits on a cushion, fanning himself, while another leans up against a wall, his nose in a comic book. Two other inmates sit cross-legged before a small fold-up table, engaged in a quiet, but intense game of Old Maid.

I’ve read that yakuza consider time spent in jail a “holiday”, and, upon release from prison, can expect to receive a bonus equivalent to what they would have earned had they been out on the streets menacing society. These guys, however, don’t seem to be enjoying their “vacation” all that much. If anything, they look bored to tears. I suppose that a gaijin like myself walking past their cell must bring, as they say in the joint, a little ray of sunshine into an otherwise cloudy day, because they all perk up as I shuffle by.

“Gaijin,” they murmur to each other. “Check out the gaijin.”

Approaching the end of the corridor, I find a weather-beaten old man, eyes clouded with cataracts, staring vacantly out of his window. Like Castaway at the other end of the cell block, the old man’s thin, wizened body looks as if all but the very last drops of life have been wrung out of it. Even so, just as I am passing, this fossil of a man lets out a harrowing scream that gives me such a fright that I’ll be damned if I don’t nearly soil myself.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.