B. James 4 November 2009 Stories and Appreciations 541 views One Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

EDITOR’S NOTE: B. James continues her series of stories of being an American living and working in Japan. Read the rest of her stories here.

There was a book store I liked to stop at on my way home from work to engage in the Japanese pastime of tachiyomi, standing and reading. Unlike in America, in Japan this is considered a perfectly acceptable consumer practice. Tachiyomi rivals sleeping on the train or getting drunk and puking in the street as the salaryman’s favorite way to unwind after work.

It was a day like any other. The previous evening I’d gone on a date with a self-proclaimed Japanese Johnny Depp lookalike named Makoto. We ate on the sidewalk outside of Hotel Sexus in the Kiyamachi bar district. He  picked the octopus tentacle chunks out his takoyaki dumplings; Makoto had been too much of a gentleman to warn me about his cephalopod allergy before treating me to an eight-pack of the savory treats from a street vendor.

Makoto was sporting a bizarre hairdo of twine and jute plaits woven into his long hair, which he claimed he’d had done for a fashion shoot in a men’s magazine. Naturally, my curiosity got the best of me and I went to a news stand after work to try to find his pictures.

“ENJOY YOUR VACATION!” A thick voice slurred at the back of my head in English as I flipped through a copy of Brutus.

It was him. Let’s just call him “Toshi.” He was unnervingly tall for a Japanese person, well over six feet tall and heavyset, with thick glasses, a boxy skull covered in unkempt hair, and a dead-eyed gaze that indicated either mental dullness or a simple surrender to a society that was slowly destroying his soul. Every time I stood at this particular bookstore leafing through magazines, Toshi would lumber past me and wish me a happy vacation.

For three years straight.

I’d had enough. I spun around and yelled “I’M NOT A TOURIST!” at Toshi’s back as he shuffled away. The other patrons ignored the outburst with the same passive discomfort as my coworkers had on the day my mentally unstable ex-boyfriend burst into my office to aggressively demand I return a Ryuichi Sakamoto video I’d borrowed from him.

Toshi was gone, and I was left standing there, shaking. It didn’t matter that I spoke fluent Japanese and had a lease and a full-time office job and a cell phone contract. I could apply for permanent residency, marry a Japanese man and make his miso soup every morning, give birth to his kids, and Toshi would still wish me a happy vacation. I envisioned Toshi hovering over my tombstone in some cramped temple plot, lighting a stick of incense as he wished me a happy vacation.

All my attempts at assimilation were futile. I was walking in the shadow of the uncanny valley. If I could only speak a few words of Japanese, I was a cute novelty like a dog riding a bicycle. If I could eavesdrop on their conversations in Japanese, I was creepy and invasive like Talky Tina, the “Twilight Zone’s” omniscient, murderous doll.

Better I should be a tourist.

- B. James

PHOTO BY ISADO