Chapter Summaries
PART IX
The Tokyo Times
Chapter 37
TRIALS
AND TREASURES OF TOKYO
When the jet lands at
Narita, I am extremely tempted to stay aboard – the flight’s next destination is
Los Angeles, just nine and a half hours away. But enigmatic Japan is a definitive
destination of the Odyssey. I disembark. There is no Charlie Tan here and I
spend the first night in Japan at the closed airport in the company of Iranian families.
The green
countryside seen initially on the 70-mile ride into Tokyo belies the crammed, squat
metropolis that sprawls over the Kanto Plain – Japan’s phoenix of World War II
– and I am disgorged into its swarming belly. I lug 140 pounds of gear in five
packs. Crossing wide busy streets requires two trips. So begins the
month-long double shuttling between the Tokyo International Youth Hostel and the very
Japanese but gaijin-infested Okubo House.
The latter is a workman’s
dormitory. At a phone box outside Okubo House, I discover little envelopes stuffed with
colorful calling cards – phone numbers, prices, and pictures or nude or nearly nude
girls. These are advertisements for prostitutes – the "pink bila" that is
regularly replenished by the Yakuza, Japan’s Mafia. I will uncover other often-brutal
preoccupations with sex in this male-dominated society.
After diplomatic efforts
culminate in a traditional meeting with Tokyo’s number three man, I again hit the
streets in search of sponsored onward passage, initially feeling like one of the Buddhist
monks that walk almost blindly along the Ginza, alms bowl in hand.
The company that
stands to benefit most from the odyssey – Honda – is the most evasive. At
its Tokyo headquarters, I finally meet the polite but officious woman who had been
assigned to respond to the introductory letter I had sent from Gatwick Airport 15 months
earlier. I am dumbfounded by the emptiness of my reception. I become part of
all the comical "Japlish" – distorted English translations – as when I
am subsequently referred to in the corporate magazine, Honda Today,
as "a Scooter Saluter". I am not amused. In this segment, I explore
some of "The Honda Way".
Back
on the streets, the exhibition of the west is blatant – Paul Newman mugging for a
Japanese bank; George Lucas hoisting a camcorder for Panasonic; and everywhere a billboard
with James Coburn puffing the subject cigarette, the words exploring the viewer to
"Speak Lark". Japan seems like a bazaar of mix and match clichés.
By and by, I
acclimatize to the bizarre congested worlds of Tokyo. What seems like the
"sardine syndrome" of Tokyo’s crush hour is diminished by the exquisite
use of the smallest spaces – beautiful pockets of quietude amid the noise and
haste. The language barrier is by far the worst here but some Japanese go out of their way
to guide me through the unaddressed maze of Tokyo’s streets.
Once such Japanese is Takeshi, the young executive met on the
flight from Singapore. He befriends me and shares some of his "outside"
life and sights of the city. Most notably, he shows me Shinjuku, which is more
popular with the Japanese than the Ginza. Shinjuku has glittering lights, a huge video
screen and "love hotels" where, Takeshi says, young unmarried couples engage in
their "dirty business".
I
see some of Japanese life. Through skyscraper windows I see men working into the
night in brightly lit offices. I wonder if these workaholics were really men who
longed to be lazy but worked hard in order to avoid having this desire discovered. I
wondered if men were made to work hard to avoid having more meaningful relationships with
their wives. Were Japanese men afraid of this? Were they afraid to appear
vulnerable?
I encounter many interesting gaigins
including Lawrence, one of the hordes of "English teachers" who flock to Japan
to grab up high salaries for often little more than "conversation". There
is Tadeki, the fuming newspaper editor who feels I should make a case for Hiroshima; Jeff,
the disenchanted American bodybuilder; and Elsie, the Singapore Tourism Promotion
Board’s branch director who offers their offices as my "home away from
Tokyo", and whose sisterly devotions and "care packages" are a true comfort
when the real trials set in.
I negotiate onward passage with
Japan Airlines which is undergoing privatization. The executive I deal with seems
always to begin a conversation with "I am sorry, but…" I must provide
far-reaching publicity for JAL and soon I feel like Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz
as I explore the haunted forest of Japanese media. Prospects become bleak and I
resort to visualization of the next destination – Hawaii. But a month after my
arrival, it all falls apart. JAL finally declines a deal and my Visa account hits
its ceiling. I am more than broke: I'm vastly in debt. I wonder what the hell
I've done to my financial self - dug a grave, or a foundation? Right now, I face the
ultimate failure – repatriation.
What to do?
Chapter 38
THE JAPANESE ART OF THE
DEAL
Feeling downtrodden,
I wait in the embassy for word of repatriation. Here, an entrepreneur counsels me
on Japanese ways. Ron McKay, a visa officer just off a five-year stint as an English
teacher, takes me off the street and into a world of expats and Japanese friends who share
hospitality, friendship and tales of Japan.
Ron gets me started. At a
women’s college where Ron had taught, I must overcome shyness to give a slide show
and talk about the odyssey before an audience of about a hundred silent Japanese
girls. I quickly discover the Japanese reticence to speaking out, especially in
women. I get an assignment to do a story for an international Tokyo-oriented
English-language magazine. I get another assignment from the enthusiastic senior
editor of a major Japanese motorcycle magazine.
I re-open negotiations with JAL
for sponsored passage to Hawaii. Again it is possible, if I can provide national
publicity. The Wizard-of Oz-syndrome begins again but with a difference – Japanese
magazines are interested in the odyssey story. Tense and delicate three-way
negotiations climax in a deal for magazine coverage for JAL and my flight to Hawaii.
But what about Melawend?
Because of my survival expenses,
my battered mechanical friend has been languishing in a cargo warehouse, "covered in
dust" an airline executive will chuckle. Negotiations begin for Melawend’s
passage to Hawaii. A deal is artfully arranged – using what I've earned here, I
will pay for Melawend’s fare, but earn it all back, to the yen, by completing an
assignment in Hawaii for JAL Cargo. Everybody wins, except Melawend. The
crushing irony is that having come so far, through so much, Melawend will remain on a
skid, her wheels never touching the land of her birth.
And I feel a loss too.
After slogging Tokyo’s streets for two months, I have seen only reconstructed Japan
– having been barred from exploring the beauty and tradition that abounds in
Japan’s hinterlands. I vow to return.
But what better consolation than
Hawaii? It’s the perfect place to conclude the international aspects of the odyssey.
Though part of the good old U.S.A., Hawaii, for me, epitomizes
East-meets-Pacific-meets-West. And so in the darkness, lulled by Hawaiian music in
Executive Class, I relax. Though still penniless, I feel sanguine in anticipating my
time on, as Mark Twain described them, "the loveliest fleet of islands anchored in
any ocean."
