Onna Hirona

I’m glad August is over. It’s just not my month. Last August, Krazy Katherine (a.k.a. India Girl, where I had met her on vacation) descended upon Tokyo for what would be my most unpleasant week that year. You won’t find a blog about it. I tend not to write about romance or disaster. But just days after I wrote about both, my heart would ache again. I figured the best way to forget about dating disaster girl would be to hit the clubs and find a new onna, or woman.

Hirona and I had made eye contact earlier, so I moved in when I saw an open seat on the couch next to her. Her friend was passing out on a pile of bags on the other side. I know enough Japanese for the first three minutes of any conversation, but I quickly reverted to English to verify what I thought I heard.

When she said she lived in Omiya (50 minutes north of central Tokyo), I added that’s not far from where I teach. Then she said the name of her former high school. It sounded familiar. It was my school! She woke up her friend and former classmate to share the news. His English was good, too. I speak with authority when I say they that didn’t learn it in high school. We both graduated in 1998, but it seems like some old timers have been teaching since the school’s inception in 1947 (and dressing like it, too). We played the “do you know so-and-so sensei?” game, and one rang a bell.

“Hey, do you still have your school uniform?” I suddenly asked.

She looked at me and smiled. Then I looked down and frowned. What kind of perverted question was that? I’m not into that. I mean, I’m a teacher. I can’t be into that.

“You must be very popular at school,” she said.

“Well, sort of. With the high school girls a little bit. But my junior high kids could care less about me. In fact, a few girls openly dislike me.”

I told her she should come for a reunion. Then I had a better (read: worse) idea. Displaying affection at school is strictly forbidden. In fact, displaying affection anywhere while in uniform is strictly forbidden. Last year two junior high students were suspended because they were seen touching lips in town.

“On the last day, I want to kiss you in the middle of the courtyard at school,” I said. “Bring your friend, too.” It would be a legendary sayonara moment, and the final affront to what has been a less than pleasurable teaching experience.

Wanting to speed up that moment, we danced with the help of several gin and tonics. Things got a little blurry. She kept checking on her friend. And I kept loosing her in the dark crowd until I thought they had left.

I flipped open my phone and scrolled to “H.” Hidomi…Hika…Hillary…Hiro…Hirona (X). I use that designation to remind myself never to call someone with whom I politely traded numbers. But I was totally into Hirona. Then I remembered I had met a different Hirona earlier that night.

“You’re the most beautiful guy I’ve seen in Japan,” she had said at the bar. She obviously didn’t get out enough, so I walked away after she asked for my number.

I couldn’t believe that I had spent hours with the good Hirona and forgot to get her number. All I knew is the region where she lived. That gave me one chance.

I pushed out of the club, and made a beeline to Shinjuku station. I bought a ticket for a train I would never take. The time printed on the stub was 04:45. I went up the platform, eerily silent and hazy just before sunup. It was still too early for service, but I wasn’t going anywhere for a while. I planted myself at the foot of the stairs to the two tracks with trains bound for Omiya. She would have to pass through here to get home, or so I hoped.

My phone buzzed with a message. It was Hirona. Hirona (X). I kicked myself, and maintained a vigil. The trickle of partygoers passing by went in and out of focus. I kept anticipating a purple and white striped shirt would come bouncing along. She was just a normal girl, nothing outstanding other than our high school connection, but the thought of another lost opportunity made me hold out hope. The odds of finding her in the world’s largest train station were slim to none, but that hadn’t stopped dating disaster girl’s ex-boyfriend from randomly spotting us together outside of it.

Two-toned pinging noises from the ticket turnstiles increased with frequency. The station gradually revved to life. Takao, 6:35, track 7. Utsunomiya, 6:42, track 4. Shin-Kiba, 6:44, track 5. Chiba, 6:51, track 11. Announcements flashed for trains fanning out from the world’s largest metropolis. At 7:00 I conceded defeat.

The station attendant looked at me. Yes, I had bought a ticket from the same station that I was now leaving. It was a long story, and didn’t feel like breaking out my survival Nihon-go and asking for “money, please.”

Walking home, I began murmuring the “Somewhere Out There” song. It had been playing in Jonathan’s restaurant (think Denny’s) where I had eaten alone just prior to clubbing. Alone again under the pale sunlight, the evening had come full circle.

Time to climb another mountain....

Dating Disaster

Wednesday couldn’t come fast enough. I had been waiting a week for dinner, over which time we had traded about 30 text messages. She was the perfect combination of lively, stylish, Japanese, proficient in English, and just a year younger.

Not yet hungry for dinner, we decided to get a drink first. The Hub, a British-style pub chain offered us a barrel to stand over in the middle of the smoking section. Hardly the right atmosphere. The next place sounded more promising. The only thing I could read on the sign for the fifth floor restaurant was “private dining,” written in English.

We checked our shoes at the door, walked past a waterfall, and then on top of a dry rock garden encased in glass. She did all of the ordering from our private booth.

My cell phone buzzed with a text message, but I didn’t budge. When hers buzzed, she looked. We chatted over beer while shelling wet peanuts (wet seems to be the custom here). She buzzed again, and typed back. Korean style pancakes arrived. She buzzed. Tuna and scallion maki rolls arrived. She excused herself. Fried cartilage came. I nibbled and waited.

When she returned, I remarked on the cartilage’s crunchiness as being kori-kori. She smiled and asked if I liked it, but didn’t hear my response. She was buzzing.

“Your friend?” I asked, forcing a smile.

“Yes,” she said while fiddling with her phone.

Perhaps something bad had happened. It had, but for me. In one of the busiest parts of a city home to of 32 million, somehow her Japanese ex of two years had spotted us together. He was mad, and letting her know about it. They had recently split, but not for much longer.

“You miss him?”

She took a sip, buzzed, and rose up clutching her phone. I stared at my beer. It was half empty. I have trouble finding my friends at a designated time and place, so how could this be? I’ve had chance encounters here before, but doesn’t this sort of thing only happen on TV dramas? A week’s worth of anticipation had evaporated within an hour. Just as I was about to reach for my wallet and leave ¥2000 ($17) on the table, she returned. We silently headed to get our shoes.

She removed my Pumas from the locker and arranged them on the floor. She turned to pay the bill – in its entirety.

“Gomen-ne,” she apologized.

I stood by the elevator waiting for her to get her shoes, also Puma.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” she said flatly. “Gomen-ne.”

I slammed the down arrow button. Outside, neon lights everywhere added to my shock. Cars, signs, vending machines. Everything was lit up and swirling in my mind. People rushed by from all directions. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Sitting on the sidewalk with a beer sounded good. Then I could roll into traffic.

Instead I walked home and had a second chance encounter. I bumped into Takahiro. His piercing feline eyes always make me feel uneasy. A tank top with the phrase “I’m not gay, but my boyfriend is” clung to his muscular chest. His shiny face reflected the neon lights. He has a plastic look, but is too young for cosmetic surgery. Jess once said that he was 24, but he looked older, perhaps because he had been playing the scene for too long.

Takahiro was pacing on the corner. Diego hadn’t arrived, and couldn’t be reached by phone. Diego had Taka’s esctacy and his money. I told him something bad had just happened to me.

“Ohhh, what’s wrong? Did you get AIDS?” he shrugged as if popping advil would do the trick. Takahiro has a great way of putting problems into perspective. After I told him of my heartbreak, he shared his dating news: yesterday afternoon he spent 12 hours banging the brains out of some German guy.

“But yesteday was Tuesday! Didn’t you have work?”

“It was my day off. I needed it. I was so tired from the weekend.”

He then gratuitiously recounted his clubbing-esctacy-meth-afterparty-sex-filled weekend. He flipped open his phone to show his conquests of chisled white men who could have walked out of a Calvin Klein ad. They were just from the weekend.

Was this supposed to be making me feel better? We ducked into the nearest bar for a beer and waited for Diego. Once the goods arrived, Takahiro dumped me. I walked the long way home.

* * *

“Go Tell It on the Mountain” is a gospel song. That Jesus Christ was born doesn’t have anything to do with my situation, but the title is fitting for how I coped the following day. Find out next week.

Blind Dates

Hair neatly parted? Check. Nostrils and teeth free of debris? Check. Plentiful supply of invigorating Frisk peppermints? Check. It was time for my first goukon.

Satoshi’s friend had arranged everything. I would meet them outside of Shinjuku station, exit A13 (there are, after all, about 50). I had traded mangled text messages with Satoshi for the past two weeks, but forgot what he looked like. We only met once in passing at a party and exchanged numbers. Now we and two other guys were going to meet four girls for drinks, dinner and a possible first step towards lifelong romance.

Goukon is a Japanese-style group date involving equal numbers of guys and girls, often the type that struggle to find their own dates beyond a structured invitation from an equally desperate friend.

Maei, Maki, Mariko and Eriko were waiting in the basement-level restaurant’s private booth. I removed my shoes and climbed in. We began introductions as our drinks arrived. Aside from names, I understood and said very little. One of the guys spoke some English, but other than that I could only express common interests with Eriko by repeating hip-hop stars on her Sony mp3 player.

Maki had the looks and the piercings – 19 of them, in fact. Not all were visible. “I want to see them later,” I blurted out in Japanese. Sometimes I forget my audience is not always adolescent males. She looked older than the other girls, perhaps early 30s, but I wasn’t one to guess. I was surprised to learn that Satoshi, who looked 23, was actually 33.

He was also on his third glass of shochu (whisky and water) before I had broken apart chopsticks to sample the appetizing raw tuna slices drizzled with peanut butter and clover sauce, or that’s what it looked like.

Perhaps impairment caused Satoshi to call Maei “Maria,” who grunted at the affront. She was a piggish girl with an attitude, and scowled at him all night. She also divulged that her mother owned a restaurant in Tochigi prefecture where horsemeat was the specialty. It was apparently very cheap. I double-checked to make sure I interpreted correctly. Yes, the horsemeat came with egg and ginger sauce. I’m not sure if the eggs were on the side or in the sauce, but I was glad we weren’t eating in Tochigi.

While Japanese flew all around me, I dove into buta no kakuni ni boi, or boiled pork squares, which don’t sound much better than horsemeat, but were heavenly. With the girls nothing special, at least I had an endless supply of pre-ordered food arriving at the table.

Later in the evening a woman slid open our booth’s shoji, a paper door with wooden frame. She dropped off promotional cigarettes in green and pink packs. A nicotine-like rush came over me as I thought about owning my first pack. While I would never buy one based on principle, I’ll take anything free and targeted at me, even cancer sticks.

Satoshi, who smoked as much as he drank, had other ideas. He gave all of the pink packs to Maria, and kept the green ones for himself. He knew the American didn’t smoke, but where was his Japanese sense of obligatory hospitality?

The best part of the goukon was periodically changing places. This clever twist ensured a mixing of the group in case you initially sat next to Mariko, who had less to say than I did. Changing places also enabled me to devour the untouched plate of pork squares at the other end of the table.

Although all seven of us except Satoshi started off with beer, by the end of the evening I was one of only two such drinkers left. The others had switched to shochu or mixed concoctions. Warned about last call, Satoshi ordered an extra round. This happened twice more, with drinks coming before the previous ones were finished. Maria hoarded three full glasses, and was talking loudly across the table at Satoshi.

I was stuffed, but slid chocolate cake onto my plate. You can’t eat and drink this well for ¥6000 ($51)/person in New York.

When I returned from the restroom, I asked Satoshi where the girls had gone. I struggled to understand that they had left without saying goodbye. Satoshi wasn’t ready to call it a night, and in his thirst hailed us a cab to an Irish pub.

Students were keen to know of my Japanese experience. Perhaps next time I should listen to their suggestions. As one 9th grade girl advised, “Don’t go on a goukon. The girls are pathetic.”