A Woman's Nails Read online

  She looks up at me, smiles broadly and pauses. I take this as my cue to tell her that the pleasure is mine.

  “Pleasure?” she asks.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I say.

  “Pleasure?” She says with a puzzled look.

  “Nice to meet you, too.”

  “Oh, I see. Thank you.” Studying her crib sheet, she says, “Please forgive my poor English.”

  “It is forgiven!”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Mind?”

  “Please, go ahead. Dôzo.”

  “Please forgive my poor English,” she repeats after checking her notes. “I want to be your friend.”

  “Okay.”

  She looks at the paper, mouths the words as she reads them silently, and asks, “Will you be my friend?”

  “Well, it’s gonna cost ya!”

  “Pardon?”

  “Okay.”

  “May I ask you some questions?”

  “Shoot!”

  “Pardon?”

  “Sure, go ahead. Dôzo.”

  “What is your hobby?”

  What the hell is it with the Japanese and these stupid questions? I can count the times on one hand I was asked this before coming to Japan, but here it’s the most pressing thing that needs to be addressed. Ridiculous questions deserve ridiculous answers: “I enjoy groping strangers on crowded trains.”

  “Trains?”

  “Yes, trains. Groping.”

  “Guroappu?”

  “Er, I like traveling by train.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Not, trouble. Travel. I like traveling by train.”

  “Oh, I see. I like to travel, too.”

  “You do? Where have you been? Have you been abroad?”

  “Next question,” she says looking down at her sheet. “Can you eat sushi?”

  Good grief. “Yeah, it’s okay, I suppose.”

  “Okay? You can eat sushi? Let’s have sushi next time!”

  We whiz through her questionnaire in no time then sit in awkward silence until it’s time for me to meet Bachelorette Number Two.

  3

  Mika is an attractive 24-year-old woman, who asks me what my dream is. The question itself is not as surprising as, say, the complete lack of context in which it’s asked: our order has just been taken by the waitress. But then, many Japanese mistakenly believe, like Bachelorette Number One, that rattling off a random list of questions in English amounts to communication.

  “My dream? Huh.”

  I’ve often asked the same of women and am usually disappointed by the replies.

  “I want to master English,” one girl told me.

  “Okay, then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What are you going to do after you master English?”

  “I don’t know. I just . . .”

  “English is a tool, nothing more. A hammer, if you will. If you haven’t got any idea of what you want to build with that hammer, then it’s just going to sit on a shelf in the shed and get rusty.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh, is right. If you don’t know what you’ll do with the English once you’ve mastered it--sorry to burst your bubble--you probably never will master it.”

  When I asked a young college student the same question, she replied that she had never really thought about it. I was flabbergasted. “How the hell can you not have a dream? I mean, how the hell can you even get up in the morning?” The poor girl. She fell silent and stared at the table after that.

  Mika’s English is pretty damn good, so I can indulge myself: “Most people are like flotsam drifting on the surface of the ocean their whole lives. They make no impact on life. Life, on the other hand, has a huge impact on them. They’re tossed about, they flow this way and that. You follow me?”

  “I think so.”

  “They don’t change the sea in any way. They don’t have much of an influence on the others around them. I mean, I suppose that from time to time they might bump into other flotsam, see? Or, what? Get tangled up in discarded bits of fishing net?”

  She eyes me warily.

  “I don’t want to be like that,” I tell her. “Not at all. No, I want to be like a tanker plowing its way along a river. Everything that is caught in its wake gets overturned and tossed about. Even people who don’t see the tanker go by still feel its impact and influence, good or bad.”

  “You want to be a sailor?” she asks.

  “A sailor! Nice one, hah! No, I don’t want to be a sailor.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “No problem.” I tell her of the megalomania, which fuels me, my interest in Japanese architecture and design, in the pop art here, particularly manga and anime, Japanese comics and animation. I talk about how I want to learn from it and use it in my own art and designs.

  “Peador, are you an otaku?”

  “Otaku? No, I’m not a nerd. I’m a maniac. So, how about you, Mika? What’s your dream?”

  “I want to travel.”

  “Yeah? Where to?”

  “Everywhere. Europe, Africa, Asia . . . Mars.”

  “Mars?” I ask, not sure I heard her correctly.

  “Yes Mars,” she repeats.

  “Mars,” I ask again pointing toward the ceiling.

  “Yes, Mars,” she replies, pointing to the same point in the ceiling.

  “Rotsa ruck!”

  Mika is attractive enough, speaks English well enough, and has a sense of humor that accommodates my nonsense. There is even something, which resembles chemistry between us, but I get the distinct impression that I’d have to join the Realian’s Cult just to get to first base.

  4

  I dash over to the Nishitetsu Grand Hotel where I’ve promised to meet a young woman named Kumiko.

  Of all the women I’ve set up “dates” with, it is this Kumiko I’ve been looking forward to meeting the most for the simple reason that we share similar tastes in music. Not saying it’s necessarily bad, but far too many Japanese women have their short attention spans captivated by flavor-of-the-month Japanese pop stars. They get all worked up over the one or two-hit wonders that are cranked out of production machines like burgers at Mickey Dees. I’m not into fast food, and am even less of a fan of fast art. This Kumiko, however, is different: she is gaga about British rock and what she calls “guranji”.

  I imagined Kumiko to be cool, pretty in her own way, but when I get a load of how she looks, a reassessment of my musical preferences is in order.

  Kumiko has thrown herself whole-heartedly into the grunge look: baggy, soiled pants with holes in the knees, sweatshirt in tatters, and a loose-fitting flannel shirt. When I arrive at the hotel I find her sitting in the most un-ladylike manner, slouched and legs spread apart with a practiced indifference to the world and an unforgivable contempt for the five-thousand-dollar Arne Jacobsen leather swan chairs she has planted her filthy arse in. I have the urge to race back to Mika and hop on the mother ship before it leaves for Mars.

  Kumiko introduces me to a pug-nosed, overweight and slovenly friend named Kazuko. Dressed in tattered fatigues, this Kazuko has been asked to join us because of her fluency in English. Normally, I would welcome tagalongs with “The more, the merrier!” but in this little piggy’s case, three’s a crowd.

  Before I can recover from the disappointment they lead me out of the hotel towards an entertainment district a few blocks away called Oyafukô-dôri. As we make our way there, Kumiko asks, in Japanese, if I’ve ever been there, but just as I’m going to reply, in Japanese, Kazuko butts in with a heavily accented translation, “Oyafukô, you know? Been to?”

  “I, I can’t say that I have.”

  Kazuko translates my reply for the benefit of Kumiko who lets out such an expression of surprise it makes me wonder if the dog’s got it right.

  “You know oyafukô mean?” Kazuko barks.

  I shrug. I couldn’t care less. I just want to go home.

>   “You don’t know? Why? Why you don’t know?” Kazuko says with theatrical disbelief. I feel like whacking the girl.

  Kumiko says that she and her friend are oyafukô, causing the two of them to split their sides laughing. It’s highly unattractive and I want to escape. Kumiko, well, I could manage spending time with her, perhaps even enjoy being with her, but this Kazuko? Let’s face it, Kazuko’s a pig and standing next to her is an embarrassment--people might think that we are, God help me, actually friends.

  “I haven’t the slightest clue what the two of you are talking about.”

  Kazuko leaps at the opportunity to inflict her Engrish onto me: “Oya mean mamma, pappa. Okay? You got that, Mistah Peador?”

  “Parents? You mean parents, right?’”

  “So, so, so,” Kumiko replies, “pahrento.”

  Kazuko continues, “So, fukô mean ‘fee-ree-ah-ru pie-ah-chee . . . want of.’”

  “Huh?”

  She repeats the same gibberish a few times, then digs a dictionary out of a large army surplus canvas bag that’s slung around her shoulder. After thumbing through it, she passes it to me, pointing at the entry.

  Incidentally, even though it’s evening, it’s so brightly illuminated downtown with glaring street lights, building facades bathed in the glow of flood lights and massive neon billboards, you could read a newspaper, or, in this case, an entry in a dictionary.

  After crossing the street, I pause to read. “Fukô: unfilial behavior; disobedience towards one’s parents; treat one’s parent’s disrespectfully.”

  “You got it, Mistah Peador-san?” Kazuko asks loudly.

  “I, I guess so?”

  “We are oyafukô!” Kumiko tells me again. The two of them point to their noses saying, “Oyafukô”, then burst into laughter.

  “Ah, you make your parents cry, don’t you?”

  “So, so, so,” replies Kumiko. “Pahrento. Wah! Wah! Wah!”

  I take it this is how parents cry in Japan. No boohoo-hoos in the Land of the Rising Sun.

  “So, so, so,” adds Kazuko. “My parents, too. Crying ohru za taimu.”

  “All the time? Why do you make your parents so unhappy?”

  Kazuko answers, “We still don’t marriage.”

  I would prefer to speak with them in Japanese than endure this woman butchering of the English language, but the pug-nosed brute is relentless.

  “You haven’t got married yet?”

  “No, still not marriage.”

  Ah! “But, the two of you are still young. I mean, what’s the hurry?”

  They get a kick out of that. “Oh, we love you, Mistah Peador. You gentleman!”

  “Don’t get too excited. You haven’t seen me drunk yet.”

  Kumiko asks me how old I think she is.

  I guess she’s a few years younger than myself, but say “Thirteen?” which causes her let out a shriek. She turns to her friend and says in Japanese, “I can’t believe it, he thinks I’m thirty.”

  “Thirteen,” I repeat. “Thirteen! Not thirty. Ah, never mind. I was just joking.”

  “Jokku?” asks Kumiko. “American jokku?”

  What the hell is an American joke? “Yes, American joke.” Whatever.

  Kumiko tells me she can’t understand “American jokes.” I reply that I don’t really understand Japanese jokes, which seems to consist primarily of one man slapping the other on the head and shouting, “Fool!”

  “Oh, you just put us on, then Mistah Peador?” Kazuko said. “Don’t surprise us so. Bad for heart.”

  It’s tempting to whack Kazuko on the head and shout, “Fool!”

  We come to a second signal where food stalls, or yatai, serving ramen and yakitori, are lined up on the sidewalk. The steady stream of pedestrians coming and going are forced to pass through a narrow path between the yatai and the street, walking over an obstacle course of electrical cords and hoses.

  Looking across the street, towards what Kumiko indicates is Oyafukô-dôri, I am hit hard by the realization that I have been here before. It’s all disturbingly familiar.

  On the left is a yakitori restaurant, belching out black smoke from a massive vent blackened with oil and soot. Above that is an Indian restaurant run by Sikhs, beards and turbans and all. Across the street is another tall and narrow building with a Yoshinoya outlet on the first floor that serves, gyûdon, bowls of rice topped with a mystery beef. The two opposing buildings form a gate of sorts at the entrance of Oyafukô. A sea of bodies flow in from the main avenue attracted like moths towards the neon lights and bright signboards. The street itself is clogged with dozens upon dozens of taxis, the lights on top of their cabins forming a string of illumination that runs the length of the street, all the way to a gazebo like police box.

  Kôban. Police box. It had been a new word for me when Mie said it. “You don’t have police boxes in America, do you?” We’d just got out of a cab. “I didn’t see any when I was there.”

  I told Mie we didn’t, that we had police stations and precincts and police roaming around in cars like stalkers, but no police boxes.

  It was Mie and my first time to get together and I had only been in Japan for about a month and a half. Mie would treat me to dinner at a noisy Japanese-style pub, an izakaya she’d teach me, where the staff was constantly yelling at the top of their lungs, “Two drafts, hey!,” or “Welcome, hoi!” or what the fuck ever. Later, we’d go to a hostess bar, called a snack, where she’d get jealous when a hostess tried to hit on me. Back at her place, we would sit on her bedroom floor drinking saké until there was no more left, and then we’d kiss for the first time. In the months that followed, Mie and I would go dancing at the discos or drinking in many of the bars here.

  I can feel Mie’s presence as we cross the street and enter Oyafukô-dôri. I see her in the middle of the street on a Monday morning, wearing a simple, but tight-fitting orange dress with white polka dots, and smiling broadly, arms stretched out. I see myself ignoring the annoyed honking of a taxi driver to take her picture. It’ll become my favorite photo of her and will always remind me of everything that I loved about her, her vitality, her spontaneity, her smile and her body. I see us sitting at the Mister Donut where share a cup of coffee and an old-fashioned donut and talk about going to America together. Oyafukô is as haunted with memories as my old apartment in godforsaken Kitakyûshû was and being back after all this time, after six months, is unsettling to say the least.

  “Peador, we’re here,” Kazuko says, tugging at my arm.

  Is Mie out there somewhere? Is she having dinner with her roommate? Is she drinking with friends in a bar nearby? I look down the street beyond the milling mass of people towards the police box, at the passengers getting out of taxis. Is she there? I scan hundreds of faces but can’t find hers.

  “Mistah Peador?”

  “Huh? Oh, right,” I follow them into a modest little bar called Umie.

  After the unexpected onslaught of memories, I’m not much of a companion to Kumiko and Kazuko. It’s difficult to put up with Kazuko’s incessant questions with my thoughts lost on events that are nearly a year old. God how I want to go back in time and relive that first night, that night which changed everything for me. I wish I could go back and undo the mistakes of last summer, so that it would be Mie I was with rather than these two. But I can’t. All I can do is try to chase after forgetfulness one cheap bottle of Heineken at a time.

  “Is something the matter?” Kumiko asks later while Kazuko is off harassing someone else for a change.

  “I’m sorry, I’m just feeling . . . “ I can’t remember the Japanese for depressed. “I’m just feeling blah.”

  “Blah? The band? I love them.”

  “Not Blur, blah. I’m feeling . . . depressed.”

  “Jipuresstoh?”

  “De-, depressed. Blah. Er, melancholy.”

  “Ah, merankoree. Me, too!” She clinked her bottle of beer against mine.

  “To melancholy. Cheers.”

  Without K
azuko’s meddling Kumiko and I are able to talk for quite a while about our “merankoree”, our heartbreak and our loneliness. Seems she’s been suffering for two years (two whole goddamn years!) from unrequited love. She wants to know what to do about it. She wants to understand what men are thinking. I don’t have the heart to tell her that most guys are thinking much about anything, that they just want to get laid without too many complications.

  “Why don’t you just ask him out?” I suggest.

  It comes as a revelation to the poor girl. “Me? Ask him?” What are you? High? She doesn’t say this, but she must be thinking it.

  “Yeah, you. Ask him out. If he accepts, hey great, you’re lucky. If he says no, well then you can move on. Find someone better.”

  Despite Kumiko’s poor choice of clothing and friends, she is still a sweet girl, and even if I haven’t found what I was looking for this Saturday evening, I have at least found a friend. And that, I cannot deny, is better than nothing.

  I have to leave Umie around eleven so I can catch the last train back to my condominium in the middle of nowhere. Kumiko’s jaw drops when I tell her where I’m living. I still find it hard to believe it myself. After silent commiseration, she tells me to move out of the inaka, the sticks, before I turn into an imo otoko, a potato boy, that is, a hick. Her advice is like a virus, which finds a willing host in my mind. It’ll spread quickly and before I know it, I have a full-blown case of dissatisfaction, the only cure for which will be to find a place closer to town.

  I get to the station in time for the final train, which is packed shoulder to shoulder with red faced salarymen, reeking of whiskey, and office ladies, trembling like lambs among wolves, hoping they won’t have to silently endure another clumsy grope.

  A drunk standing to my side looks up, and noticing with exaggerated surprise that I am a gaijin, a foreigner tries to speak to me.

  “American?” He says teetering precariously on unsteady legs. Were it not for the fact that the train was as full as it is, his knees would surely buckle, he’d drop like a sack of shit to the floor.

  I pretend to read the ads that dangle from the ceiling like laundry on a clothesline, but he taps me on the arm. “Hey! You American?” Aside from the high-pitched woman’s voice giving the passengers an unnecessarily long running commentary over the intercom system, this drunk is the only person among the hundreds crammed into the carriage that is speaking.