V.
There's no one moment when I realize I have become the sole survivor and heir to a kingdom. No official transfer ceremony, no coronation, not even a specific event marks my accession to a position precarious yet refined, a strange and unintended outcome to the collision of massive forces in the night, great battleships that have unleashed titanic broadsides against each other, leaving the smoke and dust slowly clearing to reveal only the tiniest of frigates, the smallest of corvettes, still mightily chugging onward as its larger counterparts have sprung great leaks and are settling, slowly, into the fathomless sea. Rather, there is simply this one Saturday morning when my phone starts ringing—and doesn't stop—a succession of people who not only want to know the latest happenings, but are also looking to plan and undertake new get-togethers and social occasions of their own. I have become the mediator and communicator of plans; the fount of life and activity, the alpha dog of Tokyo if by fate and not design.
"So yeah, we can crash at Mayumi's parents' place, and Jon will be packing some tents just in case everything falls through. If worst comes to worst, there is a sort of time-share place that will let us have rooms for 150, you know 1.5 mahn, that'll be fine."
Buzz on the telephone; Tucker's question.
"Yeah, no problem. Just as long as you have a grill and keep it away from trees or whatever."
Confirmatory and conclusatory buzz.
"Great, thanks, good stuff. See you in a bit."
It is the third weekend of October, the final gasp of that crazy summer that never ends. It is still warm enough to go to the beach, it is still hot enough indeed that a trip to Kamakura, two hours south of Tokyo, a half-thought out excursion that becomes the immediate It event from anyone who hears about it; and at 10am that morning, it seems the phone won't stop buzzing from last minute additions, not Jon, a somewhat awkward software engineer who was planning on celebrating his birthday with a beach picnic with Japanese colleagues; not Tucker, the old Soren faithful who now falls into my orbit; not Maggie, who just wants updates on Shan—which at that moment I presently lack. Not until forty minutes later am I able to rise out of bed out of bed to prepare breakfast and pack the cooler full of ice in my Ueno apartment, but I am already being to sense the social lay of things, the lie of the land.
"So I'm trying to go up to Iwaki last month, but I think we miss the right stop--turns out there's another foreigner on the train with me, little blonde girl who I end up talking to, name of Charis. Just arrived here in Japan, third week, finishing orientation in Tokyo before her group gets assigned to wherever. But she'll be living in Kanagawa."
By the time we get on the highway to Kamakura, Tucker is explaining to me his prior weekend as we both wear sunglasses and stare out into the well-trafficked, but not jammed up roadway. The windows are down and the fresh air is breezing in.
"And so she'll be coming out today?"
"Yeah. She and her whole group I think."
"Cool, cool, good stuff."
We enter a tunnel with the highway noise-reflecting walls suddenly giving way to a first view of the sea, and the effect is of leaving behind Japan and coming into a tropical paradise. The sun almost seems to leap up in intensity, and the building architecture seems suddenly changed, resorty and universally terraced, subtropical foliage pushing up against the street itself. The dazzling light on the sea is not quite eclipsed by the almost pure white of the sand. Simultaneously: "Ahhh!"
It takes about twenty minutes for us to find the surfer girl, Mayumi's, place, a little beach-style house tucked away two blocks inland from Enoshima. She's in, already dressed in her wetsuit for surfing, and we greet her and her friends cheerily before making our way to the water to stake out a spot. Crowds from all over begin to pile in, and it isn't long before Tokyo acquaintances start showing up, in couples or small groups, our knot of towels on the warm sand spreading out now to thirty or forty meters, and everyone a hive of activity, slopping on greasy sunscreen, passing out beers, catching up with people you haven't seen in weeks.
"Hello... hello... hello..." Brad has lost half a centimeter of thumb in an accident with a paper cutter; Satoko has just returned from north Japan. An ultralight buzzes in the Indian summer air, the pilot easing out against a stiff shore breeze and then circling back inland. But without much ado, we jump out into the water to swim and play, and then back to the sand to bake in the hot sun. Only after lunch, a quick raid of coolers packed in trunks and the local convenience store, do the new NOVA teachers arrive, at first from a distance, a group of more foreigners who by their cupped hands and beeline for us, are merely clearly people from our group.
"Oh wait, Ritchie, this is the group I was telling you about. Just arrived in country, working for NOVA, and going through orientation together."
Tucker goes out to greet the new arrivals, about six in number, three guys and three girls, one of whom is the small blonde Charis. We introduce ourselves.
"So you've going to be based in Fukushima?"
"Yeah, know anything?"
"Hear there's good skiing."
“But far from Tokyo.”
“You can bullet-train it in two hours.”
It's strange; there's no reason for her to distinctly remember my name, but after the initial sitdown on the beach while everyone is getting to know each other, exchanging names, details, Charis comes over and sits down next to me, she definitely picks me out among the people already here as the person she wishes to talk to.
"So Ritchie, you've been here two years now?"
"Yeah, thereabouts. How long you staying?"
"Maybe a year or two tops. This country is just the first step, but your hand is still getting held here. I want to go out to China or Thailand next."
“Wow, that's cool.” We continue to talk for the next hour or so, watching people come and go, tossing around a frisbee or forming pair or triples to talk to young Japanese. Through the shade of sunglasses, I perceive the strange familiarity of Charis' posture; a weird ease with each other that cannot be simulated. If I were to make a human being have perfect conversational responses, they would probably be exactly everything Charis says, a display of adventure, femininity, and dazzling good 'cute-girl' looks. She's Texan, Republican, and Christian, but aside from that, or maybe precisely because of that, she’s totally confident, carefree, and distinctly flirtatious, the moment comes when she clearly is making some kind of move, though I smile, and keep my cool. Some of the group decides to make a beer run; we'll tag along, but she'll walk with me, a traffic light will separate us from the others, and we'll let the gang go on ahead and follow just a block behind.
"They have these little love hotels here in Tokyo, right?” comments Charis, looking at an example of garish beach architecture. “For eighty bucks you get a place with groovy 60s furniture and flashing disco lights?"
"I think some are like that. Or you can get a cowboy theme if that's what you want. Bunch right in Shibuya, all clustered on one hill."
"I want to go to a love hotel sometime."
I look back at Charis with wide eyes until she realizes what she said.
"I mean," she says, blushing, "I just want to see what they look like."
High-noon passes into afternoon, and we throw around a frisbee in the surf, we bake in the sun, we talk to pretty Japanese girls with sunbleached hair and dark tans. Jon's group, conservatively attired, almost awkward, yet never ridiculous, sit on their formally laid out beach towels and smile politely at attempts to talk to them; some of us who know him play this little game of pretending we're all here on account of him, and the uptight natives don't react as if anything is out of the ordinary; all you can detect is a sense of distinct Japanese conservatism. A few more people dribble in even as our group dwindles, the sun starts to swing to the other side of the sky, and a beautiful sunset begins, achingly slow into the warm late summer waters.
"So what do you think of the Japanese judicial system?” asks somebody, and the crowd begins to fall into separate knots of conversations, heatedly debating the fairness of the Japanese judicial system, referring in particular to an English backpacker allegedly found with a suitcase full of pills. Erik, who has a law degree, explicates some bizarre peculiarities of the Japanese system and we listen intently. But, as the sun continues its descent, our conversation returns to more simple-minded things.
“Hey, dude, imagine if like the rest of the world disappeared and we all had to be stuck on this beach forever, kill wild pigs and just try to survive. Wouldn't that be awesome?”
I glance over at the surfer dude who brings this up and listen as the conversation unfolds.
Charis: “If the whole world disappeared and we were in a survival situation, I know there are some people I'd have to take out.”
“Whoa, really? Like who?”
Charis smirks. “I don't have anybody in particular in mind. But some people impose themselves on others in a way that's harmless so long as we're all in a functioning society, but in a desperate survival situation, would be a liability none of us could afford.”
“Wow, intense. I figure as long as I got good ganja and good surf, party's on.”
It is the last weekend of a hyper summer. This summer changes our lives, and many people, too many, have been sucked into its maelstrom logic. But yet the seeds of the future are here as well; I remember, actually, now, that little Emma first shows us here, her easy-going irony something really nice and funny. John, Sue, Mack, Michelle, Tanya; if this isn't their first time out, it's one of the earliest, in a sunlit space our paths to cross, carrying with it the promise of future great things. No more crisis! No more mad excursions of the heart! Somewhere unconsciously my hands and Charis meet, as the sun finally sinks into the blaze of water, all eyes seaward.
Off to the side, conversation: “It's not so much the facts, if these even exist, as your attitude towards them. Are expats people who just can't fit in at home, or are they the explorers of the world? Why do we heroize Christopher Columbus, but not want to hear too much about our friend backpacking from Timbuktu to Thailand?”
“I met a girl who said travelers and non-travelers just can't be friends. If you're sitting in an office back home waiting for the next promotion to come in three years, the last thing you want to hear about is your friend climbing Machu Picchu.”
“But the thing is that nobody ever heard of a traveler just ending up at home, a complete wreck and regretting ever taking off. It bothers people that other people don't see the value of trying to become physically rich, when experiences are what count.”
Night begins its slow takeover. We are down to a mere two dozen now; the thought of a beach fire is expressed but doesn't quite get underway. “Plans for October...” “Career back home...” “Why do the Japanese do...” Snippets of conversation and longer, more involved ones, as darkness finally sets in. To the right, hundreds of meters away, a pier juts out into the surf, and just barely, shadowy figures, night fisherman, can be seen, extending lines carefully.
“Dare me to go skinny-dip?”
Charis.
“Oh, no, you wouldn't.” But a low murmur turns into a group cry as Charis gets up and starts walking to the surf, turning her head to smirk once, and then peeling off layer by layer. Her bum is perfect; tight and firm.
“Go Charis! Go Charis!”
We watch her, a pale figure, paddling out into the surf, and it's clear that the fishermen, now all facing our direction, have figured out what is going on.
“Somebody else!”
Taking up the challenge, a half-minute later I go out to join her and the group is once again cheering.
“Hey Charis!”
“Hey Ritchie!”
“Nice water!”
“Yeah, it's awesome.”
“Paddle out more?”
“You bet.”
…
“Think they'll join us?”
“Give 'em a minute or two.”
“Yeah.”
Charis and I do not become girlfriend-boyfriend—or at least, not right away. She is, after all, still a devout Christian and her work placement, to Fukushima, prevents the possibility of seeing each other on more than a biweekly basis. The next actual situation confronting me is the reality that although Redd is already on his way out and Julian, without the original impetus, is reduced to needling and occasionally sarcastic remarks online, my situation is actually quite precarious. A turnover of new Japan arrivals is getting adjusted to Japan, and I am known to have been associated in some way with the old disgraced regime; if I do nothing but stand still, I will just be a person of poor reputation, possibly even involved with the criminal Shan, the drug-user Dominique, the disgraced Soren.
My solution to this predicament is simple. I can't do anything about Internet or real life rumor mongering, and there will always be a faint taint of some negative association, but if I engage the newcomers and improve their lives, I will at least not be in the same total disgrace that Soren is in and in any case my ability to deal with the vague and undefined threats like Dominique and her over-protective father will only be improved. As it turns out, a simple defense measure turns out to overwhelmingly successful to an almost offense degree.
“So we'll go to Ageha but we'll get there by all packing into one train?”
“Why don't we just pre-game and take the long way around?”
“You mean, actually on the commuter train?”
“Yeah exactly.”
A spur of the moment decision to get to a Halloween club night becomes what is now annually celebrated in Tokyo as the “Yamanote Halloween Train.” Packing a commuter train car in silly Halloween costumes, we cause such a ruckus and manage to drink so much alcohol that the story hits the evening news. Expats in Japan still commemorate this one crazy night out, although I understand the police are now on the watch for this behavior. November, right before the snow hits, we have a Tokyo scavenger hunt, one that takes twenty or so teams, some as big as a dozen people, racing around the city and confusing the natives with their strange costumes and get-ups. December means "remainers" events going on, the typical "internationalization" get-togethers that bring demure Japanese women in their mid-20s, Christmas parties and then the great Japanese New Year, consecutive days of continual Golden Week partying. Finally, the long winter months are broken up with ski trips, more casual weekends at the Lion's Head or Kita-Setagaya, before spring finally peeks its faint pink nose into the atmosphere, a giant blind mole with a smile on its face, hesitant, snuffling forward, scraping away against the frozen ground of winter.
I remember the autumn of that year has an immensity of sky; an intense blueness that follows all of that oppressive heat. I remember winter is by comparison completely mundane; snow flakes and scarves; the slush melting in the great blue city of Tokyo. In the market streets or amid the unrelenting, yet ever so civilized crowds, one becomes almost hypnotized, fundamentally moved in some esoteric way, questioning one’s very assumptions on human nature, modernity, Westernness. Seen from an elevated train, the varied neighborhoods of Tokyo pass by, frozen moments of children playing a ball game, locked into their destinies, light sparkling off glittering crystal skyscrapers, still lifes in memory, implicit in promise in experience, a quality impossible to capture in text. Yet this is also the period when I become a native Tokyo-ite. One day I find myself walking through Shinjuku Station, and suddenly—gestalt—the pattern of the entire city-block sized labyrinth of tunnels and passageways falls into place. Then, finding myself looking at a subway map, I realize that I’m not looking at the various paths and extensions as a tourist would—curious at the breadth and reach, looking for familiar landmarks—but as a city-dweller, simply looking for the quickest connection to a necessary destination. I have gone native. And against this backdrop, this unity of self and environment, a special girl who takes the train into the city twice a month for a relationship that doesn't quite have a name, I have become the mediator of situation.
“Uh, Ritchie? Mr. Ritchie, sir? There's someone who claims to know you personally?”
By spring of the year after the great crisis, I have become sufficiently dominant in young Tokyo's social scene that I hold regular court in Eden, which is pretty much the top club of the hour that year. An individual wishing to see me must pass not one, but two layers of inspection just to receive an audience—the bouncer at the velvet rope to the VIP room first, and then, second, my closest lieutenants who themselves with a mere dismissive look can cause an entire roomful of partygoers to erupt into laughter at some futile attempt to “break in.” It is therefore highly surprising, even shocking, when an apparently dirt-poor unfashionable Japanese guy somehow manages to get himself brought into the chamber of leisure and savoir faire on a high Friday night.
“I'm sorry, but he claims to know you personally and was able to tell me your phone number—just says he just got out of jail and doesn't even have the cash to call.”
My eyes widen as I recognize Shan. In the perversity of the moment and the supreme boredom of the early evening, I throw caution to the wind and smile wickedly. “Okay, let's see what he wants.”
In the dark blue mood-lighted room, I receive Shan on two black leather cushioned sofa-seats as around me, my lieutenants peek out of the corner of their eye in genuine shock and curiosity. Elegant women in black cocktail dresses look bored and sip pink cocktails; the ambient music is of old-school trance/house; and I find myself in a deliciously perverse mood.
“So, Shan Le, what can I do for you?”
“Ritchie, uh, Ritchie, please you have to help me.”
“Calm down, calm down. What is the problem?”
“Dominique. She is crazy girl. She keeps telling police that I pull a knife on her. They put me in jail. I had to stand in one place for two days. People get tortured. No talking. It's terrible situation. Terrible.”
I raise one eyebrow. “Really Shan? I find that hard to believe. I really don't think a modern developed country like Japan tortures its prisoners. Maybe you just got in a fight.”
“No, Ritchie, please. I'm begging you. It's terrible in Japanese jail. They have different jail for Chinese person. No visa; no paperwork; I had to do factory work sixteen hours day. Hell on earth.”
“Well Shan, that sounds like a character building experience. But I don't see what it has to do with anything I can do.”
“I just got out of jail. Waseda won't let me into dorm; I don't have my clothes, my things, no money. I just need place to stay. And maybe paperwork for lawyer. Help me please. I do anything.”
With the full certainty that anything I can do for Shan is a slap in the face for the dog Dominique, I signal to a friend to come over, and his arrangements—starting with just being able to crash on the tatami floor of somebody we know in Minowa, are made.
It starts with a half-starved, beaten, possibly hallucinating impoverished Chinese ex-Waseda student showing up in my majestic surroundings and proceeds from there over the course of about nine more months in that remarkable city that once defined an empire. The time is around the turn of the century; the city is a city of twelve million; and the fashions that adorn the girls walking around will show up in New York the following year.
“Okay, Shan, let's start from the beginning. How exactly did you get in this mess?”
The Chinese boy takes a deep breath. He has washed up and rested for two days, and he looks a little less pitiful. But his weight is still down and he has developed a nervous tic in his left cheek.
“So...I am sitting there peacefully in my dormitory room studying when suddenly four Japanese police officers, wearing full riot gear outfit and carrying big black sticks march in. I jump up; I am terror-fied. They say that I have pulled knife on Dominique; that Dominique is victim of crime. But this is lie!”
I exchange glances with Tucker, loyal lieutenant, who looks carefully back.
“So these people arrest you and charge you with assault and battery for no reason at all? They do it just because they don't like you?”
“Yeah, Dominique is crazy girl! She just like cause trouble!”
“Have you ever hung out with her? Maybe you just were carrying a knife once and she saw it and panicked?”
“No. I just know her through when she at same party. I never even be in same room with her alone.”
“Not even once.”
Shan breathes in and out again heavily. “Okay. There is one time when I go to her apartment.”
We settle back. It is good to hear the truth.
“I lend Dominique a magazine. And I am reading Maxim magazine, the section where readers can send in jokes to get $500. And I remember reading the same joke in an old issue. So I call up Dominique to get the magazine back.”
Tucker cuts in. “So you are reading Maxim magazine and you see a joke repeated. So this is important, this is just a outrage calling out to the heavens for redress that you must, you simply must go confirm this injustice by going to get the magazine back from Dominique.”
The comment flies over Shan's head, but I exchange a quick glance of mirth with Tucker.
“Yes, but this is only time. And I never bring knife.”
“Have you ever kissed Dominique, Shan?”
“No, never.”
Apparently so much time has passed and the experience of a Japanese jail has been so traumatic, that Shan doesn't even remember any more that he kissed Dominique in my presence. But he is apparently so involved in his lie, the myth that he doesn't even know Dominique all that well, that he responds automatically and with a straight face. Now it's my turn to sigh.
“Well, Shan, you know what? We'll see what we can do. But you do have to get your own place and find your own job. The ideal is for you to return to your studies, but if Waseda has kicked you out, that's that. Have you considered transferring to a Chinese university?”
“No. That is impossible. I will not go back to China.”
“Okay. But then if you would rather be a working person here rather than a university student in China, I think you have to commit to finding work commensurate with a high school degree. You have to work in a restaurant or something; I'm sure I know somebody who can help you.”
Suddenly tears are brimming in Shan's eyes. “How did this happen, Litchie? I was getting top grades in Waseda University. I always getting top marks.”
I do sympathize. “I don't know. I almost feel like I am missing one important piece, that it's staring me right in front of my eyes. But I don't have unlimited resources, Shan. Money comes from somewhere.”
Tucker agrees to help Shan with his one final request—to get a letter sent out to some British NGO that Shan found on the Internet—a non-profit committed to helping reform the Japanese legal system. It doesn't sound promising, but we're c