8) Intermission

Part 8
(This is chapter eight of my nonfiction accounts, "-Liking-: Refractions and Infractions" )

I had a brief intermission coming. A break from my normal life.

The last day of junior year was a bridge. There were a few issues that I was suffering through, sure. However, after school ended there was fortunately not much time to think about such things. I was busy.

The day after the last day of school ("goodbye everyone, have a summer"), I took my ACT test. I got there at the unfamiliar college campus, and I did the whole thing where you have to present a photo ID to get into a test room. I've always been comfortable with standardized tests, and I've never really gotten worked up about them. This case was no exception. After several hours of testing and a lunch break in which I wandered around the courtyard, the ordeal was over. Right after the test I met up with someone I knew from school, Sarah. She offered me a ride home, which I gladly took.

On the way we talked about what we were doing this summer, and this led naturally to what I was doing two days hence. "I'm shipping off to Japan for two weeks." Reactions: enthusiasm, amazement. This little snippet reminded me for the first time in a while that it was in fact pretty cool. I was doing a cool thing.

I'd lost sight of the coolness of actual activities due to my ceaseless brain dwellings of the past few months, devoted to impossible emotional enigmas.

When I got home, I had to start packing. Leaving the country was the final item on my foreseeable checklist of life, so I didn't have to worry about anything else.

The trip was through a program organizing the whole thing. Since nobody else at my school had applied (our Japanese program was in its beginning stages), I was going along with six students and a Spanish teacher from Southwest High. I had applied for and received a sizable scholarship, and I had also been staying after school once a week to practice additional Japanese with the teacher in preparation. So I was all set.

Flight

The day came, and I showed up at the airport with all of my junk and dressed in a new blazer. The other kids were sitting in a circle in the terminal playing cards. Immediately I felt like the weird one, but that was to be expected.

The plane ride was my first. Then again, the whole trip amounted to an accumulation of firsts. After stopping at Chicago and switching flights, we reversed course and flew West.

For that long flight, I was in a seat next to a girl who was taking up more than hers. As in, she was too large for it. This presented a conundrum for me. I was stuck there, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was uncomfortable. But I could only imagine how she felt. The whole situation had a blameless awfulness to it, because there really was no solution.

I dozed in and out of uncomfortable sweaty naps, unsure sometimes whether or not I was in a dream.

Then on the great projection in front a map showed up, and there was Japan. We made our landing at Kansai Airport, the largest building in the world.

Arrival

My group and I all met up and got on a bus, which would whisk us away to Kyoto. Or wherever, because I wasn't particularly aware at that time. The busride was visually striking; we went by the greenest fields I've ever seen, all leveled up in wet contours filled with rice. It was alien. I was really there.

After that long drive with no bathrooms, we eventually showed up at our fancy hotel in Kyoto. Orientation followed in our lobby, and we made our way to our room. At the hotel I made an observation that today was Tuesday. The sun hadn't set, since I'd followed it across the ocean. But somewhere along the line, a day disappeared. This was a source of stress for my mind.

I had time to get to know my traveling companions. There was Chris, who was kind of a quiet loner, glasses and the whole shebang. When I had first met up with the group, I was wearing a new blazer my mom had made me buy, and he made a remark about it. It turned out that he had the very same one, a creepy revelation, to be sure. Then there was Ian, who was too cool for his own good, but friendly. Richie was the small jewish kid with the best sense of humor. The two girls with us were Kat, kind of punked out and angsty and large, and Amanda, who was the Wiccan type. And lastly was our chaperon Mr. G., who liked having many pairs of shoes, and who told us we could pretty much do anything we wanted unless it was stupid.

With that in mind, we spent the first night wandering the streets. We found a nice arcade with strange and baffling new arcade games; games where you played musical instruments, typed in a keyboard, danced. It was all so innovative, so fresh, those Japanese. I retired with most of our crew, but those who stayed out later had a wonderful story to tell about meeting an old guy in a bar who regaled them with fascinating stories. I was disappointed to have missed out. But there would be more.

The following few days were all structured tourism at its best. We visited Old Kyoto, looked at a big Buddha, visited Minneapolis' sister school and received giggles from students, walked around through beautifully strange examples of city growth, saw the huge orange shrine. Each night we retired to run around the hotel and surrounding area and cause international mischief.

Each of us bought swords before we left Kyoto. They were everywhere, and just when one person bought one, the next shop carried some that were even cooler. Upon further inspection, however, all of the swords were just touristy items that only looked good on a wall. Me and Ian sword-fighted with our brand new swords in our hotel room. That lasted a few minutes -or three dents, to be more precise. They weren't really for fighting.
They were just for buying. Fancy illusions.

It all went by extremely fast. In every direction there were amazing sights, strange contraptions, and goofy people. There was so much to take in that there was no room for the perception of time. So before I really knew it, we were at the Shinkansen station waiting for a train to...

Yokosuka

We'd blasted through most of the country on the bullet train, and Mount Fuji had loomed in the distance out of our windows. The day was getting late, and the station was crowded. One Midori-san, a guide from the school we'd be attending, picked us up and brought us out to eat at a quaint ramen shop. Afterwards, we walked to the school and split up to meet our host families.

Getting to know my new family, The Nakayamas, was a bit awkward. My host brother Koki was a little younger than me, and knew a little bit of English. The rest knew only a few words and phrases. From where we met at the school, we walked for a long stretch through the city. We passed an old man at the gas station who was some relation to the family. (I did not catch it.) We entered a mall, and went to a grocery store where I helped by randomly taking interest in some of the treats, as the packaging was nearly incomprehensible. Finally we got into a car hiding in a ramp nearby, and we drove to what would be my home for the next week. They played Backstreet Boys in the car's CD player, and Koki pointed out the huge naval ships at the nearby US military base.

They invited me into their home like another family member. I met my little brothers, Mazu, small, and Riku, smaller. Mother made delicious cooking, father was a driving instructor, and Grandma and Grandpa lived in a room on the first floor. Everything seemed very happy. They even had a 'western style house', which meant there was a shower (in addition to the hot bath) and recognizable toilets.

The entire week with my host family was ceaseless activity. They all took care of me and kept me entertained. Koki took an advanced English test the Saturday, so his teacher brought me to a nearby park and museum. That night, we went to the 'ramen museum'. On the Sunday, the family brought me to the Japanese version of Seaworld.

I got to see many strange Japanese television shows at the house. At night, there was a show where high school students would stand on the top of a building and yell down at their classmates, giant subtitled kanji renditions of their statements plastering the screen. In the morning, there was a channel that was an aquarium, with nothing but happy music and fish.

I played with my little brothers, and we walked the dog together. I was living in some kind of wholesomely surreal family land.

Then there was school.

Shonangaku

Me and my contingent were all hosted with families of students from Shonangaku, a high school. In Japan, high school consists of three years -equivalent to our tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. This particular high school had been an all-girl private school. This year was the first year they were allowing both male and female students to enter, meaning that only grade one was co-ed. So five sixths of the school was giggling Japanese schoolgirls.

This was enough to deal with by itself, but it was worse. They would come up and talk with us during passing time, and try to test their English skills. The first question they ALL asked?
"Do you have... gallfriend?"

They gave all of us foreign students 'special schedules'. We got to visit pretty much every class offering at the school during the course of the week, and in almost every one of them we were given special parties or presentations. There was a Tea Ceremony class (I suppose this would be like a manners or conduct class), where we were all waited on by young girls in kimonos. As silly as it was, it felt like being royalty. In other classes we sat awkwardly in the corner and observed, or were given special projects.

Ian, one of us Minnesota boys, developed what can only be called a 'following'. The Japanese schoolgirls, once they learned his name, would chase after him in groups calling it out:
"Eeeya, Eeeya!" How attractive was this Ian? I really don't know, but he certainly wasn't ugly. So much for Japanese modesty, though. These girls were all over him, or pretended to be. Both reasons meant the same thing to me. Rumors of him spread through the school, and it seemed like every class wanted to get a look at him.

In addition to all of the activities the school had planned for me, the Nakayamas continued to offer hospitality. Each night was another little outing or presentation. A visit to an island, fried tentacles on a stick, Japanese KFC (whose familiar mascot was named "Uncle Colonel"), a videostore, Koki and his father's martial arts presentation.

Presentation

It was soon Thursday. We foreign students had heard rumors of some sort of presentation, of speeches we had to make. This news immediately freaked me out, and I had Koki help me prepare a nice humble thankful speech. We got together in the school office that morning, and we were kept there alone for some time. Outside in the hallway, the Japanese girls shuffled about, tittering.

Amanda and Kat were asking us guys for girl stories. It went around the table, and finally it was my turn. I couldn't help but relate my 'MARRIED?' story to them, and I wowed them as expected. That whole predicament was starting to feel more and more like it was in the past, or from a different universe. Something funny to look back on. It was no longer controlling my emotions, it was no longer the permanent stormcloud over my head. It was a tale -a fantastic tale- and nothing more. There were jokes, of course, and I took them with a degree of pride.

Then the time came, and we were brought to the auditorium where we sat behind an ominous curtain closed in front of us.

The curtains lifted to reveal the entire estrogen-heavy school gawking at us, all of them in full giant-ribbon-with-skirt sailor uniforms. There was the podium, where we were called up one at a time to say our words. Mine was a bit long, but maybe only because everyone else's was extremely short.

While I delivered the speech, I looked out upon this sea of young girls, focusing and unfocusing my eyes on the surprising depth of the auditorium. As far as I could tell, it went back forever. The students were looking up at me with either vague welcome or a kind of distracted indifference. What were they like? Were they really encouraged and excited by this visit from American students? Or were they just sitting through it, as I would have done for some cultural presentation, happy to be momentarily out of class. Would Japanese schoolgirls snicker and make jokes to each other in the back, or was it more common here for them to be genuinely respectful? The answers to these questions I would never know, all of them screened out by the haze of this crowd of uniforms below me, and the scanning eyes penetrating my head.

I convinced myself at that point that it was all a dream, and that I was still sleeping on the airplane. "Learning the language is fun and very hard, but I'm trying my best" I said in simple Japanese, ending my little speech. The explosion of clapping followed the end of my speech broke whatever thoughts of dreaming had come to mind. I was satisfied then just to sit down and be done with it, comfortable in my real chair with the knowledge that I would never have to do that again.

Leaving

The week wound down, and on my last day of school, some of the instructors gave us a trip around the area, in place of sitting through classes. That morning I'd intended to present to my 'classmates' a giant bag of souvenirs from Minnesota. But Ian had showed outside of my classroom, encouraging me to meet up with our American group. So I left the bag with Koki, telling him that it was for his class, and I left.

We went to various important monuments, met the mayor of Yokosuka(!?), and returned to school just in time for the end of classes. At that point, we wandered about a bit, and I desperately took pictures with students I'd talked to. Many of them fingered their noses or adopted strange new gestures; I couldn't tell exactly what it meant.

That night, the Nakayamas threw me a going away party, a feast. There were various delicacies, ranging from the exotic to the familiar. I stuck a ball of 'tako' (octopus) into my mouth, and with some difficulty I got it down my throat without losing it. But I would never make the mistake of eating one ever again.

They presented me with a gift, a gigantic bag full of Japanese treats. In turn, I ran up to my luggage and brought down tie-dyed shirts my mother had made for them. It was a cute moment.

The next day they brought me to the train station, where I would be leaving with my group to Tokyo. On the way, I told them my strange request: I wanted to go to a beach to pick up some sand. They catered to this bizarre desire, and I bagged a small clump of Yokosuka to take home. Thankfully, we still made it to the station on time.

There were some teary eyes, and some hugging, and then I was on the train again.

Group

On the train, we all kind of regrouped. Talk, jokes, gossip. There was some funniness regarding Chris, the kid with the glasses and my blazer. He'd always kind of been the 'weird one' -if that could be said about anyone in the group- and as the trip went on, he increasingly kept to himself. As rumor had it, he'd shown an inappropriate amount of interest in Kat's host-sister, even so much as to cause the girl to discretely remark how she was creeped out by him. So for the school week, many in the group had arranged to 'protect her'. Now I'm not one to be proud of ostracizing someone, but I couldn't help but join in the humor of it all.

At the hotel, Richie was complaining about how he was 'stuck' rooming with Chris. There were a few more 'weirdness' stories to back up his distaste, convincing me it was beyond mere exaggeration. But I still wasn't sure I liked how the group had so split up around him. Whether it was because he kept to himself or otherwise, I'm not sure I liked it. Then we got to our hotel rooms.

We entered Chris and Richie's room first, to take a look at it. I had to use the bathroom, but Chris got there before me. Afterwords, I came in to find a surprise waiting. My first thought wasn't exactly disgust, but a kind of confusion. How had such a noticeably sizable coil of pubic hair been left on the seat? More importantly: how could someone leave it there in plain threatening sight of the next hotel-mate to use the facilities? I saw the opportunity, and I started to laugh to myself. I opened the door, announcing to us four men present: "So, did the hotel room COME with the pubic hair on the seat? Or..."

They all laughed at my derisive joke. It was awful, but it was funny. My mind spun, attempting to balance payoff and cost ratios. In the end, it all came down to one thing: I was free. I was in Japan, I was with people I didn't know and would likely never see again outside of the trip. So I could react in any way, really, regardless of the fact that I'd have reacted differently in more familiar company. The remark was provoked, true. But could it have been toned down? Probably. I made a note of this behavior to myself.

Does everyone behave differently in different groups? Was I a completely different person in this company? In Japan? Were the rest of them only adapting Japan-personas? Where would one draw the line, how far from oneself is too far? How much could I do without changing myself for the worse?

Coincidentally, it was then time for the group to decide what the heck we were going to do that night in Tokyo.

Nightlife

Shopping district. That's where we would go: Shinjuku. We rode there on the infamous Tokyo subway line. We went to a Tower Records and various other stores, then returned to the hotel. Over the next few days, we spent most of our time just wandering around shopping centers, riding the trains from stop to stop, then revisiting them.

The second time we wandered Shinjuku it was getting late at night. All of the other students and myself were in a big group, excluding Chris who had broken off on his own mission. I wanted to check out a DVD video store we passed. The others seemed really uninterested, so I had to go in myself.

It was down a few stairs to the small video store. At least, it looked fairly small. The selection was only a few shelves and the counter. There were some crazy Japanese animation titles, and some familiar ones, and I gawked at them for a bit. And then, the mystery swinging door opened and Chris emerged from an adult video section that dwarfed what I had taken for the 'main' section of the store. Through the harmonic swinging of the door, I spied walls of video covers, a mosaic effect of white and skin-pink.

Chris made a face for a second and greeted me. After my cursory glance inward I went right back to looking at my normal titles. A seventeen year-old youngster, I had not yet experienced skulking through the adult section of my friendly neighborhood videostore. However, this WAS Japan, and I wasn't exactly sure where I stood.

"Don't worry," he said with a creepy smile, "go check it out."

I spent only a few moments wandering the candy-store like dirty room. Just enough time to be astounded (then intimidated, then slightly sickened) by the sheer volume and variety of the product. I'd known the Internet, for sure. But I had no idea the world behind the door, so to speak, was this vast.

I left the store with Chris soon after, and we wandered more of the streets. By some freak of coincidence, on the second floor of the electronics store we went to I bumped into the rest of our group and joined them again, thankful for some different company.

Last Day

There was a grand party planned for our last day in Tokyo. All of our host families would visit and celebrate. I and a few others were late in getting to the party; we'd miscalculated train travel time. So we apologized profusely to our chaperone and our host families and anyone else who happened by. Thankfully, we were not extremely late.

The party went on, photos were taken, speeches were made by organizers, and students and their families stood around munching on food. As the night went on, eyes became more red. This was a family that had existed for only a week, and yet, it felt more real than that. I realized I was going to miss them all very much. Koki, his mother, and his father, and the other two kids who hadn't made it out to Tokyo. There was great hugging had that night.

Somewhere along the line, there was a two-liter bottle of Coke sitting there ("I feel Coke" written on the side). I picked it up, and some people started chanting that most idiotic of idiotic chants: "Chug, chug, chug." For a moment, I knew it would be dumb, and I tried to shake my head to those around me. But looking at their faces, this bizarre will in them tearing through my inhibitions... I could not hold out. I grabbed the plastic bottle and chugged down, taking an uncomfortably long time in the process. I felt ungood immediately afterwards. Not because of the meager amount of cola consumed, but the spectacle I had caused. My Japanese family noted that afterwards my cheeks were bright red 'like a drunk'. Oh, the embarrassment. Thankfully, a group standing adjacent to us started shouting out what we had: "Chug, chug, chug." Another even skinnier and nerdier kid then tried chugging a bottle of some carbonated beverage. And thank goodness, he made even more of an ass out of himself than I.

We all took our final pictures in a big group of families and friends, and soon enough everybody left. We said our sad goodbyes, and it was done.

Left to our own devices, us students decided to do one last night on the town. Chris left on a solo journey to who-knows-where, and Ian probably went to where cool people hang out. So me, Richie, Amanda and Kat wandered a bit, going nowhere exciting in particular, ambling in circles, and trying to find easy landmarks in the night.

Later that night, we bumped into Ian on the street, who was returning from his mystery expedition. The girls left us at this point, and we found a treasure in some nearby vending machines: 'Long Cokes' (or 'Wrong Cokes'). These suckers were bizarre, long cans of Coke. For some reason, Ian had to have them. A lot of them. So we set to work stuffing all of our leftover yen into the vending machine and filled Ian's backpack with cans. Then we made a visit to our hotel's local supermarket and got some food. One strange characteristic about the supermarket was that it had a comic section. But in with the comics, right next to the more 'wholesome' titles were straight out pornographic ones. I grabbed some normal ones for the purposes of practicing the language.

We went back to our rooms and ate microwaved ramen, listened to music on newly-bought minidisk players, and made fun of Japan.After a while, me, Richie, and Ian started to get bored. It was clear though, we were not going to be sleeping that night: At 6am we needed to be on a bus to the airport. So we needed to stay up.

I made a remark about the availability of the naughty comics at the supermarket. We agreed that it was kind of strange. This led to our brilliant plan, one of those things that is infinitely more funny at two in the morning. We would go on an expedition to the store to buy...

Milk and Porn

We walked into the store, which was empty except for one poor underpaid late-night cashier. Half asleep ourselves, we kind of slumped over to the fridge and grabbed the proper milk, and than grabbed a graphic novel of questionable taste from the rack. The guy at the counter rang us up unquestionably; just some goofy spoiled foreign kids with the munchies.

Sitting in our hotel room, we took turns watching inane television and looking through the strange comic, making fun of the nastiness within. In Japan, there's a strange censorship policy in regard to such material -even while on television they allow full frontal nudity. Their big censorship solution to vile material, at least in the comic we had, was to put black rectangles over specific parts of the anatomy. But it's not what you think. A great deal of the microscopic gynecological details are still there, in plain sight. There just happens to be a black rectangle located somewhere on it. The rectangles didn't cover up enough of anything to 'save' poor prying eyes from the material, but rather they served to leave just the slightest, teensiest bit of naughtiness up to the imagination. This was probably the result of years of artists 'pushing the limits' of their required censorship (handed down by the wholesome U.S. of A. after occupation), but seeing this evolution of it right then, it was just pure absurdity.

Gigantic black rectangles floating in front of various anatomy.

After making fun of the oozing rectangular boxes for some time, we needed more hilarity. It was time to turn it into a running joke. Clad in hotel-provided pajamas, we trudged once again to the market and bought snack and porn from the same sullen cashier.

An even smaller amount of time later, the television having not supplied enough 'funny', we stopped in to buy just one more book (having run out of need for milk or snacks).

A Departure

The night was nearing an end, so we started packing things up to get to the airport. Chris hadn't arrived yet, and it was almost time to leave. At last he showed up, disheveled and with what I interpreted as a 'crazy look in his eyes'. When questioned, he became apprehensive, only furthering my sleep-deprived classification: clearly he had done something, maybe many things. It was beyond us, whatever it was.

My mind wandered. He had referred earlier to meeting someone, or something important, but I had forgotten it. Now it suddenly became important to me; I needed to piece together what Chris had done in the dark corners of mysterious Tokyo.

The extended period I had stayed awake caused my imagination to go in strange directions. I envisioned him walking the street. He would enter a massage parlor perhaps, one of many we had seen. But of course, a little more interesting than a mere massage. In a dark corner somewhere. In my mind, I watched him being led by a cute girl from the train station to a darker alley. And during this time, he would make clumsy conversation with her in Japanese, only to find out that she spoke alright English. They arrived at the rustic parlor, and he purchased his room like a good man. The girl would accompany him upstairs, away from the spooky entryway. They would have a good time -he would have a spectacular time. And then afterwards, he would take comfort in her company, a kind of rare blessing. And they would talk, and he would be fascinated with her. Sadly though, he would need to return to the hotel, lest he get in trouble.

This scenario would be the night before last, I garnered, because it had to leave room for an even more eventful Last Night. After the party with his host family, he realizes he needs to see her again. He wastes zero time trying to return to the girl from last night. He cannot find her at the station, so he walks through twists and turns he half remembers. He is getting lost, and there are people with dirtier looks this time, making alien remarks at him. Finally, he makes it to the familiar parlor. He asks the manager for the girl, by her name: Yukiko. She appears after fifteen minutes, glad to see him. Once again they meet together, take their room. This time they talk more, and they hold each other closer. She reveals snippets of her troubled life: she owes money. He vows to help her. Trouble arises when he confronts her boss without thinking. He is tossed out, and she screams briefly before getting roughed into a back room. He realizes, lying on the street in front of the parlor, that there is nothing he can do. He is powerless to help her. For now. A bouncer eyes him from the entry, and the boy turns away to walk back to the station and home. But a flash of hope fizzles in his mind, and he looks back briefly. She is running toward him, one of her arms held back by the bouncer.

"Don't forget me!" she cries.

He takes steps toward her, even as she is dragged back in.
"I'll come back for you," he cries, "I promise I will!"

Then she disappears back into the dimly lit room, and the bouncer again assumes his position giving him a look that says 'I could kill you'.

He rides the train back to the hotel, and thence to the plane, and finally home to the USA, knowing that he had experienced love, and that he had a bittersweet hope to live for. Someone waiting for him.

That's what I saw in his eyes. At the hotel, in the airport, on the airplane. His adventure. And I pitied him. Poor Chris, I thought. Lined up with an unrealistic, fleeting hope of love. He went abroad, and did something out of character. The geek tried to break out of the box, and he found something wonderful in the gutter that he couldn't keep.

I realized that that wasn't it, though. During the lengthy period I'd spent imagining what Chris had found in Tokyo, I was in fact projecting a fantasy of my own.

I had wanted to live that tale. I wanted to be that character, become someone more dangerous than myself, more interesting. I wanted fights with the scum of the city, to experience the twisted nightlife. And most of all, I wanted some torn and bitter, impossibly complex love. I wanted a crazy look in my eyes, a knowing, experienced look of someone who has known it all and lost it.

The whole trip had been a fiction, a fantasy. I spent my time with people I never knew, and would never know again, in a land I'd never been to, and would never be to again. Fake friends and a fake family in a fake country. How far could I have gone, how could I have behaved?

The farthest I went was simply reading a speech in front of thousands of tittering, uniformed, schoolgirls.

It was my break from the real world, and its greatest impact was the thought of my What Could Have Been. And that seemed far more glamorous than Milk and Porn.

Those potential nights I could have spent in the dark streets of Tokyo haunted me. They hid behind the giant black rectangle floating over the ludicrous anatomy of my dream. Censoring myself.


Landing

And then, before I knew it, the whole trip was over. Two and a half weeks. Myself again, comfortable landing in the real world of Minnesota. My old heartbreak felt like it was years behind me, and I hardly cared what new troubles might lay around the bend.

For that moment, exhausted, and happily not worrying. The remains of my troubles seemed like nothing, compared to those that Could Have Been. And nowhere near as interesting.

(This was chapter number eight of my personal accounts, "-Liking-: Refractions and Infractions" )

(Next chapter: "9) Ponderation" )