image: A. Shinohara
“The Bad Girl strutted off and I was left with a ham egg pie.”
In Tokyo I have heroes to whom I can say hardly a word. First among these is the Bad Girl of Mister Donut [1] in Senzoku. At fifty, she’s thin as a reed and wears sleeveless camouflage half-shirts which showcase her navel. Whenever we meet at Mister Donut we grin and wave to each other like cellmates in the same exuberant asylum.
Today the illustrious Bad Girl bought me a ham egg pie, which she slid onto the table as she stopped by to pick up my point cards. I always save them for her, and she exchanges them at the register for promotional gifts—plastic lunchboxes, day planners and rice bowls.
This exchange of pie and point cards [2] was great fun, of course, because the people around us looked shocked and appalled. I live for these moments of cultural levitation, when things that could never, ever happen in Tokyoland go ahead and happen anyhow.
The Bad Girl strutted off and I was left with a ham egg pie. But I loathe ham egg pie. The egg is soft-boiled, see, so that the yolk bubbles out as you chew. And it’s cold.
If only I could love those near to me as well as I love certain adored strangers. Because I would sooner die than hurt the feelings of the divine Bad Girl of Mister Donut in Senzoku.
I ate the hideous ham egg pie; the cold egg dribbled into my beard [3]. 
referenced works
- Mister Donut in Japan. Free refills on their American Coffee. ↩
- Point cards are everywhere in Japan. Seriously. Bic Camera must make millions of dollars a day off people losing, and thus not redeeming point cards. The coffee shop down the street has a point card, your dry cleaner has a point card, your sexy massage parlor has a point card, your video store .. strangely, no point card. ↩
- Food dribbling photos. ↩
location information
- Name: Mister Donut in Senzoku
- Address: 1-4-1 Kitasenzoku, Ota-ku
- Time of story: afternoon
- Latitude: 35.609533
- Longitude: 139.692957
- Map: Google Maps
033 “Dewy eyes closed, her porcelain arms and legs splayed attractively”
032 “The ika had made too many turns.”
031 “A tongue was moving around my big toe, like a warm slug crawling. ”
030 “Ichor will gush out of this carefully constructed image”
029 “I wince, more than her.”
028 “Their schoolbags were puddled around their socks, forgotten”
027 “Amongst the bottles and the obscure records and the crimson velvet walls”
026 “Nostalgia isn’t an easy indulgence for amateurs”
025 “... but anyway please take one of these little cheese cakes ...”
024 “The inhabitants of the blue, makeshift tents in the bushes.”
023 “Yeah … I’m sorry too. Merry Christmas.”
022 “I was dead broke. It was winter.”
021 “The district's energy had faded to rest on my last night there.”
020 “The slightly bald salaryman didn't correspond to any memory I could conjure up.”
019 “She laughed at my effort and responded in English, ‘Long time, no seduction.’ ”
018 “In my dreamy state, oblivious to signs and announcements I often boarded the wrong train.”
017 “I was fifteen years old and it was one of those nights.”
016 “That ear of corn just wanted to go home”
015 “With his painstakingly coiffured mane blowing in the wind”
014 “Her voice, even across languages, betraying her worry.”
013 “I saw them drawing bamboo sticks from a silver rectangular box.”
012 “A simulacrum of someone else's home, equal parts comfort and loss.”
011 “Jumbled Escheresque insanity where geography in any traditional sense ceases to exist.”
010 “I could hardly make out anything apart from his glowing eyes...”
009 “Shibuya was like a stroke.”
008 “I cried for a while and wiped the dead bracken off my karate pants.”
007 “Both my tie and my disposition hang limp as I calculate the remaining distance to the station.”
006 “I once read about a Chinese maiden whose feet were unbound by a cruel man …”
005 “The Bad Girl strutted off and I was left with a ham egg pie.”
004 “I arrived expecting an irritated Japanese person to step out of the crowd and identify himself as Hideki.”
003 “The woman at the ticket window seemed surprised to see another human being. I was the only visitor.”
002 “Flanked on either side by adult manga shops and the like, the smell of yakitori in the air.”
001 “For two weeks the day began with this morning walk, our shared routine.”
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