image:
“With his painstakingly coiffured mane blowing in the wind”
A common fantasy among first-time visitors to Japan is that they will be an exotic wonder in a sea of kimono-clad mystics, revered for their otherness, but also required to prove their worth to this honour-bound nation, ideally through the medium of the karate competition.
It has long been a hobby of mine to try and spot the exact moment when this fantasy falls to pieces around the ears of some fresh-faced young nerd, and there is no better place to enjoy this pastime than Tokyo.
Almost as much fun can be had observing how people deal with the disillusionment once it sets in. I have witnessed many strategies, from barefaced denial to grudging acceptance, from escaping into the cloying clutches of the “gaijin community” (for this read “hiding in Roppongi”) to joining every “international friendship club” (for this read “Japanese losers club/sinister Christian recruitment cult”) going. Nothing, however, ever terrified me more than when I arrived at Makuhari Messe for my first Tokyo Game Show, and was introduced to a friend of a friend who exhibited the worst (and thankfully rarest) coping method of all: attempting to become Japanese. Imagine, if you will, approaching from a distance a decorative boulder to see, perched atop it, his long leather jacket artfully draped over its sides as he squats there in the delightfully named unkozuwari position with his painstakingly-coiffured mane blowing in the wind, a figure who, from a distance at least, resembles nothing more than visual kei superfop Gackt.
Now imagine drawing closer, and the pockmarked pastiness of an unmistakably English face slowly coming into focus, impossible to hide beneath any amount of plucked eyebrows and expensive male cosmetics. He turns to you, a disinterested look that is clearly the result of considerable practice strewn across his face and, as if it could get no worse, you are introduced to him and asked to call him “Hiro”. Later probing reveals that his name is Gary and he is from Romford. He is the reason that foreigners will never, ever be taken seriously in Japan.
location information
- Name: Makuhari Messe
- Address: 2-1, Nakase, Mihama-ku, International Conference Hall, Chiba City
- Time of story: morning
- Latitude: 35.647462
- Longitude: 140.035579
- 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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