Hokkaido Highway Blues
looked vaguely the same. I passed a red-lantern eatery, walked for a few blocks, and then, seeing nothing better, I circled back only to get hopelessly lost. Block after block and still I could not find it. It was getting dark, and I made a list of places I would not want to live: Saiki, Saiki Port, near Saiki Port, and Saiki. Harbor towns either hustle with excitement or reek with lassitude, old urine, and turpentine. Saiki is of the old-urine-and-turpentine variety.
As I passed one doorway, I startled a little boy, maybe four years old. He was buttoned up from neck to ankle, the sure sign of an overprotective mother. She proved me right by coming out hurriedly and telling him in a hushed, frantic whisper, “Kiwo tsukete! Gaijin wa abunai yo!“ a phrase which always stings me when I hear it: “Watch out! Foreigners are dangerous!” But the little boy was having none of it. He stood, mouth open, his eyes a cartoon of surprise.
“Good evening,” I said, first to him and then to his mother. She gave me a hypocritical little smile and a small bobbing bow. Her son, having regained the power of speech, burst out with ‘A-B-C-D! A-B-C-D! A-B-C-D-F-G-E!”
“Very good,” I said. “Did you learn that in kindergarten?”
To which he replied: ‘A-B-C-D! A-B-C-D!”
This was getting real annoying, real fast. “Can you say Hello in English?”
“A-B-C-D! A-B-C-D!”
I congratulated him on his prowess with language and said good-bye. His mother bowed again, more deeply this time, and said with grave sincerity, “Thank you very much,” though it wasn’t clear whether she was grateful to me for speaking with her son, or for not robbing her and leaving her and her boy for dead. At moments like these I have to fight the overpowering urge to yell “Boo“ and see how high they leap and how loud they shriek.
Then, at the next corner, I came upon the red-lantern café I had passed earlier, and I went inside.
There was a plump, aproned lady behind the counter, and when I came in she exchanged glances with the only other customer in the place, a thin man slouched over his noodles. He slurped them up noisily, keeping an eye on me the entire time.
Above the bar were glossy photographs of Japanese battleships—not vintage Second World War destroyers, but modern, state-of-the-art vessels of prey. In one photograph a phallic gray submarine was emerging from the sea, the decks awash with foam and the Japanese flag emblazoned cross the aft or forecastle, or whatever the hell the correct seaman’s term is. As the lady of the place hurried herself with my curried rice, I pondered the significance of these photographs. I was wondering how a nation that claims to be the “Switzerland of Asia,” a nation whose constitution outlaws war and forbids it from ever having an army, I was wondering how such a nation managed to produce these lethal, sleek war machines. Except, of course, they aren’t war machines. They are part of Japan’s Self-Defense Force. Call it what you like, it is still a military buildup. I, for one, do not have a problem with this. Put yourself in Japan’s position. You’ve got North Korea aiming its warheads at you with a certified nutball at the helm, and you’ve got your crazy cousin China babbling away beside you, armed to the ears with Communist-era nuclear bombs—which means that eighty percent of them won’t work properly when fired. Unfortunately, twenty percent of Apocalypse is still Apocalypse. When you have neighbors like this, maintaining primed and ready armed forces would seem to make a lot of sense. But why can’t they just come out and admit it? Why the big charade?
“Oi! Gaijin!” It was the other customer. He had addressed me in the rudest possible way “Gaijin! Chotto!“
Shit. Just what I didn’t need, a dyed-in-the-wool, one-hundred-percent certified Grade-A Japanese asshole. I tried to ignore him, but he became belligerent, speaking in what I think was a slurred Osaka accent. “0/7 You like that ship? You a sailor?”
“Sorry, I don’t speak Japanese.”
“Ha ha!” he laughed, a nasty, guttural sound. He called out to the lady, who was now bringing me my curry. “Henna gaijin!” (“Weird foreigner”). Then, his eyes narrowing, he said, “I am Japanese.”
“Good for you.”
“I am a Japanese sailor. That ship,” he gestured with his jaw to one of the photos and in English said, “Japanese, number one. ” And he sneered, his lips like eels.
There
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