The Answer is at the Bottom of a Bottle of Awamori

After a long drive from Montreal, where the highlight was listening to baseball highlights repeated at “every 20, 40 and on the hour” for 8 straight hours, I finally arrived in New York City.

I’ve never missed New York City…sure I bitch about how other cities never stack up, or I sometimes I really hanker for a real bagel/pizza/skyline, but New York City is somewhere I’ve lived for 18 years. I’m used to it, it’s normalcy for me; its not new, exciting nor fresh. But it doesn’t matter what I think of New York City…cuz I was only going to be in New York City for a week.

Where was I off to?

Japan.

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After I single-handedly tore through Tokyo (with many collabos from Teddy), my return had been hyped for years like Detox. And just like Dre, I was actually going to do it this year. No, really.

When word got out of my return, the Japanese portion of my Bookface account exploded like a Peter North scene.

Asians require little incentive to utilize the internet to express their highly exaggerated overeager characters and something of this magnitude was enough to require a national emergency. Wallposts flooded my account and I disabled it in a vain attempt to stem the tide. But that worked as well as a New Orleans levee as my inbox started overflowing.

I started ignoring the little notifications cascading into my email account…I didn’t have the patience to wade through roughly 80 messages per day. But I made sure to focus on one person’s emails. Alisa 2.0.

If one remembers, she was the girl I never went after in my crazy summer in Japan. I was rolling in bitches and I couldn’t spend time on a girl that would take more than a night to get with. But I should’ve ignored those other girls…she was the one. The Almanac entry on her sums her up nicely:

“She was another intern at the financial company I worked at. She was easily the girl I liked the most in all 19 years at that point, but I completely ignored my feelings. Why? Because my life was moving at a 10,000 miles per hour as I tore through Tokyo. Only when things started slowing down (the subsequent plane ride back to America), did I realize I genuinely loved

Dreadful Weather at Narita

her.

But it was too late.

She got a boyfriend after I left and she’s been with him for over a year. I later found out from a mutual friend that she had liked me during that summer. FUCK!!!!”

Except one thing has changed since then…she’s single now.

And she, like the rest of the Japanese entourage, is excited to see me. She can’t wait, wants to meet immediately and is thrilled I’m finally heading over.

And it would be a sure homerun like a Hank Aaron batting practice…except for one small problem.

Chiaki.

Living in the same country as Alisa 2.0, she is the huge pink elephant in the room. Juxtaposed next to the girl I never went after is the girl I ferociously pursued for 10 up and down days in Calgary.

Since Chiaki doesn’t have Bookface, she remains unaware of my excursion to Japan. I wanted to tell her. I still like her. But maybe it’s for the better. I’m definitely meeting Alisa 2.0…and depending on how the meeting goes, I might be going after her.

But if Chiaki is thrown into the mix, I’ll be torn between two people. Knowing myself, I wouldn’t be able to invest enough time with both girls. Knowing myself, I would also slip up at some point. And if you think a skinny ass Asian kid with no confidence can sign up two exceptionally hot girls at the same time, I’ve got some profitable ventures with Madoff I wanna sell you.

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The internal debate continued as I sipped my third beer.

During a 30 minute drive to JFK, 13 hours and 56 minutes of sleepless deliberation in the cramped 737, an hour of swine flu scare medical checks at Narita, 2 hours of rush hour train rides through Tokyo, an hour of extended family reunion and after a 30 minute train ride to Shibuya to meet a friend, it had remained foremost in my mind.

Do I contact her? Do I not? What do I do? Adding to my addled mind was Miss KO in Montreal and a girl in New York City who had confessed her love to me (why does my timing fucking suck?).

I turned to my friend. He was actually one of J-Poppers I played soccer with down in the desolate town of College Station, Texas. Now halfway around the world, we were drinking beer in one of the most densely populated parts of the world, Shibuya, Tokyo. We were sitting in one of the countless izakayas that populate Tokyo and with one too many beers aided with 36 hours of sleeplessness, I finally got the courage to ask someone for help.

“What should I do?”

He chugged his beer and let loose a roaring belch. He leaned forward.

“You see, I’m not even from Tokyo. I’m from Okinawa. I don’t like the people here, the city, the lifestyle, the women…I say fuck these two broads. Fuck them”

I snorted and leaned back in disgust. My answer was definitely not going to be found with a slightly tipsy, sex-driven Okinawan male.

His smile faltered. “Oh, you’re in it that bad, huh?”

I nodded. “Well, in Okinawa, there’s a saying. The answer to even the hardest question is at the bottom of a bottle of awamori*.”

He said this in his crazy Okinawan accent so I had no idea what he said, but he said it with a serious look so I nodded in affirmation.

He sternly nodded back and yelled out, “Awamori, hito bin!” <One bottle of Awamori!>

He poured us both a glass and while he was pouring, I saw a bit of the label. 120 proof. 60%. Hanazake it said.

We clinked glass. “It’s on me. Buy me a drink after you’ve solved your riddle. Now let’s finish this bottle.”

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I had only 100 meters to my house, too weak to stand up, sniffling through a curtain of tears, trying to right the world in my vision and stumbling despite crawling forwards on all fours.

I felt a rumble deep in my stomach and in a last ditch effort, dove for a planter and vomited my guts out. I heaved again, but with nothing left to regurgitate, my whole body contracted inwards and I became a sniffling, sobbing mess. My upperbody had fallen headfirst into the planter, my lower body was dangling outside.

I needed to call someone to help me. Without even the power to get myself out of this mess, I managed to extract my phone, go to a random entry in my contact list and hit send.

I put the phone to my ear. Ring. Ring. Ring. “Hello?”

If this were a movie, the random person I had just called would be Chiaki…because it’s destiny. But then if this were a movie, I would be tall, blonde, flawlessly handsome and I would’ve had a poignant soundtrack to accentuate the moment.

Instead, I’m short, Asian and my face looked like Rihanna’s after an argument with Chris Brown. And the only soundtrack I had was fucking cicadas chirping everywhere. And I had just woken up my grandmother. Who happens to be very intolerant about alcohol.

“Why are you calling me this late? Are you in trouble?”

Before I could formulate an amazing excuse for why I was calling this late and whilst taking three minutes to formulate said amazing excuse, someone pulled me out.

If this were a movie, the person who picked me up would’ve been Chiaki…who for some inexplainable reason was jaunting around on the other side of Tokyo at 2 in the morning. And I would be wearing a custom-tailored shirt and have long flowing locks.

Instead, I was wearing a $10 Old Navy shirt whose base color was indiscernible due to my multicolored vomit and I had a variety of leaves, grass and dirt embedded taking refugee in my short, black hair. And I had just been pulled out by a fucking policeman.

“Where do you live?”

I pointed to my building. “There!”

“Alright, let’s go home then.”

I walked forward one step and fell flat on my face. He sighed. He probably had to do this every fucking Friday and Saturday with drunk as fuck Japanese salarymen. He started to pick me up, but thought better of touching my vomit and wilderness covered body. He took out his baton. “Grab this.”

I gripped the baton and he half dragged, half walked me the final hundred meters to my house.

He made sure I opened the front door with my keys and as the automatic doors started closing, he waved goodbye. I drunkenly saluted him and went into the elevator.

As I stood waiting for the doors to close, I smiled. And just before my body collapsed into much needed rest on the elevator floor, I couldn’t help repeating the name on the tag of the helpful policeman. Ueda*.

Welcome to Japan.

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*Awamori-A really fucking strong sake from Okinawa...it has to be when its the only respite from American soldiers littering that island.

*Ueda-A really common last name in Japan...it also happens to be Chiaki's

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