Pivot Point

Financial woes.

I mentioned it briefly in the past entry (though all of you glossed over it to get to the good stuff), but I am fucking in the shitcan.

Socially, my life is as good as it gets (considering my financial situation). I have this Busty Girl texting me nonstop, Alisa 2.0 and Chiaki are waiting in the wings…it doesn’t get much better. Three prospects at one time?

Look, I don’t consider myself the Major Leagues. It’s not like girls fucking dream to play on my team, or 16 year old Dominicans forge birth certificates to get with me, or Americans pump performance enhancers into their systems to stay with me. I consider myself just a dilapidated franchise in a big market (The New York Knicks? Hiroshima Carps?) fending off all the hot franchises (people bigger than me, people hotter than me and people richer than me…a substantial portion of the population). So having three blue chip prospects is ridiculous. I’ve long given up the heralded 5-man rotation (for sheer impossibility and for moral issues), but this is legitimately the closest I’ve gotten to three (or even two) aces.

Continuing down this metaphor, I’m a small market team so at some point they’re going to clamor for contracts worthy of their status. And in which case, I’ll only have enough resources to sign one of the three. But for now, while they’re still in their developmental league minimum contracts, I have three cornerstones for a young, legit contender. I even have one of those Pedro Martinez type savvy veterans in my friend’s ex-wife.

And this is the ideal strategy small market teams employ to build dynasties except for one gaping problem. I don’t have money. So I can’t even meet these women for dates, get-togethers, all the shit you’re supposed to do with developmental pitchers.

In essence, my life could be ridiculously amazing. Instead, it’s in the shitter. I have a few friends here and there in Tokyo, but Asians are flakier than the burnt rice at the bottom of their rice cookers so I hardly meet them. Not that I could meet them anyway…I have no money. I have no job so I spend my days milling around my home station too broke to go anywhere of interest and too broke to waste my life away in the pleasures of drinking. All that crazy shit that happened to me last time I came to Japan doesn’t materialize anymore because I’ve gotten smarter, soberer and Teddy isn’t around to cajole my insecure, weak character into a drunken blizzard of craziness.

I was considering taking a huge financial hit and jumping back to North America. At least in America I could get some shitty ass waiter job or something. In Japan, one of the main obstacles for working is my shitty Japanese. Because I have a Japanese name, and a Japanese face, and a Japanese passport, and a paperthin Japanese physique, I’m supposed to talk in a respectful tone, read Japanese and write Japanese. But all my interviewers pointedly ignore my upbringing in America, my decidedly American mannerisms, my American clothes and the freedom running through my red, white and blue blood cells.

So as soon as it’s revealed I can’t read even the most simplest Japanese…or write my address…or speak in anything other than the street Japanese I learned growing up from pops…I’m respectfully shown the door with a bow and a fake smile.

I can’t read, I can’t write, I speak street Japanese…and my clothes (though supertight in America) are baggy in this country…I’m basically a black man.

Actually I’m worse than a black man…in a desperation move, I applied to the job epitomizing lower class ghetto: flipping burgers at Mickey D’s. I was rejected.

Walking back from the lowest of lows (getting rejected from Mickey D’s??? What’s lower than that…a midget doing the limbo?), I staggered around trying to figure out what the fuck to do with my life.

I was getting rejected left and right by jobs, spending an average of 4,000 yen I didn’t have per day just to get to interviews, and to keep myself fed. I was blowing money like a porn actress practicing on a roll of quarters.

I guess my masculine direction senses were top notch because while calculating my depressing financial state, I had somehow found myself at the train station. I staggered around, trying to find something interesting, something to do, something to keep me going.

A wall of cold salarymen hustled by, knocking me to and fro as they hurried to whatever goddamn important thing they needed to get to. Drunks abounded, staggering around. The high pitched whine of Japanese schoolgirls was everywhere.

I needed to get away from people. I was going to fucking Columbine these people if I had to stand another second of this shit. I ran up some stairs.

I stared down from the overpass at the train tracks. Visions of jumping to a gory death briefly flashed across my eyes. It would be quick, painless.

Fuck. I need to stop.

I looked skyward to avoid the disturbing thoughts. I grimly smiled. Of course. It had to be fucking raining. It had been raining for weeks…Japanese rainy season.

I hate this country.

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My spirits lifted a bit when I got a call from an English school. Opening available two days a week. 10,000 yen ($100). I pounced on the offer…it would keep me afloat for a bit. Just enough to stem the tide of cash flowing from my pockets and to give me some leeway to meet some people.

The first person I met with my newfound financial freedom was not one of my three aces, but a person I was supposed to meet a while back. Our families are real tight but the last time I had met him was when I was ten and his family of six visited New York City. Just from the number of children this family has, you can tell it’s messed up. 1 child is the defacto standard in Japan. 2 and you’re pushing it and you’ll be seen as strange. 4 is utterly absurd.

And apparently, our families are tight for an absurd reason. My father used to live in Hawaii during his glory years of high school and early twenties. The mother of this family is one of the many girls my father fucked around with and for some reason its not awkward…

Anyway, he’s the third out of the four and since he’s studying at an all-English university and since his age is closest to mine out of the family, we decided to meet…or rather, we were forcibly pushed together by our respective families.

We met at 7, ate some dinner, did ten years worth of catching up…apparently he played around for quite a bit, and its hard not to see why. Not only is he pretty good looking, he’s railthin the way the J-Girls like’em and for a touch of exotic-ness, he was half Memoirs of a Geisha with one blue eye and one black eye (for this reason, I’ll refer to him as Cyclops from now).

After bonding over our nanpa days and then concluding girlfriends was the way to go (he has a long term girlfriend now)…we realized we had nothing to do. We sat around at a café, trying to figure out what two straight males should do at 8:30 on a Wednesday fucking night.

He turned to me with a sly grin, “Wanna get drunk?”

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Still…it was a Wednesday…and just the two of us would be lame. We started furiously calling up everyone in our cellphones. I managed to get one person (Yusaku) and he managed to get two. But everyone was coming from different directions and it would take 40 minutes to meet. And it was already nearing 9:30. Trains stop at midnight.

He turned to me with another sly grin, “Wanna make it an all-nighter?”

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We finally got everyone together at a central location…Gotanda station, the middle of nowhere in Tokyo. Its one of the satellite stations in Tokyo that’s fairly big because it happens to be between several hubs. But the partying scene is deader than that pedophile pop star who grabbed his crotch during music videos.

But who cares…as long as we make it crazy. Since the group consisted of a couple (Cyclops’ friends), a guy with a girlfriend (Cyclops) and two single guys who already have stacked rotations (me and Yusaku), we didn’t have to worry about superfluous reasons to remain sober. We focused solely on getting trashed.

Between endless jockeys of beer, we argued about what constituted as “gay” in our cultures, how to pick up women, me and Yusaku tried to explain the difference between “hot” and “cute” to the J-Poppers (there is no word for “hot” in Japanese) and we all ragged on each other throughout the night.

Before I knew it, we were in some shady bar pounding back vodka and then Cyclops and his friend turned to me. “What would be a fun drink to drink right now?”

I looked around. It looked like a shady Irish pub mashed into a Japanese izakaya. Well Irish pub equals only one drink… “Yo waiter, three Irish car bombs!”

I explained the drink to Cylcops and his friend while Yusaku told the girlfriend how deadly the shit was in whispers. We toasted, slammed them back and I was legitimately fucked.

Cyclops turned to me with a sly grin, “That’s not the only one you’re having is it?”

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We sat outside the train station. I was chugging back a Pocari Sweat and rampaging through a rice ball in a vain attempt to stem the tide of drunkness overpowering my body.

Fuck, I was fucked.

Yusaku grinned at me. He’s a legitimate lightweight but he had his fair share of drinks. He must’ve been pretty drunk.

Cyclops was fucked. He’s the strongest drinker I know in Japan, but even he was wobbling like a bobblehead.

“Alright, time to go home.”

We all made plans to meet up again (when we replenished our wallets) and then went our separate ways home.

I got into the train, and since it was filled with drunks like me who had stayed till first train, I couldn’t get a seat on the Yamanote. Got to Shinagawa, changed trains and managed to snag a seat on the Tokaido.

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I groggily opened my eyes. The train was rocking along at high speeds and I was momentarily lulled. No I had to stay awake to get off at my stop. From Shingawa it was one stop.

I looked out the window to a picturesque green landscape.

Wow, Japan looks pretty when you actually pay attention to it.

OH SHIT! I bolted upright.

Tokyo is one of the biggest cities in the world. There shouldn’t be green, let alone fucking forests…where the fuck was I?

The announcement came over the train loudspeaker: 「間もなく戸塚。戸塚駅」

Fuck. I was 40 minutes away from my home. By rapid express train. I must’ve passed out. I hurried out of the train, to blinding sunlight. Shit! Shit! Shit! When’s the next train going back, fuck, I can’t read Japanese! I needed to find a stationmaster. Fuck! Oh wait, there’s one! I started sprinting!

But then I stopped and looked around. After days and days of Japanese rainy season…it was sunny. After days and days of staring at the grey of Tokyo…it was actually green. There were birds chirping and shit.

I need a break from my depressing life. I need an escape. I need to get myself reorganized and make my stay in Japan equal to the two previous times I was here. I need to get myself focused.

This was the place to do it. Shonan. Site of some of my crazy stories from my last trip. This was it, the turning point. A normal Jap would just take the first train back and sleep at home. But I wasn’t normal. And I needed to get myself back together.

I left the train station, walked 10 minutes under the scorching sun, got to the beach, sat down and stared at the sea.

I smirked.

Japan, Get Ready.

I passed out.

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Part of trip: Japan...Part Tre

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