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Me and Kang 2.0
Korean/Japanese tensions are resolved with "peace"The next morning drifted in through the heavily curtained floor to ceiling hotel windows. Miraculously, neither Kang 2.0 or I were hungover, but the fact that we woke up in each other’s arms was testament to the amount of alcohol consumed.
I lazily smiled at the ceiling. I guess this is the first hit of the season (ignoring intrasquad triples)...a double is a double anywhere. I turned to Kang 2.0.
We stayed staring at each other for a while. She smiled and placed her index finger on my nose. “Let’s eat breakfast.”
We rolled out, languidly picked up shoes, wallets, keys and all sorts of personal items we had discarded in our drunken romp, and then took the elevator down to the 4th floor.
Ping!
Japanese workers were hustling to and fro, tourists and businessmen and quite a large collection of Korean students flowed around the buffet or chattered at their tables. Kids were screaming and whining, girls were chattering, chefs were barking orders.
Through this beehive of activity we leisurely swaggered in. Our lazy pace garnered more than a few eyes and the Korean contingency took in our disheveled hair, rumpled
outfits and muted smiles and started huddling and whispering and pointing.
She sighed. “Let’s get some food.”
We loaded up plates at the buffet and sat in a large empty swathe in the seating area. These seats were hugging windows facing directly East and the harsh Japanese sun pounding these tables had pushed everyone away.
I started tearing through eggs and bacon and toast and sausage and then noticed she was just pushing the food around with her fork. I looked up to her face, but she seemed to be concentrating on something over my shoulder.
I resisted the urge to spin around and focused my auditory senses in that direction. Whispered Hangul. Of course. “Hey,”—she snapped out of her reverie—“I can tell them to shut up…and that nothing happened…”
She smiled and shook her head. It was here I remembered I was not on the best of terms with that certain group. I had clocked one of their comrades in their head. And probably reopened tensions in Korean-Japanese relations. She was staring off again.
“There was a guy I kind of liked in the group…but because of yesterday…” She trailed off.
“Oh…Sorry…”
Me and Yu
Flummoxing Yu with simple tricks. She sighed and smiled, for real this time. “No, don’t be. It was fun.”
“I guess it was fun…but we didn’t really do anything…or, not that I remember…”
“Exactly. What ‘if’ we had done something…you’re chasing someone…I am—was—chasing someone. Isn’t it best we left it at nothing?”
Wow, (some) girls are fucking smart. I smiled, “I guess it also gives us an excuse to meet in the future huh? Unfinished business…”
She punched me in the arm, “Shut up.”
We both laughed and started eating.
In a perfect world, I would hug Kang 2.0, train home and sleep off two monstrous nights of drinking to bring back my depleted health meter blinking away at the corner of the screen. I already had a win. And to my American readers who think a single off a Korean pitcher is not a win, you’re fucking retarded.
This mentality is the reason why America never wins the WBC even though it pretentiously claims the game as it’s “national pastime” and declares their championship as the “World Series”. When facing Asian opposition,
a neat and tidy single (let’s ignore for the moment that neither of those adjectives pertain to my single) is a lot more effective than blasting homers left and right. Try it sometime. It’ll work. It’s called small-ball in baseball circles. Among your frat bros, its called being a pussy.
Regardless, I had gotten something tangible this weekend and my health was deteriorating faster than a midget with Ebola. If I were smart…I would walk away with a win and spend a day or two recovering. But if you recall, I’m not your run of the mill partier and this wasn’t your run of the mill Saturday/Sunday weekend, but a three-day weekend.
Two nights ago (Friday) I had gotten wasted and tripled through my family tree. A night ago (Saturday) I had gotten wasted and tried mimicking Ichiro’s game winning single off of Korea. Today was Sunday. On the schedule was a meeting with the Calgary crew, in hopes I would get wasted and the hitting streak would continue with Chiaki. And then I had a full day to either recover, or to continue motoring towards DiMaggio’s record.
So instead of doing something sensible (like sleeping), I hugged Kang 2.0 goodbye (extra tight for the Korean delegation pointedly not watching us), took the train home, showered, changed and then headed out to Shinjuku.
Time for Day 3.
I swaggered into the meeting spot with my usual American punctuality of 15 minutes late to an olfactory and auditory rape of my senses. Shin, Yu, Chiaki and Soon Hae, all wearing crazy ass colors and patterns and clothes while trying to remain interested in some story Yu was chattering off at 90 mph.
Some things never change and no one in the group had. The art kids seemed relieved I had shown up as Yu’s chattering stopped momentarily as we decided where to head off. The general consensus was to eat, and Soon Hae led us off to some sketchy Korean section of Shinjuku and to an even sketchier Korean restaurant in said neighborhood.
Just a brief history lesson, but Koreans have been second-class generations in Japan for generations. They were originally used as slave labor, earned some rights but remained mired in poverty due to racist laws and now everyone in Japan loves having a token Korean friend but would never venture into a Korean neighborhood for fear of violent attacks. Sound like a minority group within America?
Taking into account Shinjuku is the real heart of Tokyo but wholly disconnected from downtown and a great parallel can be made to New York City’s Brooklyn.
So if Shinjuku is Brooklyn, and Koreans are Black…this neighborhood was Bed Stuy. Except worse. There are only 500,000 Koreans in Japan, split between two neighborhoods on the entire island, one on the East (Shinjuku) and one on the West (Osaka). Imagine only 500,000 black people in America—with no other visible minority groups, all crammed into Compton and Bed Stuy making both of these hoods 50x worse. Would you take a stroll through one of these places?
Being part of the majority in this nation, this was akin to a group of white friends being led by a black girl through the projects. I was also a little scared…500,000 Koreans nationwide so this community was extra-tight…maybe my right wing right straight had sped through the Hangul grapevine and zainichis were ready to press my face into a yakinuku grill?
Thankfully, it seemed most of them were staring at me and whispering because I had a bright red t-shirt depicting a woman committing lewd acts to a fruit.
Phew.
My anxieties slowly started dissipating with the amazing bibimbap I was plowing through and partaking in the ever-fun activity of laughing at Yu’s expense. And then all concerns dropped as I started draining rounds of soju and beer in hopes of finding a path towards confessing my love to Chiaki.
Before I realized, we had left the restaurant and were “going to start drinking” at some izakaya. Realize that I had already drank enough to stop counting after I ran out of fingers…and I was asking every Korean on the street if they had a girlfriend/boyfriend (the only phrase Teddy taught me from his Korean class). After having many a fight averted by having Yu apologizing for my drunkness, we stumbled into an izakaya. Chiaki had been matching me drink for drink and thought my idiocy was hilarious…Soon Hae was only one or two drinks behind and was having fun making fun of me…Shin was drunk and trying not to pass out…Yu had amazingly not touched an alcoholic beverage all night and was chattering about something to all of us pointedly ignoring her and here’s where my memory starts having blank spots.
Next thing I realize, we’re at some shisa bar sans Yu. Then someone starts ordering rounds of a deadly Oolong tea/vodka drink that tastes like a Far East version of a Long Island Iced Tea but with double the potency. Combined with the shisa smoke invading my lungs, my head is spinning far out of control.
Now we’re meandering down some street in Shibuya (how the fuck did we end up here?) and I notice there’s only three of us. Shin has disappeared. My analytical mind comes up with the brilliant deduction…each time you black out, its one less person in the group! Cool! Here’s the key to spending some alone time with Chiaki! Black out again!
But what if Chiaki is the one that goes missing and its just me and Soon Hae?
Will you take the risk?
I’m drunk. Hell yes!
But an Asian can do math even when he’s shit ass drunk…fuck...that’s a 50%!g(MISSING)amble…
But I’m American, so I skip over the logic like the fat kid in pickup basketball.
I force a stop at a 7/11 and buy a chu-hi tall-boy …
I started whispering,
“Please make it Soon Hae who disappears, please make it Soon Hae who disappears…” Despite being non-religious and having no affiliation with the Catholic Church, I attempted the Sign of the Cross to strengthen my prayer, mangling it into something resembling a game of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes...
“Please make it Soon Hae who disappears, please make it Soon Hae who disappears…” Satisfied, I cracked it open…
“Please make it Soon Hae who disappears, please make it Soon Hae who disappears…” I cringed into the depths of the vomit inducing liquid. Well, here goes nothing…
“Please make it Soon Hae who disappears, please make it Soon Hae who disappears…” I chugged it back, took two steps and blacked out...
Author's Note None of the pictures are from that day...in fact, they were all taken in Montreal several months earlier.
To get some feeling of timelines, this entry took place Mid-July...so right now I'm a month and half behind "real" life. Sorry for the huge delay in getting this entry out...Seeing as I added a cliffhanger, I'll try to get the next one out relatively quickly, but writing is like reading Braille. It's really hard when you're not feeling it.
And right now, I'm wearing oven mitts.
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anonymous
non-member comment
Other shared stereotypes include being really good and singing and liking spicy deep-fried chicken. Aren't you ignoring the much larger, much lower esteemed minority population of Chinese though?...then again, I s'pose by your logic they would figure as the Mexicans in your analogy. What is it with you and blacking out while drinking with my ex-girlfriends in Shinjuku?