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Shibuya Crossing
Oddly, I did not see a drifting "Fast and Furious" import car race through here.Continued from the previous entry...
I was prodded awake by a security guard. Apparently there was a camera in the elevator and he had viewed my epic collapse on a TV screen.
Due to Japanese efficiency, he had woken me up not 5 minutes after I had found a comfortable spot on the elevator floor. Sometimes, I wish I were in another country…then I realized I wasn’t getting mugged, raped or beaten even though I was passed out.
Together we pushed the 8th floor, he ushered me into my apartment, waved goodbye…and I passed out in my entranceway.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I squinted open an eye. My head was still swimming in inebriation so it took awhile to focus the world.
Oh shit. My grandmother stepped back from her tapping of my head. I glanced at the clock on the wall…only 5 minutes since I had last passed out.
Why the fuck was she up so late?
The answer took a few seconds to come.
“You woke her up with your phone call, idiot.” I tried to think of a good excuse…and while I was hemming and hawing, she sighed,
Shibuya Crossing 2
My goal is to wear a "Where's Waldo?" costume and walk this "busiest intersection in the world. I was sadly told Waldo is white, not Asian. “Just go clean yourself up and go to bed.”
I stumbled down the hallway, threw my clothes in the wash, jumped into the bath, and finally, finally, was able to find a comfortable place to dive without interruption.
The rest of my week was highly uneventful. It’s hard to beat collapsing into a planter, collapsing in an elevator, collapsing in an entranceway and collapsing in the tub after drinking a bottle of awamori…especially when you’re flat broke.
I came to Japan with the naïve intention of quickly getting a job like my past two summers in this country. Get off the plane, call the nearest English school, sign the contract, done. But here’s where this plan fails…
if there’s a fucking worldwide recession.
So now, I’m in one of the most expensive countries in the world…and I don’t have a job. I’m burning bills like a Lewinsky STD and got no money coming in…and this has led to something called depression.
Right now, my life sucks.
I was just ripped apart from some of the best friends in my life due to graduation. I had been torn away from Miss Ko. In Japan, I have no money due to no job. I have no love interests because I can’t go out because I have no money. I can’t meet friends due, once again, to no money. And everyone around me is getting fucked in much the same way I am.
The house I live in is a fucking nightmare: my grandmother is pushing late seventies but is working part time to cover enormous debt. My aunt is barely pushing $10/hour. My cousin has graduated university and works late night shifts with no future in sight. And I’m sitting on my ass all day looking for a job that won't materialize.
But go outside, and you realize how really fucked this country is. I went to a park to escape my house, and it was filled with salaryman. Filled. These are workers in their 30’s and 40’s, out of employment because of the recession and in a culture where saving face is most important, these fathers, husbands and sons put on their suits and shirts and ties and head out every morning as if they’re still employed.
And then go straight to the park and chain smoke until 5, 6pm to head back home and complete the charade to their oblivious families.
Fuck, I didn’t need to see this when my life is fucked enough already.
Meeting with friends, family friends and other parts of my family just reiterates the dire times. My uncle on my father’s side has just vanished after the recession. Those few friends who do have steady jobs are getting overworked to the point that they’re graying in their late twenties. Friends my age in university are applying to companies that can’t hire them and each rejection letter is pushing them closer and closer to jumping the tracks.
I needed to escape from this shit. But I had no money to drink, it was weekday so no friends to meet and the rainy season was starting so I couldn’t even fucking take a walk.
Reprieve came in the form of a phone call from a family friend.
“Yo, can you make it out to Shibuya tonight?”
I checked my wallet…I just had enough to maybe…perhaps…”Err, why?”
“I want you to meet my friend’s family. I talked about you and they’re really interested in you.”
“Um…”
“They have a daughter your age.” He knew me too well.
“Alright, what time?”
Trying not to focus on the negative, I took the train in. But it was hard not noticing the hunched, overworked salarymen fighting over the seats to rest for ten minutes, the shitty weather, the overstressed students.
Think positive!
I guess the girls are hot (but use too way too much makeup)…and the sounds in the train are cute (they became annoying within ten seconds)…and…umm…you’re part of the racial majority now! You can lynch, become a CEO and have access to old money! You can sit in the front of the bus now!
It’s a good thing I love dark humor, because it was the only thing that could fucking put a big ass smile on my face so when I met the group, I looked cheery as a motherfucker.
There was the family friend, his drop dead gorgeous ex-wife (long story, but despite divorcing, they’re good friends), a mother and two daughters. I had met the friend and his ex-wife before on many occasions in both Japan and America so I wasn’t really interested in them…
The first thing I noticed about this family was…humongous breasts. The mother had a C, maybe D cup at least, the older daughter had a C that was clearly still growing and the younger daughter (a fucking middle schooler) had a B cup. Now this might not sound big to you Western motherfuckers, but imagine a toothpick holding up two golf balls and you can picture what these girls’ silhouettes looked like.
Seeing one pair of big breasts in Japan is probably about as rare as raw steak. Seeing three pairs lined up in front of me left me wondering if the apocalypse was upon us.
I finally forced myself to look at their faces and started talking to them. I was stuttering through my introductions when I started coming to the realization that they weren’t big-breasted sexual objects but actually people! With personalities, emotions and brains like the rest of us!
After attaining this enlightened deduction, the conversation started flowing easier. It still didn’t help that with every step they walked, a bit of breast would come bouncing in the field of view I had focused on their faces and derail my entire train of thought. But I tried my best and constantly rerouted my thoughts back to the conversation at hand. Thank god they weren’t wearing vnecks, haltertops or tanktops.
The general consensus was to eat and the grownups picked some quasi-fancy pseudo-Italian restaurant on the top floor of some Shibuya building.
Here’s where things got weirder.
There was six of us total. My friend and his ex-wife. The family of three. And me. We got a table of six, and it would’ve been natural for us to all sit at the table and eat together.
Instead, they separated the table in two and left me and the elder daughter on a separate island.
I quickly pieced shit together. The older daughter, though good looking, wasn’t good looking by Japanese standards. She was normal sized, not railthin. Her head was a little big. She dressed well, but too plainly.
All in all, a really nice package, but in Japan, where you had to look like the crowd or you weren’t part of the crowd, she was D-List. In America, or any other place where actual beauty is graded above following trends and looking like clones, she was easily A or B (I would rate her 12/16).
So she had probably complained a few times about not having a boyfriend to her mother, who probably gossiped about it with everyone in sight like an Asian mother is supposed to. In that way, my family friend and his drop dead gorgeous ex-wife must’ve thought, “Aha, how about Gen? He’s pretty good looking, funny and has a nice personality. And he too is always complaining about being single. What’s more, he was born and raised in America so maybe his standards are different and he’ll like her!”
So, this was a setup. The adults were trying to play matchmaker with us kids. I decided to test how much she gathered of the situation, and whether she was in on it.
“So, what was your name again? I’m horrible with names, actually.”
She said her full name but I immediately forgot it as she had sat up straighter at the same time, thus causing two cantaloupe sized tig ole bitties to bounce around.
I swallowed and refocused, “Hey, don’t act so uptight. This isn’t like a goukon or anything…”
She smiled, “Um, I guess not. But it is still awkward the way they put us here.”
Ok, she wasn’t in on it. I smiled too, “Well, let’s have as much fun as possible!”
Things were going good. We had flown through a variety of topics during the appetizers and now as we were hitting the main course, I had her rolling in laughter with tons of my crazy stories.
I was wildly telling the Liquid Viagra story and she wasn’t even attempting to eat her pasta as she had snorted out some of it earlier. We were both leaned in a bit as we were both Japanese and mindful we couldn’t talk in loud tones in this hushed atmosphere. But we were definitely making tons of noise.
I could feel the eyes of the other table on us as they silently congratulated each other on their successful matchmaking. It was probably to get reaffirmation of their skills, or maybe it was a pure accident, but the ex-wife dropped a fork and it landed right next to my chair.
I was oblivious. I had an overeager audience in front of me who was lapping up my words like a hungry cat. I was focusing all my attention on providing an amazing story. So I didn’t notice the fork until the ex-wife was right next to my chair, and I hurriedly bent down to grab it right when she did…
I grabbed the fork and straightened up to hand it to her. But she was frozen in place, half bent, staring at me.
I held out the fork, waiting for her to grab it. “Umm…”
A coy smile played on her lips, “You smell nice, Gen.” She whispered this in English (she’s fluent) so the others couldn’t hear, and even if they did, they wouldn’t understand.
Huh? Then I realized why. The graduation present mentioned two entries ago, from Miss KO, had been a bottle of high end cologne. Just for kicks, I had put some on today (I never wear cologne). Right, Miss KO. Back in Montreal. Fuck, here comes the depression again. Thanks for reminding me…
And then I started blushing. This ex-wife is the hottest person I know. The hottest. Hands down. She’s about 40 years old, but I don't care. Every guy has an older woman he had a huge crush on around the ages of 11-15. Sometimes it's a woman you know (in my case), sometimes it's a celebrity who’s clearly older (if no women around you fit the bill) or sometimes it’s your own mother (in which case you are a redneck).
She was that for me. It’s not sexual or anything, just someone you’ve had a crush on…for a really long time. And its just that, a crush. You don’t want to kiss her, fuck her, date her (especially when she’s your friend’s ex-wife)…you just find her really, fucking attractive.
And she had just praised me. So I started blushing, slightly. I tried to say thanks, but my mouth wasn’t working right.
The coy smile still remained. “You smell…sexy.”
If I wasn’t red now, I was fucking turning bright commie.
She smiled fully this time. “I guess you’re an adult now, Gen.”
She ruffled my hair and as she grabbed the fork, she pecked me on the cheek so no one could see.
“Thanks for picking up the fork.” (in Japanese)
She sashayed back to her table and I stood, speechless, mouth agape, hand on my cheek.
“Are you ok?” It was the older daughter.
“Yea, yea, yea.” I glanced at the other table, but she was pointedly having a conversation with the other people there.
I sat down, head in my hands, blinking rapidly, trying to piece everything together and just got a confused mess in my blank mind.
“Can you continue your story…please?” I looked up to see a pair of big, overeager doe eyes, arms in a V-shape pushing her already prodigious breasts into monstrous proportions and a body leaned in towards me.
Following a veteran ace’s wicked curveball that had me looking foolish was an amateur league 70mph fastball waiting to be crushed.
I’ll wait til I have some experience before attempting the curve.
I twirled the spaghetti on my fork, and leaned in, “…I wanna tell you the rest…but its kind of inappropriate here…give me your phone number and I can finish the story some other time.”
She froze.
Fuck…maybe that was a changeup, I suck at reading pitches tonight. Fuck! Shit, this is what I get for jumping the gun…Fucking shit! You went too quickly, you're leaned in not more than six inches from her now, idiot! You could've just waited til the end of the dinner, but no, you had to do it fucking right now. Well, here comes the rejection...
She smiled our faces not a half a foot apart after I had leaned in, “You smell good.”
I blinked in surprise. You still got it, Gen. You can still read them pitches. And then a cocky grin came over my face.
“I know.” I paused. “Just give me your number.”
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yakyu otaku
T.J. Smith
Young guns
If there's anything we've learned from my adventure, it's stay away from single moms and stick with the young one with the big boobs. Basic managerial wisdom: If you're looking for that long-term, repeat-champion dynasty pitcher you gotta sign 'em young and build 'em up strong. If you're desperate for some W's in the short term, you can turn to the tested vets. Never hurts to line your bullpen with proven righties I guess though...Make the call.