Part 1 —Tokyo

THE FIRST THING I SAW IN JAPAN WAS A CORPSE. It was lying under a canvas sheet on a gurney in the Tokyo airport, the shoulders and feet bound by wide leather cargo belts. A warm mist clouded the windows of the shuttle that took us from the plane to the terminal. I tried to catch Walker’s eye, but we had gotten separated and he was standing up front, a blond head in a sea of black. We held onto straps from the ceiling as the bus careened past the hangar. The body rested alone under a salmon-colored spotlight while a Japanese voice announced in English our arrival, the airlines’ gracious thanks, and the temperature: 62 degrees.

It was the last week of April, the first day of Golden Week and the Emperor’s birthday. It was the worst day to arrive in Japan. The Tourist Information Center’s booth at the airport was closed. Everyone was on holiday viewing the cherry blossoms in Kyoto. Only the money exchange window remained open. We had $800 between us which translated into ¥96,000. It was obvious we couldn’t afford a hotel room at $80 or $100 a night. We didn’t have jobs waiting for us, or anyone to stay with. I wondered if we’d have to sleep in the airport. We stood at the bank of red, green and yellow telephones and began calling guesthouses. Walker bought a drink from a vending machine; the name on the label said “Pocari Sweat.”

I took a turn at calling, using the pages of guesthouses in the back of Japan On A Budget. Walker showed me how far down the list he’d gotten with no luck. It was important not to get discouraged at this point in our journey. We’d been traveling on a plane from San Francisco for twelve hours, but had to hold out until we had a place to crash. He shifted heavy coins into my hand and I began feeding them into the phone, a bell ringing as each was swallowed.

Every call was answered, but there wasn’t one room available. My eyes were exhausted and the back of my head continued to hum from the plane ride. I was about to let Walker take another turn when I noticed a Japanese man standing next to me. He was wearing a suit and tie. He carried a newspaper, a briefcase, a raincoat, an umbrella and an open wallet in his hands. He smiled and held out what I thought was a business card. I glanced over at Walker who watched us from a row of chairs. The opposite side of the card had a photograph of a geisha kneeling in a white kimono. The background was black with three tiny triangles on the outer edge of the card.
“Sumimasen?” I enunciated.

He talked in Japanese, showing me where to slip the card into a slot at the base of the phone. He lifted the receiver and the phone lit up with the numbers “800” in green liquid crystal. He handed me the receiver and stepped back. I could feel the man’s eagerness to help, so I looked up the next number on the list. I was amused by the incongruence of the hi-tech calling card and the rotary dial phone.

Someone picked up at the “Beauty Guesthouse” and I was told that there were no rooms for the night. Did I know that it was a holiday?

I wished them “Happy holiday,” and hung up.

“No luck?” asked the man.

“Only bad luck,” I kidded him, surprised that he’d switched into English. The card backed out of the machine and I handed it to him, but he refused to take it. With a bow and a wave of his hand, he walked out the electric doors.

“What was that all about?” Walker joined me at the phones and turned the card over in his fingers.
“He gave it to me. Look—it still has ¥700 on it.”

On the next call, Walker got us a place for the night. A woman named Latitia told him that we could stay at America House, 5th stop on the Yamanote Loop line. She gave us instructions on how to recognize the train, how much the tickets would cost and how to get into the city from Narita. She said to hurry or we’d miss the last train of the night. Our traveling wasn’t quite over and the adrenaline from arriving hadn’t worn off yet. It would take an hour and a half to get into the city. We ran to catch a bus to the Keisei railway.

The Tokyo streets were necklaces of neon: Basketball players, beer bottles, Michael Jackson—all lit up the night on 20-foot video screens. The city was alive with groups of men in business suits and teenagers with blue spiky hair. We were getting curious looks, perhaps because we were so loaded with luggage. Our backpacks weighed almost thirty pounds each and we carried two more pieces, but the load seemed light. Here we were in Japan. We’d made it. We managed to hold hands as we rushed into the night.

In the six years since we’d met, Walker and I had traveled over twenty thousand miles together, hitchhiking through California to visit his family and back to Chicago to see mine; up to Kenai, Alaska, to work in the canning factories and vacationing in Hawaii and Mexico as college students. But this time was different. We were in Japan to stay—at least three months, maybe a year. Walker’s dream was to travel through India and he hoped to save enough money modeling or teaching English to do it.

I’d come to Japan to have an experience; I didn’t know what that experience would be. I hoped to make money, have fun, become worldly. I wanted to see where the Buddhism I practiced came from, although I didn’t expect miracles; everyone had told me that Zen in America had come a long way from Zen in Japan and I was here to satisfy my own curiosity.

I wanted to see the rock gardens of Ryoanji that were raked every morning, the practice halls of Eiheiji monastery, and the raku tea ceremony bowls. In my mind, there was no culture more diametrically opposed to ours than that of the Japanese. I’d come with the intention of changing the course of my life dramatically.

By asking people along the way, Walker and I found the train station, surprised there were no signs in English. We had taken a Japanese course together in San Francisco before we’d left, but studied only basic conversation. We couldn’t yet read the Katakana characters for foreign words. We found our train, the last ride of the night. Only a handful of people were aboard and the car felt empty and off-centered. On the narrow bench across from us, a woman wearing a mask over her nose and mouth watched our every move. Her hair curled around her head, and her coat was made of brown cloth. She wore boots and a plastic scarf over her hair. It was the kind of rain hat my mother wore: accordion-style, ready to unfold at a moment’s notice, with a snap under the chin. Out the rain-pecked window behind her, I saw a neon bride and groom cruise by as we picked up speed. Tokyo—the mystery of the city was still so complete.

Latitia met us at the end of the station. She was from Portland and had been living in Tokyo for four years. Her brown hair was piled on her head and her eyes were rimmed with a dull blue that came from too little sleep or a diet deficient in vegetables. Or maybe it was makeup.

She was our guide, our mythic transporter into this new world. She smoked a Winston cigarette and wore a short trench coat that reminded me of something in a James Bond movie I once saw with my dad. Latitia looked us up and down in a millisecond, then led us through the color-splashed alleys of the Katsura district.

We climbed four flights of outdoor stairs behind her thick-heeled punk shoes to America House’s top floor. There was a small kitchen with cockroaches in the sink, and a pink international telephone. Latitia pointed to a doorway, beyond which we saw a futon and a low table against the wall. She let us know this was her room.

The scuffed linoleum ran from the kitchen into the living room. On the couch, four athletic, Middle-Eastern men were talking loudly. Each had a cigarette and a glass of beer. On the table sat a bottle of whiskey.

They stopped talking and looked up as we entered, nodding at Latitia and taking turns staring at Walker and me.

“Hello,” I ventured.

They took a few moments to say hello back.

“This is your area,” Latitia stood in a far corner, motioning like a schoolteacher to the left half of the living room. Three snug tatami mats were laid into the floor, black linen binding their edges, indentations of wear down the center of the room. Four heads swiveled as we crossed over from linoleum to tatami. There were two sliding fusuma doors to block off the view.
Latitia’s stare traveled up from my wet shoes to look me dead in the eye. I knew that look from hitchhiking: it meant, don’t steal anything from me, and you won’t find yourself shot in the morning.

“Thank you Latitia,” I was so exhausted it was hard to smile. “We really appreciate this. You saved our butts.”

She strode back through the living room. “No problem.”

We dumped our backpacks on the straw matting and I noticed black scuffmarks and several tears in the shimmering rice paper that covered the doors.

Some unknown signal brought all four men sitting around the table to their feet. As they scooted out of the small area, they gave us little waves, grabbed overnight bags, and stuffed their fingers in their pockets. They went out the door and clattered down the stairs. The place was suddenly quiet, smoke twining into the currents of air behind them.

Latitia pointed as she walked out of her room, having changed quickly into a white kimono with pastel herons on the sleeves. “Futons, pillows, all that stuff is in the closet. This is the bathroom. I’ll just be a minute.” Her right hand pulled the rubber band out of her hair as she shut the door.

After a minute I noticed Walker and I were still holding hands. He lifted my fingers to his mouth and kissed them, looking under his eyebrows at me.

“Here we are,” I said.

“Here we are,” he said softly. We stood for a moment, relief beginning its journey into our bodies. Then we began to unpack what was necessary for the evening.

It was clear to me that Latitia was the manager of America House, although that’s not what she said; she had simply lived there longer than anyone else, so the duties of helping newcomers fell to her. She sat on the floor at a low table with the whiskey, a pack of cigarettes and a deck of cards. At night, she was a hostess in a men’s club.

“A friend of ours in Oakland did that,” said Walker as he took a long drink from his beer. I was drinking water. I needed to get to sleep ASAP. We’d been twelve hours in the air, two and a half getting here, crossed the International dateline, lost a day. As Latitia and Walker talked, I wondered where exactly that day went, imagining the sun catching up to itself and swallowing its own blaze.
“Everyone gets the wrong idea,” Latitia was saying, “unless they’ve done it. They think we’re prostitutes, but I don’t have to tell you, they import from the Philippines for that and the girls are glad to do it. It’s incredible what the Japanese can do to humiliate people.” She placed a red jack on a black queen. “Not us, though, not the Americans. They like us. Ever since we nuked the hell out of ‘em.” Her voice was scratchy from years of cigarette smoke.

I heard a train go by outside, two bells ringing at the foot crossing. Their pitches jarred like a scene from “Psycho.” A heavy smell of soy and steam came from one of the cracked plastic windows. The building felt like a thin stack of cards, ready to sway at the first breeze.

“Ever since our troops came in to uphold the peace treaty and didn’t rape their women or burn their crops, they’ve been grateful as hell.” Latitia sucked alternately from her drink and her cigarette.
Walker caught her eye as he reclined against his elbows on the floor. “What kind of money do you make hostessing?”

“I make over a hundred a night, that’s in dollars. And I’m in a classy place, not one of those karaoke bars, don’t do that if you can help it.” I was startled as she pointed her cigarette at me.

“Hostessing was not why I came to Japan,” I said.

“I save $1000 a month–that’s savings,” she emphasized, shaking out another cigarette. Walker was sufficiently impressed by the mention of money and looked at me as he placed his hand on my leg.
“Isn’t it ironic?” Latitia continued. “I got only enough of an education to realize that I’d never make this kind of money in my own country.”

Walker and I rolled out guest futons in the tatami room and pulled the chain on the overhead light. I slid the door closed to the living room. The lights from the city bounced off the ceiling as I slid under a sheet.

“I am gonna sleep for days.” I stretched my arms over my head and Walker caught me at the waist and nuzzled his rough cheek between my breasts. We squeezed each other tight, then let go with a sigh. My body felt the hum of the airplane’s engines like an afterthought. I looked over to watch Walker’s profile. I could tell how tired I was by the buzzing lights around the edges of my vision. Walker’s face was lovely–long, arched eyebrows, translucent skin, bright eyes, a gentle mouth with firm lips. I touched his cheek and he turned and smiled at me. I could already feel myself slipping gratefully into the sleep zone. The last thing I heard was what Walker had said to me every night for the last six years:

“I love you ’Lissa.”