The first time I ever stole anything -- honestly -- was the evening of October 13th, 2001.

"It's like being God," my fat roommate said over a crunch of ramen.

"Yeah, like being God," my skinny roommate said.

They were talking about stealing advertisements from trains. They were talking about this, in a train bound north from Kita-Urawa to Omiya on the Keihin-Tohoku Line. My skinny roommate and my fat roommate were sharing a package of uncooked ramen. My fat roommate's goatee and pig-nose flexed as he chewed. My skinny roommate's Popeye-jaw and temporal arteries pulsed as he crunched and smiled at a schoolgirl. She scowled at us.

My fat roommate continued his description of God-business: "These people are afraid of you. They see a foreigner, they freak. You just got to give them the evil eye, like there ain't gonna be no messing with you. Then you grab something you like, and pull it. Think of the eBay dollars."

My fat roommate grabbed the bottom of an advertisement featuring a Japanese model's face and a mug of beer. The girl was smiling. She had a beer mustache. He pulled the ad down, and it clicked out of its fasteners. My skinny roommate was sliding away the plastic on a framed telephone company ad featuring Seattle Mariners baseball player Ichiro Suzuki.

"Sons of bitches are tough."

An old man was looking at my fat roommate, as my skinny roommate sidled up to his side, rolling up his poster.

"What you looking at?" my fat roommate asked the old man. He pushed up his glasses, and looked away.

"Now you take one, man," my skinny roommate said, motioning to the rest of the train car. I found one featuring a model wearing a raincoat with dog ears on the hood. I pulled it down with covert ease.

"Not a bad first selection," my fat roommate said. "Roll that shit up."

That night, at home in Kita-Urawa, under the glow of Christmas lights swiped from the semi-pleasurable pleasure quarter of Omiya, my roommates hung our new posters, feasted on beef bouillon, and spoke with me on their plans to steal the Urawa plastic Colonel Sanders statue. I was, for the first and last night, one of the boys. A few days later, they started hiding details from me. Something I had done had made them question my reliability. I don't remember what it was.

*

The first time I EVER commit ANY form of fraud (honestly!) was on Monday, November 11th, 2001.

It was a little before eleven in the morning, and I was early for work. My company always did this thing to me. They'd give me my schedule on Sunday night, telling me all the days I worked early shifts and all the days I worked late shifts. I was told halfway through every early shift that I'd have to stay until late. I was told a day before every late shift that I'd have to come in early. So it was I started coming in early for every late shift by reflex. Every once in a great while, they'd throw me a curve, I'd end up an hour early for work, and they'd tell me not to clock in until my shift began. Even then, I was only paid for half of my working hours.

My days off were Wednesday and Thursday. Since the beginning of my employment, it always went like this: if I'd made plans for Thursday, they'd tell me on Tuesday that I was needed on Thursday. If I'd made plans for Wednesday, they'd tell me on Tuesday that I was needed on Wednesday.

No, this isn't a logic problem. It's working for your unfriendly neighborhood Tokyo Yakuza-owned English Conversation School. "TYCES," as I came to call it. It looks like an ALMOST ridiculous enough acronym to exist in Japan.

This flip-flop shift scheduling did nothing as efficiently as it tired me out. For my first couple of weeks in Japan, I looked at the salarymen sleeping on the trains, and felt pity. The next couple of weeks saw me looking at the sleeping salarymen with envy in my eyes: I wanted their seats. A few more weeks saw me drinking tea in the morning specifically so that I'd have enough energy to burst into the train car when it stopped in Omiya and get a seat before anyone else. It took me a few weeks to manage my tea so that I'd still be able to sleep in the train. It took me a week or so after that to be able to nod off when the train left Omiya and awake just as it stopped in Kawagoe some forty minutes later. Once, I'd awoken at Nishi-Kawagoe, and had to get off and catch the train going back east. After that, I was never off by a stop.

Two weeks after I learned to sleep and wake on a one-yen-coin, I became able to not sleep at all, thanks to my dynamic duo of Yakuza stalkers with frosted hair. They waited in the parking garage beneath my building every morning, and followed me all the way past the bus stop and into the train station ticket gate. Why they'd started following me, I wasn't sure. All I knew was that it had something to do with a Chinese-Canadian girl I'd told about our company's fraudulent health-insurance scheme. They were illegally deducting 9,000 yen from each employee's paycheck.

On the morning I commit a little fraud of my own against this company, I was thinking of the fraud they'd cast down on me. I figured they deserved it. I was in something of a bad mood that morning. It was raining for the fourth day in a row. For the fourth day in a row, I'd forgotten my umbrella. I was wet, and, at the same time, told I didn't have to work for another four hours. I was then pushed out of the building without being allowed to use the bathroom. I stepped into the SATY department store near my school, used the bathroom, splashed some scalding water on my face, and looked at myself in the mirror. A white guy in a bite-sized Tokyo bathroom and a black tie.

The only other white guy in Tokyo who wore a black tie was Colonel Sanders. It was Ramadan, and a deal I'd made to someone a while back meant I had to fast. So it was that on the blue, rainy Tokyo morning I commit my first act of fraud, I came to resent Colonel Sanders. Not only did a plastic statue of the smug bastard stand outside my favorite subterranean Kentucky Fried Chicken, a place that sold French fries that were far favorable to the nothing I'd be eating until I got home after midnight -- he had a plastic, convenience-store-bought umbrella hanging on his right arm. My guess was that one of the girls who worked at the place -- boisterous, bandana-wearing college-types -- had replaced the standard Tokyo Colonel Sanders Cane with an umbrella on this rainy day. Something of a practical joke, Japanese-style: no one gets hurt, or even loses any face, unless they're a plastic statue of a foreigner. Cryptic people, those Japanese Kentucky Fried Chicken girls.

I pondered stealing Colonel Sanders' Umbrella. I didn't. I went upstairs and played some Super Monkey Ball on the demo Gamecube. I lost about fifteen times to some little kid. I realized I didn't want to spend my four hours losing at a game I wasn't even sure I liked. So I set out of SATY, squinting at Colonel Sanders' umbrella as I left.

I was soaked by the time I reached the train station. I went up the stairs and turned around. What the hell was I doing in the train station, anyway? I wasn't planning on going back home, was I? My roommates would LOVE that, I thought. I was a big joke to them.

Early -- very early -- that morning, they'd had lectured me on my wearing of a black tie.

After using the bathroom that fraud-driven morning, I took a shower. I like Japanese showers. I like how the bathtub is small and square. I like how the room with the bathtub is separated from the rest of the bathroom by a sliding door. I like being able to leave the light on in the main bathroom and off in the shower. I like how being in the shower makes me feel like, outside that little room-within-a-room, time is frozen. When I was finished in the shower, I shaved, added some "J Super Hard" gel to my hair, and went back into my room to put on the same gray slacks and white shirt I'd worn for the last week and a half. I picked a black tie at random, and tied it in a perfect Shelby.

"Don't even bother wearing a tie if you aren't going to make it a Shelby," my dad always told me when I was a kid. Unfortunately, he never taught me HOW to tie a Shelby. I had to learn on my own. It was no small feat, considering I'd never tied a tie prior to my orientation day in Shinjuku.

"Mr. T, the Black Tie Bastard," my fat roommate announced, when I emerged into the communal room. I'd just sprayed myself with my fat roommate's Tommy cologne. His mother sent it to him a week after I arrived, and my fat roommate, who despised cologne, left the bottle in the bathroom for "anyone" to use.

"What are you always wearing that black tie for?" my skinny roommate asked me when I sat down.

I shrugged. "I don't know. I like it."

"Well, Japanese people get all shitty if you wear that shit around them," my fat roommate said. "I wore a black tie a few times, and those bitches were like, 'We only wear black ties for funerals, you sick son of a bitch.'"

"Well, I'm not Japanese," I said.

"Still, bitch, you gonna get yourself in some bad luck if you keep wearing that shit."

"Maybe," I said with a shrug. "Who knows?"

"When you got to be at work, Mr. T?" my fat roommate asked.

"Nine," I said. I looked at my watch. It was a little after six.

"Looks like you'd better leave soon," my fat roommate said. "You don't want to be late."

"Yeah," my skinny roommate said with a snicker. "You don't want to be late."

Both my skinny roommate and my fat roommate knew how far my school was from Kita-Urawa, and they thought it was utterly hilarious. Good for them; at least someone found it funny.


One thing I did not find funny was Tokyo train suicide. In its own right, it's not funny because it involves death. Death typically isn't funny, unless it's handled in a Seinfeld--like fashion. There's nothing funny about a train suicide, though not just because it involves death. The truth is, a train suicide is handled so professionally that there's never any chance for anyone to laugh about anything.

In another respect, a train suicide is boring as hell. Most of the time, you'll have no idea anything is going on. You'll just stand, listening to music, rising up on your tiptoes repeatedly. You'll sigh, grumble, and check your watch. You'll note how many people are crowding onto the platform. You'll note how not a single train has come on either track for more than a half an hour, and you'll start to feel kind of stupid. You'll start practicing your Japanese by reading the billboard ads placed across the tracks.

Bunkyo Women's College, in Saitama. Aikido lessons, Kita-Urawa. Indian-style curry -- even Indian people are surprised! Korean-owned beauty salon in Urawa: students, bring your school ID for a discount. Cell phones. Buy a cell phone. Girls, buy cell phones, and get a free pair of legwarmers thrown in with the deal. Ichiro Suzuki wants you guys to buy cell phones. "Not having time" is no excuse for not learning English. We can arrange lessons during any one of the twenty-four hours of the day from one of our real, trained, overpaid foreigners. Cheapest English lessons in Japan! Ewan Macgregor wants you to learn English. Girls, you won't get to actually meet Ewan Macgregor. That doesn't matter either way, does it? Though you listen to the Backstreet Boys, you admit on teen discussion shows that you'd be "too scared" to "even look at a foreigner." Has Ewan ever been to Japan? It doesn't matter, does it? His face is here, smiling with twinkling teeth, on a poster. Wherever he was when that picture was taken, it's ended up in Japan, right here, and right now. All you want to do is look at him. Take lessons at that company's school -- or any company's school (there are hundreds to choose from, you know) -- and the closest you'll get to a Hollywood gaijin is this guy, standing dangerously close to the yellow line, wearing a Spider-Man sweatshirt, long hair, seriously pondering stealing every Ewan Macgregor poster he comes across. The 2002 FIFA World Cup is coming. Quick, pretend you've liked soccer your entire lives. McDonald's. Try a teriyaki burger. Pot&Pot Curry. You'll end up here if you're too lazy to cook. J-Phone. You'll end up here sooner or later. Sony. We already have most of your money. Give us the rest. Nintendo Gameboy Advance. Something to do on the three-hour train ride to your cubicle. John Lennon museum in Omiya. He's dead already. Guy in Spider-Man sweatshirt. Right here, right now. Delayed by train suicide. Still Alive. Not Yet Dead. Get him while he's hot.

And then, the blue-suited guys will start walking down the yellow line, waving flashlights, telling everyone to step back. The train will come an hour behind schedule, and then you'll get off at your destination to find a man handing out little shomeisho -- "excuse receipts."

I read over my shomeisho as I stood in the middle of a train on the Kawagoe Line on the morning of my first fraud. Ewan Macgregor was smiling at me from the ad above my head.

"We're sorry for making this person late. Sincerely, Omiya Stationmaster."

I thought of framing it. When it occurred to me to frame the shomeisho, I felt a chill of disturbance.

A bit disturbed by the shomeisho, I turned around so I couldn't see Ewan Macgregor. The poster was right above my head. A college girl with a sliver cell phone, glasses with orange lenses, a brown leather coat with a fake fur collar, and a white "Green Day" sweatshirt got pressed into my chest when the train stopped at Nisshin and filled up. She looked me in the eye, bottom lip trembling. She smelled like baby powder. I stank of Dove Pink soap and Tommy cologne. We stared into one another's foreheads for twenty minutes, until the train arrived in Kawagoe. When the announcer said, "Kawagoe," I breathed, hard, out my nostrils. I reached up, grabbed the Ewan Macgregor poster from the bottom, and pulled it down and out of its fasteners. The girl stared at me as I did so. Smiling at her, I rolled up the poster and stepped off the train.

As I rode the Tobu-Tojo Line south to Fujimino, I looked over the shomeisho again.

"We're sorry for making this person late. Sincerely, Omiya Stationmaster."

I thought for a while that I'd have a chance to use it. I didn't. I got to work, soaked in rain, and slapped that shomeisho down on the counter.

"Oh, Tim," staff-girl/yakuza spy Tomoko said with a smile. "You no come here, FOUR hours!"

Tomoko, too, smelled like baby powder, I thought, when I stood in Fujimino Station for the second time that day. What was it with girls smelling like baby powder on such a rainy morning? I didn't know. The bathroom at the station smelled like rotting meat, and that was not exactly comforting. Using my monthly rail pass, I took the Tobu-Tojo Line north to Kawagoe. During the ride, I kept my hands in my sweatshirt pocket, feeling the edges of the Ewan Macgregor poster. When I got bored with that, I fished out my rail pass, and looked it over. It expired in three days. I had three days to do what I'd been planning to do since my first day in Tokyo.

On my first day in Tokyo, a Korean-Australian named "Cookie" had guided me from Narita Airport to Kita-Urawa. The Company apparently didn't want me alone for too long. They'd only trusted me with hopping the bus from the hotel back to the airport terminal. On that first morning in Tokyo, I was able to sit down on the train. On the express from Narita to Tokyo Station, I even ordered a cup of hot tea, and drank it. Outside the windows, broad-daylight-Tokyo streamed by, rice fields and billboards, hiragana, katakana, kanji, and old men on bikes.

At Kita-Urawa, Cookie got out a little Japanese phrasebook, cleared his throat a few times, and made ready to give me a demonstration on how to pay for a monthly train pass.

"Did you bring cash?" he wanted to know.

I looked up at the map above the ticket machines. A rail map of Tokyo and its environs, truly, looks like the human circulatory system times five. The center of the city, enclosed by the Yamanote Loop, is like the heart. I mused for a moment: is the Yamanote Line the heart of Tokyo transit's circulatory system, or is the rest of Tokyo the heart to the Yamanote Line's circulatory system?

"Tim?"

"I'll get my train pass later," I told Cookie. He sighed in relief, rubbed his hands together, and announced he was going to take me to my apartment.

"You won't need a taxi," he told me outside, pointing at the Kita-Urawa taxi circle. "You'll see how close you are. Won't need a bus, neither."

A bus was stopped near the taxi circle. On its side, it said "Kokusai Kyogo: KKK Bus." I always thought that was kind of funny.

Walking in Kita-Urawa was always enjoyable. Especially on that day in October -- pleasant remnants of what I'd been told was an evil Tokyo summer still hung in the air. Bikes lined up by a chain supermarket glinted. The cars passing on the backstreet leading to my apartment stopped to let pedestrians pass.

This was days before I'd see Fujimino, with its "downtown" of rice fields, and its roads as wide as those of a small American town -- the rest of Saitama's roads are about as wide as a small American town's sidewalks.

My first workday, I took the Musashino Line to get to Fujimino, and the ride was long. The next day, I took the Tobu-Tojo Line-Kawagoe Line combination, and found the ride even longer. The third day, I saw about getting a train pass.

The route I dubbed "The Northern Entrance," which involved riding the Keihin-Tohoku Line north to Omiya, switching to the Kawagoe Line west to Kawagoe, and taking the Tobu-Tojo Line south to Fujimino, took a grand total of one hour and forty eight minutes on a typical day. The fare, for thirty days, was 20,600 yen.

The "Southern Entrance," taking the Keihin-Tohoku south to Minami-Urawa, switching to the Musashino Line to Asakadai, and taking the local Tobu-Tojo north to Fujimino, took an hour and four minutes. Its thirty day fare was 11,400 yen.

Looking at this, I laughed aloud. An old woman with a gray face looked at me.

It can be said, then, that I made the decision to commit fraud on that day. The plan had fermented in my brain. It had begun when I received an email about my company's fraudulent health insurance scheme a week before I left for Japan. It was finalized that sunny morning in October. It was to be carried out thirty days from then.

Working in Tokyo: if you're not prepared to think your train-pass-fraud through this far ahead, you lose to the Yakuza Machine.

I bought the 20,600-yen train pass. At my school, the staff woman made a photocopy. On every paycheck, I'd have 20,600 yen listed for travel. All I had to do, she said, was keep buying my train pass as usual.

On that rainy day, I had three days left on my original train pass. Something about the rain, the train suicide, and my having four hours to kill had gotten me to feeling a little guilty. If I'm going to commit fraud, I was thinking, I might as well do it with a little bit of dignity. That is, I might as well buy the cheaper train pass three days before my old one expires.

I honestly don't know what I was thinking. It made a little sense at the time. It still makes a little sense now, kind of. Moving on.

When in Tokyo, my wallet is always stuffed with 10,000-yen bills. On that day in November, it was no different. My stomach was hissing and full of acid and hungry for Kirin Afternoon Tea Milk Tea:

"Sunlight and mist turn a young leaf into tea. Tea can turn you into something new. Tea. A natural gift of love."

I bought the new train pass, and stuffed it in my wallet. I'd even typed my name in katakana, just for the hell of it. The next day, I figured, I'd take the shortcut to work, and be leeching 10,000 yen a month out of my Company. I'd suffered a month of long train rides and waking hours before sunrise: I'd paid my dues.

I sat at a cafe in Kawagoe and read a newspaper. Ducking under the station bridge, I headed to an underground internet cafe, and checked some videogame news. As time crept on toward noon, I headed back for the train station, and to work. From the platform outside Kawagoe Station, it looked like my Ramadan wasn't going to get any better: the sky was still gray, and somewhere above those clouds, the sun had yet to set.

* * *

On Tuesday, November 12th, I looked like a fool. I was returning from a day of work that should have been a day off, and I couldn't find my train pass. I tried to explain to the blue-suited guy at Asakadai Station I didn't know where my train pass had gone. I'd used it to board the train -- I swore -- I just couldn't find it now that I'd gotten off the train. I kept trying to spell my name -- William Timothy Rogers Junior, for the record -- and he kept getting the katakana wrong. Eventually, I wondered if I even remembered which katakana I'd used to spell the name in the first place. I blamed my hunger for my sudden uncharacteristic forgetfulness.

Eventually, the guy let me go. I was relieved until I stepped out of the Tobu-Tojo gate, and realized I'd have to pay for my passage to Kita-Urawa. I fished around for some coins, and paid for the ticket. On the Kita-Asaka Musashino Line platform, I sipped a hot milk tea and looked out at a building taller than my apartment building. On the building's side were signs for three different English conversation schools.

* * * *

The next day, my train pass reappeared in my wallet. I was exiting Minami-Urawa Station when, by reflex, I reached into my wallet for my train pass. I'd forgotten about its disappearance of the night before. When I found that it was right there, and in the window in front of my American driver's license, no less, I was a bit incredulous. I used the train pass to exit Kita-Urawa Station. I still have that unneeded ticket, even today. It's been punched once. I carry it in my wallet, a memento of the date: Wednesday, November 13th, 2001.

For the duration of my walk home, I was pleased. I grabbed a can of hot cocoa, and was surprised to find it was the regular kind, not the semi-sweet variety they'd been stocking for the last couple of weeks. I drank it all the way home, hardly in any position to think I was about to be horribly disturbed.

"Yo, Mr. T," my fat roommate said, when I'd been home and cooking noodles for all of forty-five minutes.

"Yeah?"

"You got a letter in the mail."

"Oh?"

"On top of the TV."

It was a brown envelope with a thick permanent-markered katakana scrawl:

ウイリアム・ロジャーズ先輩
William Rogers-sempai

There was no address, return or otherwise.

I narrowed my eyes at it, and then looked back to my roommates. The skinny one shrugged. The fat one pointed a chopstick at the skinny one.

"He got his Japanese dictionary out. For the katakana."

"I see," I said. As my noodles fried and sizzled, I took the letter into my bedroom, sat on the futon, reached up, pulled on the light, opened the envelope, and had a heart attack.

Inside was a single sheet of paper, folded carefully into eighths, and a plastic wrapper from a pack of tissues. When I unfolded the sheet of paper, I found that it was a photocopy of both of my train passes. I squinted, in the low light, and inspected both photocopies. The old pass -- it was fuzzier than the new one. It was almost as if the new photocopy was made by setting the new train pass atop a copy of the old train pass. I wondered as I looked at it. And then I noticed a folded receipt in the plastic tissue wrapper.

I removed it. I was shaking when I did so. Either it was fear, or the fact that my heater had been broken since before I'd arrived.

"Here. Friday. PM9.00. Bring computer."

Aside from the odd time notation, the note was in English. I turned over what had once been a pack of tissues. It was from Fujimino's own Cafe Monster, located just thirty seconds' walking distance from the station.

I didn't get out of work until nine on Friday, so I had to run to make it to Cafe Monster. I considered hopping into one of the cabs waiting by the curb near my English school. I didn't. I wasn't as made of money as my wallet would have you think. I braved the rain and the walk.

I got to Cafe Monster at a little before nine-thirty. I peered in the window. Inside, it looked hot, and everything glowed mahogany-colored. Posters of James Dean lined the walls. The two other patrons of Cafe Monster were college girls. They looked at me, maybe, because I was looking at them. I looked at them, mostly, because I was suspicious. I figured it was safe to go in.

On the stereo, for whatever the reason, was the Beatles' "Revolution 9." I told the hostess I was waiting for someone, and sat down alone at a long table adorned with LAN hookups. I sat in the corner, and kept my eye on the door.

Masako came in about two minutes after I ordered a cup of Earl Grey tea. She was in rare form: in full schoolgirl uniform, with shoulder-length hair. It was the first time I ever saw her, and the last time I'd ever see her with long hair. The silver-framed glasses, wide face, and evil grin would remain for months, even as she shaved her head, took to wearing a baseball cap, and quit school.

She looked over at me. When her eyes met mine, she looked down. Eyes on her little black shoes, cheap umbrella hooked around her arm, she headed clear across Cafe Monster, and sat down right next to me. She clunked a SATY bag of vegetables down on the table.

"Why don't you hook up your computer?" she asked me, in Japanese, as she tied the plastic bag.

I flipped open my computer, and turned it on. As it booted up, Masako pulled a packet of tissues out of her little Avon bag.

"I want a hot dog," she said.

I scoffed. "Do you now?"

"Oh, so you can speak Japanese. Well?"

"Well what?"

"Won't you get me a hot dog? And some water."

"Um, okay," I said.

The cafe girl came by a second later. Masako kept her face buried in her tissue, and motioned to me with her elbow.

"She'll have a hot dog. And some water."

The cafe girl nodded, and was gone.

"How did you know I spoke Japanese?" I asked her. Probably not the practical first question you ask someone who has apparently followed you home at least once.

"I heard you speaking it to the girl at Kentucky Fried Chicken. You were totally macking on her."

Was I?

"Was I?"

"Hell yeah. What, you're surprised? I thought the Osaka accent was a tactic. Now I realize it's not. You should be careful what you say to people, William Rogers."

"Call me Tim," I said.

"No," Masako said, as her hot dog arrived. Cafe Monster's service is prompt in a lovely way, quick as "Revolution 9" is long. "How about I just call you 'sempai'? You don't have to call me 'kohai' or anything."

"Fair enough," I said with a shrug.

Masako stuffed the end of her hot dog in her mouth. She motioned with her flat chin to my computer. Over the hot dog, she said, "You got the internet in there, right?"

I scoffed. I was transported back to the videogame store where I worked during college: two American guys in NASCAR shirts and mullets were looking over Dreamcast games shortly before the release of Phantasy Star Online. One says to the other: "I'm not getting that Dreamcast, because that PlayStation2's got the internet in it."

"Yeah," I said. "The internet's in here."

"Can you show me?"

I plugged the computer into the LAN jack.

"Is the internet on?"

I scoffed again.

"Yeah, it's on."

"Can you show me something?"

"Like what?"

Masako shrugged. "I don't know, just show me something."

I logged onto my email, and sipped my tea. The college girls in the corner were glowering at me. I felt hot, sitting next to a girl half my height. How old was she? Seven? Eight? Nine?

"What's this?" Masako asked.

"It's, uh, email," I said.

"Oh. Like, you get email from people?"

"Yeah."

"I see," Masako said. "Can you see, like, pictures?"

I scoffed. What year was this, anyway? 1994?

"Yeah."

"Can you see pictures of, like, rock bands?"

"Um, yeah."

"How about, like, Aerosmith? Can you see pictures of them, too?"

"You like Aerosmith?"

Masako shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. So, can you?"

"Yeah."

"You can look up, like, information, too, right?"

"Yeah." I took a deep breath. This girl had apparently stolen my train pass mid-voyage -- and given it back a day later. She obviously had some motive. "Is there a certain KIND of information you're looking for?"

Masako shrugged. "Just Steven Tyler's birthday."

"Good," I said. "That's more like it."

So I tried out Google. I typed "Steven Tyler Bio." I came up with a few sites, and opened a few pages. Each one listed his birthday as "March 26th." The facts checked out.

"March 26th," I said.

"What YEAR?" Masako asked.

Answering that question took about forty minutes of my time.

"This internet thing ain't so great, is it?"

"Not really," I said. "It usually works. Don't you have a computer?"

"I don't like them," Masako said.

"Oh, here it is," I said.

"What?"

With my pointer, I highlighted a line of text on a fan's biography page.

March 26th, 1948.

"1948!" Masako said, pounding her fist into her palm in a way that alarmed me. I looked at her, and suddenly got the strange impression she was about to turn into a very old man.

She didn't turn into an old man. She reached into her bag, and pulled out a notebook. She flipped it open, to a page that was already seven-eighths covered with text. There was a gap in the middle. Masako took to scrawling something in the empty space. It looked like a friendly letter. It was already signed at the bottom:

"Masa-Blaze," it said.

"My name's Masako, by the way," she said.

"Yeah, I figured," I said.

"Oh? How?"

I tapped my index finger onto her notebook.

"Oh, you can read, too?"

I scoffed. "A little bit, yeah."

I finished my tea.

"I had a bet going with my friend," Masako said, tearing out the sheet of her notebook. "I won. You want to get out of here? It's hot as hell."

"Sure," I said, and picked up the check.

* * * * *

Outside, Masako stuffed her plastic umbrella into a garbage can, and unchained her bike.

"Something wrong with your umbrella?"

"No."

Masako and I found an elevated concrete slab with several nozzles for water fixed to one side of it. Next to the slab was a block of three phone booths. I easily jumped up onto the slab. Masako had to hoist herself up and on.

For the next hour, Masako and I shared a real conversation -- not a packaged one, like my Company sold.

(My skinny roommate: "It's like McDonald's, only we sell English, not hamburgers.")

Masako was sixteen years old, in her second year of high school.

"I've never talked to a foreigner before. I didn't know they could speak Japanese."

That's why most Japanese people went to conversational English lessons, an Australian representative of the Company had told me during my orientation. A lot of them don't care about learning English -- they're just morbidly interested in talking to foreigners, even if they don't understand a word they say. I had trouble believing that woman, either because her top right incisor looked as if someone had turned it ninety degrees with a pair of pliers, or because she had also told us that "Ninety-nine-percent of foreigners in Japan are English conversation teachers." What about the Korean beauty salon women, the countless American IT guys, the Chinese restaurant managers in Shibuya?

"I didn't know I could speak Japanese, either," I said.

"Whatever."

"No, really. I've had about one conversation in Japanese since coming here."

"Oh, with the cafe guy in Mizuhoudai?"

Somehow, it didn't surprise me that she had seen me that night. It was a week before, and I'd stumbled into that little cafe after just missing a mandatory after-work "party."

"Yeah, him."

"You were writing something, on your computer, right?"

I nodded.

"It's a novel?"

"Yeah."

"What's it about?"

"Lots of stuff."

Masako snorted.

"You want to read it?"

"Nah. I can't read English for shit. I know just about enough to tell something is a novel."

While seated on the concrete slab, Masako stretched her legs out in front of her. The bare backs of her legs sat against the ice-cold surface of the concrete. As she and I talked, she repeatedly rotated her legs so that her toes touched and her ankles pressed down flat. As Masako talked, I watched her feet, with their little, black, leather shoes, rotate at an impossible angle. While witnessing this display of double-jointedness, I heard the sound of numerous trains sliding, brakes squealing all the way, into Fujimino Station. Sometimes, I looked up, to see the lights inside the slowing trains, the people standing inside, and I wondered how many of them were getting off at Fujimino Station. Of those that got off at Fujimino Station, I wondered, how many would exit to the east? To the west?

Each time a train stopped, a good-sized crowd of people poured down the steps of Fujimino Station. Many people descended the steps of the underground bike garage, many of them lined up for taxis; many of them just took off walking. Every person looked like they knew exactly where they were going. Even a typical drunken salary man walked with some visible sense of determination. He walked in the direction of the concrete slab, stumbling as he walked, hands digging through his pockets for change. He stumbled into the payphone closest to where Masako and I sat. After closing the phone booth door, the man stood for close to a minute without doing much of anything.

"I hate my school," Masako was saying. "I hate . . . city people."

"I see."

"I hate . . . having to take the subway. Like being in a coffin."

"Oh? You go to school in Tokyo?"

"Yeah," Masako said.

"I've only been on the subway two times," I mumbled.

Masako and I were silent for a minute. We listened to the drunker half of the salary man's telephone conversation. He was asking someone to come pick him up, to take him home.

Masako rotated her feet again, and touched the toes together.

"Hey, doesn't that hurt?"

Masako shrugged. "It hurts, and it doesn't hurt." A typical Japanese reply. Masako sniffed the air. "I'm double-jointed. Do you believe in God?"

Such a random question. "A little bit, yeah." Such a random answer.

"Why do you think God made me double-jointed?"

"I don't know. I guess it just depends on His mood when He made you."

"His mood? I didn't know God had moods."

"He does, sometimes. Everyone has moods."

Masako cleared her throat. "So what mood do you think God was in when He made me?"

"I don't know. I guess He wasn't busy."

Masako narrowed her pea-sized eyes. "God doesn't get busy, does He? I mean, He's God."

"Well, even God gets busy sometimes."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"I don't know," I said with a shrug. "I just think that God wouldn't have given you such a unique detail as double-jointedness if He had too many other things to do."

Masako snorted when I said this. Smirking, she motioned with her elbow to the man in the phone booth. "What kind of mood do you think God was in when He made that guy?"

I smiled. "I think God was very busy when He made that guy."

Masako laughed.


During our conversation, Masako and I stood up occasionally to stretch, and comment on how frozen our limbs felt from sitting in a cold place so long. Sometimes, we assumed karate poses. All the while, the drunken man kept on talking to whomever he was talking to.

At one point, I jumped on Masako's bike and took off, her following me all the way. I made a few quick turns, trying to lose her, and eventually ducked into a pitch-black alleyway. An island of drink machines sat in a small inlet about a hundred meters into the alley. The light from the drink machines poured out into the alley. It made me remember Omiya, and how the drink machines blended in with the surrounding bright lights of the city. In Fujimino, a drink machine was a burning beacon in the night.


"I want something hot to drink," I said to Masako, as she came up behind me, not panting, not tired in the least from her short run.

"Get tea," she said.

"I want cocoa."

"Cocoa is too sweet. Don't get cocoa."

"I'll get cocoa if I want to," I said.

The only coin I had on me that was bigger than one or five yen was a large, new, gold five-hundred yen coin. I slipped it into the machine, and it promptly slid right out the coin return slot.

"It doesn't accept that," Masako said, pointing at the sticker saying "Only the old 500 yen coin is accepted here."

"Oh," I said. "I should have known."

"Can you loan me 120 yen?"

"Not for cocoa."

"Fine. I'll find another vending machine." With that, I jumped back on Masako's bike and took off for another island of vending machines. Masako ran after me, the heels of her little leather shoes clicking all the way.

Masako and I searched, for all of ten minutes, for a vending machine that both accepted the new five hundred yen coin and sold cocoa. We found some machines that had cocoa, and we found one machine that accepted the new coin. Lipton milk tea occupied three slots of the machine that accepted the new coin.

"I'll just get milk tea."

"Knock yourself out."

After retrieving the can of tea, I stuffed it in the pocket of my Spider-Man hooded sweatshirt with my rolled-up picture of Ewan Macgregor, hopped back onto Masako's bike, and rode back to the concrete slab. Masako ran alongside me. It was neck and neck all the way. In the end, I won. I hopped up onto the concrete slab, and rubbed the can of tea all over my face.

"Let me have some," Masako said.

"I didn't even open it yet."

"I just want some of the warmth."

"Oh, sure, help yourself." I handed Masako the can of tea, just as another train grinded into the station. The mist of a rain was growing slightly thicker. As people began to pour down the stairs, Masako ceased rolling the can between her hands, and began rubbing it all over her face, from her unwrinkled forehead to her chubby cheeks.

"Warm," she said.

She pressed the can to her ear. "Warm, warm, warm."

As people lined up to wait for taxis, Masako handed me the can of tea. "Thanks," she said.

"Don't mention it." I popped the can open, and started drinking it. A car pulled up to the circle in front of the station, and a woman got out, leading a large Siberian husky. The dog was bigger than Masako. The liquid in my mouth, quickly becoming cold, tasted something like warm milk with a hint of tea. I went on drinking, and I went on watching the people that were pouring out of the station.

"That's a big dog," I said, uncurling my finger from around the can of tea to point at the husky.

"That dog could bite your head off," Masako said.

"I'd like a dog that big."

"That dog's a murderer. My dad would never let me have him."

"I'm not sure I'd let myself have that dog."

"My parents wouldn't let me have any dog."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, even before I started messing up in school they wouldn't have let me have one."

Masako sighed.

"So what's wrong at school?" I asked her.

Masako snorted. "Nothing. I'm just . . . stupid."

I scoffed. "Whatever."

"Oh, and what do you know?"

"I can tell you're not stupid," I said to her. Really, I could. Anyone who masterminds a train pass-pickpocketing-photocopying-stalking scheme for the purpose of finding out Steven Tyler's birthday couldn't possibly be stupid. Crazy, yes. Stupid -- absolutely not.

"Whatever. Don't lie to me."

After Masako said this, she went silent for long enough to allow me to finish my can of tea.


Masako sighed, and another crowd of people poured down the stairs of Fujimino Station. As those people lined up for taxis, unchained their bicycles, or headed into the underground bike garage, the misting rain picked up speed and strength. Masako and I nonverbally agreed to walk to the station, and take refuge from the rain.

"Hey, sempai," she asked me, when the two of us were standing before the escalator, "do you think I can see you playing the guitar?"

"Um, sure." I'd told her earlier that I knew how to play a little guitar.

"Maybe I can come to your house?"

"Hmmm. I don't have a guitar there."

"Why not?"

"I didn't bring it."

"Don't you practice?"

"Well, sometimes I go to this guitar shop in Omiya, on the fourth floor of the Loft department store."

"I can make it to Omiya," Masako said, almost to herself. "Maybe we can meet there?"

"Um, sure," I said. "My days off are Wednesday and Thursday."

"How about four o'clock on Wednesday?"

I almost choked. Was she for real? "I don't see why not," I said.

"Oh, good."

A few moments of silence passed. More salary men, schoolgirls, and elderly people trickled down the stairs.

"Sakai-san can play the guitar, too," Masako said.

"Sakai-san?"

"My friend."

"I see."

"I'm learning the drums. Me and Sakai-san and her sempai want to start a band."

"She has a sempai?"

"Yeah. She plays bass. They want to be like Aerosmith. I think we should be like the Blue Hearts. You know the Blue Hearts, man?"

"'Hito ni Yasashiku,' 'Linda Linda'?"

Masako pounded her fist into her palm. "Yeah! Punk rock. You like it?"

"Of course."

"Wow," Masako said, and trailed off.

I opened my mouth. Before I could say anything, Masako spoke up.

"Hey sempai, what should I do?"

"Do for what?"

"To become as cool as you?"

"I don't know. Just . . ." I searched the pit of my preconscious mind for some advice for the girl, and came up with only, "Always do the things you want to do."

"What if I want to quit school?"

I shrugged. "Do it."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Enough people say they're going to quit something, then they just let it drag on and on. If you want to quit school, do it."

"Right," Masako said, nodding.

The people waiting in front of the station had mostly dispersed by that point. It was shortly after ten-thirty.

"What do you think I'll become? I don't even know what I'm going to become."

"No one ever does," I said.

"When you were a kid, what did you say? Like, in kindergarten and stuff?"

I shrugged. "I don't remember."

"You don't remember?"

"Well, I remember my second-year Japanese class. The teacher, this serious Japanese PhD candidate, was asking us what we planned on doing after graduation. eSotsugyou shitekara, nan ni naritai desu ka?' ("After you graduate, what you do you want to become?") She asked every student in turn, starting with me."

"What did you say?" Masako asked.

"Well, I said, eI want to become a pirate.'"

Masako laughed, pounding her fist into her palm. Again, I got the impression that she was about to transform into an old man. "What did the teacher say?"

"She said eCHOTTO chigaimasu!' ("That's a little wrong!")"

"No way!"

"Nope, that's what she said."

"So then what?"

"She said she'd come back to me. She asked each other student. They all gave boring replies: eI want to become a doctor.' eI want to become a lawyer.' eI want to become a journalist.'"

"What did you say when she came back to you?"

"I said, 'I want to become a samurai.'"

"And what did she say?"

Imitating my teacher's high-pitched voice, I said, "'CHOTTO chigaimasu!'" Several passing Japanese men glared at me.

"Whoa!"

"Yeah, I know. So she asked again: 'After you graduate, what do you want to become?'

"So I said, 'I want to become a ninja.'

"Again, 'CHOTTO chigaimasu!' Then she asked again.

"So I said, 'I want to become a princess.'

"No way!"

"Yeah. So she asked me one more time before she gave up."

"What did you say?"

"'Kami-sama ni naritai.' ('I want to become God.')"

"Rock!" Masako yelled, in English.

"Yeah, I know."

"That's awesome."

"You bet."

Masako thrust her hands into the pockets of her schoolgirl jacket.

"And you ended up as a conversational English teacher in Japan."

"I guess life's like that some times."

"You just wake up one day, and you come to realize your entire world has completely changed," Masako said, snapping her fingers. She spoke that entire sentence like it was one big compound verb. I recognized a structure from my college fourth-year Japanese class.

"I guess so." I cleared my throat, and was silent for a second.

Rotating her ankles so her toes touched one another, Masako asked, "So, have you given up on becoming God?"

I shrugged. "I guess I have. I guess I learned a few things."

"Like what?"

I shrugged again. "I guess I realize how busy God is. It's a lot of work to be God."

She narrowed her pea-sized eyes. "Why the hell do you say that?"

"Maybe you'll understand someday," I said, not having much of an idea what I was saying.

"If you say so," Masako said. "Well, maybe you should go." Suddenly, she didn't seem so intent on keeping me around. "You'll miss the last train out of Kawagoe again."

"You were there?" I said.

Masako looked down at her feet. "I didn't follow you. I just figured you missed the train. So you did?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Well, I knew it." Masako was still looking down.

"Hey," I said, kind of slowly.

"Yeah?"

"Why don't you write me a letter? I'll reply."

"You promise?"

"Yeah, I promise. Just, one thing--"

"What?"

"Send it through the mail."

Masako grinned. "Sure."

I stepped onto the escalator, facing Masako as she waved goodnight to me. Something about her smile, and the way she pointed her toes together, indicated exasperation. I gave her a small wave, just as another crowd of people flowed down out of the station. The city behind Masako was dark, and the little light in station entrance didn't show until the crowd of people had descended the stairs. As the people surrounded Masako and rendered her invisible, I turned around, rubbing my numb hands together, thinking that I'd go home and have tempura at the Tenya near my apartment building.

As I rubbed my hands together, I said, only to myself, "Tonight's a busy night for God-business." I decided then and there to use my old train pass one last time before retiring it. I'd take the long way home.

On the train all the way back to Kita-Urawa, as I watched the reflection of the moon in Saitama's rice fields, the only light in a pitch-black landscape, that thought stayed on my mind: "Tonight's a busy night for God-business."

On the Kawagoe Line, the train was so warm it bordered on hot. My frozen ears were brought to painful, stabbing life. I almost cried. I didn't. I turned off my CD player, and opened my eyes. There was to be no sleep yet. The inside of the train car was filled with yellow light, and the hushed, tambourine-like rattling of train against rails.

The train car I occupied was empty except for a young Japanese couple sitting in the priority seat -- the bench reserved for, as the picture shows, old people, people with injuries, people with small children, or pregnant women. The illustration makes it look like the seat is provided for people with candy canes, people with big white socks, people holding monkeys, and people who've swallowed bombs -- the pregnant woman has unexplainable speed lines radiating out of her inflated stomach. The Japanese boy and girl in the corner didn't fit any of these criteria. Then again, they were going at each other in a way that suggested one of them -- I'm guessing the girl -- had swallowed a bomb, and wanted to make the most of their last few moments of life. Before I could feel guilty about staring, I looked away. Japan made me realize I have a habit of staring sometimes. I closed my eyes, hiding the three of us as we slid soundlessly toward Omiya.

The guy and the girl got off the train at Nisshin. The girl stood up and smoothed her hands over her hair. When the guy stood up, I noticed he was taller than I was. He wrapped a loose-knit camouflage scarf around his neck, and slid on some sunglasses. He must have seen me staring at him. He gave me a little "What's up?" nod of the head.

On the front of his black hooded sweatshirt were printed the words "Still Alive." When he turned to walk out the opened doors of the train, I saw, written on the back of his sweatshirt, the words "Not Yet Dead."

* * * * *

In Japan, I saw so many things I wanted to buy. I'd been begged by American friends, many times before I went to Japan, to buy "shirts with crazy Engrish." After seeing "Still Alive -- Not Yet Dead," I was filled with a feeling: I will own that Engrish, or I will own no Engrish.

I never got that sweatshirt. That explains why I arrived back home without any Engrish apparel. It does not, however, explain why I didn't pick up a pair of Sony Eggo headphones.

"Damn it, you should have gotten them in Akihabara yesterday!" Masako yelled, slapping me on the back of the head.

"Don't hit me."

Backs to a Sapporo vending machine, we were sitting on the floor near the ticket gate of the Narita Airport Station. I had already checked in for my flight, and was free of luggage. Rather than pay three hundred yen for too-small Sprite, Masako and I grabbed a couple McDonald's Hot Apple Pies, and tracked down to the train station. We shared a "Big Can" of Mitsuya Cider, and gossiped about my hostess.

"The way she forced us into that taxi . . ."

"What was with her new SOFA?"

"I didn't even get to pack everything."

"What about all those Super Famicom games?"

I shook my head.

"At least I got Goemon and Parodius."

"Which Goemon?"

"I think all three of them?"

"I saw a Goemon game on your chair."

"No way. No way." I shook my head. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It slipped my mind. You were so frantic. Like a girl before a blind date."

"Whatever."

Masako snorted. Her feet were spread out before her body. She was wearing ripped jean shorts, and she visibly needed to shave her legs. She rotated her ankles, and touched her toes together.

"It better not be Goemon 2," I whispered.

"We WERE playing that one last night."

I let the horror sink in.

"Hell, I'll go get it for you. Don't worry. I'll say I, uh, came to pick up your guitar."

"Good idea," I said.

"I'll learn to play it before you come back."

"You better," I said. "Large Prime Numbers ain't done enough damage yet."

Masako snickered. "You're damned right."

I held up my can of Mitsuya Cider. "Large Prime Numbers are Not Finished with Tokyo," I said, like a salute.

Masako grabbed the can out of my hand. "It's hot in here," she said.

The area around the train platform was steamy. It was like a hot spring day, indoors. Out of the ticket gate came people rolling suitcases. Into the ticket gate went people with hands firmly in their pockets. Every pair of people at the airport, it seemed that day, consisted of one person leaving and one person being left. Even the woman with a baby at a little franchise cafe across the shiny-white-tiled way had the leaving-someone-behind look on her face. Was she going to leave the baby behind? I wondered. Who was going to take the baby? Her husband? And where was he? In the bathroom? I didn't get it.

"I should be going."

I looked at my watch. My plane left in three hours. "So soon?"

"Yeah," Masako said.

I walked her up to the ticket gate. She bought a ticket for the Narita Express train.

"You're taking the Narita Express back?"

"Yeah. She gave me so much damned money. I don't know what to do with it all."

I snickered. "You could give some to me."

"You've got enough in your debit account."

"I'm saving that for when I come back."

"Yeah, whatever. Anyway, I'll see you."

Before I was even aware Masako had taken her ticket, she had turned her back, and was headed for the gate. I was never one for goodbyes, and neither was Masako -- hell, she was hardly one for hellos -- so I figured I should just let her go. So I let her go. Without looking back, bumping shoulders with all the suitcase-pulling couples about to head out of Tokyo and into somewhere else, Masako disappeared.


In ten minutes, I was at an airport gift shop. With a handful of leftover coins, I bought a few FIFA World Cup 2002 badges that would, in just a half a day, earn me envy from dozens of people "back home." The gift shop lady slid my merchandise into a little paper bag, and taped it shut, rendering it a streamlined package for easy transport. When she smiled, something told me she was Malaysian.

At an airport bookshop, I browsed for an English edition of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, which I'd been reading in Japanese at my hostess's suggestion for a few weeks. I browsed alongside a fellow white man, one who was looking at a copy of Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. I almost told him it was a good book. Then, I realized he might not be American, and he might not appreciate such forwardness from strangers. There was no way to tell.

At an electronics shop, I found a pair of Sony Eggo headphones, and I was surprised. The guy who had greeted me at the door was surprised, too, when I ran back out of the electronics shop a second after entering. I was beaming. Just one ATM and 4,400 yen later, I'd be the proud owner of one charcoal-gray pair of Eggo headphones.

I found an ATM under the escalator in the main lobby of Terminal 2. The ceiling above was glass, and arched, and showed the thick, humid gray sky. The sound of a jet shook the air far above that arch. I opened my wallet. My ATM card was gone. It had been replaced with my very first Tokyo train pass, which I carry even today. I had given that train pass to Masako, as a memento of something.

A memento of what? I wondered.

Standing in that airport lobby, as quiet as the home I'd be seeing again soon is loud, I wondered. My plane would leave Tokyo at seven o'clock on Sunday, and arrive twelve hours later in Atlanta, at six o'clock on a Sunday that was the same, yet different. Somehow, the notion reminded me of Tokyo.

I thought of the electronics store. Its floor was a matte-wood tile. Its shelves were stocked with glistening packages of Sony products, headphones with metallic-painted plastic, and all manner of things meant to be picked up, put in a pocket, and taken somewhere else. Its customers could never be loyal: they entered, bought, and left. If they ever came back, it'd be just like the first time again. They come over and above ground, and on rails, and before that from all nations in the world. It's a one-way-street of an electronics shop, poised above an escalator, inhabited by smiles and greeters, patronized by people either ready to hop on a plane and fly somewhere or tired from travel.

Two tall men in "Brazil" soccer jerseys were laughing it up outside a nearby 7-Eleven. Their voices echoed all the way down from that glass ceiling.

When those Brazilians, and my former roommates with them, leave this place where they are so grossly outnumbered, so ridiculously foreign -- and they WILL leave -- will they stop at the floating electronics store of dreams, too? What will they leave behind, with my guitar? A statue of Colonel Sanders? What will they buy, minutes before leaving this place? Will they have anyone to leave behind, anyone who might try to stop them from taking too much?

Like the city itself, with its mix of neon and kimonos and modern architectures and rice fields, like streets without names in a megalopolitan village with too many names, like the people who come here with neither an intention nor an ability to stay forever, the electronics store at the top of the escalator is always moving, slowly, toward something none of us can ever live to see.

-Tim Rogers
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