It's ten fifty three AM in the morning, Sunday, March 24th, 2004 in Tokyo.

I'm in the only Cinnabon store in Japan, underground near the Toys R Us in Ikebukuro. I am eating a Cinnabon and drinking half a box of Van Houten Cocoa that I smuggled in in my backpack, unknowingly. It was underneath half an apple and a cart-only copy of Seiken Densetsu 2.

A certified ganguro sits at the table across from me. She is sending an email with her cell phone and slowly developing skin cancer. She cuts herself with her Cinnabon knife. The wound is serious. I stop sipping my cocoa for a second.

*

I had become friends with a strange Japanese woman again. This time, her name was Tina Yoshiwara and she was Chinese/Korean. Her original name was Wo Chi Gourou and she had to give this up to marry a Japanese guy. So she picked Tina from Final Fantasy VI and Yoshiwara from the area in Edo where her husband's aunt's dog's former owner's grandfather was reportedly conceived in a loveless tryst between a twelve-year-old maiko and Kenzaburo Oe. Before meeting her husband, Tina had briefly dated Bob Sapp.

"How did you do it?" I asked, Tina being three foot eleven.

"I kind of sat on top of him and he bounced me up and down," says Tina.

"Like jerking off, only with somebody to talk to," I observed.

"Ne, buy me a Cinnabon."

So we ended up in the Cinnabon and watched as the ambulance took away the ganguro. She was worried that her tan-in-a-bottle lotion would infect the wound. From the amount of blood it was clear that she had reason to worry. As the paramedics took her out, she asked them if she could get eyelid surgery while she was in the hospital.

"I want that surgery too. I want to look like Ayumi Hamasaki," Tina said.

"I'll punch you in the face and do it for free," I said.

"You're crazy."

"They said that about Gumpei Yokoi too. And look where he is now."

"Let's go to Toys R Us and make the stuffed animals fuck."

I loved that about Tina.

We exited into the corridor of Sunshine City. The Blue Hearts played on the PA.

"Linda Linda," they sang. "Linda Linda Lindaaaaaaaaaaaaa."

On the way there I tried to explain to Tina that Toys R Us in the US isn't halfway full of infant shit like it is here. "In America they have two separate stores - Kids R Us and Toys R Us. If you go into a Toys R Us it's not half infant clothes and cribs like this one is."

"If they sell toys at Toys R Us, what do they sell at Kids R Us?" Tina doubled over in laughter as if this was the height of comedy. I gave her the last half of the apple to shut her the fuck up.

*****

Girls were always asking me to teach them English. I usually obliged even though my Japanese was better than theirs. Not that they even cared about that. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to impress a girl by taking a piece of scrap paper and writing the FUCK out of some kanji. And they always just get bored. I mean I'll write something profound and complicated like:

俺は...ロリコンでございます！

('I am the demon slayer!')

and they won't even be impressed. However, the minute I teach them how to say "crap" they're all over me. I guess that's why it's my destiny to be an English teacher.

Of course, I am no longer licensed by the yakuza to teach English. I briefly wondered if that meant I was similarly blacklisted from all other yakuza-run jobs, like pachinko parlors or pimping. If that was true, there were two more career options down the toire.

**************** ***

Growing up, my father always told me, "Tim, try sticking that penny into that electrical outlet."

By the time I was fifteen, this got a little old.

**

I tied my scarf into a full Windsor knot. I briefly pondered the fact that if I ever went to Hawaii, I would probably tie my lei into one too. I wondered if this made me a unique and worthwhile person or an asshole. I was leaning towards "asshole."

******

I had taken to going out for nomihoudai (which means "all the watered-down crap you can drink") with a fifteen-year old girl that I met on the subway. Her name was Yaruko and she liked The Clash.

"What do you think of The Clash?" she would ask me every day.

"Same thing I said yesterday," I would answer every day.

We were sitting under a tree in the gardens in front of the Imperial Palace and I pointed out that we could see the Hinomaru, the Japanese flag, from there.

"What is it supposed to be, anyway?" she asked.

I was transported back to fourth grade where we were quizzed on the American flag and asked how many stripes there were, and what they stood for. I remember half the kids looking at the flag at the front of the classroom, surreptitiously trying to count the stripes. One of the kids in the back of the class said they stood for the amendments to the Bill of Rights.

"It's the rising sun," I said. "They never taught you that?"

"I don't know any of that shit," said Yaruko. "Hey, teach me how to say omae no okaasan wa debesou in English."

Yaruko and I would go to Saizeriya for nomihoudai and the lines would be ridiculously long. I would write my name on the list, only I would write コイズミ instead of my name. Anyway it was important that we went to Saizeriya because they had 180 yen nomihoudai and bottles of off-brand hot sauce on every table. I guess if I just drank the sauce it would be free nomihoudai. Of course, if I went into the bathroom and lapped at the toilet water that would be free nomihoudai too; of course, that doesn't mean I do it.

I drank so much orange Hi-C that I started to crave collard greens and fried chicken. Sadly, they don't have the former and as a vegetarian I can't eat the latter. Of course, if those stories that KFC's chicken isn't really chicken turn out to be true, I guess I can start eating there.

Yaruko was broke so she drank water. Well, that isn't entirely true. She actually was squeezing lemons into the water and adding sugar to make free lemonade. She had cuts on her hands where she had cut herself to get attention and the lemon juice irritated them. The allure of free lemonade was too much to pass up, so she gritted her teeth and worked through the pain.

"Isn't that against the rules?" I asked her, in perfect Japanese.

"Do you see a sign anywhere that says I can't add lemons and sugar into my water?"

"It's taking advantage of them," I said.

"And what about all that off-brand hot sauce in your bag?" she retorted.

She was right. I had taken the half-used bottles of fake Tabasco off of every table between ours and the drink bar. (I had left ours on the table, partially in order to deflect suspicion and partially because I figured I would use it all anyway before we left.)

This seems like a childish prank, only the thing was, I really needed the hot sauce because I use it like a mother. I had taken to carrying a bottle on me at all times, and whenever I passed a crepe stand in a game center, I would buy a tuna and strawberry jam crepe and douse it in Tabasco before eating the entire thing, including the paper wrapping.

I was putting Tabasco into everything. I would buy a can of cocoa from the vending machine in front of the Yamanote, Shibuya-bound platform in Takadanobaba then drip Tabasco into it before the train arrived. If the vending machine was out of cocoa I got Pocari Sweat Stevia; if it was out of that I just drank the Tabasco straight up. I figured it was like drinking vodka, except it just hurt without the drunkenness.

***

I typed this in the Shibuya Manboob! internet cafe. At this cafe you get the first hour for 100 yen, then after that it's 280 yen for each additional hour you spend, no matter how you spend it - clacking away at the screwed-up Japanese keyboards trying to remember where the atmark is, or reading the severely old back issues of Young Jump with severely young girls on the cover, or running back and forth to the nomihoudai which is what I was doing.

All internet cafes have one girl. She sat next to me a mess of keitai straps and clashing, layered tops. I stopped counting at five. I looked over at her computer. She was looking at pictures of Aerosmith. In a sofa booth across the way, a salaryman read a MiniMoni photo book and attempted to obscure his erection. It was not difficult.

I leaned back and listened to the soft hum of the espresso machine. The slurpee mixer mixed its slush. The monitor degaussed. The crystal was shedding its light silently. Blah blah blah symbolism pathos. I downed the cocoa as fast as I could; the hour would be up soon. Again and again I drank from the nomihoudai bar in the dead center of this internet cafe place that was no place.

- Chris Kohler
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