This last weekend V and I had plans to meet up with The Partner and a paralegal from his firm for a morning in Tsukiji. For those of you that have never seen the Tsukiji fish market before, imagine about one million fish, probably more, spilling forth out of the ocean onto a quarter mile of reclaimed land. It's amazing, really, and also a little disturbing. There is nothing quite like starting off your morning with a glorified massacre.
But that is not what this blog is about. This blog is about the evening before.
The Friday night prior to the Tsukiji auction we began everything, innocently enough, with a nice Thanksgiving dinner at a wonderful gaijin restaurant in Roppongi. The food was great and the wine was even better, but when compared with the Japanese food we normally eat, I have to admit I have lost my fondness for American food - including, shockingly enough, chips and salsa. It wasn't that the turkey dinner wasn't wonderful, it was, as were the two salads and the pumpkin creme brulee dessert. It's just that American food can be so unsettling and heavy when you're used to a diet of noodles and fish and miso soup and more noodles.
There was only one thing I wanted to do after dinner and it involved two pillows, a comforter, and a three-legged bed. V, however, knew that if either of us went to sleep that evening we would not be waking up at 4am for the necessary voyage to the fish market, so we came to the inevitable conclusion - the necessity of an all-nighter.
Which brings me to the focal point of this blog. Next door to our apartment there is a building that has a grocery store and a Chinese restaurant and some sort of spa thing. On the other side of our building there is a dental office, more residences, a clothing store, and a bar. Not just a bar, but a bar that neither V or I have ever been to before.
The reason for this has been, and remains, a mystery. While it appears a tad bit sketchy with its blacked-out windows and sign-less domain, such details would normally be overlooked when it comes to drinking and, more importantly, drinking within twenty feet of our apartment.
This is why I think it all comes down to the second floor address. Simply put, V and I were just too lazy to walk upstairs. There is, after all, a perfectly good standing bar across the street and this standing bar is, conveniently enough, at street level.
But, due to the late hour, our standing bar was already closed, leaving us instead with the bar less traveled. Before we decided to trek up the flight of stairs we both paused and voiced our concerns about the foreboding peculiarity of the joint.
"There probably won't be a single customer inside," remarked I, visibly tired with visions of pillows and mattresses dancing in my head.
"Yes there will," replied V. "They are just going to have tattoos and pinkies missing, that's all."
The door was exactly the same as any door to a residence would be, except this was, after all, a bar. With trepidation I twisted the handle and cautiously peered inside. Imagine our surprise to discover that this bar was indeed a residence- just a residence that had been turned into a bar.
There were a total of 8 people inside; Five well dressed Japanese men and women were sitting in chairs at the bar (it used to be a kitchen) and two Japanese ladies were sitting at a round table in the main room (it used to be a living room).
Upon walking in we were eagerly greeted and rushed inside, in English. V and I took the two remaining seats at the bar, me at his right and I with a wall at my right. To V's left was a well-groomed man in a suit with a nice, expensive tie. He looked like he was in his twenties but, being Japanese, he was probably in his thirties. Next to him was his girlfriend, a lovely young girl with unfortunate teeth.
The man with the nice tie immediately began speaking to V, again, in English, and with so much enthusiasm and candor that I began to wonder if we were even in Japan at all. We introduced ourselves and I sat back, sipped on my watered-down vodka soda, and listened to V switch to Japanese just so that he could impress upon everyone just how smart he is. (And this was, of course, followed with the not-so-subtle, "I work at a law firm" remark that he somehow manages to slip into almost every single introductory conversation.)
At this point a Japanese woman with almost perfect English and a British accent chimed in, and told us, quite loudly, that the man with the nice tie was bisexual. I looked at the man to my left and then at his girlfriend to his left and wondered how he felt about being so publicly "outed." Although his girlfriend didn't speak English I wondered if she could understand, at least vaguely, where the conversation was headed.
Sex, sex, and more sex. Everyone's sexuality, from the bisexual man to the flamboyantly gay bartender to the lesbian couple to the openly promiscuous Japanese woman, was discussed.
While everyone at the bar alternated between Japanese and English, I continued to observe silently, and they very rarely drew me into the conversation anyway. I would be lying if I didn't admit that this perturbed me - Now that I live in Japan and lack the language skills to communicate my social role has been sidelined to quiet observer, or worse, smile-and-nodder. In America it was V who would watch as I talked to everyone at the bar, made new friends, flirted with everyone within a five foot radius of me. Then, it was V that was the jealous one, now it's me.
I was reminded of one of my best friends in Austin, SassaFrass, an openly gay, openly homophobic, paradox of a roommate who spent most of his time either quitting his job or finding a new one. While these thoughts drifted through my mind, the flamboyantly gay bartender and the man with the nice tie began touching each other's faces and hugging each other from either sides of the bar.
The man with the nice tie's girlfriend watched and I smiled at her, not the full on aren't-we-having-fun-smile, but a more sympathetic half smile that I wouldn't allow to linger for fear of embarrassing her further.
The older Japanese woman continued to talk about sex, about her ex-husbands that ate her out of house and home and never worked, about the man she's dating right now in England that is her soul mate even though he doesn't love her, and about the 17 year old she slept with, accidentally mistaking him for a 23 year old.
And then she asked V or I for a kiss.
Yes, that's right. A kiss.
V and I exchanged nervous glances, not sure if she was joking or not. Looking back it's clear to me that she was jealous of how affectionate V and I were being, and her only response was to include herself, maybe half way hoping V would favor her instead of me.
She wasn't interested in my words of sincere kindness or my you-don't-need-a-man power talk and she blatantly ignored my words of empowerment in favor of V's similarly worded encouragement. There was something exceptionally needy about her, a desperation that fit her so well that I can only imagine she has been playing this role for years. And as the night went on it became increasingly clear that the only one she really wanted a kiss from that night, ever, was V.
Here she was, an attractive Japanese woman, older yes, but thin and attractive, so desperate to find someone to love her, respect her, marry her, that anyone old enough to have children would do. She told us her sob stories, over and over, and half of me wanted to tell her to go do something constructive with her life besides all of this moaning and groaning and miserable pandering for attention.
The other half of me was furious that I was on my third vodka something and still stone-cold sober.
I read an article about a woman in Pakistan who had been arranged into a marriage with the wrong man and, after trying to divorce him, had acid thrown in her face. Needless to say, she doesn't have a face anymore and she's dependent on her 10 year old son for survival. That's a woman I feel sorry for. This Japanese lady, however, married the wrong man, and then she married another wrong man, and now she's sitting in a bar trying to convince everyone that she's the victim. This is not a woman I can feel sorry for.
But yet, I do.
This woman is an example of someone I never want to be, but her very existence is proof that I could, if I'm very unlucky, end up just like her. Just like I could have acid thrown in my face, I could wake up twenty years from now just like her. It's not probable, but it's not impossible, and with such a wide range of possibility in between I don't feel comfortable judging her.
V and I finished the night in a karaoke bar, alone, singing Bon Jovi and Journey songs and, if you can imagine, even cheesier songs than that. I stole the microphone and V made me return it the next day, not immediately, but after an early morning of walking around aisles and aisles of dead or almost dead fish, aimlessly chattering with The Partner about how the world's obsession with tuna isn't sustainable, and all the while wondering what will happen to that lady.
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