Yoko (Extended Version)

 

1

 

Listen:

In Japanese, jimé jimé is that unpleasant, sticky feeling during the rainy season when humidity’s got its clammy hands all over you; mushi mushi when it damn near smothers you.

To the Japanese ear, potan is the sound of a drop of water plopping into, say, a bucket; pota pota, the tune a leaky faucet sings; and jah jah, water gushing out of a pipe.

The Japanese will hear potsu potsu as raindrops start falling upon dry ground; shito shito, when it drizzles; and zah zah when it pours.

Strong winds howl with a byoo byoo making the windows of your apartment rattle, gata gata. And, thunder, when woken by the pika pika of lightning, will grumble loudly with a goro goro.

While nuru nuru describes the slimy feel every surface has when it’s been balmy for days on end, beta beta is how your sweaty skin feels on uncomfortably jimé jimé days.

You are dripping with sweat if you’re dara dara; drenched to the skin if you’re bisho bisho.

And, while niwaka amé, you may recall, means a sudden shower, a doshaburi is a downpour; and õ-amé, a torrential rain. Konuka amé means a light mist; and kiri samé, a drizzle.

Confused already? This is not even a potan in the bucket. There are 1190 rain-related words and phrases in the Japanese language.

One more! Though Yūdachi, which literally means evening stand, refers to a late afternoon summer shower, you shouldn’t assume that asadachi, or morning stand, means an early morning shower. Far from it, an asadachi, my friend, is sure as shootin’ the Morning Woodie.

 

2

 

There’s been no let up to the rain since Tuesday evening’s doshaburi when Yumi’s hopes were dashed and another crack was added to that fragile little heart of hers. From then on, we’ve had torrential downpours and light showers, drizzly mornings followed by thundery afternoon squalls, and night after balmy night of the rain falling, falling, falling down to an already inundated earth.

Another day of this, and I’d better start drawing up plans for an ark.

 

Early this morning, I was jolted to attention by the clamor of timpani and snare drums. Leaden raindrops fell like birdshot against the tin roof of the storage container atop my building; the heavens pealed with thunderous profanity.

I have heard that the Japanese hide their belly buttons after a thunderclap to keep them from being stolen from the Kaminari Gami. Why the God of Thunder has a navel fetish is just more proof that even among the kami, it takes all types.

After the second peal of thunder I rolled over in my futon and tried covering my head with my pillow, but it was no use. There would be no sleeping with the racket Nature’s marching band was making.

Moving listlessly to the bathroom, I took the first what would be three cold showers that day, rinsing a night’s worth of sweat off my body. 

Because the laundry refused to dry—it still hung droopingly from hangers like the wet standard of a defeated army—I dressed casually. Thank God, I didn’t have to wear a suit and tie to work like the losers teaching at the big English broiler houses like NOVA, GEOS and AEON.

That was about all I could be thankful for, though; the weather had made it hard to get fired up about anything. Eating, too, had become a chore, so I was skipping breakfast more often than not, which was just as well; the only scrap of food I had in my kitchen nook was a loaf of bread, green with mold, and half a bag of soggy potato chips.

 

With the sun eclipsed behind a sullen sky for so long, every surface had become wet and slimy, treacherously slick, so I made a cautious descent down the steps of my apartment building, one hand gripping the banister, the other brushing the wall in case I lost my footing.

At the bottom of the steps drowning in a muddy puddle on the ground was the teru-teru bōzu doll I’d seen the boys downstairs hanging outside the door of their apartment yesterday. The paper doll and the prayers that accompanied it were supposed to coax a recluse sun out from hiding. Lesson learned: you should never underestimate the power of prayer to disappoint.

 

Outside, while the morning traffic lumbered along the black, wet asphalt like a funeral procession, children covered in hooded parkas stomped through and splashed about the giant puddles as they hurried off to school. One small boy, stepping off the curb into the growing pond where an intersection once was, sank up to his bare knees, cool water flowing over the tops of his yellow wellingtons. He couldn’t have looked happier, but I’m sure his mother would chew him out for it when he returned home with muddy socks. That’s what mothers do the world round.

I had to zigzag all the way to work, creeping along the eaves of houses, circumnavigating puddles, ducking under shop awnings and staying close to the foot of buildings, just to keep from getting drenched. But, halfway there my pants were already soaked to the knees, shirt sleeves wet to the shoulders, and the hole in my flimsy convenience store umbrella did a bang-up job of directing a steady dribble of cold rain water down my back.

Though our small corner of the world was thoroughly inundated, I found Yumi predictably dry when I got to work. As dry as dust. After toweling myself off, I decided to take a stab at some small talk and proclaimed myself to be bisho-bisho, sopping wet, as I walked into the office.

No response. Yumi just continued her morning routine of organizing flash cards into neat little piles, labeled with color-coded slips of paper.

“How do you do it, Yumi?”

“Do what?” she asked, head still down and fingers busily walking through the cards.

“How do you manage not getting wet?”

“I’m Japanese,” she replied flatly, implying, I suppose, that I was an American boob.

I was about to try to pry another answer out of her, but she stood up and flitted off to her classroom where she started banging around.

It was just as well. I wasn’t very keen on talking to her either. Still, I knew that after Tuesday evening, I had to put in at least a token effort at trying to return to her good graces, because there was no telling what she would do if allowed to stew. That was what worried me most. I knew her quiet stoicism was nothing but the calm before storm; that she would eventually unload the burden of her heartache onto the nearest warm body in the office, and it has kept me on tenterhooks.

Would she tell the boss? Or would it be Reina? Either way, I’d be in the doghouse.

 

2

 

After my Friday morning lesson, the students, my boss Abazuré and I crammed ourselves and our dripping umbrellas into two small taxis and drove off to of the student’s home a few minutes away in an exclusive and surprisingly ostentatious neighborhood in the hills southeast of Ōhori Park. There is a saying in Japanese seemingly lost on my student which goes minoru hodo kōbé no tareru, inaho kana. The more a rice plant grows the more it bends, meaning that the greater a person becomes, the more humble and modest he should be.

Once inside, the women made a big show of lavishing praise upon their host. One woman let out such a squeal of excitement upon entering the living room that brought the other women scrambling in after her and gushing just as loudly.

It was an impressive spread, but to tell the truth, the woman had gone and ruined it by decorating the room with the same kind of heavily ornate Italian furniture and rococo finishing you’d expect to find in the home of a nari-kin, that is to say, a nouveau-riche.

When asked what I thought, I kept a civil tongue in my head and made appropriately courteous noises. Urayamashii, I said. I so envy you, Yōko-san. I was no ingrate, especially now that I was feeling peko-peko, or hungry.

After ooh-ing and ah-ing, the women got down to what this chauvinistic society believes women do best: donning aprons and disappearing with their small, slippered feet into the kitchen.

Another polite smattering of compliments emanated from the kitchen. From where I was in the living room it sounded like the cooing of sexually agitated pigeons.

I’m no mooch, mind you. Had I been told it was a mochiyori party I’d been invited to, I would have gladly brought a culinary treat myself instead of milling about, hands dug into my pockets, and feeling as useless as the husbands the women lived to complain about.

 

Thirty deliciously fragrant minutes later, the bustle and commotion dies down and the dishes are brought out to the dinning room which is, thank God, considerably more modest and homey than Yōko’s garish living room.

She’s done a nice job setting the table. Where I expected to see a gaudy hodgepodge Royal Copenhagen china, silverware, and Venetian wine glasses, I am surprised to find the table has been tastefully set with Japanese ceramics and bamboo baskets. The placemats are also made of birch and bamboo. And, at the center of the table is an elegant arrangement of violet irises.

The women have gone all out in the presentation. There is an array of sashimi served on a bed of crushed ice in a dish carved from a bamboo stalk and garnished with green Japanese maple leaves, filets of sole meunière, laid out in an elongated Arita porcelain dish with a delicate pattern of mauve hydrangeas, tempura in a bamboo craftwork tray, katsuo tataki on a Koishiwara earthenware plate, piis gohan (rice cooked with peas) sit at the end of the table in a lidded tub known as a ohitsu made from Japanese cypress, and firefly hashi oki to rest our chopsticks on, and so on.

They have also prepared a stir-fried pork and ginger dish known as shōgayaki, spicy, crisply fried chicken wings, a bean salad, another stir-fried dish I’ve been told is an Okinawan specialty called gōyā chamburū which is made with tofu, bean sprouts, carrot, egg and, I kid you not, Spam.

“Spam?”

“Yes, Spam. It’s very popular in Okinawa,” I am told.

“Well, I guess it was bound to popular somewhere.”

“Don’t you have Spam in America?” one of the women asks.

“Yes, of course. Spam is the very pride of America. Why, it’s every pig’s ambition to end up as a can of Spam one day.”

“Oh? I didn’t know that. So, I take it, Spam’s popular in America, too?”

“Popular?” I say, laughing. “Popular isn’t quite the way I would put it.”

“Peadar, please try some of it,” Yōko says, taking my plate and giving me a healthy serving.

“Oh, Yōko, you needn’t . . .”

“Oh, you needn’t be so polite, Peadar. Please, eat up.”

With all eyes on me, I am overcome with a spell of cataplexy, chopsticks twittering slightly above the . . . what the hell was it called . . . the gōyā chamburū.

“I’m curious,” I stall. “What is this green, um, whatever?”

“That’s the gōyā.”

“Ah, yes, of course it is. But, what exactly is it.”

“Nigauri,” my boss explains unhelpfully. “Niga,” my boss says quickly tracing a Chinese character in the air with her crooked finger, “means bitter. And uri,” she adds with another meaningless wiggle of her finger, “means gourd.”

“Bitter gourd?” I place my chopsticks down on the firefly hashi oki and shrug. It’s a long way to Tipperary.

Yōko snaps her fingers; she’s got an idea. She turns around and draws the curtain open to show me a leafy vine growing up the wall outside. Mammoth, bumpy cucumbers that look like monstrously studded green dildos hang from the vine. “That,” Yōko tells me, “is a gōyā.”

I overcome my initial trepidation and take the plunge, and I must admit for a studded green dildo and Spam, it ain’t bad, ain’t bad at all.

As we are eating, a miracle of sorts happens. After four days of endless rain, the sun breaks through the clouds, the rain stops. The dining room is filled with a long-missed brightness and a few moments later chirping of small birds can be heard outside. Yōko opens the sliding glass door behind her. A refreshing breeze has picked up, a glass wind chime hanging outside clanks away like ice in a glass of chilled water.

 

3

 

After a dessert of chilled amanatsu—jelly served in the half peel of the summer orange it was made from—Abazuré says she has to return to the office. Several others take the opening my boss has given them to say they, too, have to hurry home before their children came back from elementary school. So, I am left alone with Shizuko and our hostess, Yōko. As Shizuko fills my choko with reishu saké, Yōko brings in a basket of cherries she says arrived from Yamagata just this morning.

“Did you try the sashimi, Peadar?” Yōko asks placing a handful of cherries on my plate.

“Uh, no, I didn’t.”

“It’s out of this world,” she says. “Very fresh.”

“I am sure it is.”

“Where did you buy it, Shizuko?”

“I didn’t. It was a gift from one of my husband’s patients.”

“You really must try it, Peadar,” Yōko insists, reaching for a fresh plate behind her.

“Please, I’m fine. I . . . I’ve really had quite a lot to eat already.”

“Mottainai. What a waste. C’mon, just a little.”

“It’s, um . . . It’s just that . . .” Should I tell her I’m allergic? That I am a vegetarian? No, that won’t work; I’ve been eating meat all afternoon. On a Friday, no less. Religion? Nah, the only religious bone I have in my body is the asadachi I stroke reverently every morning. “I’m afraid I am not that crazy about sashimi.”

Yōko wags her finger at me. “Tsk, tsk. You will never be able to marry a Japanese woman, Peadar.”

“Oh? And why’s that?”

She takes a long sip from her wine glass leaving a dark red smudge on the rim before speaking. “I don’t think two people can be truly happy together unless they grow up eating the same food. I know a couple. Oh, you know him, Shizuko, what’s his name? The Canadian . . .,” she says snapping her fingers as if to conjure him up.

“John,” Shizuko says. “John Williams. Works at Kyūshū University.”

“Yes, well, John married a Japanese girl,” Yōko continues. “When he met the family for the first time, they served him sashimi. They asked, ‘John-san, can you eat sashimi?’ And, of course, he says, he loves sashimi, but actually he couldn’t stand fish. Like you, Peadar.”

“I didn’t say I . . .”

“So, the poor girl’s parents think ‘Yokatta, he’s just like a Japanese!’ After the marriage, though, this John won’t eat a bite of fish and, yappari, now they are getting divorced.” Keiko takes another long drink, leaving another red smudge on the rim of the glass. “No, if you don’t eat the same food, you’ll have all kinds of problems. And that’s why foreigners and Japanese don’t get along well. I mean, if they can’t eat the same food, how do they expect to be able to do anything together, desho?”

She concludes her argument as she often does with a smug look and a broad sweep of her hand slicing through any disagreement.

After all I’ve eaten and drunk, I don’t have the energy to argue. Besides, people like Yōko, who love dominating conversations, tend not to listen to anything but their own sweet voices.

“I really like these hashi oki,” I say to myself. “I didn’t know you could see fireflies around here.”

“You know, international marriages are bound to fail because the cultures are so different,” Shizuko says. “You know that JAL pilot, Barker-san[1], don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” Yōko says putting her wine glass down. “I had him and his wife, the poor girl, over last week.” You get the feeling Yōko’s home is in a perpetual state of hospitality, inviting and feeding guests, then assuring them to come again. Once gone, however, they become the fodder for that red-lipsticked, tirelessly booming cannon of hers.

She picks up a cherry, removes the stem with her long bony fingers then sucks it into the venomous red hole in her gaunt face. “I didn’t tell you, Shizuko, but while Barker-san and my husband were out getting a massage, I talked with his wife. She said she didn’t know what to do with him. ‘He always wants to do something on his day off . . . go out, jog or hike . . . All I want to do is stay home and rest.’ And just as the poor girl was sighing, Barker-san and my husband came back. And Barker, he went right up to his wife, gave her a big hug and kiss and said, ‘We’re so happy together!’” Yōko fills my choko with more saké, and shakes her head. “I really felt so sorry for her.”

“So, the fireflies . . .” I say. “Know any good places I can see them around here?”

“The problem with young people today,” Shizuko says with contempt, “is that they want to marry for love.”

This surprises me enough to bring me back into the conversation, and I ask Shizuko if she loves her husband. The two women laugh at me, making me feel foolish for asking. I didn’t know the question was so silly.

“Love,” Shizuko scoffs. “Tell me, Peadar, why do half of all Americans get divorced?”

I could offer her a number of reasons. Many really. But, I’m really not in the mood to go head to head with these two half-drunk, half-bitter housewives.

“It’s very important to know the person you’re marrying,” Shizuko warns. “Love confuses you.”

“Do you want to marry a Japanese girl?” Yōko asks me.

“I haven’t given it much thought, to be honest. Anyways, marriage isn’t the object. It’s the result. If I find someone I love, who also happens to be Japanese, who knows? Maybe I’ll marry her.”

“You will never be able to marry one,” Yōko says refilling my choko. “You have to eat miso and rice and soy sauce as a child.”

Maybe I’m blind or a sentimental dolt, but, somehow, I just cannot accept the idea that what went wrong between Mié and myself was rooted in my dislike of sashimi.

“Everyone wants to marry someone funny and cheerful,” Yōko continues spilling a drop of wine onto her linen tablecloth. “Tsk, tsk . . . She’s cheerful but she couldn’t cook if her life depended upon it. She buys everything from the convenience store and puts it in the microwave. Ching! Boys want girls that are fun, but they don’t understand that what they really need is a wife who can cook real food and take care of children. Young people these days!”

It was almost as if she was speaking specifically about Mié. My Mié who woke early in one morning, and walked in her pajamas to the nearest convenience store to get something for our bento. She wasn’t as hopeless as Yōko might contend; she fried the chicken herself, then packed our lunches and bags before I had even gotten out of bed. When I finally stopped knitting my nightly dream, put down my needles, and woke up everything for our day at the beach had been prepared.

“It’s a shame what some of the mothers fix for their children at the International School. My daughter used to trade her tempura that I woke early to make because she felt sorry for her friends. They were eating sandwiches!”

It was an outrage.

 

When I woke, Mié was gently stroking my head. I pulled her into my arms and kissed her soft lips. She lay upon me, legs to each side of me, then punched the remote to invite Vivaldi into bed with us. As the hot morning sun began to brighten up the room, we made love, made love throughout the Four Seasons.

Later that morning, we drove with the top of her car open, windows down and music blaring to Umi-no-Nakamichi, a long narrow strand of sand and pines that continued for several miles until it reached a small island forming the northern edge of the Hakata Bay. Pine sand and sea lay on either side of the derelict two-lane road. We arrived at a small inlet, which had been roped off to keep the jellyfish away, and paid a few hundred yen to the old woman running the umi-no-iebeach house. Passing through the makeshift hut with old tatami floors and low folding tables we walked out to the beach which was crowded with hundreds of others who had come to do the same.

By eleven the sun was burning down on us, burning indelible tans into the backs of children. The only refuge was either the crowded umi-no-ie hut or the sea, so Mié and I took a long swim, waded in each others’ arms or floated on our backs in the warm, shallow water.

Although I’d eventually get so severely sunburnt that I’d end up lying awake at night trembling in agony, it was one of my happiest days in Japan. On the way back to Mié’s apartment with my lobster red hand resting between her tanned thighs, I sang along to the Chagé & Aska songs playing on her stereo, making her laugh the whole way.

“I love you,” she’d tell me with a long kiss when we arrived.

 

“What men need,” Yōko repeats, “is a woman who can cook and take care of the home. Someone like your Yu-chan in the office.”

I’m slapped out of my daydream by the absurdity of what Yōko has just said. Yumi, grayest of gray, as cold and bitchy as they came, may make a suitable Eva Braun for an Al Hitler, but suggesting that she’d make a good wife for me, why, that was insulting.

Yōko, reading the disagreement in my face, says, “See, Yu-chan’s gloomy and, well, she isn’t much to look at, but she really would make a very good wife for you, Peadar. You just don’t know it yet.”

Good grief!


[1] Barker is another one of those unfortunate names foreigners can have. Barker is pronounced in Japanese as Bahkah or Baka, which means “idiot” or “fool”. I once had a Chinese teacher whose husband’s name was pronounced in Japanese as Chiketsu, which sounds like “bloody arsehole”.