Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (45 page)

I’d booked myself into a
ryokan
—a traditional Japanese hotel—on a strange and sparse street somewhere in the suburbs. The driver had had trouble finding
it and we’d stopped to ask for directions. A man in a hat had his finger to his mouth, trying to work out where we’d need
to turn off. He shouted out to a friend, who brought a map with him. They studied it together, and this brought the attentions
of a passing cyclist, who stopped and asked if he could help. All three men and the driver were now studying the same map,
huddled together, every now and again looking at me apologetically. I looked back, trying to look even
more
apologetic, and thankful for their attentions. It was like we were in some kind of etiquette-off, all trying to be as polite
as we could possibly be. If there is anything that will bring the Japanese and the British to war, it will be over who is
the most polite. But even if that happens, it’ll never really come to blows, because we’ll all spend so long insisting the
other side take their shot first.

Finally, thankfully, I arrived at the
ryokan
—lit up from within like a lantern and as welcoming as you could imagine.

I opened the door and stumbled in to find the receptionist sitting right opposite me. At a cooker to my right, a man was frying
some chicken and tossing bright green vegetables into a pan. At a table, a barefooted gent with a huge beard grinned at me,
and poured some tea. It was a tiny room. But it was homely. In fact, it was so homey I was worried I’d inadvertently wandered
into someone’s home.

“Mr. Wallace?” said the receptionist. “We’ve been waiting for you!”

The bearded man nodded.

“Hi…” I said, turning to make sure I made eye contact with the chef and the bearded man, but forgetting I had my rucksack
on and knocking something off a shelf. God. It was really small in here.

“Don’t worry!” said the receptionist, as an orange plastic Buddha clattered around on the floor. “Please don’t worry!”

The bearded man found this inexplicably hilarious and nearly choked on his food.

“Please—you are in room four,” said the receptionist. “I give you your key.”

She searched about in a drawer, trying to find the key to room four.

“You are on first floor,” she said. “Bathrooms are on second floor.”

“Cool,” I said, taking the key. “Thanks.”

A bathroom. That was a good idea. And food. I needed food. That chicken smelled amazing.

I knew my room didn’t have en-suite facilities so I carried on up to the second floor, inching past an el derly couple on
the very narrow stairs and apologizing for knocking their elbows with my backpack. I found the toilets, and eased myself through
the door. There was a sink in here, and, beyond, a separate cubicle. By now, the water I’d drunk in the taxi was tapping at
my bladder, asking to be let out, and I squeezed my way into the cubicle, my backpack catching slightly on the lock of the
door as I did so.

And then I simply let nature take its course, as I stood there, smiling blankly and thinking about chicken.

Finished and satisfied, I attempted to turn around and unlock the door.

But I couldn’t. I tried, but I couldn’t.

Why couldn’t I turn around and unlock the door?

I tried once more, but my backpack only allowed me an inch or two of turning space. I turned right, but no. My backpack just
softly baffed against the wall. So I tried turning left, as if that would make any difference whatsoever. If anything, it
was worse. The toilet-roll holder made contact with an area that toilet-roll holders should never make contact with. So I
tried turning right again.

God.

I was stuck! I was stuck in a Japanese cubicle!

Panicking slightly, I tried to reach up to the straps of my backpack and slide my arms through them—but there wasn’t the space.
My elbows couldn’t get out far enough to get them through. I tried turning as far as I could and sliding—no luck. I tried
simply leaning. I tried hopping up and down with my arms straight down but the backpack kept catching on my jacket and wouldn’t
budge. Eventually, I realized there was only one thing to do.

I looked at the key to room four. I got my phone out. I dialed the hotel receptionist. I waited while the call bounced via
satellite from the toilet, to England, back to another satellite, and down to the receptionist, two floors below.

“Hello,” I said, when she answered. “This is Mr. Wallace. I’m afraid I’m stuck in your toilet.”

“You are
stuck
in the
toilet?
” she said.

In the background, I heard the bloke with the beard start choking again.

I decided, once I’d been freed, that maybe I’d better eat out tonight. The bearded bloke—whose name was Adriaan and who came
from the Netherlands—still seemed some way off finishing his dinner, and I didn’t really want to explain how I’d ended up
stuck in a Japanese toilet. He, the chef and the receptionist all waved me off, and I strolled out to meet Tokyo for the very
first time.

I could people-watch, I decided. Get to know the local culture. Get inside the mind of the Japanese. That way, when I finally
managed to track Akira down, I’d have something to talk to him about. And so on I walked.

I walked down small streets and little alleyways, before finding myself on a large road twisting through tower blocks and
past skyscrapers, under shopping malls and vast neon lights. I walked on, as a dark Tokyo evening began to blush under orange
streetlights. The city was thriving. Cool kids with strange haircuts and risqué clothing hugged in the streets. Drunk businessmen
staggered into bars, filling the air around them with sake fumes and belched laughter. My stomach rumbled as I watched people
through windows, eating noodles or sushi or strange dark meats. I found everything fascinating. The people. The buildings.
The street signs. The fact that their taxi drivers all seemed to wear small white gloves and drive cars called “Cedric.” There
was chatter every where, noise all around. There’s nothing better, sometimes, than being somewhere where virtually nothing
you see or hear is understandable—not a sign on a door, nor a symbol on a map, nor a single thing someone says. You’re lost
in a safe place. A strange mix of the alien and the totally familiar. And so on I walked, and when it looked for all the world
like I was starting to get lost, there I saw it—a black, barely visible oval sign bearing the letters
NJA
—and the more welcome word “Restaurant” beneath it. I was ready to eat. After a moment or two I found the door and pushed
it, but nothing happened. There were no windows, no lights, and just as I decided it must be closed or non-existent, I heard
a tiny, indefinable click. I pushed the door again, and this time it swung open, to reveal a small, dark room, with rocky
walls and water features, and a girl dressed entirely in black standing behind a counter. It didn’t look much like a restaurant
to me. For a start, there was no… well… there was no
restaurant.

“Hi…” I said, suddenly very unsure of myself. “Is this… a restaurant?”

“Hello!” she said, clasping her hands together. “Welcome!”

I stole another glance around. It still didn’t look much like a restaurant.

“You are… alone?” she said.

I nodded. The girl looked slightly perplexed, but then shook it off and said…

“Please wait one moment. You will have wonderful evening. We have very nice food. Traditional Japan food. Please wait. Your
ninja comes in one moment.”

I relaxed slightly. It
must
be a restaurant. I wasn’t sure why she thought it was so unusual that I should be here on my own, though. Surely people in
Japan sometimes ate on their own. I guess even in London, though, restaurants are for sharing, and…

Hang on.

My
what?

“Sorry—
what
comes in one moment?”

The girl was now beaming at me.

“Your ninja will arrive in one moment!” she said.

“My
ninja?
” I said.

How jetlagged
was
I?

“Your ninja,” she said, and then, pointing one finger in the air, importantly: “For ninja training!”

Ninja
training?
What
was
this place? When had I ordered ninja training? I hadn’t even ordered a
starter!

“But I didn’t
order
a ninja!” I said, confused. “Not even a little one!”

I tried to think right the way back through our conversation. Had I ordered a ninja? I was pretty sure all I’d said so far
was, “Is this a restaurant?”

“I’m not sure if this is the right kind of—”

But the girl put one finger to her lips.

And then I heard it.

But what
was
it?

And then there it was again…

A blood-curdling scream from a room somewhere far away. Followed by a thump. And then a series of thumps. Like a toddler backflipping
through a hallway. And then, totally without warning of any kind whatsoever, a hidden door was flung open and out leapt a
small female ninja.

I realize I may sound mental at this moment, but I promise you it’s true: out leapt a tiny ninja.

The ninja landed softly on the floor beside me, and crouched for just a moment, summing up in one split second the dangers
the room held. But it didn’t hold any dangers. It held a Danny. A rather confused and reasonably scared one. As odd as it
may seem, I was very annoyed with myself. I’d only been in Tokyo a matter of hours, and already I’d let a ninja get me.
Why
had I come to Japan? Of
course
I was going to be got by a ninja!

There was another scream, and the ninja shot straight up, undertaking a number of rigorous hand movements and shouting various
statements in Japanese, before turning to me, fixing me with the eyes of a killer and shouting, “ARE YOU READY FOR NINJA TRAINING?”

I looked at the ninja. And then at the receptionist. The receptionist looked at me.

“And then will I get food?” I asked.

The receptionist closed her eyes and nodded. I looked back at the ninja. She raised her eyebrows.

“I am ready,” I said.

Like pirates, sharks, monkeys and ghosts, ninjas will never not be exciting. It was part of the reason why suddenly having
a Japanese kid in school was so thrilling. Akira Matsui was our pathway to this mysterious and hidden culture. You can imagine
our disappointment, then, when it turned out he neither knew any ninja magic, owned any ninja swords, nor even seemed to know
what a ninja was. Michael Amodio and I put this down to a special ninja code of silence, and would often throw things at the
back of his head to see if he would react with lightning speed. But he never did. He just turned around, looking hurt and
confused. It was a shame, because the 1980s really was the decade of the ninja. The petrol station me and Michael used to
stop at on the way home from swimming to buy packets of Revels and look at the videos bore testament to that.

These videos were brilliant. They were clearly pirated (which made them all the more exciting—
pirate ninjas!
), with photocopied sleeves and battered covers, but when we were able to get our hands on one, high production values weren’t
our concern. There was
The Nine Deaths of the Ninja,
of course, as well as
American Ninja
and
American Ninja 2: The Confrontation,
but Michael and I both found these simplistic portrayals of ninja culture too broad and Westernized in their scope. Plus,
they didn’t use nunchuks anywhere
near
enough. There were nun-chuks galore in
Enter the Ninja,
which was also better because it ended with a freeze frame of the main character winking at the camera, which is a technique
that I have now decided is how
every
film should end. Then you had
Revenge of the Ninja,
and
Ninja Resurrection. Mafia Versus Ninja
(imagine!),
Zombie Versus Ninja
(imagine!!!),
Chinese Super Ninja, Phantom Diamond Ninja,
and
Ninja Kids,
which was critically acclaimed, but rubbish.

Now, something tells me that very few of the classics listed above may have stood the test of time. But the unerring fact—the
one thing these grainy, badly edited films showed us—was the absolute and unwavering dedication the simple ninja has to his
training. They needed stealth, cunning, ruthlessness. Steely-eyed determination. They needed to be able to leap off speedboats,
flying hundreds of feet in the air, to land on airplanes. They had to have complete mastery of their intuition. They had to
feel their enemy’s moves before their enemy had even thought about moving. It was training that went back thousands of years,
treated with utter respect and reverence by all those who knew its dark and astounding secrets, and it was training that I
now found myself undertaking in a small antechamber of a cave-like Tokyo building. And the only thing that took away from
it? The fact that just above her authentic ninja-style shoes, I could clearly see that
my
ninja was wearing a pair of Garfield socks.

I was still ever-so-slightly confused as the ninja turned to me, suddenly, and said, “Now we begin the training!”

She slapped me on the shoulder.

“You must always have awareness of your surrounding!”

I looked around the small room to show I was making myself aware of it. I watched as she pressed what looked like it was supposed
to be a hidden button.

“Oh no!” she said, and a second or two later a small section of the floor fell away in front of me, with all the excitement
and special-effects wizardry of a peanut. She widened her eyes dramatically and looked very worried indeed. “What we do now?”

I had a think. We could always step over it, I thought. It was, after all, quite a small gap. But surely that wasn’t the way
of the ninja; that was just the way of the sensible.

“Quickly! WHAT WE DO?”

“Well, we mustn’t rush into anything,” I said, quite calmly, given what was fast becoming quite a high-pressure situation.