Harajuku Sunday (4 page)

"Oh no," says two or three people.
 
"You're reading it all wrong... European men also..."

Julian and Soren meet later that evening.
 
It's at least two or three in the morning, right before the film-maker and some of his friends call it a night, and only the real hard-core Roppongi crowd is staying on, the regulars of GASPanic, that downmarket club of last resort.
 
Julian calls Soren "boy wonder" or "boy band" which is unexpected, but the timing is perfect, and it's just so unexpected out of the shy, neurotic nerd that for two seconds we're staring at him in incredulity before we erupt in laughter, we do have to give him absolute credit for it, Soren's smirk notwithstanding.
 
And anyway, it's just
Tokyo
in the summer, no one can really hold anything against anyone, not when you're well-dressed and beautiful, and in this
Japan
just this once.
 
Groups coalesce, merge, drift apart, and rejoin throughout the small numbered hours, our cell phones buzzing, our texts tripping back and forth across the space of a few hundred yards or across the city.
 
One of the girls for reasons known only to her makes me take a pair of sneakers to her in another club, and I oblige because she's cute and somebody I've known for a full year now, which by Tokyo standards makes us old friends.
 
The main body ends up going to Vanilla: it's just so in this summer, and we drift in and out of GASPanic and the other more pure-play meat market clubs, and finally some people mosey over to the Wall Street that has the underground dance floor.
 
I end up watching a soccer game at a bar (live, it's daytime in Europe) with a German girl before saying "Auf Wiedersehen" and putting her on the correct train, or maybe that's some other night, all of these summer Tokyo weekends blend together in a seamless, tipsy succession, so many nights of listless drinking, chit-chat, smoking cigarettes, clubbing, casual flirtation, tipsy bumping into each other on the dance floor, tipsy accidental hand on the girl.
 
But no actually, it was definitely that night, just one of those high summer nights, after so many hours of clubbing almost deafened from the music, leaving 911 you are surprised at how the sun has already begun to rise, you can see the day has already begun, and you can see over there, Tokyo Tower, silent, uncommenting, still, in the summer sky already lightening to day.

II.

Summer draws to a close.
 
The hot, miasmic subtropical air begins to retreat from over Kanto, hurried along by breezes that have blown in from the great Asian mainland.
 
As if by a painter's brush, oranges and umbers, reds and browns begin to sweep across the forests of Japan, seen on television news reports in passing, the colors first touching the mountain tops and then creeping downwards and southwards and into the lowlands below.
 
In the streets of
Tokyo
, there is a complementary change as the first light jackets begin to appear on the people, and the girls of
Tokyo
slowly, reluctantly, abandon their miniskirts and t-shirts for longer apparel.
 
Ayako finally leaves Soren, their relationship unconsummated, her still wistful, him barely noticing.
 
Soren gets caught up at work and has to put in longer hours, and then that fades away, we return to partying.
 
We have one final summer party at
Oarai
Beach
in
Ibaraki
and make some desultory plans to get something going out to
Kyoto
, but nothing ever comes of it.

As promised to Julian the filmmaker, I grab a copy of his film.
 
Melanie, Julian’s girlfriend and one of the leading figures of the artsy girls, gladly gives me a copy in her energetic promotion of all things cultural and artistic.
 
I do not regret watching it.
 
The film is about two hours long, but in its way riveting: starting with this existentialist opening (working class Japanese guy ("Daiichi") being forced to ride motorcycle away from his small Hokkaido town after being framed for murder, decrepit dirt-road bridge collapsing as metaphor for complete break with youth), the story follows the protagonist as he makes contact with and is slowly accepted by Tokyo gang.
 
Tokyo
gang shown to be being squeezed by economic pressures and a rival out-of-town gang moving in, ultimately leading to leader of
Tokyo
gang being killed.
 
Esoteric exchange of public posturing/ritual insults with the other gang, and then young junior foreign (Australian) member of gang decides to go for kill against enemy leader in violation of yakuza code (and perhaps as positioning for leadership of gang).
 
But in surprise twist, former girlfriend of the
Tokyo
gang's leader, herself member, turns on the young upstart, (out of race solidarity?
 
protection of gangster code?) and the gang, now utterly without hope, reduced in number its forces turning in on itself, starts to run amok with the film in its jump-cut, blaring-rock music conclusion leaving you no doubt that they're all going to be wiped out, one-by-one.

It's a bleak, pessimistic work.
 
I walk around for a few days in a sort of daze.
 
Even a second or third viewing later, I still get drained watching the thing, that's how perfectly tuned the work is.
 
But despite my best efforts, Soren refuses to watch.

"Screw him, man, that guy's bad news."

"I think it'd be cool just to know what it's about so you'll understand when people talk about it."

"Thanks, but not thanks."

So winter passes, and then spring arrives with its season of endless rain, and our carefree life in
Japan
's capital continues.
 
With an actual corporate job, however mindless, I'm one notch above the NOVA drones and "English conversation-monkey” tutors and earn just sufficient to keep up with Soren's lifestyle of living by whim.
 
I live for the day, and my credit card balance is incrementally growing.
 
But there's no particular reason to stop.

"So just out of curiosity, dude, why does Julian annoy you so much, anyway?"

Soren looks thoughtful.
 
"Ritchie, the guy would be a nobody back home.
 
He probably was, and the problem is that when people like him arrive in
Japan
, it's like they suddenly get to be somebody, girls pay attention to him, and it gives us normal people a bad name."

"The charisma man effect."
  
I offer, blowing out cigarette smoke.

"Yeah, exactly!
 
You have these thousands of people who are essentially McDonalds fry clerks back home.
 
They arrive here, and suddenly, bang! They're immediately rock-stars or 'filmmakers' because the girls here think they're really cool.
 
Give me a break.
 
He’s a total nobody.
 
And the effect of that is that it ultimately hurts us.
 
It’s when you get somebody like me, genuinely an item back home, who actually was a figure in
London
or in New..."
 
But by now I am tuning Soren out, even if nodding sympathetically in pretend interest.
 
And by the time we forcefully bang open the sliding door and troop back in, I notice, for the first time, that there's a sort of Soren-smell to the apartment, a sort of masculine, leathery stink.
 
The thought occurs to me that this has something to do with why three or four girls vomited at his last party.

"Anyway, I do have something for us tonight, something you'd be interested in."
 
Soren says, stretching as he walks across the clothing-strewn living room.

"Eh?"

"Some Brazilian girl's dad is having a reception at the American Club.
 
Big trade deal closed with the Nipponese.
 
Lots of businesspeople, way-o."

"So why the American Club?"

"No clue."

We've just gotten off a huge party, the apartment isn't even fully cleaned up yet, and there'll have to be a sayonara night for a couple people leaving soon.
 
Soren's birthday is coming up in mid-August, and that will only cap off another hot summer of consecutive all-nighters, another killer season.
 
So for tonight, this Brazilian thing's a good event: something low-key, relaxing, requiring absolutely no preparation.
 
We laze around with a Playstation 2 for a while, and then get changed to go.
 
Expectations are met--the trade reception turns out to be a bunch of middle-aged people, pot-bellied middle-aged middle-managers trying to tell bad jokes (e.g. "I work for DHL.
 
Do you know what DHL stands for?" "No." "Delayed, Held-up, Or Lost") or smirking at dirty stories ("Do you know what the H in DHL did with his money?")
 
Yet the food is decent; the
Americana
furniture a pleasant change of pace.
 
I suck on a rib while a black
U.S.
federal trade official goes off on "most favored trading status."

"… mutually beneficial to all three of our great countries, yet energizing synergies all over the world.
 
Free trade is the foundation for any true global-wide specialization of economies, the fundamental foundation for societies that have free-speech and freedom of thought.
 
So…"

There's really reason for me to pay special attention, but for lack of anything better to do I find myself paying close attention to the speaker.
 
He’s a middle-aged black man, glasses, stuffed full of theories and intellectual arguments rambling on and on with all these over-blown theories, some string and string of words effortlessly gliding out.
 
There's something tremendously earnest about the man.
 
Mr. Trade Commissioner LeFauve.
 
The cutting edge of historical forces, driven along a holy mission, possessing so much vitality that his ideas will renew
America
, a volcanic force inside of him bursting to get out, hero against the world.
 
Somehow completely missing some major, unspoken point that everyone else understands, however.
 
When I crack one of the bones with an audible snap, an old dowager at the table throws me a dirty look.
 
But I don't care.

"Oh man, check this out."
 
Soren hands me his cell.
 
"STUCK IN TRAFFIC" reads the display.

"Brazilian girl."

"Yep."

"Well let's at least load up on champagne, hey?"
 
We ditch the table and make for the drinks.

At the drink table, we discover there is one person our age present tonight, a half-black American girl with intensely green eyes.
 
She's wearing a skirt that's about five inches long.

"Hello.
 
Dominique LeFauve."
 
She offers her hand

"Soren Soutern."

"Ritchie Ufuo.
 
So I hope you're not too bored by tonight?"

Dominique laughs.
 
"Call the ambulance."

The three of us find a quiet corridor where we can compare notes and in short order establish our situations.
 
Having completed a year at Bryn Mawr, Dominique's now taking a year off and spending it in the most exotic of the comfortable foreign countries.
 
Tonight's speaker, the trade official with his relentless paean free trade, free trade, free trade is actually her father, a senior political commissioner with the American consulate here, a rising new star in the Republican Party.
 
Japan
has intrigued Dominique since childhood, "it's so futuristic here.
 
I think they're ahead of us by twenty years," and though she doesn't really speak any Japanese, she's eager to learn.
 
She'd love to be shown around. Dominique flirts with us both, a little tipsy on champagne, and it's enjoyable, but is there the undertone of something suppressed.
 
"I will expect to hear further from you gentlemen," she says, at the end of an evening, two hands on each of our shoulders.
 
Dominique LeFauve, 19.

In the heat of the summer that begins to slither in and then grip tenaciously to Tokyo Special Metropolitan District, in one first wave of heat that seems almost luminous, the rules of a lazy, timeless game become implicitly recognized by all parties.
 
Soren and I are casual rivals; Dominique is the prize, and although Soren has the apartment, the cash, and the circle of sycophants, I am not even all that interested in the girl, I am trying to win her just so Soren can't, Soren who has everything else in life.
 
I take Dominique around the city, showing her Harajuku and Shibuya first, and then Roppongi, Shimokitazawa, Odaiba, Ebisu, and the Ueno area.
 
And here I have certain advantages, a genuine street-level knowledge of things and perhaps a slightly wider circle of acquaintances.
 
There is a pleasure in this, in being the knowledgeable guide to a girl discovering a city, the one in the know, complete with anecdote and insider's insight.
 
After a long afternoon with sweat on your brow, it is a good thing to have a beer with a pretty girl, a girl who attracts attention from onlooking men.
 
My lips brush hers on
Tokyo
Tower
observation deck; she sighs and says something about
Japan
as dreamland, a future in now, and I accept this as common ground.
 
If there are moments of unaccountable weirdness, a strange, conflicting feeling sometimes of desire and repulsion, (we have coffee this one time, and she has some sort of fit, almost inviting me to push her around verbally, to dominate her on a psychological level if we're going to have any conversation at all pushy submissive people are looking) there are also good, fine, pleasant times as well, the Tokyo aquarium, the day at Venusfort and Decks in Odaiba, where we drop coins into the penny arcade and play video games side-by-side, as carefree as grade school kids.
 
Everyone else in the city becomes a sort of scenery, useful merely for how they provide a picturesque setting to the progress of things, which is slow, intentionally deliberate, pleasurable.
 
For Dominique, she is playing around with two guys she calls "really handsome" without being too serious, playing them against each other.
 
I'm not sure exactly of the depth of her involvement with Soren—there are plenty of times as well when we hang out in a comfortable three.
 
He does at one point make some inquires and decides to share with me what he's found out.
 
Tyrell, an old friend, on the phone, scoffs at the suggestion that Dominique is "taking a year off from Bryn Mawr to travel."
 
He is evasive; he alludes to something that happened at a Lower Merion Country Club years ago, but he refuses to commit to any one version of events.
 
All he leaves us with at the end of the phone call is, "Dominique LeFauve spent seventeen years being a perfect little Catholic schoolgirl from a rich little Southern family, and then one day she woke up and decided to f-ck Satan."