I. Licensed to ill

Or at least to dress someone in kimono.

It's been a couple weeks since my test but I will be feeling the financial strain of it probably until the fall. I ended up having another jaw-dropping experience shortly after being told that I needed to buy a formal kimono, which entailed me buying an extremely expensive piece of wood. 60,000 yen expensive to be exact.

On the last lesson before my test, my teacher gave me a piece of paper outlining the test day schedule, with instructions to be in formal kimono, with hair and make-up done. And to bring the test fee - 60,000 yen. I just about choked up my tea that they put out at the end of every lesson when I saw that figure. I take my kimono dressing seriously but what on earth could justify a $600 test fee? You can probably take a test to pilot a plane for less than that and with kimono we are only dealing with fabric, not heavy machinery. I stewed on this for a few days, trying to decide whether to push back my test date, or at least let my teacher know that I would have liked to be informed of the fee a bit earlier because surprise! I don't have 6 Gs sitting in the bank, nor does my nonexistent filthy rich husband.

A delicate issue to say the least. Do I just put up and shut up? The real me wanted to call my teacher and ask her to explain the fee, after telling her that I hadn't been expecting such a sum of money and why didn't they tell me sooner?! but the foreigner undercover in Japan wanted to just say shou ga nai (it can't be helped) and pay the damn money. For the first few days I began to harbor a lot of resentment towards my teachers whom I had previously had nothing but the utmost respect for. I felt cornered and uninformed - why had they not told me months before the test that I would need a nice kimono (and 60,000 yen test fee)? Surely they have met with surprise before from students caught kimono-less and unaware, and especially being non-Japanese I don't have any kimono hand-me-downs from female relatives. I love that they treat me like all of the other students, not dumbing down anything or trying to simplify the verbal explanations during my lessons. On the other hand, there was a small part of me that wished they had thought a few steps ahead, which may have raised flags as to whether I a) would actually have a formal kimono (not a far stretch as they have seen my casual off-the-rack kimono) and b) knew about the test fee (not having lived in Japan my whole life, I am not acquainted with how expensive seriously pursuing a stream of learning is here).

So there I was, feeling left in the dark, and wondering whether I would have guessed my fate in advance had I been Japanese. There were tears of frustration shed. I tried to imagine what senpai before me had done when suddenly faced with lifestyle-interrupting expenses. I refuse to believe that not more than a few women were unpleasantly surprised to learn they would need to purchase a kimono for their test. This went on and on for a few days until I finally called my teacher and simply asked. I told her that I hadn't known about the fee and was a bit surprised at how high it was and she explained that it had been written on a piece of paper I'd once been casually handed before even beginning the course. Perhaps in an effort to make me feel better about it, she told me I would be getting a plank of wood with my name on it bearing the national certification. Well if I'm getting a plank of wood out of the deal...

This is definitely a rich woman's pursuit.

Please do it again?!

Changing it up I see, they did a little fliparoo on the yellow/white balance and the wording this month. Creepy's life is one long sob story: first his mistress has a baby and now he has a broken leg. Perhaps the two have a cause and effect relationship. That is all - this month frankly bores me.

I guess fiance is better than ho on call

The wedding is only a few weeks away, dear readers, and you know what that means. Time to get my hair did, my nails pretty and my face facialized. If any of you are tuning in after some time away, I didn't suddenly get engaged or pregnant, I'm preparing for the wedding of Baby Daddy and Baby Mama (do I have to stop calling them that once it's legal?), which is, I assure you, going to be the event of the season.

I've touched before on some of my qualms about my presence at the wedding and just how the beau's family is going to explain their dirty little secret that is the child-free white girl shacked up in sin with their eldest. As it turns out, I need worry no more, for there was a flurry of phone calls shortly before I went back to Canada between Tokyo and the Great North, during one of which the beau's dad asked slash told him that I would be introduced as his fiance. At Japanese wedding receptions everyone receives a seating plan that includes each guest's name and seat location. I will be sitting at the family table on Baby Daddy's side so you know there will be trouble when some guest's eyes are cruising along the names written in kanji until they fall upon some English name written in our ugly foreign alphabet and someone is going to have some explaining to do. Namely, about just who that mysterious whitie is.

Problem solved. While still rather unorthodox, it is better to have a fiance at the wedding than a girlfriend, especially when we are talking about the chonan, or eldest son. Call me mildly cynical, but I can't help fantasizing that guests' will deem us odd for being together four years and attending the wedding of the younger brother while being unmarried ourselves. God forbid I don't get married right away and start popping out some babies. I have never been a dirty family secret before! Whatevs, if anything untoward is said, I will just point to the bride's stomach, although frankly, it will probably still be concave at that point. And really, who are we kidding - I am practically gagging for something dramatic to happen for your reading pleasure. Unfortunately for you, it is a lunch reception, which means there will probably be less time/alcohol to fuel any outbursts. I'll try my best though, promise.

As amused as I am by my new role as faux undercover fiance, I was touched when the beau related a phone conversation he'd had with his mom some weeks ago. She lamented to him that she had wanted us to get married first, not to keep things in their "natural order" (order of sons that is, not marriage then baby order), but because she's been wanting me to officially join the clan for some time now. At one point in the conversation she told the beau that she would send him money to borrow for an engagement ring, one that he would have had to select and give to me within about five days as she wanted me to have it before I went off to Canada. You see, she is concerned that my parents are concerned that I have had a boyfriend for such a long time with no immediate wedding plans. I think that is the least of my parents' worries, especially given they were together for ten years before marrying and having me. I don't think this is necessarily a cultural difference however, for I'm sure there are some of you out there that have gotten the when are you getting married/having kids pressures from family.

So there you have it. We are T minus two weeks on this joyful event and I still need to find an obiage and obijime for my kimono and a bow tie for the beau. Even if we did get married, custom dictates that wedding invitations here rarely include a plus 1, so this could be our only wedding together in Japan ever. I am determined to enjoy myself. And my ability to drink champagne.

The one about the yakuza and the hotel room

If you had asked me how I ended up in a hotel room with a card-carrying yakuza one recent weekend night, I would have been hard pressed to come up with a short explanation. This is not going to be a tale of an illicit tattooed love affair, so you can put that out of your mind right now.

It wasn't just the yakuza and I. We were joined by a wrist-cutter, a girl woman, one of the beau's baito (part-time worker) and the beau himself. That I found myself on the 6th floor of the Smile Hotel clinking beer cans with a member of organized crime is all the beau's doing, really. He is the one who started fishing in the first place.

The beau, bless his analog heart, is not a technology man. He didn't use a computer growing up and so has missed out on what used to be the novel idea of "online community." Missing out on chatroom socialization ("14 y/o blond with green eyes looking for fun"), he hasn't had the experience of connecting with people he doesn't know via the Internet. Until the fishing game. God knows what compelled him to start, but he is now playing a fishing game on his cellphone with hundreds of thousands of people around Japan. And by extension, learning what it is like to have online friends, a concept most of us have long since first experienced. Do you remember what it was like first talking to people over the Internet? I do. I was on my island in the South Pacific and felt liberated to be able to talk to people online, and boys in particular, given I went to an all girls' school. Let's not go there though.

So this particular weekend several of the beau's fishing buddies descended upon Tokyo from distant locales: Y-san the Kansai yakuza, Wrist-cutter (so named because she has made public her habit and the beau takes calls from her at all hours to talk about her problems) and Girlwoman, a smoking and drinking dynamo who looks about ten when she pulls her sweatshirt over her folded knees and sits on the bed like a dumpling. It was so cute watching the beau get ready for his first Internet meet-up, I felt like I was sending him off to his first day of school. And would you know it, I couldn't resist sneaking in a little "don't tell anyone where you live" spiel as he was stepping into the elevator.

I hadn't intended to join this meeting of fishing minds at all and had a date with a dark bar in Asakusa that evening, but on the last train home I get a call from the beau telling me to come to the Smile Hotel. How could I resist? The chance to meet a real live yakuza doesn't come along very often in my life as a salarygirl.

The hotel door opened and there was the baito, urging me to come in to the capsule-sized room. As I shook hands with Wrist-cutter and Girlwoman, they both looked at my hand clasping theirs as if it was the hand of god on the roof of the Sistine Chapel. And I'm not even being narcissistic here, promise. These girls were from the boonies but come on, there are foreigners they can touch in the boonies too, am I right?! I'll admit it was kind of cute, I haven't encountered any foreigner-deprived Japanese in a while and they are always extremely eager for any morsel of foreign strangeness thrown their way. As I shook hands with Y-san, he remarked that I looked like a doll. I like him immediately.

I perched on the bed, keeping up my doll-like facade, and the drinking commenced. Y-san cracked open an Asahi Superdry for me and we clanked to the fishing gods. It was funny to see how this group of previous strangers was now acting, having spent the evening at dinner and karaoke before retiring to the hotel room. They were still calling each other by their screen names but after a couple slip-ups by the beau and his baito, everyone rattled off their full names, seemingly relieved to give up the pretense. Wrist-cutter even started crying at one point when the beau started waxing on about how great it was that this group of people from all over Japan (and the token Canadian) could get together and socialize like this. He made it sound like an invention akin to sliced bread.

As for Y-san, what a sweetheart. And he had all his fingers too. He kept extending an invitation for us to meet him in Osaka and never having been there, we are definitely going to take him up on the offer, for what better way to explore Osaka than with someone "in the business." Don't even ask about when he took his shirt off and pulled down his pants. Swoon. I am not a fan of tattooed men in general, but this mostly has to do with the tattoos chosen - ugly, tasteless junk. Maori men and Japanese yakuza however, I make an exception for. Y-san had a full back tattoo of a gorgeous koi (carp) that covered his butt and finished behind his knees. He even let me touch it. I get a little tired of the repetitiveness of the word kakkoii in Japanese to mean cool, but shit this man embodied it.

At one point in the evening the beau told me this would be an excellent chance for a Q&A session in case I had any yakuza-related questions burning to be asked. I wish I had known earlier and I would have brought a list! We talked about the tattoo thing and the cutting off of fingers (he hasn't fucked up that bad yet) but had I known I would be in the presence of such a man, I would have gone prepared. Y-san was extremely sweet but upon request gave us his "work eyes," which are pretty frightening to behold. I couldn't believe how easily he could just switch off and I'm sure for him, that night afforded him a rare opportunity to be fisherman Y-san instead of yakuza Y-san.

When your nails are all you've got

What you see above is the very thing that got me through a body-emptying experience with the stomach flu this past weekend. I never knew nails could be such a comfort but when your hair is dirty and plastered to your head and you're sporting back-corner-of-the-drawer ratty underwear and the last clean t-shirt you haven't soaked in fever, pretty nails are like a beacon of light. A port in the storm. Swim to the lighthouse!!

As I played fetus on my bed clutching my stomach with one hand, I had time to stare at my other, which would have looked positively claw-like in its twisted, limp positioning had the nails not been adorned with glitter and 3D art. Yes you did read correctly: I just used "nails" and "3D art" in the same sentence bitches. When I drank my millionth glass of Pocari Sweat, noting, in my delirium, that it might as well taste like sweat, I saw four shiny red dots rise closer to my face as I tipped the glass to my lips and my nausea washed away. Clutching the heated throne, I couldn't help but congratulate myself on having such cute nails as I dry heaved into its depths. Too much?

This flu completely derailed me and left me whispering sweet nothings to my stomach in the dark, promising favours impossible to bestow, like no alcohol and no chocolate. The day I got hit I considered not seeing a doctor despite the toilet getting so much action the beau was getting jealous, but as I later rationalized to my mom, doctors here always give you something for visiting. I wanted that something and I wanted it to stop whatever war was being waged in my stomach.

So in my most attractive outfit of leggings, white tennis socks and sneakers (only this level of illness could compel me to wear said items in combination), I grannywalked to a hospital down the block with a plastic bag in my pocket for unforeseen emergencies. When I first stepped foot inside the hospital I thought I had misread the sign outside and that it actually said "Dante's Inferno", for that, dear readers, is how hot that shit was. I wonder if they get more money from patients with fevers because they were pumping uncomfortable hot air throughout the hospital like it was going out of style. I had the pleasure of filling out one of those forms with the tiny boxes designated to fit your whole address, the ones that set you up for failure and you can't help but colour outside the lines. By this time my tongue was practically lolling out the side of my mouth and I prayed for quick relief as I swayed back and forth like a grand old ship.

I found one of the heat-breathing monsters in the waiting room I was sent to, its huge gaping rectangular mouth spewing forth hot air that rolled over me in prickly waves. Bathroom time. Sitting out in the waiting room again. Why do the old salarymen seem to be visiting this place in droves? Do they give out the good pills here?

Back to the toilet and this time it is urgent. I can see a nurse heading in before me and she quickly takes the Japanese squatter stall and starts pumping out the Sound Princess tunes. My situation is far too dire to bother with such silliness and I figure, hey, she must have heard this all before. So I squeeze myself into the Western stall - what do you know, it's one of those stalls cut so tight your knees hit the wall in front of you. I can't even kneel there is such little room, so I bend over as far as the ass/wall partnering will allow and start to dry heave loudly and desperately into the toilet. The nurse must be panicking by this point because the Sound Princess volume hits a crescendo (they have volume control dontcha know) followed by a hasty exit and the door opening onto footsteps in the distance. The bathroom door opens onto the waiting room so you can rest assured the waiting patients all heard my performance.

I come out of the bathroom to a room full of ugly salarymen giving me the side stinkeye and the nurse immediately calls me in asking, are you OK? Lady, I almost said, the oyaji to my left can tell you that. They must not get very sick people in this hospital.

But it's all in the spirit of Japan's pseudo-socialized medicine right? The government pays for 70% so you get to keep 30% of your health issues private. I couldn't care at that moment what the waiting room heard from the bathroom, as they quite possibly heard my whole conversation with the jolly doctor from behind the curtain that only provides visible privacy. The good man pronounced it a "cold caught in your stomach" and sent me on my merry prescription way.

Across the street to the pharmacy where I get to fill out another patient history form, recalling for the second time that hour any allergies or past illnesses. What is the point of this really, when the doctor has prescribed me meds based on this very information already, and my general info is printed on my health insurance card? I think they wanted to see whitie faint.

I almost did and begged the pharmacist to allow me to sit while she carefully explained all the drugs. Then back across the street to the hospital where I sat in a toilet stall for 5 minutes to garner the energy to make it the one block home without keeling over.

Mission accomplished. Meds ingested. Electrolytes replenished with sweaty Pocari Sweat. Resume fetal play on the bed.

Japanniversary

It seems as though the Tokyo Metro has gathered a host of previous characters to celebrate my Japanniversary (yesterday if you're wondering). And look! A prince has been born!

Do you remember your Japanniversary? Do you celebrate or mourn it? Mine have come and gone without much to do but they always give me pause to remind myself why I am here. More than the date, the smell around Tokyo at this time of year when the wind picks up is what makes me nostalgic. I know, I shouldn't wax on about luscious spring air when what you really want is more of my snarky tales of Kaisha terror but I love the smell of March and April. It makes me walk slower on the way home so that I can inhale it ferociously. It reminds me of my first week in Nakano getting settled into my apartment and upon the realization that I had come back to a Tokyo void of anyone I knew from my uni days, thinking, well now what? Well now what indeed. If you had told me I would be here now doing what I do and shacked up with a Japanese man I would have slapped you.

The smell reminds me of listening to Slum Village's most recent album on my iPod as I walked to catch the last train out of Nakano to meet the beau in the first weeks of our courtship.

The smell reminds me of late night walks by myself out to Koenji or Asagaya, times I embraced my loneliness and enjoyed the quiet neighbourhoods sometimes punctuated with a small lit-up sign.

The smell does not remind me of the School, which is perhaps not so surprising given I was shell-shocked for some time after arriving for that first day.

I don't know what it is about Tokyo that makes me observe my time here to the day, but I can't imagine doing the same anywhere else in the world. Maybe it's to keep from feeling like the city has swallowed me whole.

Summer come early

I am back from a self-sponsored trip to Vancouver and as much as I'd like to say better than ever, I feel like I've rolled out of a Christmas holiday - less money and more poundage. I knew what I was doing however, when I embarked on my one-woman economic stimulus plan to help the city back on its feet after vomiting money at the Olympics, and the extra trips to the gym are totally worth the poutine, alcohol, Purdy's chocolates and wheels of cheese that have my ass in a death grip.

Some trip notes:

-Weekend nights on the Granville strip are for amateurs and I am shocked by the number of neanderthals allowed to live in the city.
-With a train actually running underground (amen), Vancity now feels something akin to a real city.
-All India Sweets and the Mongolie Grill (the dirty one on W. Broadway) are just as good as they were when I was a high school student just tryin to make it.
-Being escorted to a house party in a real live Vancouver Special by four gay boys is excellent fun until you get to the actual party and have to take your boots off on dirty shag carpet.
-Hello delish $5 smoothies, how I have missed you. Ditto hot dogs on the corner.
-Casual unscripted conversation is totally OK with people you don't know. And the eye contact is mind-blowing! ! !
-Wearing heels in daylight there is the equivalent to wearing them to a day of tree planting set off with a classic string of pearls.
- I love the smell of North American drugstores: that illicit mix of magazine gloss, plastic shampoo bottles and brightly coloured candy wrappers.
- Some of my best clothing finds come from consignment stores in this fair city.
- I now kind of understand how people like the whole "sea and mountain" thing the city has going on. I'm not hugging any trees though.
- Hello Whole Foods, where have you been my whole life?! I think I need to become a high-powered attorney just so I can shop there on a semi-regular basis. Really and truly.

Getting back mid-week has been a shock to my system but I am extremely pleased to let you know that I haven't had any pedestrian rage or salaryman stabbing fantasies yet! I'm sure my post-trip orgasmic glow will wear off in less than a week and I will be back to my healthy bitchy public self. But for now, I am bouncing down the street in the mornings to Rihanna's Disturbia and marvelling at how undisturbed I actually am. I'm still not entirely sure what I want to do in the next couple years (I had secretly hoped my parents would hold these elusive answers) but I feel refreshed and ready for at least another six months on the island before a break.

Despite my well-documented aversion to handing out omiyage, I went ahead with the proverbial shooting of one's own foot and bought some fragrant creme-packed maple cookies for my bitches at the office. I even brought my Secretary and Sunshine an ugly-cute Olympic stuffed animal keychain each in order to encourage better international relations over the quad partition. I figured that if that fails, at least I have something to stuff into their mouths when they are chattering at a fever pitch during lunch while I am trying to work.

I went through the same pattern of pass-the-omiyage procrastination that I do every time, where I try to coax myself into eating most of the omiyage myself so that I don't have to give it to many Secretaries. I ate the two or three broken cookies but couldn't rationalize any more. Then I cleaned my desk, wallet and purse, watered and toileted myself and stared at my calendar for a while before strategizing and pinpointing the targets of my omiyage blitz. Read: Secretaries I think are nice. The two sitting next to me are not all that bad but when the devil from down the hall comes by at lunch all conversation hell breaks loose. Devil is definitely not getting a taste of the sweet maple nectar.

I don't know what it is about passing out omiyage that causes me to sweat, quite literally, but props to Japanese societal pressures, they have most definitely taken effect. I even found myself blushing (or was it flushing?) while making small talk with each Secretary, causing me to wonder if I was going through puberty or perhaps menopause, both stages I had previously thought myself quite far from. When I got back to my desk I felt like the office heating had been turned up to a million degrees and taking off my cardigan barely offered any respite. Thank the sweet lord my omiyage quota has been filled for at least half a year and maybe, just maybe, the cookie-munching Secretaries will pass along a kind word about me to someone.