Lovin' Tokyo

The Japanese are an exceptionally kind, polite and sincere people. They are also not physically affectionate at all. They don't even shake hands. When I first meet people to conduct an interview, my first instinct is to extend my hand, of course. Well, after my first awkward moment where my Japanese subject looked at my hand then touched it like I had some strange disease, I quickly abandoned my American greeting. In lieu of the physical touch, the Japanese accompany their greeting bow with a trade of business cards. I've learned you can't travel anywhere in Japan without a giant stack of business cards. You trade cards on all occasions, especially if you're meeting for business. It's considered extraordinarily rude if you don't have a card to return to the extended card. I emailed my home bureau and begged for a federal express delivery of every remaining business card they could muster.

You don't notice how much you're addicted to affection until you're in a society that doesn't touch at all. I began to notice how no one holds hands on the street, not even the teenagers. Occasionally, you see two really, really old Yoda-looking women holding hands as they walk, but that appears out of necessity. Sometimes the tourists hold hands, but even that appears half-hearted.

"PDA is not really Japanese," said Yoko. Yoko, Junko and I were out for lunch, a quickie diner meal of soba noodles, raw fish and donburi. I was eating the fish, so sick of soba noodles I could nearly flee at the sight of them.

"People don't really hug or show love overtly in Japanese society," Yoko added.

"Except for love hotel," said Junko.

"Love hotel?" I asked, thinking it sort of sounded like an Elvis song. My pop music history remains awful and shallow.

"Love hotel," repeated Junko, her face lighting up.

"You been there!" laughed Yoko.

"No, no," Junko said, a frown immediately flashing across her face. "For story."

"Right," chided Yoko.

"What is a love hotel?" I asked.

"Love hotel is like a place you go with boyfriend," said Junko.

"It has all kinds of themes, like leather, or swings, or even that crazy one, remember Junko?" asked Yoko.

"Hello Kitty!" laughed Junko.

A bright pink hotel room with a life sized, vibrating Hello Kitty bed leaped into my head. "Are you kidding?" I asked.

"No! I see it!" Junko said.

"And everyone has done this?" I asked. "Except for you, of course" I added quickly to Junko.

"Everybody! I'm weird, I don't do when I'm teenager," Junko said.

"There are so, so, so many of them," Yoko said. "If you go to Shibuya, it's everywhere. You can buy for one hour, and they discount after three hours."

"That's nasty," I said. "It seems totally unsanitary. Don't you worry about other people's funk?"
"Funk?" They both looked at me.

"Never mind," I said.

"Rent is so expensive in Tokyo, there's no space, and most people live with their parents until they marry and can afford their own studio," Yoko said. I'd already seen that the average price of a Tokyo studio or one bedroom hovers at $6000 a month. And that's post-bubble-burst in Japan.

"We're only human. Everyone goes," said Yoko. Then mischief filled her small face. "You should take Mike!"

"Nas-tay," I said. But the thought intrigued me. Not the use of it, because I couldn't get over the image of years of piled on, hourly funk in a bed I could potentially use. Though the Hello Kitty room might be worth a tourist picture, I thought, as long as I didn't touch anything.

"What about gay people? If PDA isn't accepted here, what do gay people do?" I'd always ended up somehow finding the gay neighborhood in whatever city I lived in (usually because it's the nicest!). But not Tokyo.

"People accept if you are gay, as long as you don't talk about it," said Yoko. "No politician makes it an agenda. And there was one lesbian who ran as an openly gay lesbian, but she lost."

"Did it have to do with the fact that she's an open lesbian or her candidacy?" I asked.

"Primarily, she didn't have enough support," said Yoko.

"So it's like the US military, don't ask, don't tell?"

"Yes, exactly. But it's not the government, it is society."

I decided that Mike and I would indeed, travel to Shibuya and walk around Love Hotel Hill, as it's called. We took the subway to the bright lights of Shibuya. This edge of Tokyo is another area that's lit up as bright as day, except it's grungier and dirtier and trendier than anywhere in the city. Teenagers and 20-somethings rule this kingdom and the general uniform here is a schoolgirl outfit and spiked heels.

"Hello," I waved my hand in front of Mike's face.

"Yes, my love," he said, his eyes still not averting from the purple haired, leggy 18 year old.

"You're about to violate probation," I said.

We weaved through the sea of people in the thick, humid air of Tokyo's urban jungle. It was nine o'clock but seemed like the middle of a weekend day. Conversations flew all around us, a band played on a street corner surrounded by teased, dyed hair, and motorcycles revved along a side street.

"Look, it's a giant Pac-man," I pointed to the two story high Pac Man that was the center of a gate over an alleyway. The sounds of pachingo slot machines rang out from gambling shops all over Shibuya.

"Look, it's a giant snake," Mike said, pointing up to an enormous plastic snake that covered half of a 12 story building. There simply was too much to look at, too much for my brain to digest at once.

We weaved through one of Shibuya's many tributaries leading to what I hoped might be some food. I'd already abandoned hope of finding Love Hotel Hill, since I hadn't been able to yet successfully find anything on my own yet in Tokyo. But 30 minutes later, we were winding up a hill, as neon flashed back and forth in the alley.

"Hey, do you know what this is?" I asked Mike.

"Uh, no," he said, looking at a group of teenagers sitting on the sidewalk with their brightly colored thongs exposed under their schoolgirl skirts.

"It's the Love Hotels!" I said triumphantly. I walked up to a sign. "See? This is how much you pay for an hour. And see this? This is how much you probably pay for the next hour, or maybe for the whole night."

He raised his eyebrows and kept walking. "Interesting," he said.

We walked all through the hill, surrounded by the flashing neon of the hotel signs. They seemed to have themes, like Yoko and Junko said. Cats, leather, Europe, the Caribbean, disco, etc. They were all the exact opposite of romance.

"This is where they must shoot all that Japanese porn," I said to Mike.

"Maybe we should find another area to get food?" he suggested.

"Something without cream?" I joked. He didn't laugh at that one.

We walked several more blocks before we saw a sign that looked like the entryway to a small restaurant.

"Here?" I asked.

"Okay," he said.

We walked down a flight of stairs to a very small restaurant.

"Irradishe!" called out the waiter. I'm sure I'm butchering what the waiters say, but that's what it sounds like to me. All restaurants, no matter where I've been except for the extraordinarily upscale Park Hyatt Tokyo, have greeted me with that saying.

"Hey," said Mike. He can get away with saying "hey." The Japanese think it sounds cute coming from him. The other night, he said "May I have the check please," read directly out of our Japanese-English dictionary, and our sushi chef and several patrons broke into applause. I get mild amusement, at best.

We sat down at the counter and the waiter greeted us again, pointing to the menu. All Japanese.

"Eigo hanasemasuka?" I asked, asking if he spoke English.

He shook his head apologetically.

"Okay," said Mike. He pointed at the menu. "That."

I looked at the menu, waved my finger over it and it landed on another phrase. "That," I said, looking at our waiter.

He said something in Japanese, and then said, "Okay?"

"Okay," I said. I pointed to three more things.

Our waiter returned with two alcoholic beverages we'd apparently ordered. One was delicious, like a pear martini, and the other was like an awful orange-sprite version that reminded me of spoiled orange crush. Mike valiantly gave me the pear beverage. "Bir-u" he said to the waiter, one of four words he'd mastered in Japanese. The waiter returned with a very cold beer.

He then delivered two sticks of mystery meat. "Liver," he said, apparently knowing more English than he'd let on.

"What kind?" I asked, figuring he could just say something in Japanese.

"Chicken."

Our waiter with a sense of humor left and Mike and I stared at each other. "Okay," he said.

We grabbed our chicken livers on a stick and chowed away. I like fried chicken. I'd been known on occasion to eat the liver of the thigh to gross out my little brother. But I'd never eaten four chunks of solid liver cubes barbequed as a meal. It wasn't bad.

"I wouldn't order that again," said Mike, cleaning off his stick.

The chef who'd been eyeing our progress was starting on our next orders, which both looked like the more pedestrian parts of chicken. I tapped on the glass that separated us and held up our sticks triumphantly.

He stood up taller in surprise and then bowed.

We left Love Hotel Hill without the affection that most couples get here. But we'd gotten a better prize, the respect of a doubting Japanese chef.