Charisma Man

I met a new manga character. His name is Charisma Man.
So that the significance of meeting a brand-new character is fully understood, a little background first. The Japanese love their manga. For the uninitiated to the world of manga, as I was just a few months ago, it appears to be a blend of graphic novels and newspaper comics. The art varies from exquisite detail to “Family Circus” type ink. Even if you don’t read kanji, if you look at it long enough, the story does seem to unfold a bit, revealing character-driven stories of heroism or just lewd sexual behavior. Manga has seeped into much of everyday Japanese culture, from general media to fashion. It is a cultural phenomenon so aligned with Japanese life that sometimes life here appears to imitate manga (ie, girls dressing up as maids and cartoon characters).
I was enlightened to Charisma Man’s existence by my new Tokyo acquaintance, Yasmeen. As I’m learning being an expat, a friend-of a friend-of a friend can suddenly become your friend just by the commonality of your language. Yasmeen grew up in New York and bore the glitz of the city. Almost two years ago, she’d ditched her life in the States to teach English in Japan as a means to seek adventure. A veteran of Tokyo by my standards, Yasmeen not only had tales of living life in Japan as an American, but as an American black woman.
“It’s cool, girl,” she said, a brilliant smile filling our corner of the Indian restaurant. One of the benefits to hanging with a former New Yorker is she knows where the good food in the city is.
Yasmeen held up her nan and pointed at it. “It’s like in the US, I’m just like this, plain. Just another black girl. But here, they think I’m the coolest thing ever.” Undeniably, she did stick out in the sea of Japanese faces. I’d seen only a handful of black people in Japan, and most of them appeared to be immigrants from Africa or France. I’d excitedly tried to say hello to a guy once, mistakenly thinking he was from the US. His snotty rebuke made it clear he was from France.
As if on cue, the owner of the restaurant came by and delivered free drinks, staring at Yasmeen and bowing with a glint in his eye.
She grinned at me. “They dig me.”
Not one to shy away from my curiosity, I asked, “So are you dating Japanese guys like crazy? What is that like?”
“Not exactly.” Yasmeen whipped out her cell phone and clicked the camera button. A guy’s face, his smile filling the small screen, stared back at me. He wasn’t Japanese, but a curly haired Italian. Even through the pixilated image, you could tell he was very good looking.
“Mmmmm,” Yasmeen said, flipping the phone toward her and then back at me. Yasmeen wouldn’t need dessert, now that she had her fill of this picture. “My Italian. He makes me want to move to Italy!”
“So you’re dating all foreigners?”
“Basically, because Japanese dudes are so meek! Even at the club, they just stand in the back and bob their heads back and forth. They don’t have the guts to make the moves like the foreign boys do,” Yasmeen said, her head shaking back and forth despondently. “But it’s competitive for the foreign flock. You gotta fight for the good guys because they’re all going to get taken. Even Charisma Man gets the hot chicks.”
“Charisma Man?” I asked.
“Charisma Man!” Yasmeen said, as if she’d said Jesus and I had no idea who she was referring to. “You don’t know about Charisma Man? Oh yeah, I forgot that you just got here.”
Yasmeen leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Charisma Man is the white dude who can’t get no play in the US or London or wherever. So he comes here and the Japanese chicks just flock!” Yasmeen waved her hands in the air, imitating the swarms of Japanese girls surrounding a man.
I sort of understood what she was talking about. I’d seen several examples on the streets of Tokyo of geeky white guys with very attractive Japanese women. I’d sort of chalked that up to the fact that there are tons of gorgeous women here and not so many good looking guys, in my opinion, Japanese or not. Gotta date the rate, I assumed.
“No,” Yasmeen said. “It’s like those guys come here on purpose, like they know they’ll score some hot chick just because they’re different. And you know what? They’re right. It’s the superpower of Charisma Man in Japan. That’s the only way to explain it. That sort of hook-up would never happen in the States, you’ll see.”
By “you’ll see,” Yasmeen meant that I would see when we moved over to our next stop, a Roppongi shots club. Roppongi is a mecca of nightlife for expats, Americans and Euros alike. We walked up a windy staircase to the smoky bar. The heads bobbing up and down at the bar were not just black haired heads, but broken up by blonde, brunette, auburn. Yasmeen weaved through the packed club to the corner, where a group of Italians ran up to us. I looked back on the crowd, feeling transported to another section of the world. Maybe not rural America, but this crowd had the makings of a hip ethnic joint in Los Angeles. The waitress asked me what I wanted to drink in English.
“See, Charisma Man in action,” Yasmeen pointed to the couple at the corner of the bar. A squat, balding, bespectacled, strawberry blonde leaned against the bar, his arm around a much younger, super thin, long hair Japanese beauty.
“And there,” she said, “and there, too.” I looked up and down the bar, noting with each couple, a very attractive and young Japanese woman was paired with a dopey looking Brit, American or African. Our end of the bar looked like an ad for a mail order bride website.
“How do they communicate?” I asked Yasmeen.
“I have NO idea. Though I supposed talking isn’t all that important in that sort of relationship,” she said.
I scooted closer to the bar so I could eavesdrop on the closest couple to me, the squat Charisma Man and his Japanese beauty, as they tried to talk.

Charisma Man, either a Brit or Aussie (I couldn’t quite tell): “Do you want another drink?”
Japanese Beauty: Silence, a look of confusion.
Charisma Man: Holds up his glass, “Drink.”
Japanese Beauty: Relief spreading across her face, “Eiya. Omizu, onegashimas.”
Charisma Man: Silence, his turn to wear a look of confusion.

Conversation was clearly not important in this union. But what was this? Was Charisma Man some secret Justice League of dorky white guys I’d never heard of? Do they join their covert international club and then fly over in their invisible jets to Paradise Island? Was Tokyo’s soil the reverse of Kryptonite? Did it suddenly make these ordinary dudes sexy super-studs to the Japanese? And as Mike and I wandered around Tokyo, were people wondering how I’d scored the non-dork variety?
“It’s crazy,” Yasmeen said. “These dudes get the pick of the litter with the Japanese girls and seriously, those girls act like Charisma Man is their manga-hero. And then the foreign girls like us have to fight for the scraps.”
I didn’t get the sense that Yasmeen was lacking for too much male attention after the owner of the club brought us free drinks. Maybe Charisma Man was just her way of venting her frustrations with dating in Tokyo. Maybe Charisma Man was Japan’s manifestation of the US’ white-guy-Asian-chick couple. Or maybe it was some secret manga power that American expats would just never understand.
“Okay, maybe I just won’t ever get this whole thing,” I said to Yasmeen. “But here’s my question: where’s Charisma Chick? Where is she and her flock of Japanese male adorers?”
“Oh she’s around,” Yasmeen grinned. “She’s over at the hostess club, paying for it.”
Hostess clubs are clubs where Japanese men “service” female clients, offering food, compliments and drinks. Women often pay thousands for the special treatment, none of which openly involves sex.
“So Charimsa Chick is getting Japanese love, just at a high price?”
“You got it,” said Yasmeen.
Figures.