Japanese recollections

When I first went to Japan in 1985, it wasn’t the first time I had been out of the US. Since I grew up in southern California, a trip to Tijuana, Mexico was almost required, and eating the worm out of the bottles of cheap tequila we bought was required too. Dark smoky strip clubs and open markets, and foreign languages all around me – I had watched that movie already.

Japan, though, was JAPAN, not some tourist town on the US border. I never did go to any strip clubs in Japan – I was married, and being a foreigner in Japan is not always a good thing. There were sections of the cities that were called "Soaplands". The only thing really forbidden was selling penetrative sex, but it was ok to sell bathing assistance, wink wink. My wife gave me a map of the city specifically marked with "do not go here" sections; for one thing the headquarters of the two main Yakuza groups were in Kobe, which tended to be in the same areas as the Soaplands and Pink Salons.

Imagine what a "Pink Salon" might be.

After the 1995 earthquake that wrecked the city, my commute to and from my job in a warehouse changed, and I found myself going through one of those marked areas every night. I never stopped or went in to any of the places there, but I became a nodding acquaintance to the touts standing outside some of the "clubs", and I did stop in at the liquor store on my way too – they had a good selection of Kentucky Bourbon.

One night I was walking home through that area when I heard running sounds over taking me, and some Japanese guy went running past me, two uniformed cops chasing him. I just stepped aside. As a foreigner in Japan, you are never invisible, but there are times when you wanted to be.

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Japan is the land of the Vending Machine.

One thing I liked about them was that cigarettes did not cost any more out of a machine than they did anywhere else, so at midnight on the last train home, you could still find that pack of smokes and not get raped on the price. In fact, cigarettes were the same price Everywhere in Japan. By law. It was something you could count on, and cigarette vending machines were not rare.

There were cold drink vending machines too – the usual soft drinks and sports drinks, yeah, but there were beer machines too, selling cans and bottles of BEER. That was something I had never seen in the US, outside of a Navy base. And some machines not only sold beers – plural: different brands, sizes, and containers of beer – they sold mixed drinks. I liked the canned Gin Rickeys out of the Suntory machines, but you could buy whisky and water, the Japanese style of drinking it and gin and tonics and other kinds I never tried. Next to the beer machines, there were sometimes whisky machines too – you could buy anything up to a fifth of whiskey out of a Vending Machine!

NOT good whiskey by the way – it was guaranteed hangover medicine.

You could get nearly anything out of a vending machine in Japan. You go to a hotel, need some socks? No problem, there’s a machine for that. Need underwear? Yup, right in the same machine. Forgot a toothbrush? Need a comb? Some feminine protection? Same machine, fully stocked.

Ice? Of course. Soda pop and beer, yeah. Cigarettes? Candy? Uh huh. But I had never seen Hot Drink machines. It turns out you could buy hot cans of coffees (note the plural again) and teas and soups, which were quite handy when you’re waiting for the bus on a cold blustery night.

Need something to read? Yeah, newspapers and magazines and…Manga? Japanese comic books? In machines on train platforms? Quite sexually and violently graphic manga? In public like that? For anyone with the coin?

Wow.

And check this out: Right in front of one of the liquor stores on my way home were… porno vending machines. VHS tapes, color magazines, really filthy manga, explicit fucking sex – ropes and bondage and… it was pretty incredible.

Had you bought something from those machines, you would be excused from believing that all Japanese women were hairless. It was illegal to show any pubic hair then, none at all. Men of course had their genitals blurred out – the usual double standard.  There was apparently quite a market for "Uncensored" videos. My brother-in-law, who worked for the Prefectural Police had quite a collection which he shared with my Father in Law and me.  I wasn’t sure what to say.

Japan is, or was in the 80’s, a very homogeneous place- they all look alike, to be crude. At one point, I remember I decided that there were seven real Japanese women and nine hundred million clones. Downtown, when the lights changed and you crossed the streets, you joined nine hundred other people going the same way. YOU look different; everyone SEES you. People move on trains – no one wants to stand near a foreigner. Kids in towns that don’t see many foreign faces will wave at you and say "Herro!" Everyone give you a fork – foreigners can’t use chopsticks; it’s well known. Your co-workers will assume you can’t buy Japanese condoms, because, you know, foreigners are bigger.

I was married most of the time I lived there; I didn’t prove it to anyone but my wife until later.

In Japan, I felt like a Movie Star – everyone saw you and looked at you – at six foot tall, it was impossible for me to go unnoticed.

I’m invisible here.

 

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