Whiskey, Miles Davis, and That Experience

Since coming to Japan I've found myself robed in all kinds of roles. People seem happier here if they know what role to assign you. The conversation can then continue on a predefined script. I've noticed Japanese people feeling out the other person's status early on in the initial conversation. Once they find out, there is an "Ahhh! So you're..." Suddenly things relax, people know what to call each other, and talk follows in torrents. In the early days, about the only role available to me was the zany gaijin. I didn't choose this role; it descended on me out of a fortuitous sky. Without it, I wouldn't have had any place in society. I didn't know the language, and was always looked after by whatever Japanese spoke the most English or whatever foreigner spoke the most Japanese. Often, neither was very much. People wanted to touch my hair, stroke my nose, practice their English, buy me drinks, and laugh at my jokes. Or at least laugh. Maybe be it was at me. In any case, I messed up in such a way as to be entertaining.

Then I got used to teaching. It wasn't so much teaching as convincing people to learn. At first I assumed a level of motivation. Soon I realised I had to provide not only the material and the means to master it, but the entire rationale behind studying in the first place. My lectures, my mock pleadings, for people to study more became famous. I never got angry at missed homework, but I upped the ante at the end of class.

"Please please please!" was my catch phrase.
"Please please pleeease watch this movie!" I would beg.
"Please please pleeeeeeeease study page 49 for next week!"
"Please please pleeeeeeeeeeeeease come to class more than once a month!"

I became so good at the role that people sought out my lessons. I think I made people feel wanted. The students barely knew they were learning. I had every cheap trick in the book down pat, and a few expensive ones as well. I could have been the poster boy for my company. Come to think of it, I was.

While I was expounding grammar rules in a suit by day, by night I assumed the role of Casanova. This was the easiest role of all. All I had to do was show up in a bar or izakaya, and it was difficult to leave alone. Looking back, my lack of language was a great help, because the Japanese guys never saw me as a threat. But it's easy to seduce without language. You just smile more.

So while I was getting little Yuki's name and phone number as she stood attentively by me in her baggy trousers and grease-stained jacket, the cooks assumed I was trying to get some kind of cheeseburger, or find directions to the embassy. From afar, it probably looked cute. From up close, it definitely looked cute. Which is why I was asking for the phone number. One night, I was walking a waitress back to her car. It was a clear night, as if a storm had blown all the guilt off the city, and the stars had came closer to look. As we walked, we looked up. I had learned a word that I was keen to show off: hoshizora, starry night.

"It's beautiful," I remarked.
"Thank you," she replied, flicking her hair some.
Cleverly opting not to correct her mistake since I couldn't, I chose to take her home and discuss this newfound beauty in more depth. I didn't get to show off my word.

As time went on, I entered the role of senior gaijin. This I mastered as well, but it involved some sacrifice. Going to a bar I could put the master at ease within a few seconds, even with a group of foreigners in tow. I could then field the inevitable questions with humour and aplomb. I could translate for fellow workers. But was I dumbing down what everyone wanted to say? Was I translating only a fraction of what could be said? Around this time, some of the roles began to break down. I guess it was inevitable, getting beyond the novelty of being foreign, and finding that most people only wanted to know how long you'd been in their country, what country you were from, and how long before you went back there. Even so, I navigated through the rapids with Americans demanding faster service, Canadians counting out edamame and paying only for their share, Australians drinking in the toilet to shorten the route from spew to spew, and New Zealanders...well, let's not even mention them.

I claimed cultural differences, I claimed responsibility--shit, half the time I was one of those Australians drinking in the toilet--and got away with more than was ever reasonable, just on being the go-between, and having been half-sober when we walked in and still able to nod in time. This was certainly when Japan became problematic. It became more so when I found myself knowing more about some things than locals. Once I sat in a bar listening to two salarymen arguing over the three types of train to Osaka. They got the Nozomi, the Hikari, but they couldn't think of the third. After about five minutes of listening to their fruitless fumbling, I volunteered that it was the Kodama. I should have kept my mouth shut. One of them was okay, but the other was visibly peeved. Funny thing was, he wanted to go to Australia for a holiday. I offered some pointers about where to go and what to see. But when I gave him my email address he turned to his friend and said: "I don't want any foreign friends." I wanted to make some sarcastic comment like "No one who can't navigate themselves from Tokyo to Osaka is a friend of mine, turkey." But I shut up. Where was my role? I didn't know anymore. I even had a feeling that I had in some unknowing way orchestrated my own downfall.

Around this time, I began to seek more and more Japanese roles for myself. I picked Japanese restaurants as much as possible, and deliberately chose hostess bars that would be unlikely to let me in. I would then talk my way in in Japanese. Once in, it was usually a great time, and if I ever went back to the same place, I would have a role to play. Unfortunately, it would never carry over to another bar in another town. I was a vagabond, a homeless actor, selling snake oil in each village I happened upon, and living by my wits to convince the locals I was the genuine article. I had had many roles, none of them serious and I had lost many roles, none of them serious. But I had never been in the serious boyfriend role. And nothing could have prepared me for the complete lack of script I was confronted with one February in Sapporo.

I had gone up as an area manager, as I had done many times before. This time it was soon before the collapse of the company. There was a dark mood present everywhere. Even the hotel I had booked into, the "Kita", was a concrete tomb with a bare atrium and rooms devoid of decoration. When I arrived outside the next morning to be picked up by one of the managers, she asked if it would matter if we went for a drive instead of going to work. I was groggy from the night before--a single man doesn't go to bed early in Sapporo, if at all--so it sounded like a good plan. We had met several times up there, been drinking with the other managers, and usually ended up at a bar together before I sent her home in a taxi. Given the fact that I smelled so horribly of alcohol, we stopped on the way to get some rolls. I forced a couple down just to leach my guts of last night's whisky, despite not having any appetite. Then we were out of the city.

Mitsuko had a BMW. For a young girl that was quite a car to own. It was the first time I'd been in a five-series for a long time. I wondered how she afforded it--the company didn't pay too well--and whether her family was loaded. I even wondered if she was married. In any case, she handled the horses pretty well. Even in the snow, a BMW goes exactly where you put it. As we drove along, Nagai Aida by Kiroro came over the radio. The city shrank behind us and the country road stretched out ahead.

"Bart," Mitsuko said as we listened to the song, "Have you ever had that experience?"
"What's that?"
"Not being able to tell someone you love them?"

I thought a minute, not about the truth, but about whether I should tell the truth. It struck me that I had that experience daily on the train, watching a girl with quirky movements sitting opposite me, say, or a girl leaning adoringly on her boyfriend standing in front of me. Sure, I could never say anything. But then, there were many times when I'd had the opposite experience: when a hostess pours my drinks, lights my cigarettes, gives me her phone number, it's hard not to say something. What role should I play here?

"I guess I have." I copped out. The road took an incline and the car switched up a gear. Mitsuko didn't say anything. She just guided that BMW expertly up the hills and round the bends. Then I realized I'd never been able to really tell anyone here how I felt. I played the role from concerned teacher to professional area manager all the way to drunk salaryman, and it was all pre-scripted. And I remembered how sad I'd been when a certain school manager announced her marriage after Golden Week, a few years back.

"Yeah, I guess I have." I said under my breath.

Within a couple of hours we had arrived at the Nikka Yoichi Whisky Factory. Crunching through the snow, we managed to find the museum and began our tour. It was all in old warehouses with barrels left around carelessly, bleeding the pungent smell of aging whisky. We trudged from one hangar to another, a squeaky speech leading us on. I was getting drunk on the fumes. It turns out Taketsuru, the founder, went to Scotland to study whisky for Suntory, and returned to Japan to be head-distiller. He disagreed with their choice of location, and chose to set up his own company in Yoichi, where he felt great whisky could be made. He wasn't wrong, but Suntory also made a decent go of it in Kyoto. Until recently, you rarely saw Suntory whisky in Hokkaido. While in Scotland, he married a local lass, and she came back with him and lived her life out in Hokkaido.

After the tour, we found ourselves in the tasting room. We were each supplied with a barrel-strength shot and a menu of available whiskies to order, all from the cask. By twelve o' clock I was drunk. By twelve-thirty I was in tears. I had gone through everything available on the menu twice: chivalry made me buy one each, but of course Mitsuko couldn't drink. After finishing the 25 year old we left the building to head back to the car. I went back in under the pretence of going to the toilet. An hour later, Mitsuko found me with about six more 25 year olds in my belly and a sheepish look on my face, having toured all the toilets of the factory in search of me. I managed to half-skate, half-dance my way back to the car.

I slept very well on the way back, only stopping for boiled corn on the cob by the roadside, the sweetest I've ever tasted. When we got back to Sapporo, the bimmer was left at the family parking spot and Mitsuko and I went out on the town. It was a special relationship. We had been out for drinks every time I ventured up north. We had talked about every subject under the sun. We were cousins in a way. At least I mean, I felt like she was my cousin. She felt so much like family that it hadn't occurred to me to have other than cousinly feelings towards her. Whenever we went out, she looked after me like the older cousin of my imagination. So I was a bit self-indulgent, a bit provocative, and a bit too confident that I would only get a slight reprimand from her. As it happens, I never got any. That night we had noodles. She was too shy to slurp. Here I was, trying to slurp the crap out of those things with soup flying halfway round the shop, and she was biting. Was the older cousin me? I didn't know. We had beer and wine with dinner. Despite her shyness she would order the waiter over with authority. My beer was never half-full before another was ordered. She poured the wine before I had even noticed a shortage. After dinner, I suggested we head to a bar to finish with some whisky.

We came out of the noodle restaurant and jumped into a taxi. "Take us to the golden egg building," I demanded. The taxi did a quick U-turn and stopped.

"We've arrived at your destination, sir," the driver said and levered the door open. Mitsuko and I exchanged glances. The taxi driver was so pompous it would have been rude to laugh, so we waited until I had paid then burst out laughing on the icy sidewalk. We went up in the elevator. Once in the bar, we were shepherded down the far end of a very long counter. In fact, there was nothing but counter in this bar. Counter and windows. We sat down and took in the view below us. Cars slowly pulled ahead in disjointed lines on a wide thoroughfare, creeping their way out of the city. Their lights were somehow faded by the resting snow and the falling rain. I was high on the day's events and started retelling tales of Taketsuru and 25 year old barrel-strength whisky to the barman. He listened in silence with what could have been taken for respect by someone as drunk as I was.

After enduring my pleas for understanding of the significance of the Taketsuru story for several minutes, the barman, in a typical show of one-up-man-ship, produced a bottle of Ardbeg 25 year old. In order to counter this audacity, I quickly ordered a double, a given acquiescence, as poker-faced as I could. I also ordered a light, fresh cocktail for Mitsuko, knowing her taste. The bar-top was pitch black and extended for ever to our left. Below us, the cars became smaller and smaller in the distance. The banter between customer and bartender ceased.

The drinks came. We clinked glasses. The Ardbeg was if possible even deeper than what I had tried that day at Yoichi. Mitsuko was pleased with her cocktail, despite it being practically non-alcoholic. Over the sound system came "Ascenseur pour l'echafaud." Here we were on the 14th floor, with Miles Davis winching us up, inch by inch, with a bewitching sound that could have come from the throat of a siren. The street below became more and more distant. Then Mitsuko made the announcement.

"Bart, I'm getting married," she said.
"What, seriously?" I asked.
"Seriously."

I fumbled for the script, but I couldn't find it. My legs were already dangling in the sea from the depth and saltiness of the scotch. I tried to pull myself back up to a position nearer the barstool. I needed more whisky.

"Another Ardbeg double!" I called out as I scrambled for composure and something to say, being the cousin.
"And, and this is to a guy you love?" I was asking as a relative, but I suddenly knew that she hadn't been out drinking with me over the last two years because we were related.

There was a pause when that terrible trumpet became hoarse. Something was breaking before my very eyes, and I couldn't see what it was.
"I think so." Mitsuko said, looking down. My whisky came. I took a gulp. It was a critical moment. I could either admit Mitsuko was more than a cousin, or say goodbye. Miles Davis sounded more plaintive than ever. That horn became my disembodied soul, drifting somewhere stories above reality, lost in a world that didn't really exist, a world 14 stories up where buildings shouldn't even be built, let alone have people in them, sitting with their cousins, drinking whiskies that were many fathoms deeper under the earth than people ever dreamed of burrowing.

Finally I thought of something to say. Something non-committal, but judiciously vulnerable. Something that would get me in and get me out. Something, in hindsight, as expedient as anything that was ever said to someone who had already shown their love. "Mitsuko, was I too late?" A minute or two passed. "Did I wait too long? I mean, before saying anything to you?" We watched the street below. The crooked lines of cars made no sense on the unmarked snow. They just drove wherever they wanted to, or followed the crazy driver in front.

"You know--" she started.
"I mean, work was busy," I cut in, "and I thought I should be settled first, and..." For the first time, I was ad-libbing in Japan. It wasn't comfortable. I had so much to say. I had so many true feelings, so little time to get myself ready for them, and so little chance to wrap them up in safe, comfortable rhetoric. I meant what I wanted to say, but I wasn't saying anything.
"Men always think they have to be settled first, and it's just not the case!" she blurted out.

I looked at the girl beside me. She was compact and she was challenging me. She had just become petulant. Something drained out of me. I think it was my self-respect. I had been arrogant to think that someone would give up so much time for me on the basis that she had the same feelings as I had for her. I had never told her I liked her, held her hand, or kissed her. But she had waited for me to try. I didn't feel stupid, but I felt myself at the signpost that has two options, "Commit" and "Escape." If I'd known, I could have prepared my lines, I could have slipped into a role by which we were both convinced. But this wasn't a play anymore. No whisky, no matter how old and profound, could disguise the confusion of this moment. I decided to let Mitsuko go to claim her small happiness, and to swim back to that strange island which I came from.

"I guess we do," I murmured. I drained the whisky off and we sat in silence for a while. My feet could reach the rung on the stool now, and I could see my face in the bar. I didn't like what I saw. Miles's trumpet continued to echo out strong and sorrowful, finishing just before the horizon.

"Bartender!" I called. "Give us two glasses of Champagne."
The cars snaked off into a fine misty rain out beyond the city lights. The Champagne came. It bubbled up mercilessly in celebration. That signpost was looming but it was still just the two of us for now.

We raised our glasses.
"To happiness," I said. "Wherever she may be."

-barten