Made In Japan

Chapter 7

Seismological measurement of Fukushima earthquake magnitude 9 on the Richter scale

Birdsong came from the same deck that the folk music had the night before. Breakfast was laid out as self-service, and Hana and Jess ate rice and then wedges of sliced white bread, twice the size of a paperback and half as nutritious, that they covered in sugared orange jam. Between mouthfuls they discussed their plans for the day and then headed out.

Before they reached the station Jess pointed out the dormant neon nightclub sign.

‘Try it? There’s no commitment.’

Hana could see she was never going to take no for an answer.

Jess ran down to the basement, leaving her at the sign.

She quickly returned.

‘Emiko – the manager – can see you at the end of the week.’ She couldn’t have been more pleased with herself.

Hana didn’t want to be ungrateful, ‘I’ll see,’ was all she said.

Jess drew her towards the rail tracks.

‘Come to Ziggy’s to meet my good friend Miho.’

And they headed up the main street with its tiny stores; pottery spilling towards the fresh noodle makers calling beside loud carousels of ‘anime’ covers for any accessory.

Hana waited patiently in a din of local music as Jess fingered lollipop pens and fake-fur key rings with ears. All this from the home of Zen, she thought, as she waited too long under the awning of sound. She considered her new companion a little critically but in the assault of the unfamiliar she was already attached to her.

‘Have you chosen yet?’ Hana was surprisingly irritable given they had met so recently.

Jess emerged manga-eyed with a cartoon bag of irresistibles and she was back on message. ‘It’ll be fun and it’s the only temp job a foreigner will get in Tokyo.’

She was as short as a haiku poem but without the poetry.

‘And the clients?’ hana was worried about dodgy clubs.

‘It is tame. It’s safe,’ she reassured.

Hana’s nose wrinkled. She was far from convinced.

‘Remember I worked here all last summer.’

‘How did you find it?’ Hana twisted at her woven bracelet.

‘The homestay. Ukai, the old man, once had a share in the business that owned a chain of clubs across the city. Apparently did very well property dealing in the eighties. That was until a big deal in Guam nearly ruined him. It’s why Noru takes in foreigners. The house is their only remaining asset and the old man isn’t as well connected as he was.’

‘So they were an important family?’

Jess surprised Hana by laughing, as if the idea were ludicrous. ‘Well, let’s say influential. They’re Etahin.’

‘Etahin?’ Hana hadn’t a clue.

‘Low class,’ Jess said confidentially. Hana threaded her cotton art bag over her shoulder, engaged. Jess knew Noru and the family quite well. So they had hit hard times and Noru was whittled away by the workload and the responsibility. This all seemed to mitigate against an early move from the homestay; they would probably be relying on the income?

‘And the old man’s health has taken a dive since last year,’ Jess added unsentimentally, as if she could hear Hana weighing up her decision. And that swayed it. Hana saw she shouldn’t really contemplate moving homestay now, leaving them so early on.

On the way to the café Jess explained that she had worked with the same volunteer group as last year.

‘Yes, straight down from Fukushima.’

‘Same charity programme?’ Hana asked.

‘Same programme with the same volunteer group’ Jess conceded proudly.

Hana turned in admiration. And a memory suddenly flew to mind. One weekend last month she and Tom had walked along Regent’s Canal, and, after getting drenched in an English monsoon, once home Hana had used old newspaper to stuff Tom’s wet boots as they dried. Later, when making supper she had unfurled the paper to catch the vegetable parings, smoothing the corners until she was disturbed by a photograph under a headline. It was of a large merchant ship, a cargo vessel, resting incongruously on a landscape of debris: afloat on shards of wood, sections of wall, severed concrete platforms and flimsy girders. A sea of detritus. The bric-a-brac of a town destroyed. The vernissage of a ship – resting on kindling, once houses and stores, garden fences and schools – that had now been washed clean and was drying in the sun. The caption read Tō hoku – After the tidal wave. Across the hulk was a great expansive sky of hopeful blue on a cloudless, unthreatening day; well after the force of nature had taken its random hit on the Japanese coastline. There were no harrowing details. It was majestic; a great feat of engineering resting on the fragments of a community. It presented like a life raft to a culture, the ship ashore resting easily back on the land where it had first been constructed. A huge piece of flotsam cut it loose from its securing lines by the nihilistic force of a tidal wave. It seemed to be a monument to the survival of something grander than destruction and, like a sorrow, rested heavily on the obliterated scene of what once was. In some way she did not understand, it belonged to her. She felt a kinship then with Japan that she had never before felt with such intensity. She too was a survivor of her own family tragedy.

‘That was in Fukushima,’ Jess reconfirmed.

Hana snapped out of her reverie and was immediately honest with her. ‘I couldn’t do it. You’ve seen so much.’

‘We get to see the wastelands.’ Jess conceded. ‘But you rebuild.’

Jess bordered on glib and Hana gave way to a creeping skepticism. She eyed her petite figure. Jess would be particularly ineffective in rebuilding the havoc she had seen.

‘You. You are rebuilding?’ Hana offered tentatively.

‘I don’t have a truck license,’ Jess drawled amusingly. ‘We counsel. We don’t get close to the affected communities or their grief, but we counsel the counsellors. To be more accurate, we organize their entertainment: films, music nights. As they are the ones who work with the families, day in day out and they need a programme of events to take their minds off what they have seen and heard. They need to be fresh to counsel the survivors. Many have nothing left to hold on to but the promise of that counselling.’

It was a serious choice for a summer programme. Jess held on to Hana’s admiration.

‘Last year I was also teaching at Berlitz Language School.’ She let this slip casually, as if looking for more approbation.

And it struck Hana that the promised bottom line – the huge amounts of money Jess earned out here – was the result of more hours than she had explained.

Chapter 8

They reached the door of Ziggy’s café. Jess hammered on the glass, but no one heard, or else she had deafened them in her efforts to be heard.

‘Miho’s asleep.’

‘So Miho’s a friend?’

‘It’s her café. She’s great. Opens early and adores Americans. Some days she’ll let me eat without paying. So I wanted to tell her we’ll be two for breakfast after the bar shift.’

‘But I haven’t decided.’

‘Come on. I need some company down there. You’ll thank me.’ The prospect of the basement bar had grown no more attractive than at first. Jess needed her company and chance had thrown her no other allies.

They gave up on any response at Ziggy’s café and as they left Jess had to draw Hana from the path of a noodle delivery scooter strafing them at speed. She seemed surprised that she didn’t know to watch for them.

‘And you are a bit Japanese, right? So you are coming home,’ Jess continued, essentially thick-skinned but perhaps she needed to be.

‘Not really.’ Hana’s response was quiet.

Last night, getting out of the taxi, any expectation that she might be coming home had evaporated.

The noodle biker waved an apology and drove on with his ramen soups swinging behind him.

Hana waved back. ‘I have never been to Japan before.’ She couldn’t see why further justification was needed.

‘So the trip’s about you?’ What Jess lacked in subtlety she made up for in perseverance.

Hana could do without the analysis. But she smiled. Would anyone go travelling and leave themselves behind at baggage carousel? Was it an omission, not to have checked the occupancy rates, thus landing Jess as a roommate? But she was warm and kind of vital. And Jess did have local knowledge. Drawing her back to this, she asked, ‘So where will I find the local temple?’

Jess had never been and saw no urgency to go on Hana’s first day. She stopped at a blinking vending machine; she would need coffee before they took another step.

Hana refused either the chemically warmed or the ice-chilled can. And as if she sensed she was weighing her up, Jess bent over posturing like a sage and rolled the cold can across her forehead for comic effect. ‘Wait a minute,’ Jess said to the ground. She had found a small kitten cowering with the wind-blown trash under the vending machine. She picked it up and nestled it against her ear, walking on.

‘Wait. Won’t it belong to someone?’

‘It’ll take a holiday just for a day or so.’

‘And Noru won’t mind?’

‘Who would tell?’

Hana smiled at her new friend’s independence.

‘Where exactly did Naomi live?’ The cat was tucked under Jess’s arm.

‘I don’t know but she would have known this main street.’ Hana wondered how much would it have changed; the racket of piped music, the disarray of wares halfway across the street, signs so numerous they had become wallpaper hopelessly competing for attention.

‘You look like her?’ Jess asked.

Idly Hana imagined there might be someone on this very street that might just remember her mother and recognize some similarity, some feature or in the way she walked.

‘A bit. Not really. We enjoyed the same things. We were similar in that way.’

‘You were?’

Hana nodded and pursed her lips, and for once Jess caught the subtlety that she had lost her and said she was sorry.

Hana went on quickly. ‘She lived here when she worked on the teahouse. Around eighty-nine.’

‘So …’ Jess registered with the strike of a can hitting the pocket of the vending machine.

‘So the teahouse is important.’

‘But you are looking for your father?’ Jess tugged at the ring pull on the can.

The suggestion winded Hana. The faceless man that was her father had been a completely unacknowledged presence for so long that she had edited him out of her existence in the way that he had surely done for her. How could this stranger not realize that she shouldn’t ask? There was a time when she believed her mother had not known who her father was. A faceless one-night stand in Tokyo? But she knew Naomi too well to really believe it.

At first she didn’t respond and then replied, ‘No,’ to Jess’s open skepticism.

‘Miho’s coffee is better than this,’ Jess concluded resignedly.

Chapter 9

After supper, Tako skipped in, wearing a clean, pressed T-shirt.

‘Ladies, ladies.’ He chose to pronounce it as if it were a disease for dogs. He started regaling them with earthquake facts which had become a recurring theme with him, and he clearly enjoyed the response.

‘A thirty-nine metre wave.’ If he intended to frighten Hana he often succeeded.

Unexpectedly he produced a bottle of Blossom soap and presented it as a gift. Had he heard them complaining?

Noru scowled at her son as she cleared the table. Her housekeeping didn’t run to gifts for guests.

‘When do I show you round?’ Ever generous. He leafed though a guidebook as he held it under Hana’s nose. What could she tell him? He was the last person she would choose.

Her smile was noncommittal.

‘Okay, so when is best?’ he persisted.

There was something about him she didn’t trust. She searched Jess, who bailed her out very casually

‘We have a few trips planned. Thanks though.’ And she grabbed the soap before marching out.

It was Jess’s turn for the bathroom first and so Hana took out her battered city plan, tracing her finger across the legend of flags and dots and icons. She had scanned the whole of Shimokitazawa and found nothing.

Jess returned in a towel-wrapped turban …

‘Sweet to give us soap.’

‘Sweet?’ Hana hoped he was harmless.

As she scratched at the back of her neck Hana remembered the cat had slept in Jess’s bed for two days. It was sure to have fleas. Resignedly, she held her feet in her hands and rocked back and forth, eventually coming to settle on the uncomfortable homestay bed, intending to broach the subject of the cat with Jess soon.

On their way up the main street the next morning, Hana passed gift-wrapped melons in the window of the supermarket. They were the price of a European flight at home.

‘It is what it is.’ Jess was clearly resigned to the cost of living because she knew the short cuts. ‘I never eat melon,’ she said as if possessed of great wisdom.

Hana would not buy this as evidence of an economic sage but she did realize then, even without giving way to her taste for melon, that she would go to the interview at the end of the week or answer to her roommate, repeatedly. And so, before they reached the rail tracks, she had decided, since she planned to be in Tokyo for at least six weeks or more, she would join Jess at the club. Why not?

Her first quake began halfway to the station with what she thought was a train rumbling. She didn’t see anything particularly odd but she could hear the creaking of wooden buildings bracing against the tremor as if shaken by the vibrations of an ancient engine. It lasted for no more than ten seconds.

‘We should be inside,’ Jess advised and pointed to the pachinko parlour.

‘You okay?’

Once inside she was a little shaken but the vibration stopped as suddenly as it had arrived.

‘An earthquake virgin.’ Jess tried to make light of it to put her at ease. ‘We have loads of these little tremors. And the pressure release is a positive thing.’ She smiled with a bright idea. ‘Let’s play.’

Hana reminded Jess they were headed for Nakajima no Ochaya to drink tea but she was caught by the novelty.

The doors opened to a cacophony that drowned the shouts of welcome; chrome ball bearings in Brownian motion, like so many metallic castanets. Lights flashed in purple, red and emerald green in line upon line, and on the small screen of each pinball display an ancient geisha played out a love story or cartoon boy hero dazzled a conquering light sabre.

There were plenty of empty seats peppered with random regulars, most of whom slumped as if permanently attached to the furniture, spent cigarettes between their lips,

Jess whooped like a cowgirl to straddle a chair. She turned. ‘Are we feeling lucky?’

Hana was happy to observe and took up a position behind her. Winning balls from another machine clattered. She was far from the tranquility of the teahouse.

Jess took the joystick, jabbing at a console worn smooth as washed pebbles. Bearings collided and bounced through a maze of obstacles and at every winning gate more balls fed her play. It was a while before she was conscious of another person standing behind her. Hana turned to find Tako had appeared like a screen genii. He had a habit of turning up like an irritating pop-up ad. Had he followed them? He wore his shiny athletic jacket and bright white T shirt.

He couldn’t stay, but since he knew the game so well he would show them how it was done. Could he show them? Jess made way for him and he flashed his skills until three jackpot winners appeared on screen and a deafening number of balls fell in payout.

He indicated with a generosity as large as the sum was small that it was all theirs.

‘Yeeha!’ Jess called.

Tako rose for Hana to take a turn.

She declined, not wanting to risk the winnings, and thankfully, in the void of any encouragement, he left them.

‘I will add to the money,’ Jess announced, ‘and we’ll go for a big lunch.’

The restaurant was the size of a corridor. A thatch protected an old water wheel and a large, plastic raccoon bear stood to attention.

‘Mickey Mouse? But a bit tanned.’

Jess shot Hana a look. ‘This is Tanuki. He brings good fortune, especially in financial matters. And sex,’ she added in a helpful afterthought.

‘Funny there’s so much superstition. Mickey Mouse doesn’t mean anything,’ Hana said. Here it seemed important to hang on to the significance of things.

‘He has big balls too,’ Jess stated the obvious mischievously. She had an appetite and chose quickly from the menu. They ate and talked of Seattle and London sushi and that thing guys do when they start a row about something trivial when they need to bring up a different injury.

As they left neither could decide who best resembled the potbellied bear raccoon.

‘Go lucky,’ Jess burped solemnly.

‘And you,’ Hana wondered for a moment whether she would ever need anything more than good company and so, ditching the teahouse idea for the day, she fell in with Jess.

Jess wanted Hana to see the city before they got stuck into work, so the next day they crossed the whole of Shibuya, took the metro to Aoyama and walked the hill to Omotesandō. There they peered beyond concave glass so unreflective it seemed they could reach in for the Yamamoto and Gucci bags, too expensive to touch.

To vary the homestay offering of rice, pickles and dried or jellied fish, they chose to eat at the end of the metro line on the pavement terrace of a student café screened off with sculptured tea bushes. They were the only foreigners in the place but drank their way to the point where it didn’t matter.

After plenty of warm sake, they returned to the house where Ukai, oblivious to the hour and to their greeting, was still painting in poor light at the dining room table. He often worked at his SUMI-E, and in the cool of the late afternoons he would trim the kiwi vine that ran over the door. The brushwork was some sort of farewell poem in calligraphy; a tradition, Jess had said. Great big black strokes of angry ineptitude.

Jess cast an eye over progress as they passed. ‘Not bad for a yakuza.’

Now used to her humour, Hana found branding the old man a gangster amusing.

She was sure he had said ‘Naomi’ on that first night. If she could just make herself understood enough to talk to him …

They took the stairs unsteadily.

‘Are these mosquito bites?’ Hana inspected her arms before scaling the stairs.

Jess ignored her and returning to a pet subject said, ‘I think I saw one of the guys I met at the club in that restaurant, If I don’t pull soon …’

She laughed like a hyena as Hana held the banister unsteadily.

‘Tako?’ she suggested weighing both in each hand for comic effect and risking a fall.

She stabilized for a moment. ‘Now, the lawyer from the plane …’ Hana began, holding her forehead in exasperation at losing contact. ‘Fluent. And he was great company too.’

‘Careless at best,’ Jess slurred, and in her optimistic way rambled, ‘confidentially, you know, my Japanese isn’t bad either.’ There was nothing confidential about it and she was, as usual, endearingly keen to come top in the competition for great company.

As Hana jabbed at the air-con remote, Jess promised to search for English law firms in Tokyo and slumped on her bed. Hana found that, on returning to the room this time, it had strangely begun to feel like a haven in the city.

Neither of them saw Tako emerge from the lobby door to listen from the bottom of the stairs.

Chapter 10

On Thursday afternoon they walked to the metro.

‘Trust me, we want to take the Ginza line beyond Asakusa temple.’

Though Hana had wanted to head for Meiji Jingu temple in Harajuku, she went along with it.

The approach to the painted wooden structure at Asakusa was lined with kiosks selling souvenir biscuits, miniature samurai swords and polyester silks, and, under the canopied bronze incense burner, people stood washing in the curling smoke. Cupped hands drew the incense silently over their faces and hands. It was, Hana supposed, as effective as any purification for the soul, and she wanted to try it, wafting trails of incense across the air, following the contours of her upper body. Jess could not be persuaded to join in and they left the main complex to skirt the site for the teahouse.

Their hands traced the brushwood fence tied with origami prayers and tagged wind chimes sang as they passed. Before they reached the teahouse, they came across a forest of little statues lining the path, no more than a foot high, constructed from stones, each wearing startling scraps of red cloth, tied as bibs. Hana called to Jess for an explanation.

‘Those—’ Jess threw out as she marched on ‘—they’re Jizo.’

Hana waited for more.

‘For the God of little ones. Any who died in childhood or were Unborn.’

It was unsettling. Futile rags on petrified stones. And they walked on.

Finally Jess stopped. Opening her arms to a building rising up in front of them: a red pagoda with storied eaves like the exposed ribs of a musical instrument. As if the chimes they had heard along the way emanated from this enormous child’s rattle.

‘Chashitsu. The teahouse,’ Jess said with a flourish, making the pronouncement as if she had guided Hana to the very heart of her pilgrimage. She watched Hana carefully for her reaction but her rapt face changed suddenly.

‘Well, this isn’t it,’ Hana was obliged to point out. ‘A world-famous temple?’ she added crossly.

‘Yes, but the style …’ Jess’s confidence faded. It was a reference and weren’t they out looking for references? Wasn’t this why they had come to the garish, red, Buddhist temple in the first place?