26 posts tagged “fiction”

Chapter 4, page 12.

    Crisis was packed. The bar had apparently gone through another redecoration since the last time they’d been there, and now the joint totally lost its original, dark and futuristic taste and was settling in to a slightly retro, silver and shiny Scarface type interior. Even the African bouncers manning the entrance were wearing silver uniforms that screamed Disco Age, and they didn’t seem too comfortable in those. David thought their customary frown was deeper than was usual.

It wasn’t really giving out the hip aura at the time when Grunge still had its vibe going around the world, although in a certain way, the design predicted the comeback of the 1980s fashion in the next century. Good news was, the new design seemed to have the effect of chasing off the American soldiers on leave from the bar. That meant no fist fights, no switchblades, and no raping local girls in the bathroom.

               “This place is getting uglier and uglier,” Tim said as they forced their way back with their drinks through the crowd gathering in front of the counter, each on of them waving a 1,000 Yen bill and trying to catch the bartender’s attention.

              “Wait till they do another redecoration.”

              David sipped some of his Moscow Mule and looked around. Naturally there was no place for them to sit down.

Chapter 4, page 9.

              “I used to own a Free BSD machine back when I was in San Diego.”

              “No shit? What happened to it?”

              “Sold it to a friend before I came here. I was gonna learn C language and all that.”

              “Did you?”

              “Only the basics.”

              Tim nodded and took a big swing from his can.

              “Tim, there’s something I'd like to know.”

              “Shoot.”

              “I’d be bringing girls home.”

              “Right.”

              “That may happen quite often.”

              “So?”

              “Would that be a problem?”

              Tim looked into the air and pondered the question as though David just asked something profoundly philosophical. David waited for Tim’s brain to finish the analysis.

              “I don’t think so,” Tim finally said, “As long as you try to, ah, keep the noise down a bit. Though that won’t really be an issue. I’m usually wearing my headphones at night in my room.”

              “You listen to music with headphones?”

              “I play games on my PC with headphones. Speaking of games, do you like PlayStation?”

               “I don’t hate it.”

              “Good answer. I’ve just got a pretty cool game second-hand. Let me show you.”

              With that note Tim headed to the couch, relocated Akira manga book on to the floor, turned on TV, sat down, put the beer can down on the floor, and picked up the controller.

              “Hey, check this out.”

              David walked over, took a seat on the other end of the couch as Tim hit the Power button on PlayStation with his toe.

              It’s gonna be a while before I leave this place, David thought.

Chapter 4, page 8. Damn, no AdSense today...

              Tim made a gun with his thumb and index finger, and shot David with it.

              “Now you are talking.”

              David took another sip of Asahi and looked around. The living room was spacious in Japanese standard, especially considering the fact that the building was inside of fifteen minutes’ walking distance from Ikebukuro station. Small kitchen faced the bathroom, and beyond it there was a couch in front of TV, with VCR and PlayStation connected to it. David made out a volume of an Akira manga series left on the couch.

              “I should show you the room,” Tim said, and beckoned David to follow. Two rooms were separated from the living room by sliding doors. Tim slid one open. David poked his head in. The room was furnished with Tatami mattress, looked spacious without a bed, had an Oshiire storage partitioned off with the Shoji sliding door. Electric bulb hanging from the ceiling was shrouded in white plastic casing instead of paper.

              “What do you think?”

              “Looks okay.”

              “You know it won’t look this spacious if you move in with your stuff.”

              “I know. What happened to the former resident?”

              “Moved out so he can live with his Japanese girlfriend.”

              “Typical.”

              “So typical. Mine’s a whole mess. I’ve got two PCs in there that I’ve built myself.”

              “Oh yeah?”

              “Yep. One’s running Windows 98, you know the typical stuff, though I’ve got Voodoo SLI installed in it so the video part’s pretty cool. It’s my gaming machine. And the other one’s running Linux.”

Chapter 4, page 4.

               By the time his seventh attempt to sneak back in to his dorm room with a girl failed one night, partly because of the tight security and surveillance protocol implemented by Ishida-san, and partly because of the state of their drunkenness that kept them from making a silent entry, David was starting to realize the mercifully cheap rent for the facility had its downsides as well.

              “Share sought,” the ad he’d put under Place Wanted section in Tokyo Classified said, “neat, non-smoking and responsible male American student seeks an apartment within 30 minutes commuting radius of Yotsuya or Ichigaya.”

              One response to the ad stood out among the others he got in his Hotmail account, mostly stating the size and condition of the room, the rent price, and what kind of person was ideal as a roommate.

              “You are full of shit,” this particular response said, “there’s no such thing as a neat and responsible male American student in entire Tokyo. If you truly are, you won’t qualify as my roommate. If it’s an official, Tatemae line where you should have said, I’m a lazy, irresponsible asshole whose main activity in classrooms is think about parties and chicks, then maybe we can talk.”

              David was clicking Reply before he knew it.

Chapter 4, page 2. Thrid Reich films on DVD are back on the AdSense...

             It didn’t take long for him to find out he could go through most of the daily life situations with English, and several set phrases in Japanese. He spent his first two weeks in the city before the classes started just moving around, fascinated by the delicate and unpredictable balance it seemed to be achieving between the tradition and the hypermodern. He would admire the sight of a small temple in the shadow of a skyscraper, its façade almost fading away from the scenery to be put in between a wall of vending machines and a customary convenience store.

The torrent of neon signs left him dizzy, and he discovered what they meant by ‘crowded’ was radically different from what he had in mind growing up in California, watching the Japan Railway employees literally pushing people into the Yamanote train at the morning rush hour.

              Then, like everybody else who would spend some time in Tokyo, he’d learned to pick up an English free paper called Tokyo Classified every week. In there he found a few advertisements for English teaching position openings. All three of the language schools got back to him. He picked an institution that sent native English teachers to the companies to hold after-work English classes in their conference rooms. The job had the advantage of having only to teach in the evenings- unlike private language schools, where morning and afternoon classes were also very popular and had high demands for teachers. Teaching English at companies was a very lucrative job for a student, and he wouldn’t complain about the tediousness of teaching the basic phrases over and over again.

              The first link in the chain of events that led David to meet Junko was the Terugadai dorm watchman named Ishida-san, and the no overnight visitors policy of the dorm. Ishida-san had retired from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department ten years ago, and had tendency to be overly square especially when it came to what he called “impure boy-girl communication”.

Chapter 4, page 1. Who else has "6th Grade Literature" and "Bollywood Online" on one AdSense page??

For a while David had been thinking of studying abroad for a year after his college graduation, partly to see the world and build some useful contacts for the future, but mostly to have more fun before settling down to the corporate life. Having cast off the confusion of growing up in a single mother family by his high school graduation, David was in the thick of the time in his life when his longing for one true romance was blurred by the urge of his youth to leave his signature on every tale of love, carnal or otherwise, but mostly carnal. He had no idea what impact his casual choice would have on the course of his life.

               He tossed a coin over Spain and Japan- the pick having been made according to the image he had of the girls from these countries- and the tail sent him buying a plane ticket to Tokyo out of his savings. He picked the university, applied for a dorm room, tried to read a few books on Japan, and watched a few Kurosawa movies and Japanimation films. By some stroke of luck he didn’t bother to check, even after he’d packed his things, the number of Chinese characters he needed to learn before he could make out even the basic sentences. He made the discovery when his plane was somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. By that time, it was too late to reconsider his decision.

Chapter 3, page 15. This has to do with "Psychoanalysis" and "Pictures of Wedding Cakes", accoding to AdSense.

             Junko was slightly hurt she didn’t seem to be invited to the club, and Kaori took it for granted she wouldn’t stay out all night, dancing and drinking. She could choose to do that on this Friday night, if someone asked, maybe just to know what it was like and if she liked it. How could she know, if she had never done that?

              “Come on, Junko. It’s gonna be fun. I know this bar called Crisis, it’s pretty crazy on weekends. It’s very safe. You’d see all kinds of people in there, it’s a lot of fun.”

              Junko then thought the plan did have a merit, if she would leave the scene and go home when this Paul guy showed up, she could still have time to watch the video in peace at night.

              “Well,” said Junko, “the bar sounds pretty interesting.”

              Kaori made a gesture of triumph like she’d just won a set in a tennis match.

              “Good. See you tonight then?”

              “Where?”

              “What about eight in front of Almond?”

              “Okay.”

              Kaori checked her Baby-G watch.

              “Oh, I’m late. Why am I always late? See you there, okay? I have to run!”

              With that note Kaori turned herself around, and dashed off to the general direction of the university athletic field. Seeing her off, Junko couldn’t help but feel some kind of envy to the fact that for someone like Kaori, the life comes as something so light, and so enjoyable.

Chapter 3, page 11.

In girl’s high school she found a relatively comfortable place for herself among the loosely connected group of students who loved books and movies. She also discovered the use of sex as a tool of revenge on men; she would go to the festivals of boys’ high schools near hers, look for athletic and handsome boys who seemed comfortable enough being around girls, and let them seduce her. For her, these boys had two advantages; they knew what to do in bed, and they wouldn’t go all needy and romantic, wanting to build a relationship afterwards. She was happy to see them go chasing other girls and never felt jealous to see them fooling around. It was her little payback on Japanese men in general, to use them, knowing full well they were too stupid to realize they were being taken advantage of.

              This Friday afternoon five years ago would find Junko coming out of a university classroom, not making any effort to kill her yawn. The nap she had enjoyed during the boring lecture was still hanging loose around her head. It was one of those classes that the students all took because their Sempais had told them that you could get the credit basically for just showing up. The senior students also relayed the information that the professor- a thin, elderly gentleman who manner of speech was so hypnotizing everyone was put to sleep inside of ten minutes since he started to talk- had amiable habit of informing the content of his final exam to the class two weeks in advance. You’d have to be a first-degree fool to fail in such an exam.

Chapter 3, page 8.

              Five days later a contents-certified mail found its way to their house, with signature of Kumiko’s and her lawyer’s, asking for a divorce. The return address was her parents’ house.

              Genzou flatly rejected, and demanded she be back immediately, where she belonged now.

              There was no answer for a week. Then Junko found another letter from the same address in the mailbox. It was from Kumiko’s father, apologizing to Genzou for causing such trouble to a renowned writer like himself, promising to talk sense back into her, but she just needed some time to be left alone now.

Genzou didn’t tell Junko immediately what happened to Kumiko after that. She found out from a small article on a newspaper, and a torrent of phone calls from the journalists that followed. They all wanted to know why Kumiko had hung herself. In that flash of a second her eyes caught the small headline, she knew her mother had lost the last place she thought she could hide and be safe, and that was the last push for her. Junko also thought it would be where she would end up one day as well, an invitingly open noose, through which she would be making her last statement one day, loud enough to compensate for every moment of silence and endurance she had been through.

              Before the media curiosity died down- Genzou’s refusal to attend her funeral didn’t help to quench their thirst- Junko had learned how to build a shelter around herself, keeping her vulnerable part in her heart intact from intrusive remarks and gossip-hungry looks of the neighbors and classmates, and just function through her days.

Chapter 3, page 6.
 

            On that evening, Genzou sat on the Zabuton cushion at the head of the long table at seven sharp as always, found something unusual among the dishes and picked up the note. There was no visible indication of any emotion on his face as he read it, put it inside of his kimono, and took up his rice bowl and started to eat.

              “Where’s mother?” Junko asked.

              “She’s gone,” was his answer. He didn’t look up from the bowl.

              “What do you mean gone? Has she gone out to buy something?”

              “She’s gone. She’s not coming back. That stupid woman doesn’t know her place. Eat your dinner before Miso-soup gets cold.”

              Junko automatically took up the bowl of Miso-soup, but sudden rush of panic was so strong she found hard even to pretend to be eating. The living room was designed in the era when the family supper usually meant at least ten people present, and it felt even more spacious without Kumiko there taking care of things.

There were a line of black and white pictures of Genzou’s ancestors, hanging from the walls, looking down on the dinner table. The place where they used to hang up the picture of Meiji Emperor was left empty, with the slight trace of dust indicating its absence.