Memoirs of a Riceball

Christmas Memory

2010-12-25T10:18:00.009-05:00

I haven't seen my daughter in a while--has it really been more than 10 years? I wrote about her a few years ago in an earlier post and am not inclined to write about our situation. To be honest, I'm not even sure there's a situation to write about anymore. But I do have memories and I thought I'd write about one that I recalled recently when talking to friends about Christmas.

Back in December of 1991, when I was in Japan for my dissertation research, my daughter, K, had serious doubts about Santa coming to visit our home. In the States, before we had gone to Japan, K spent her first three Christmases at my parents' house where there was a seven-foot Christmas tree set up in the living room near the fireplace. But in Japan, most houses--let alone condos--are small and do not have fireplaces. There is also little room for a ceiling high Douglas fir or Scotch pine, which they don't sell in Japan anyway. In our small, modest abode, we had a small artificial tree--the kind you'd see on a counter at a business office. This was the norm in most Japanese homes.

Well, you can imagine K's skepticism. She wanted a bicycle for Christmas and even wrote a letter to Santa asking for one, but was unsure about delivery of such a large present. It would be difficult enough for Santa to bring a bike down a real chimney. "How could he deliver a present to a house without a fireplace?" she'd ask.

"Good question," I'd say shrugging my shoulders.

"He couldn't get through the mail slot in the door, right?" I had to agree. She even glanced at the vent over stove. But then she looked back at me, and we shook are head in unison: "No way."

Of course, being the devious father that I was, I was simply setting up my daughter for the Christmas surprise.

I should note that K did not doubt the existence of Santa; she just couldn't figure out how Santa could get into our home. As for me, by sharing in K's skepticism, I had removed myself as a suspect in any phony Santa charade. If K did get the present she wanted, it could only have come from the real Santa, not the dad who seemed to doubt Santa could actually fit through a mail slot. So I bought a bicycle and kept it hidden in its box unassembled until...

Christmas eve: I told K to set out some milk and a cookie, "Just in case." K was still doubtful. "Do you really think he can come here?" she asked over and over. But she must have held out a sliver of hope because she set the treats with care on a table next to the mini-Christmas tree. By 9 PM, K was fast asleep, undoubtedly exhausted from all the hoping.

I assembled the shiny red bike, attached the training wheels and headlight, and placed it next to the table next to the mini-Christmas tree. I am no mechanical engineer so assembling it took me more effort than I want to admit, but I did an adequate job, accomplished after some trial and error over the course of a couple of hours. I set the bike next to the mini-tree and, exhausted, plopped down next to the table. I took a small bite out of a cookie on the table and attempted to wash it down with a sip from the glass of milk next to it, a mouthful of which brought me to my senses. "Oh crap," I muttered. I'm lactose intolerant, you see, so I went to the sink, spit out what I could and rinsed my mouth with water. Without a thought of what I had left behind on the table, I trudged off to bed and fell asleep worrying that I'd get a stomach ache from the milk.

And then I woke up with a sudden pain in my stomach. "Oh crap," I muttered again. But when I opened my eyes, I realized that the pain in my stomach was not from the milk. K was straddling my stomach, jumping up and down. With both hands, she grabbed a fistful of my T-shirt and was shaking me fiercely. "He came! He came!" she screamed. What are you talking about? I was so groggy, I don't remember if I said that or was just thinking it. But it didn't matter. K quickly jumped off and ran out of the bedroom still screaming. She returned in a flash.

"Dad! Dad! Come and see!" she commanded from the door.

"Who came?" I asked still trying to get my bearings.

"SANTA!" she screamed in that high-pitched voice that only a four-year-old girl can muster.

Ah, the bicycle, I smiled. When I entered the living room, she was sitting on the bike pretending to pedal it.

"Wow, did Santa really bring you this?"

"Yes!" she said beaming. "I know for sure he did."

"Oh? And how do you know that?"

"Look!" she said.

I moved to where her finger pointed and, sure enough, there was a half-filled glass of milk and a half-eaten cookie. K jumped off the bike and scooted over next to me. "Look at that," she said outlining with her fingertips a jagged semi-circle in the cookie. "You see that? Those are Santa's teeth marks."

My eyes widened as I slowly recalled the sequence of events that led to K's discovery. But all I could do was smile and nod in acknowledgment. Who was I to question such irrefutable proof of Santa's visit?

Being a Dad

2010-12-25T07:09:00.004-05:00

[Originally posted Saturday, 05 June 2004; edited 2010.12.25]

I have one daughter who I'll call K. Although a bit headstrong and stubborn, taking after her father--this, according to her mother (ex-wife)--she is a good kid, which I attribute to solid rearing at a young age. She was born at Stanford and she was a talkative child from the start. Before K was born, I would talk to her through my ex-wife's stomach every chance I got, telling her how much I loved her, where I would take her and what we'd do once she was born. When she was born (Caesariean section), the doctor immediately showed her to mother and father--I was in the operating room, as well--and I said, "Hi K!" She opened her eyes and looked right at me as if she recognized the voice. The anesthesiologist monitoring the procedure and the nurse monitoring her mother were surprised, saying that it was as unusual a reaction as they had ever seen. But I could guess why. K had joined the world of the talker to whom she had been listening for nine months and she wanted to talk back. And once she did start talking, she wouldn't.

At Stanford, her mother and I would talk to her in a mixture of Japanese and English and she would understand everything we said, as kids will, but she would only talk in English as that was her environment. At day care, she was a leader--as many talkers are--and never took shit from anyone. One overweight kid had to learn this the hard way. He would take whatever toys he wanted, pushing aside anyone in his way. All the other kids would give in to this bully, but K--all of 18 months old--finally fed up with his antics, bit his cheek as they struggled for a toy. Oh, he cried and cried. When I went to pick her up after school, I was confronted by two very upset Jewish parents. They were coddling there precious bully and they showed me his cheek. Clear teeth marks remained embedded on his cheek. K had bitten hard enough to cause pain and leave an indentation that lasted a few hours, but not enough to break skin. What control! I was a bit worried, because the parents were threatening to sue. I apologized to them, but the teacher told me privately that K had done what every other kid wanted to do--even the teacher--but could not, so if they tried to pursue legal action, they would stand up for K. When I got home, I gave K a quiet but firm talking to: I told her that she stood up for herself and that was a good thing, but she should not have resorted to violence. Then I gave her a hug. What I really wanted to do was give her a high five, but she would not have understood that particular action.

When K was three years old, we went to Japan for my dissertation research and she had trouble adjusting. She was thrown into a world where suddenly she could no longer communicate. She could understand what others were saying to her, but she could only express herself in English, so she basically shut up in front of strangers. We enrolled her in daycare, where she was "semi-introverted": She got along well enough with everyone as long as she didn't have to speak. Then one day, about three months into daycare, as the class sang a song, she suddenly chimed in with the loudest voice: O te-te, tsunaide... According to the teachers, it was a wonderful moment they had been wishing for. Unfortunately, they did not know the concept of being careful of what you wish for. Once K knew that others could understand her, she wouldn't stop communicating.

Once, the class went on a field trip to Mt. Takao. One of the kids was handicapped, had trouble keeping up with the class and was trying desperately to hold back her tears. As they headed toward the picnic area for lunch, one of the teachers noticed that K was not with the group. Two of the teachers were about to go look for her, when K popped out of a wooded area with a bunch of flowers in her hand. The teachers were ready to admonish her for breaking away from the group and going off by herself--how un-Japanese!--but she walked right passed them straight to the handicapped girl, gave her the flowers and told her to cheer up, that she'd stay with her for the rest of the trip. Which she did. When I went to pick her up at the end of the day, her teacher related the events of the field trip to me and at the end asked, "How are you raising your child?" This time, on the way home, I did give K a high five...

I have a bunch of other stories, but there are only 24 hours in a day... Anyway, since I returned to the US, she has been reluctant to visit me--I get the sense that she thinks I abandoned them. But in my own defense, I would say that I believed that when we first went to Japan, the family would eventually return to the States when I got a job to teach. But when I got that job, my ex--a Japanese national--suddenly decided that she wanted to remain in Japan. There are a lot of details that I will not bring up here--marriages can be so complicated--but in the end, had my ex been willing to come as I thought we had originally planned, we probably would not have gotten a divorce. But we did and, as a result, I do not get a chance to see my daughter. I email when I can, but I haven't seen her since the summer of 1999. Since I remarried, I have been unable to go to Japan for variou$ reason$, and every year I ask K if she won't come visit me for the summer, but she flatly refuses. For the first nine years of her life, we were very close--she used tell everyone that I was the scariest (I'm strict) and nicest (we did everything together) dad in the world. I wonder what she says now. I hope that someday we can talk about what happened and that she will forgive me for not being with her for that last eight years.

The American Who Could Speak English

2009-09-27T18:53:00.005-04:00

[Originally posted May 21, 2004; edited 2010.12.12]

I've lived many years in Japan and I fancy myself an adequate teacher of Japanese Language and Lit, but I was born and raised in SoCal, and did not learn to speak Japanese until I was an adult. My first language, my mother tongue, is English. But I have worked hard to learn Japanese and depending on who you talk to, my Japanese is considered near native...

Or not...

I find now that the longer I live in the States, the more my linguistic abilities falter. I speak Japanese at home with M, but the topics are usually limited to domestic issues and I have little opportunity to expand my vocabulary, so I read a lot... well, not a lot, but enough. But when I lived in Japan, my speaking was near-native by most accounts. Indeed, when I worked at a think tank in Tokyo, my boss accepted me as another Japanese worker and occasionally introduced me to others as the American who could speak English. This sounds strange, I know, but it was, I think, a compliment, albeit an awkward one. Not only did I look Japanese, my Japanese language skills were such that he could accept me as an equal, and since many Japanese still struggle with English, my English ability--for a Japanese speaker--was remarkable.

Anyway, the first time I lived in Japan for an extended period was in 1984. I studied at Waseda for a year under a Mombusho grant and also earned some extra cash teaching English, as many of us foreign students are wont to do. But these jobs were not always easy to get because I did not fit the profile of an English teacher: I had neither blue eyes nor blonde hair. But before you rant about the Japanese, remember that the same phenomenon manifests itself here in the US. When I was teaching at UCLA, students who had a white TA would often come to me to confirm what they had learned because, I guess, I should know better, since I looked Japanese. Of course, I didn't know better.

But I digress...

Once, I was going to work at Fujitsu Corp. in Hino City to teach another not-so-interesting English class to a not-so-eager group of engineers. I took the train from Waseda--Tōzai line--and switched to the Chūō line at Nakano. From there I took the express to Toyoda, a station between Tachikawa and Hachiōji. I was standing near a door of a sparsely populated car staring at the sprawling towns as they passed by: Kōenji, Ogikubo, Kichijōji, Mitaka. Each station had a cluster of retail stores surrounding it, but the area between stations was one vast suburb of two story houses packed closely together. Staring vacantly at the sprawling sameness, I realized that virtually every house was white with blue tile roofing. Each had a white wall or wall of shrubbery surrounding the house which barely separated them from their neighbors with whom they lived shoulder to shoulder. Whether I was looking at the homes squeezed in between the stations of Asagaya and Kōenji or between Nishiogi and Kichijōji, they were all the same. On the train next to me, staring at the same expanse of undistinguished homes, was an elementary school kid who must have been around 9 or 10 years-old, easily identified by his ransel--the leather book bag all elementary school kids carry. I don't know if he was as bored as I was, but his gaze looked as vacant as I felt.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the conductor enter the car to check everyone's ticket to make sure that everyone had the proper fare. Sitting on the bench were two Americans--tourists by the look of their backpacks--chatting calmly. The conductor reached them and asked for their tickets using made-up sign language. Apparently, their fare was insufficient, and he tried to explain that they needed to pay him the appropriate fare. But the two Americans did not understand. What's wrong? What do we need to do? Do you speak English? The conductor began to get flustered, and resorted to speaking Japanese slowly and clearly, as if this technique would somehow break the language barrier. Of course, the Americans continued to be lost, so in the name of civic duty--but really to break the monotony of a long train ride--I walked over and acted as interpreter. I explained the situation, the Americans forked over the money they owed, and the conductor, relieved, thanked them.

And me.

I bowed my head slightly in acknowledgment and walked back to my spot by the door. The elementary school student stood there, staring up at me, apparently as happy as I was for the distraction.

"Wow, that was cool. Your English is really good," he said in awe.

I looked at him and smiled.

"Well, I studied hard," I said in a tone my current students would instantly recognize. "If you study hard, you can speak English, too."

He nodded earnestly, and we resumed gazing at the dark-blue tiled roofs passing by the window. Today, that kid would be about 30. I wonder if he ever became a Japanese who could speak English?

Earthquake! A story I rarely tell...

2009-07-15T04:38:00.001-04:00

[From July 2008] Yesterday, the LA area was hit by an earthquake. I haven't experienced one in a long time, and the 5.4 magnitude would seem to be strong enough to scare many, but it wouldn't cause much damage except to old structures and outdated infrastructure. Indeed, except for the items falling off store shelves, the damage I saw on TV was mostly limited to old unreinforced brick walls and the water lines in older areas in town, like City Terrace. I'm not trying to make light of the situation. I'm just glad that nothing catastrophic happened.

Born and raised in California, I have had my share of earth moving experiences. The first big one I felt was the Sylmar earthquake of 1971, which was a 6.6 magnitude jolt. It woke me from bed and many things from my shelf fell to the floor. We called school and good ol' Loyola High School said there would be classes as scheduled, but when I got there I was told to go home as they found cracks all over the old main building and city engineers needed to inspect the building before they'd allow anyone in it. Finally, our tax dollars at work, my dad had said.

I also lived through the big one in San Fransisco. Actually, the epicenter was closer to Santa Cruz and is known as the Loma Prieta Quake. This is closer to where I was at Stanford, and it was humungous. My then-wife had gone the pick up our daughter from daycare when the 7.1 quake struck and she told me that cars parked on the street literally rose and fell in waves. My sister lived in the Divisadero section of San Fransisco, a landfill area created for the 1915 World's Fair. As you probably know, landfill reacts like quicksand in a major earthquake and many of the homes in the area were utterly destroyed. I went to pick up my sister and it looked like a war zone. I remember going with her to an evacuation center at a local elementary school to find out the status of her flat. We walked over the sidewalk that had buckled everywhere, and walked by classrooms in which the elderly apparently in shock were lying in army cots or sitting, eating bologna sandwiches distributed by the Red Cross. My sister received a yellow card, meaning that the status of her building had yet to be determined--this was three days after the quake. Fortunately, her apartment was deemed safe, but it took three weeks until she was finally able to move back in, and even then she had no water and electricity.

As for me? Well, you sports fans will remember that it was the opening day of the World Series and I was getting ready to watch the first pitch. I had the beer chilled, and got the chips out. And not wanting to have to run to the bathroom between innings, I decided to take a dump right before the game. So there I was, sitting on the can on the second floor of our student housing residence--it was like a mini-faux-townhouse--and the place jumped up and down with a jolt, then started rocking left and right. Not to get detailed, but I was only halfway finished and I didn't know what the fuck to do. I heard books falling and dishes crashing to the floor--Shit! Was that the Doritos?!?. I opened the door to the bathroom and from the throne, I could see the ceiling lamp that hung above the staircase landing swinging like a pendulum in a 90 degree arc. I was in panic mode, trying to think of a course of action--What should I do!--but all I could do was think, Fuck. Is this how I'm gonna die? Taking a shit? They're gonna dig through the rubble and find my body with my pants bunched around my ankles?!? Fuck, what a way to die!

Then it stopped. The walls did not come tumbling down. The floor did not collapse. And I survived with my dignity intact: Ass wiped, pants pulled up. Whew!

FYI: I often embellish my personal stories for "dramatic" (read: humorous) effect but this story is pretty much exactly as I remember it.

Unexpected encounters

2008-07-27T06:24:00.003-04:00

Have you ever encountered someone you haven't seen in a while at the most unexpected place? When M came home from Japan last month, she ran into the grandmother of one of students/clients at Narita airport. Actually, she didn't really run into her. M had forgotten to fill out some kind of form for the ANA and they had been paging her throughout the airport. Apparently the grandmother heard the name and deduced that they were going to be on the same plane home. Can you imagine M's surprise when the grandmother came up to her in flight? Hi. Long time no see. I'm the kind who would have freaked out.

This seems to occur frequently within the "Japan" community--and probably in other Asian communities as well? I don't necessarily mean Japanese Americans either. I have had students--who are not necessarily of Japanese heritage--who have met classmates randomly in Roppongi or Ginza in Tokyo. I met a student of mine from UCLA at a hardware store in Tokyo once. That was really weird. I even met a former elementary school-mate and boy scout patrol member on a bus in Mitaka. It was was really random so we celebrated by doing what most people do in Japan when they meet an old buddy: Get shit faced.

I had gone to visit a girl I used to date in Mitaka--near Kichijouchi--but she wasn't home so felt rather rather sad. As I sat in the bus to the station on my way home, some called to me in English.

"Ray? Is that you?"

"JU? Woah1 What are you doing here?"

"I'm a ryuakusei at ICU."

"Man, I haven't seen you since when? Boy scouts? Karate?"

"About six years, I guess, huh."

"Man, no shit." Kinda lonely about not being able to see an old flame, I thought it would be fun to hang with JU, who was a couple of years younger than me. He was in the same patrol--the Firebirds--in our Boy Scout troop and we also took Shotokan Karate together at our church. "So what you doing now? Got a date? Going to work?"

"No, I was just going to go to the station and do some shopping."

"Screw that. Let's go to Shinjuku and get a drink. My treat."

"Yeah, alright!"

Well, we went to Shinjuku and work our way to Takadanobaba, and found a small dive outside the station. We ate lightly but imbibed rather heavily in o-sake. I think we finished more than a bottle (one bottle = 1.8 liters)... I think. I don't really remember much after reaching the bottom of the first bottle. What I do recall is paying 18,000 yen--pretty hefty for 24 years ago--and helping my friend throw up onto the tracks from the platform of the Chuo line. I sorta recall being warned by someone to take care of him as he seemed pretty bad off. I was pretty drunk, but I guess I can "appear" more sober... Anyway, I couldn't send him back to school in this condition, so I brought him home... much to the displeasure of my cousin. Hahaha. He was really put out. Alvin is a really square dude; naive as naive gets--even in Tokyo--and he couldn't wait to call Australia to report to my grandparents. All i could do was put my friend in a futon and let him sleep it off. Next morning, I wake up to find my cousin gone to school. I wake up with JU and he's still groggy as hell, but he insisted that he had to go back to school, so I went with him as far as Mitaka Station to make sure he got on the right bus.

But the funniest random meeting I know didn't involve me. Well, at least not directly.

Back in 1972, my grandparents informed my mother that they were willing to have me come to Japan for the first time in an attempt to nurture a relationship that was on again, off again, due to the physical distance between us. Back in the 1970s, going to and from Japan was not an inexpensive journey, and my siblings and I rarely saw our grandparents. In fact, the first and only time I had seen them until I became an adult was in the summer of 1968, when I was 12 years old, in Zurich, of all places. But in the summer of 1972, I had already been working at a Japanese confectionary in J-Town for about two months, and I enjoyed it so much that I didn't want to quit. I convinced my mother that my sister should go in my stead and that, in fact, she was the better candidate to "meet the grandparents" as she was much more studious and therefore more highly valued as a grandchild in the eyes of the grandparents. My mother bought into it, and I was free to continue my adventure in J-Town enveloped in an excitingly new environment at a Japanese confectionary shop, the place where I first started to break out of my Good Lil' Oriental Boy shell and learned that I didn't have to live up to the expectations of my parents and my JA school/church circles, a process that I detail in a rather long yet still incomplete autobiography-post. One person I got to know at the sweet shop was SJK, a guy who didn't even work there.

I used to work six days a week after school, 5 PM to 9 PM, 10 PM on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and SJK used to drop by the store almost everyday after his work at some government job. He usually arrived having already had a drink or two at a bar near his office, then moseying on down to J-Town around 6-ish after the day crew had gone home. The first few times I saw him, I couldn't figure out who he was. He'd just walk in and say "Hi," sit at the soda counter with his half-lit cigar and start reading the newspaper or commence small talk with the owner, Mrs. H, or my work colleague, Billy. Nobody bothered to introduce me to him; he just seemed to be an evening fixture--the counter glass gets wiped down, the store front lights get turned on, and SJK walks in to visit. As the new guy on the job, it wasn't my place to inquire in depth or detail, but after a whle SJK revealed enough of himself for me to piece together who he was.

SJK was a nisei who spoke Japanese relatively fluently--bera bera as he would say--and served in the 442 during World War II. He was a medic and used to tell me how he hated it, because he always felt like the red cross on his helmet was a bull's eye. He enjoyed drinking in the neighborhood which he did virtually every weekday night before he came to the store and after he left around 7 PM. He was very familiar with Mrs. H, her daughter, KZ (the legal owner), and nephew, Mikey. He was very familiar with Mrs. H and her daughter, KZ, and nephew, Mikey, but I am to this day uncertain of how his relationship with the sweet shop started.

Over the years, I got to know him fairly well. Indeed, he was one of my more corrupting influences--mind you, I mean that in the most affectionate of terms. He would occasionally take me to his favorite watering hole, the bar at Horikawa Restaurant. Over Jack Daniels on the rocks with a glass of water, he would talk about girls, his work sometimes, then more about girls and finally about girls. He loved women but was not married and proud of it. He told me once that he'd never get married because, as he put it, "That'd be stupid." He had his friends and his bourbon and he needed little else. He would often bitch about how the bar girls at Eigiku or Kawafuku would get too cozy in and attempt to sweet talk him into leaving large tips, but if you saw him at the bars, you'd never kow that he had any complaints. He'd be talking with them, laughing and giggling until 9 PM, when poof he'd vanish. He had work early the next morning and would always leave promptly, although it took me a while to get used to his disappearing act. Unless you were a faithful drinking buddy of his--which we became after a few years--he would never tell you he was leaving. One minute he'd be there, the next he'd be gone.

But in the summer of 1972, I had not yet gotten to know him that well. All I knew was that he visited almost every evening to say "hi" before he went drinking around J-Town. Much to my chagrin, Billy decided to quit early in the summer--I had developed quite a crush on her and had been following her around the store like a puppy dog wagging its tail. But more seriously, summer was a busy stretch for the store--in J-Town, tourist season--so without my senpai (elder, more experienced work/classmate), I had to focus on learning my duties which involved, among other things, serving customers, stocking trays of rice cakes, mopping the floor and closing shop. It was not particularly hard work, and it did give me the glorious opportunity to learn Japanese. But it kept my attention from the more extraneous happenings around me. By August, I had learned the ropes fairly well, and was able to take care of business without supervision. I had become familiar with my fellow workers and the regular customers, and was able to tell the difference between them and the frequent visitors who just dropped by to chat. During this time, SJK's visits increasingly became infrequent. He told me that the tourist were hogging up all the prime bars stools--SJK rarely sat at a booth or table... come to think of it, neither do I. So he went drinking elsewhere with his buddies. By the time Nisei Week arrived in August, he had stopped coming completely.

I hardly noticed, the store was so busy.

Nisei Week was a large celebration for the Japanese American community that actually lasted two weeks. There were exhibitions and parties, as well as a Miss Nisei Week Pageant. The finale was a weekend carnival and on on the climactic Sunday, a parade featuring Obon dancing, JA pioneers, local politicians and of course Miss Nisei Week and her court. Parade day was so crowded, that you couldn't walk a straight line anywhere in town, and during the parade, the crowd on the sidewalk was so thick you could barely walk through--which actually gave us a break from making non-stop sno-cones. It was a pretty big deal for the community and the tourists flocked to J-Town, a few short blocks from downtown and the civic center. It was definitley good for for Japanese American pride and a sense of community, and it was certainly good for business in J-Town. But not for guys like SJK. It wasn't surprising I had not seen him at all during Nisei Week.

When things wound down a few days after the parade, my sister returned from Japan. I learned that I had made the right choice to stay in LA. Grandma is nice, but perhaps too unfamiliar with American kids. She was very controlling and demanding, and my sister rebelled in Japan. My mother was rather upset at the whole ordeal--which I hardly noticed since I was too involved in my first part time job--and my sister ended up spending quite a bit of her time with our aunt in Hiroshima rather than with grandma in Tokyo. Sis discussed in detail the horrific standards and demands placed on her and I felt like I had dodged a bullet--I was a young seventeen and rarin' to learn to be my own person, away from the demands of my own parents and the enormous expectations on a good little Japanese American boy. I certainly didn't need to be with Grandma. But after Sis gave me the lowdown, she changed the topic and told me of someone she met on the plane who knew me.

"Me? You met someone who knows me?!?"

"Yeah, a Japanese guy was sitting next to me. He started drinking and was talking to me, asking me questions about what I do and where I live. He asked me if I go to J-town, and I said 'no' of course, but I said you worked there. He asked where, and I said at the sweet shop, and he said he went there all the time, and that he knew you. It was kind of creepy, like he was trying to pick me up."

I thought about my friends who might have gone to Japan but couldn't think of anyone, let alone someone old enough to drink. "I don't know anyone who went to Japan."

"He said he knows you really well."

"By name?"

"Yeah."

I swore I didn't know who she was talking about. I kept thinking that it was some random dude, maybe? A customer, maybe? I had no idea, but my sister was not attacked and she did not seem particualrly traumatized by the encoutner so I left it at that. The next day I went to work and around 6 PM, SJK walks in for the first time in a long time, sits at the soda fountain counter and points his cigar at me.

"Hey, Ray, your sister's pretty good looking. What happened to you?"

I learned that SJK went to Japan annually to see his relatives in Hiroshima. According to Mrs. H, he went every August for a couple of weeks, right during Nisei Week. Did someone not think to tell me this? Not that it would have done any good. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Tell my sister to avoid being assigned a seat next to someone who drinks Jack Daniels on her flight back from Japan? Seriously, what were the odds of that happening?

The scar on my cornea

2008-07-04T01:04:00.005-04:00

Memory is imperfect and totally unreliable, but the following is a recollection of a particular issue I have with my vision: The scar on the cornea of my right eye. There are photos of me when I was around 5 years old with my right eye patched up with gauze. I vaguely remembered--and I later verified this with my mother--that the eye was suffering from an infection, and I had to wash out my eye two or three times a day. Mom would pour a solution into an eye cup, after which I would face down to place my eye socket onto it and then while holding the cup tightly to my face look upward blinking two or three times as the solution bathed my eye. I hated this ritual, which is probably why I remembered it.

Fast forward 12 years...

One day in the summer of 1973--those glorious days of high school when I was basking in my new found independence and stupidity--I was returning from the beach with my girlfriend, Aileen, when suddenly I realized that I was seeing double. I would see two sets of railroad tracks but would only feel one set as I drove over them. For three days, my vision was strangely blurred. I hoped that it would just pass, but when it didn't I finally screwed up the courage to see an opthamologist. After a battery of tests, they determined that my vision problem was based on a small scar on my eye. He showed me a blown up photo and pointed out a small imperfection. He said it was smaller than a grain of sand, but that was enough to refract light in a way that would blur my vision. He asked me if I had injured my eye, but when I told him I didn't, he told me that it was probably the result of an infection when I was younger. When I got home, I recalled the eye patch and the eye baths when I was kid. I pulled out old photos and showed them to mother, which is when she confirmed the infection for me.

So this is the cause, I thought. But the sad thing of this predicament was that the scar was not curable. Perhaps, if laser technology was as it is today, then I may have been able to do something about it. But back then, it was what it was, and you learn to live with scars and injuries. Besides, after a week or so, my vision seemed to revert to normal. I thought it had healed itself, as any scar would heal, and I continued on with my merry summer of '73.

But life, as I was to learn, was neither so simple nor forgiving.

A few years later, I began to notice that I had trouble gauging depth. I had knocked over more than a couple of beers, but I attributed this clumsiness to being drunk. I mean, what else would I attribute it to? Then one day I went to Westwood to see a movie with two of my buddies, Cary and Sam. We were a little early and so we were strolling around the shops and small malls. At one point, we were going to leaving a shopping area that was on the second level. I strode forward and found myself tumbling down a short flight of brick steps. My friends rushed to my side.

"Ray, you okay?" They asked as they helped me get up. "What happened?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm okay." I assured them as I brushed myself off. But when I looked up I was shocked. "Steps?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I fell down these steps? I don't get it. I could have sworn it was a ramp."

"Dude, if that's a ramp..." But before Sam could finish his sentence, I went up the steps down which I had stumbled. I had to see again what I thought I saw. When I reached the top of the steps, I looked down and in front of me--Huh?--was a short flight of about 5 steps. I don't get it, I said again to myself. I swear I saw a ramp. But when I took astep side ways toward the center, the steps magically turned into a ramp. "Woah!"

"Woah, what?" Cary asked.

"Shit, you know these stairs? If you stand right in the middle, the lines kinda blend together and they don't look like steps anymore."

As Cary and Sam came up to see for themselves, I explained to them that from this particular point of view, the vertical space between the bricks looked like one continuous line making the steps look flat, and thereby appearing like a ramp. But when my buddies stood next to me, they laughed.

"Have you been drinking already? These look like steps to me, no matter where you look from."

"No, seriously. Stand in the middle. Doesn't it look like a ramp?" I said flustered. How could they not see it?

"Ray, the only way this is going to look like a ramp is if it was a 2-D picture."

A wave of events suddenly washed over me, blending together in a very intertextual manner--irreparable scar on cornea, the belief that the scars had healed, knocking over glasses of beer and now this. Was I perceiving the world in two dimension? Was I looking with only one eye? Leave it to my friends to help me put things in perspective, even if it was only a two dimensional one.

With this new insight, I began to figure things out. I fell down the steps at dusk when there are no real shadows. I had knocked over beers only at bars where the light was dim. Did that mean, perhaps, that during the day I would consider other factors unconsciously to calculate distance? The shadow of the can of beer is three inches, and the can itself is five inches, A² + B² = C². Ah, Pythagoras, who knew! I also began to think that some of my other senses were heightened. I have always been able to hear things that others could not--In a car with the stereo up high, I always heard a siren well before other passengers. My olfactory senses seemed pretty sharp even though I was a smoker. I mean, I could smell rain before it actually did--I learned later that it wasn't really rain, but bacterial spores that are emitted after a long dry spell--not an unusual situation in LA--when the humidity rises right before it rains. Or something like that. But the point being, I could smell things others seemed to miss.

More importantly, I realized that my brain was playing tricks on me. I went to the optometrist to get new glasses soon after. They took photos of my eyes and they asked me if I knew that I had a scar on my cornea.

"Yes, I found out a few years ago."

"Do you not have trouble seeing? It's the size of a poppy seed."

Now what the heck would an optometrist know about poppy seeds? I thought for a moment but was soon overcome by the realization that the scar had grown from a grain of sand to a poppy seed. Oh crap. I am seeing the world in two dimension. But what intrigued me most is that I had not even realized it. My brain would take into account any and all sensory information, then adjust my 2-D world into a 3-D one. The only time it would fail me, I deduced through my own--albeit unscientific--observations, was when I didn't have enough information, like when there were no shadows to measure. Or when I had headphones on and could not hear other sounds.

Or when I watched 3-D movies?

Back in 1973, I went to see Andy Warhol's Frankenstein in 3D with Aileen, Diddly and his girlfriend. It was relatively amusing to watch a tree pass by right in front of your face, and body parts jump off the screen. Well, amusing enough for a 17 year-old. But 16 years later, I went to Disneyland in LA and went on the ride, Michael Jackson's Captain Eo. This too was in 3D. I didn't really notice much in terms of the 3D effects, but the ride jostled me up and down, left and right, and the lack of 3D didn't seem to matter. It was fun anyway. But another ten years later, and it became all to obvious that I was being left out.

I went with my daughter to Tokyo Disneyland and watched "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience". This particular attraction had its share of physical special effects--tails whipping our ankles when rats escaped sent K sqealing with delight, and the mist spraying on us when the dog sneezed was grossly amusing... or was that amusingly gross? But all the 3D effects on screen just did not happen for me. When glass shatters and shards flew toward the audience, everyone around me screamed and ducked, but all I could do was lean over and ask my daughter:

"Did something happen?"

Seriously, do you know how sad that is? I was like my Chinese colleague, the only person in the room who did not get the joke. Perhaps I had been fooling myself all along. I mean, I had come to terms with my lack of depth perception, but the adjustments in the brain more than made up for the visual acuity I needed to function in everyday life. I felt that I was able to enjoy anything and everything life had to offer. I was wrong. But, hey!--and maybe I'm just trying to rationalize my situation--3D is not the end all of life. It just seemed like it would be a little more fun.

Unfortunately, it turned out that my vision affected more than my enjoyment of 3D effects. So I had an operation.

Back in 1993, as I was working on my dissertation, I would get severe headaches. My eyes would tire easily and I came to realize that I was actually reading texts with only my left eye. Indeed, following the cursor on a computer while editing large portions of texts with only one eye was neither an easy nor a comfortable task. Doctors told me the only way to fix the problem was to get a cornea transplant. I did not like the idea of going under the knife, but the headaches were becoming intolerable so I was willing to confront the issue with an open mind. But of course, nothing is easy. There was a waiting list, and for me a rather long one at that. Since I had one functioning eye, I would perpetually be pushed back--those who could not see through either cornea due to injury, age or illness were always bumped up to the front of the line. I was told the wait would be about three years.

However, one doctor offered another solution--laser surgery. The procedure was called excimer laser surgery, and was being carried out on an experimental basis under the auspices of Japan's Ministry of Health. They were looking for appropriate candidates for trial laser surgeries and I was a good guinea pig since I only needed one eye done--in other words, I guess, if they screwed up the surgery I'd still be able to function. The good news was that the trials had been going on for about a year without any notable issues, and the procedure itself would be cost free. I'd only pay for basic hospital visit co-payments and post-op pharmaceuticals. This sounded like a plan to me, so I agreed and I was sent to Juntendo University Hospital in Tokyo.

I initially went through a battery of tests: they gave me a physical exam as well as visual tests to determine the health of my eye. I have to admit I found the experience very interesting. Since the alphabet is not the standard writing form in Japan, the eye chart is a bit different as you might imagine. There are a variety of charts in Japan, some using the Japanese syllabary, others using a combination of numbers and alphabet. But I was particularly stumped by the broken circle chart. You tell the tester where the break is: left, right, top, bottom left, top right, etc. When vision is blurred, it is virtually impossible to tell where the break in the circle is.

Another thing about the Japanese medical system is the waiting. At a local clinic in Japan, there is no such thing as an appointment. You go in, hand your health insurance card to the receptionist and wait... If you're lucky, you'll get seen within half an hour. If not, then you wait... and wait... and wait. Fortunately, at a major university hospital, they actually have appointments. I was skeptical on my first visit to meet the doctor who would perform the surgery, but after handing my insurance card to the receptionist, they called my name in about five minutes. そうこなくちゃ！ Now this is what I'm talkin' about, I thought. They instructed me to go to the next room where... there were more people waiting. Yikes! I sat myself down, glad I had brought a manga just in case. In about 40 minutes--I was almost finished with the manga--they called my name. Whew! I was led into a dim hallway that had cushioned benches lining one side and doorways to small examination rooms lining the other. And yes, there were more patients sitting on the benches waiting! Aargh! I finally figured out the strategy. By moving you from room to room, they create the illusion of movement, of getting closer to your appointment. I finished the manga and decided that next time I should bring a novel. I closed my eyes to rest, maybe even to doze off. Kanzaki-san, Please step in to see Dr. Murakami. It had taken almost an hour and a half to see the doctor. I had many subsequent visits to this hospital, but I learned that this first visit was relatively quick. I can still recall having a 1:30 appointment and after exams and waiting--again--for prescriptions dispensed by the doctor, I'd be lucky to leave by 4 o'clock. The shortest wait was always at the cashiers window. That will be 1500 yen please. I wonder why...

The Surgery

After the preliminary exams checking my fitness for the procedure, I was set to have surgery. You can understand how nervous I was. Today, Lasik eye surgery is ubiquitous and seemingly mundane, but back in 1993 I found nothing mundane about a laser that would cut a thin layer off the surface of my cornea. Japan is notorious for babying its patients. In the US, women who give birth to a child without any complications are regularly sent home on the very same day, but in Japan, a one week stay is not unusual. So I was shocked to learn that mine was an outpatient procedure--Check in, then check out after the operation if there were no complications. I guess free surgery meant free surgery.

I was led into the operation room, but it looked more like an empty conference room. It was clean but did not comfort me with the sense of sterility or competence that an actual operating room would convey. There was no heart monitor. No IV stands ready for action. None of the trappings of ER or Chicago Hope or even Dr. Kildaire. Only an operating table, a tray with utensils, three or four computer screens and a humongous laser machine with overhead lighting. Besides the doctor and a nurse, there were three suits monitoring the computers--were they government people monitoring the operation? Representatives of the laser machine company, to make sure the laser operated properly? When I think about it now, I should have asked more aggressively who everyone in the room was. Instead, I just lied down on the table as instructed, like any good guinea pig would. While the nurse put a patch over my left eye, the doctor forced open the eyelids of my right eye to place a ring directly onto it to prevent my eyelids from closing should I get the urge to blink during surgery. He then put some eye drops in my eye to desensitize it. Local anesthesia? I asked. Yes, it should be more than enough.

How exciting, I moaned beneath my breath.

A few moments later, I felt a sting in my eye. Did you feel that? The doctor asked. Hell, yeah! I wanted to growl back, but I just nodded. Apparently, he poked the side of my eye with a probe to see if the anesthesia had kicked in. He added some more drops in my eye and five minutes later I felt the same sting again. Before he could ask I told him firmly, Yes, I can still feel it.

"Do you drink lot of sake?" The doctor asked.

"Uh, yeah. Why?"

"Well, often, heavy drinkers need a larger dose."

Great, I thought. Who knew I had developed a resistance to anesthesia.

After a while, a red light lit up above my eye. Look directly at the red light and don't move your head, he instructed me. Ah, they're getting ready to start, I thought when I suddenly smelled the unmistakable odor of hair burning. What the...

The surgery had begun. Unbeknownst to me, the doctor had prodded my eye again, but since I didn't react, he figured I was fully anesthetized. Personally, I wish he had asked.

For what seemed like about fifteen minutes, I saw a beam of light slowly scan my eye left to right, then right to left as the doctor peeled off layers a fraction of a micron thick from my cornea. And all the while, it smelled like my hair was burning. I was an awful odor.

Fortunately, there was no pain. The laser and red light went off, and the doctor taped some gauze over the eye. I then followed him to his office where he gave me instructions to come back the next morning and a prescription for pain killers. I told him that they eye didn't hurt at all. He smiled and told me get the pain killers anyway. I soon found out why.

As I waited for my prescription in the cavernous main lobby of the hospital, my eyes began to sting. I finally got the medicine, and decided to take a dose immediately. It didn't take away the pain immediately, but I was confident that it would eventually take effect on the way home. However, at the Ochanomizu station, the eye began to hurt something awful. Tears flowed down my cheek and the eye patch was soon soaked. In pain, I clenched my right eye shut as I tried to navigate my way through the rush hour throng from the platform to the train with my one good eye. I barely was able to change trains at Shinjuku to get onto the Keio line home. By the time I got to Nagayama station, about an hour and fifteen minutes after leaving the hospital, I was in so much pain I had to grip the handrail with all my might as I descended the staircase leading out of the station, pausing every few steps to muster my strength and will myself further. I thought I was going to die.

The aftermath

When I got home, my then-wife asked rather cheerfully how it was. どうだった? I didn't even answer her. I just walked passed her to the bedroom, pulled out the futon and lied down exhausted. I remember having asked her if she would accompany me to the hospital, especially since it was an outpatient procedure. Indeed, the doctor and nurse asked me why I had come alone. I couldn't remember why she didn't, but it didn't matter at that point. All I wanted to do was go to sleep.

The next morning, the pain was still there, but it had subsided considerably. My then-wife said she'd go with me to the appointment, but I told her not to bother at this point. もう、今さらついて来なくていいよ。 She insisted and came anyway, although I basically ignored her. (Yes, I could be a jerk, I guess.) I had changed the gauze patch two or three times at home, but because of the pain, my eyelids remained tightly closed. But, as I rode the orange Chuo line to the hospital, I noticed that the pain was almost bearable, and somewhere between Yotsuya and Suidoubashi, I decided to see what I could see. As I looked out the window of the train, I gently peeled up the gauze and slowly opened my eye.

I was shocked.

Although it was an overcast day, the autumn leaves never looked so bright, so yellow and red. Even the gray condominiums and office buildings in the background shone oddly brighter. Even stranger, they seemed deformed.The edges framing the structures seemed to stand out in relief. Parts of some buildings seemed to bulge toward me. It was the effect of the new curvature of my cornea, but I concluded at the time that it was my first view of Tokyo in 3D. And that was as good a reason as any. It just all seemed so beautiful.

Ultimately, I had to apply steroids daily to prevent the "wound" from trying to heal itself--or something like that. And for three years, I was fine. Indeed, I felt smarter. Is it me, or is my dissertation coming along more smoothly? I began to wonder if reading text with both eyes--i.e. gathering information through two portals each connected to its opposite cerebral hemisphere--increases cognitive ability? Does comprehension improve when data is retrieved directly through my right eye which is connected to the left, more analytical side of the brain? Well, it sure seemed like it. By 1996, I had finished my dissertation, received my Ph.D., landed a gig on my first go-round on the job market, and started teaching here in Washington DC in the Fall semester of the same year. Sadly, I had trouble getting a prescription from local doctors for the medication I needed. All the documentation I had of the surgery was in Japanese and doctors here--perhaps afraid of being sued--were reluctant to prescribe pharmeceuticals for procedures that they themselves did not perform, or that was based on documentation they could not read for themselves.

Without the steroids, the cornea slowly repaired itself and now I'm left with scar tissue that is larger than the original scar. Which brings me back to my original dilemma: Whether or not to get a corneal transplant. I've lived with this condition for so long, I really don't see the point in it anymore. But I would, just once, like to experience a 3D movie the way it was meant to be experienced. I never did get the chance.

An old friend

2007-11-12T12:03:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I met with an old college buddy from my UCLA days, TY. He's here in the DC area to participate in a workshop for English language education in foreign countries. He heads a company that advises and directs aspiring Japanese students to appropriate colleges and graduate schools abroad, mostly in the US--I think. It was very nice to see him again, although looking at him reminded me how old we are getting. But it also aroused fond memories of my salad days at UCLA.

In the Fall Quarter of 1981, I had started my second term at UCLA and was full of excitement. Indeed, since I had matriculated the previous spring, I anticipated being in classes with people I might already know. It felt like I belonged. Unfortunately, there were not too many people I knew, and those I did know were chatting with those they seemed more familiar with. Oh well....

At least, I felt a bit more comfortable in a UCLA classroom. Or perhaps I should say, better prepared. I was shocked during my first quarter. The demands and expectations were far greater than I had anticipated--by leaps and bounds greater than at the community college I attended the previous few years--and it took me hours of studying just to keep up with my classmates, let alone the class. Indeed, I was surprised at having a full class from the very first day, caught embarrassingly unprepared. But not this Fall quarter. My notebook was open, my pencils were sharpened, I had previewed the first chapter of the textbook and looked up the kanji I didn't know. I was sitting in Akatsuka sensei's Advanced Japanese class in Bunche Hall at the ready. Sensei outlined her expectations of the course, and immediately directed us to the first chapter of the text book, just as I had anticipated. She pointed to one student, then another, both of whom struggled through the sentence they had to read. C'mon, sensei, call on me. I'm ready. But she called on someone in the back of the room. In a low baritone, this student proceeded to read one, two, three sentences in flawless Japanese.

What the fuck? Who the hell is this native speaker? Doesn't he realize he'll screw up the curve?

This was my first encounter with TY.

To be continued...

An old friend (2): You again?

2007-11-12T12:01:00.002-05:00

...Continued from yesterday

I've always considered myself a rather naive guy when it comes to women. I am forever infatuated with them. Up until the 9th or 10th grade, I would be convinced I was in love if a cute girl gave me the time of day. Of course, I could not fall for every girl, and the more women I met, the more I realized how many different kind of women there were. Good, bad, indifferent. Still, I cannot deny that I often found myself easily infatuated with women.

Take PW. I met her in Intermediate Japanese class my first quarter at UCLA. Now I had met a number of young ladies during my band days in high school. Being a band member always attracted a pool of girls and I got to know many of them--not necessarily in the Biblical sense. But I had never met a girl like PW. She was a "half", as they say in Japanese: Half white, half Japanese. And I think she was at the time the most adorable girl I had ever met. It was one thing to have her in the same class, but to have her talk to me from time to time. Were you able to understand the whole passage? Did you get this sentence? Did she just ask me a question? Man, I now had a tangible reason to study and be prepared for class.

Of course, I was the new guy in class, and she had friends with whom she was far more familiar, and anything she had to say to me was limited to polite and generic conversation. But this changed in the Fall quarter, when I found her not only in Advanced Japanese, but also a Japanese literature course on the I-novelist Mushakoji Saneatsu. When I saw her on campus, I made sure to chat with her about class--Do you like the new teacher, Akatsuka sensei? What do you think of Mushakoji? When I think about it now, my conversation probably bored her to death. But she was a nice girl who was willing to talk to a dork.

Anyway, we would bump into each other at the University Research Library in North campus, sometimes at night after seven or eight. We had coffee a couple of times and I would offer her a ride to her car when it was dark. One night, after we had studied near each other at URL, I got up the nerve to ask her if she wanted to get some dinner. Her first reaction was positive, but as we walked toward my car, she asked me if she could bring a friend. Of course, I said. How could I refuse? She called her friend from a pay phone and we went to a restaurant they go to periodically, a place called Sushi King on Wilshire in Santa Monica.

I was rather mesmerized with PW. On our way there, I'm sure we had a nice conversation, but I don't remember a thing. My thoughts were on having dinner with PW and wondering who this friend was. But as we walked into the sushi bar, my infatuation was in danger of fading... quickly. PW called out: Hey, there's TY. Hi! You know Onigiriman, right?

It was the second time TY--Mr. Native Speaker from Advanced Japanese--made his presence felt, rudely and unwelcomed.

To be continued...

An old friend (3): Making new friends

2007-11-12T11:59:00.000-05:00

TY came over my house for a BBQ on Sunday and I met him and one of his other friends for dinner on Monday. We had a very pleasant time reminiscing again, and I was happy to make a new acquaintance who seems to speak better Japanese than me. In any event, I know that TY is reading this, so I thought I should put in a disclaimer: Memory is subjective and fallible. Definitely fallible. Everything I write here is filtered through the prism of my memories and is not necessarily an exact representation of the past. In fact, if you ask me, it is virtually impossible for anyone to represent the past perfectly from memory. But it is the past as recorded in my mind and I present it as such.

Anyway, where was I....

It became pretty clear to me that PW did not see me as anything but a classmate and perhaps a friend. We got along well enough talking about class and common interests. I would still offer her a ride to her car at the parking lot, and sometimes took her home to her parents house on those occasions when she went home for the weekend, as they lived on the east side of town, where I lived. I held no illusions. To have someone as cute as PW as a friend was amazing enough for me.

In the meantime, I had more or less placed TY in a back drawer of my brain. He was neither a threat nor a rival. Just another hurdle in my quest for an A; I just had to work harder. By the Winter quarter, he had virtually vanished from my consciousness. I was taking a heavy load--18 credit units--and TY was not in any of my classes. I had little time to develop friendships--let alone relationships--and was content with the casual acquaintances I had made in my various classes. Study, study, study. In the Spring quarter, I took another 16 credit units and even made the Dean's list. I had arrived! I thought as I looked forward to a pleasant SoCal summer.

And pleasant it was. Blue skies, moderate heat--for LA anyway. And the beginning of a variety of friendships.

Over the Winter and Spring quarters, I had become acquaintances with a number of people but I didn't really have a chance to get to know them until the summer. I had enjoyed my year at UCLA so much, that I decided to take a couple of classes over the summer. Although the classes were daily, they were mostly in the morning; in the afternoon, I would spend it with these acquaintances at North Campus, the local coffee shop/cafeteria. Every morning, JK--a girl I had met through a mutual friend--would find a table and squat. After class, a variety of people would come by and take a seat to eat lunch, have coffee, or just chat. We would come and go during the day, but there was always someone there, so when we driffted back, we knew we would have a place to sit no matter how crowded it was. We became a very close knit group of friends. Including TY.

One early afternoon, as we sat down to eat lunch, PW suddenly giggled uncontrollably. There's TY! I looked over my shoulder behind me and couldn't help but yelp in amusement. There was TY striding into North Campus wearing what I first thought was his pajamas. In reality, is was a jinbei, cotton summer wear in Japan, usually worn around the house (see right). I have to admit that I had never seen anyone wear one outside--well maybe except when going to the local convenience store. But not to college or for some other away-from-home event, unless it was something special like a summer festival or fireworks display when people often turned "traditional". But there was TY, on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, approaching our North Campus table in his jinbei.

Did you wear that on the bus? PW asked in wonder.

No, I rode my moped to school, he responded in Japanese.

As you might imagine, this elicited another round of laughter. But TY simply smiled as if nothing in the world was wrong. From that moment on, I felt something special for this native-speaking, curve-screwing spirit. And we had a grand summer.

It seemed like each day was filled with laughter. On some days, TY would bring his mahjong set and we'd play mahjong, clacking our tiles loudly right there on a North Campus table. On other days, TY would try to figure out what J-pop songs would suit me--he introduced me to Memory Glass by Horie Jun. One day, I saw my first Walkman and was simply amazed at the quality of sound emitted by these tiny tape players. I think I spent two hours listening and marvelling at this piece of technology, much to the chagrin of HY, my new friend from Tokyo University. But mostly we just chatted and enjoyed out summer afternoons, as I made new friends, many of whom I still keep in touch with.

Unfortunately, all this chatting did not serve me well in my Modern Japanese history course. I'm lucky I passed, just barely. On the other hand, the anthro class I took was a joke. The professor literally lectured from the textbook he assigned us. I guess since he wrote the textbook, it did not constitute plagiarism, but it did mean that I didn't have to go to class. All I had to do was read the text book, take the midterm and final and get a B for taking what amounted to a correspondence course. TY also took this class, but he was enjoying the summer as much as I did, maybe more so. On the day of the Final, a couple of guys sitting behind me were whispering outloud. Look at that guy. He hasn't come the whole quarter and he's now trying get the professor to sign a permission to withdraw form. What? I thought and looked up, only to see TY talking to the professor, then leaving the classroom with a piece of paper in hand. When I think about it, I never did ask him if that was really a permision to withdraw slip. Hmmmm...

To be continued...

Snow Days

2007-02-07T05:41:00.000-05:00

もう一度布団にもぐる窓の雪

Once more
I crawl beneath the comforter.
Snow at the window

TH 1956

Unfortunately for me, there is not enough snow on the window sill to justify more time in bed, as Dad imagined back in 1956. If there were a few more inches on the ground, a few more clouds threatening to disrupt traffic, then there would be a chance for school to call for a snow day. But that seems unlikely at the moment. The ground outside is white, but I can still distinguish the lines separating the sidewalk from the lawn, a telltale sign that there is barely an inch of snow on the ground.

Born and raised in sunny California, I often wondered what it was like to look forward to snow days as a kid. Would I meet my friends for a snowball fight? Could I make a snowman in my front lawn? During the winter months, the only precipitation we saw was rain. And you cannot do anything with rain.

But it did hail once; I think I was in the 7th grade. Now, the upper stratosphere over LA could reach freezing levels, surprising us occasionally with a smattering of hail that usually melted on contact with any earthly object. But this 7th grade hail was different--at least for a few moments. I was bored, as usual, trying my best to entertain myself by printing words in the margins of my notebook. I printed in a faux-gothic style the word "Fickle Finger of Fate", a phrase I had picked up from Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. I have never been accused of being artistic, but I have always liked texts, not just to read, but to look at. Script, fancy print, even signatures have always caught my attention, and I fancied myself a competent copier of them. At the moment, I was admiring my latest artistic rendering of the "Fickle Finger of Fate" when I heard screams and cackles from the outdoor second floor hallway.

Immediately drawn to a new distraction, I rushed outside and saw pointing to the ground. I pushed my way to the chest-high wall and looked over the ledge and was shocked to see a ground that was completely white.

"It's snowing" was the refrain streaming out of everyone's mouths. But one of the teachers, obviously more knowledgeable about things meteorological, set us straight. "It's hail," she said. "It's probably cold enough for it not to melt right away."

She was very matter of fact in her attempts to quell our excitement, but her words went unnoticed. The ground had turned white, the Earth seemed to have bumped off its axis.

"Its snow," I thought, even though I knew it was hail. I wanted to run downstairs and grab a handful of my first fistful of snow. I wanted taste it. I wanted to make a snow angel. But our teacher herded us back into the classroom, assuring us the "hail" would still be there when school let out in another thirty minutes. But when the school bell rang at 3:20 PM, the hail had turned to rain and the school ground had returned to asphalt black.

* * * * *

It's now 4:44 AM and I can still see the outline of the sidewalk outside. It has stopped snowing and the likelihood of a snow day seems as remote as ever. I wish it would have snowed a bit more so I could enact what my Dad composed some fifty years ago. But as I peak through the blinds of my second floor bedroom window, I remember the feeling that my first "snow" aroused. I find it pleasant and perhaps a bit reassuring that now, having grown up to be a teacher, I can still find the prospects of snow exciting.

Scout Buddies

2006-07-05T01:42:00.000-04:00

A few months ago, I received an email from an old friend... Well, friend may not be the exact word, but I would like to think that we were more than just acquaintances. JU was a member of my patrol in Boy Scouts, and we were together in Karate and the same private high school. But what I believe to be our true bond was getting drunk together in Tokyo. I mean, getting shit-faced on sake in Takadanobaba is truly a bonding experience.

As usual, the following is as true as I remember it--we all remember things in our own way and memory should always be held up to scrutiny. If it is inaccurate in anyway, I hope that JU will point it out to me. In any event...

JU and I went to the same elementary school, Maryknoll, near Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. He lived in East LA as I did, but in another area near where 4th Street turns into 3rd Street, so we never rode the same school bus. Since he was two years younger than me, I didn't really get to know him until he entered our Boys Scout troop. Back then, our troop had a membership of around 50--I'm guessing actually--and we were divided into patrols, each patrol consisting of scouts from basically the same area. The westsiders made up the Bear patrol--BK might want to verify that. Those from Monterey Park were represented by the Rising Sun Patrol--formerly the Beavers, but we had to change the name. The Cobra were from the Boyle Heights area.

I lived in the Belvedere area of East LA and found myself in the Firebird patrol with people I barely knew: Yonai who was two years older than me, Piki who was one year older. Yonai eventually dropped out and Piki was promoted to Assistant Scout Master, so I became patrol leader for a group of fellow Eastsiders named Kuch, Banzai, Yonai's younger cousin, the Ezaki twins and JU. A classmate, Rhubarb, was also in our patrol, even though he didn't live on the Eastside. He lived in Eagle Rock where no one else lived, so he got stuck with us. We were not necessarily a motely crew, but Yonai the elder, and others from an earlier generation ensured that we had a reputation of being slackers and screw-ups.

But that reputation was not necessarily a bad thing. Those of you who have read NLUTE know that I considered myself a GLOB (good little Oriental boy), so a reputation as a slacker had its appeal. Perhaps, however, more to the point, few had any expectations of us, so we could slack off and no one would get on our case. Once we had a physical fitness night and each patrol had to perform a set number of exercises, including a 50 yard dash, chin-ups, and push-ups. Since the patrols came in various sizes, the competition between patrols would be limited to only a few members, but each member had to participate. So the weekend before we got together to decide who could do the best in each group. I was not the fastest person at school, and my short legs made the matter worse, but I was about as fast as anyone in our patrol. When we tried to do push-ups, I recall Banzai not being able to do even one. I thought he as joking and slacking off--and if you are thought to be slacking off amongst a bunch of slackers, then that would be REALLY bad. But he was seriously push-up impaired. If I met him now, he'd probably kick my ass, but back then, he could barely do one. We did not fare very well.

However, when we did perform, people were actually impressed. Once, we had a drill contest between patrols and we actually tried to come up with a marching routine that would look kinda cool. We were supposed to march in formation and split into two different groups and then mesh together at the end. As you might imagine, in the middle of the competition, one group took a left when they were supposed to take a right, and we were all screwed up--almost like the Stanford marching band. But for some reason, at the end of the routine, we all ended up at the right spot. Personally, I was pissed as hell and couldn't wait to tell them they had fucked up. But as we stood at attention and saluted Imu, the Assistant Scoutmaster, he nodded as he jotted something down on his clipboard, muttering "pretty good." We ended up in third place with a routine we had messed up.

I have a number of other memories from my Scout days, but I would be deviating from the purpose of this post: JU. As far as I remember, he was a good kid, a solid member in our patrol. I say this without a hint of sarcasm. He was athletic, sharp and willing to work hard, which might explain why he's a lawyer now. But when I met him in Japan a number of years later, he left me with a different impression.

To be continued...

First Slow Dance

2006-01-10T08:38:00.000-05:00

Jogging Memories of my First Dance

No, the title does not reflect my lunch--Burger King. It is the initials of a person from whom I recently received an email, an acquaintance from the past. It is somewhat fascinating and to a degree weird when someone you barely knew and had virtually forgotten about randomly contacts you. I guess the longer I'm online the greater the chance of this happening. This is what he wrote:

O-man, I recently stumbled on your blog while I was surfing the net. I must know you but I can't recognize your photo or the background info I have seen. I have only read a small portion of your blogs but it looks like you were born in 1955 and went to Maryknoll. I was born in 1955 and graduated from Maryknoll in 1969. So you should have graduated Maryknoll in 1968, 1969 or 1970. Looks like you also went to Loyola High (the only Jesuit high school in LA in the 70's). I went there from 1969 -1970. You write some funny stuff and bring back great memories for me. So who the hell are you?!!!!

It's good to know that my secret identity is still intact. Only those with an O-man secret decoder ring know the truth. In any event, I was surprised to learn that BK had found me. I had previously heard from another friend that he had become quite successful as an attorney and now enjoys influential standing in LA. I, of course, emailed him and he revealed how he found me. I can't believe anyone would be doing a Google search on the Roger Young Auditorium and JA dances. I didn't think ANYONE remembered it, let alone do a write up for some newsletter. I am absolutely flabbergasted. At first, I thought it was the entry on eating grass, but I later figured out it was about my days as a Glob (good little Oriental boy).

Anyway, I remember BK as one of the weststide guys in the class above me. Thoughts of him bring back memories of when he was in the 8th grade and I was in the 7th, specifically one memory when we had a joint Halloween event in the clubhouse at Maryknoll. It was, for us, a special event where the upper class (8th was the highest grade at our school) introduced the younger class to the intricacies of "mixers." I was only 12 years old and it was my first real taste of male-female group socialization. Or more simply put, my first dance party. It was held in the afternoon between 1 and 3 PM on Halloween; the windows were covered with black cloth to give it that evening look, making it even more exotic for me. I looke forward to dancing to songs I had heard on the radio and hoping to be as cool as the teens on shows like "9th Street West" and "Soul Train"--no one watched American Bandstand for dance tips, believe me.

As you might imagine, we were stuck in cliques, usually split between the cool and the uncool. I, of course, was inclined toward the uncool. I mean, how else could you explain my thoughts of desperately trying to figure out how to avoid embarrassment? Who should I ask to dance? Would she say yes? What if she turns me down? It all seemed like such momentous questions back then. Of course, this line of questioning took on special meaning when the topic of conversation turned to slow dancing. No one would dare say it, but I know that the only thought in my mind was: What would it feel like to have my body pressed up against another body distinctly different from mine? As you might imagine, I was pretty excited.

I was partial to Top 40 fare, such as "Midnight Confession" by the Grassroots and "People Gotta Free" by the Rascals, but the cool kids more or less controlled these affairs, and we were subjected to a heavy dose of soul music, which of course was not a bad thing. After listening to a few songs, I actually danced--I'm not sure if a simple side-step actually constitutes dancing these days--to "Tighten Up" by Achie Bell and the Drells from Houston, Texas, and found it quite exhilarating. So this is what dancing is all about! I thought. Moving your body to the rhythm of music with a girl as a partner, exhibiting yourself before a group of your peers. Today, I might describe it as a tribal ritual that prepares the participants for some level of physical bonding. But back then, I'd just say it felt groovy. Suddenly, there was the crooning of Smokey Robinson.

I did you wrong, my heart went out to play And in the game I lost you What a price to pay, I'm cryin' Oooo Baby, Baby.

My friends and I glared at each other, silently gesturing with our chins, egging each other to go out and ask someone to dance. By the time one of us had gotten the nerve up, the song was over--I mean, tunes were only a little more than two minutes back then. But one of the cool guys came by, bragging about his little adventure. Oh man, those titties were so soft. Kinda small, but... Hahahaha. Who should I dance with next? Hey, put on another... And he faded away as he flitted off like the butterfly he was.

It didn't help when we saw someone in the corner making out. It was BK. There he was, facing the corner with someone's hands all over his back. Woah, are they, like, kissing? Here? When the voices around them rose to a loud murmur, he turned around quickly to reveal he was all by himself. All he had done was wrap his arms around himself, rubbing his own back passionately, giving the impression that he was making out. We howled in approval, even as Sister Patricia rushed over wondering what all the commotion was about. Of course, there was nothing, really.

As Jr. Walker and the All Stars sang "What Does it Take?" I was screwing up the courage to ask someone to dance the next slow song. When I heard the telltale strikes of the snare drum and the short strokes of violins of the introduction, I just had to ask someone to dance. I strode over to a group of girls sitting down in a row of chairs against the wall and asked one of them. She acquiesced. We got to the dance floor just as the Delfonics started to sing.

Many guys have come to you with a line that wasn't true and you passed them by. Now your in the center ring and their lines don't mean a thing why don't you let me try...

I didn't really know what I was doing. I mean, practicing regular dance steps in front of the TV was doable. You didn't need a partner since dancing didn't really involve touching, but to cuddle. I was lost. I put my arm around her waist and she put her arms around my neck, and we kinda rocked left and right as we took small steps that moved us--naturally it seemed--in small circles. As I imagine it now, I probably looked awkward, but that was the last thing on my mind. The butterfly was right. They ARE soft. That's all my little mind could think about.

Well, "La-La-Means I Love You" was another really short song--two minutes and eleven seconds?--so it was over all too soon, which was just as well for a guy with only primitive, tribal thoughts on his mind. Amazingly, and perhaps rudely, I can't for the life of me remember who I danced with. This was a signal moment in my life--the first time I actually held a girl in my arms--and I can't remember who it was. All that remains in my mind is the sensation of softness. I can almost recreate the situation in my mind right now, and this in itself allows me to imagine one particular girl. But this is just the idle imaginings of a old man.

I had the opportunity to dance one more slow dance, this time with an 8th grader--Patsy?--and this was a point of pride, as my friends later reminded me after school. Y'know, the older woman? Hahhahaha. Anyway, at home, a younger friend dropped by to ask me if I wanted to go trick-or-treating with him, but I declined. I suddenly felt too old, too worldly for such childish activities. I had touched a girl in a sexual way; not that we had sex, of course, but the sensations aroused could not be described in any other--albeit innocent--way.

I hadn't thought about my first dance in a long time, but the email from BK opened a floodgate of 38-year-old memories. BK wrote that he doesn't really remember the incident above, and I wouldn't be surprised if I have gotten the particulars wrong. But someone did act like he was making out, and in my addled 50-year-old mind, it is inexplicably linked with BK. Either way, it's just an innocuous memory that was amusing to recall. Dude, thanks for jogging it for me.

Owning a car

2006-01-08T14:27:00.000-05:00

Originally posted on Xanga 2005.06.27

Took my car in for servicing today. Its nice to have a car; a rather inane but nonetheless honest comment from a boy born and raised in LA.

I couldn't wait to own a car as a teenager. I bought my mother's '73 Camaro--no, she didn't give it to me--I molded (not attached) a spoiler on to it, removed all the Camaro insignias to make the body look smoother, repainted it from red to midnight blue (making it look even darker, but not black), and changed the rims (cyclones). I left the engine stock. It was beautiful and my baby (the Camaro in the photo is not my car, but the resemblance is remarkable, right down to the absence of the front red Camaro insignia!). However, as driving became a necessity--going to work or school--and finding myself each day in the parking lot known as the LA freeway system--take your pick, Santa Monica, Pomona, San Bernadino--I soon dreaded driving. And of course, my eyes were progressively getting worse--see earlier post--which made driving an even scarier proposal.

Needless to say, when I went to Tokyo, I was very impressed with the fact one could get around quite easily sans kuruma. The trains and subways ran frequently and on time. Amazing. I subsequently lived in Japan for about 7 years and got completely used to the idea that I didn't need a car. Back in LA, where my Camaro was sitting in my parents driveway, my mom complained persistently about the hassles of having a car around that isn't being driven, and ultimately I was persuaded to give my baby up for adoption, which I did reluctantly.

Of course, as the gods of irony are wont to do, I got a job in DC six months later. Upset, I vowed to find a place to live near a Metro stop, so I could continue my Japanese lifestyle of not needing a vehicle. Unfortunately, unlike Japan, where there are always retail shops surrounding the station, suburban Metro stops--particularly beyond Ballston in Va--are surrounded by parking lots and condominiums. I was reduced to going shopping at "local" supermarkets on foot or by bus. Stubborn me. I lived like this for 6 years.

Last year, I inherited my mom's car (she lost her battle against non-Hodgkin's lymphoma), and now am recalling the freedom a car brings. I don't drive to work--the traffic here is as bad, if not worse, than LA--but to go shopping in a car is sooooo much easier. The convenience it provides easily outweighs the cost of gas and insurance. Who woulda thunk it.

Not Living Up to Expectations

2006-01-07T12:18:00.004-05:00

Originally posted on Xanga 2003, July through September--last edit July 23, 2008

I've read 3-4 posts lately by people who are feeling down about themselves, about how some earlier actions and past decisions have resulted in a life leading to nowheresville, where nothing seems to be working out. Well, some may be just ranting, to work out some stress. But if not, you guys still don't have to feel too down. There is always hope.

I realize that it sounds hokey, but its true. There really is hope. The only catch is that YOU have to make it happen. Been there, done that. Really. I don't want to bore you with the details, so let me be honest....

I was a total screw up in high school.

Bad grades, bad attendance. I'm surprised they didn't kick me out of school. Couldn't go to college like my friends so I went to work full time. Hey, all I wanted was money to put gas in my Camaro and go on hot dates. But I began to realize that maybe--just maybe--this wasn't the right path. But I thought, "Crapola, I'm 20 and going nowhere. I can't even get into school if I wanted to." So I started out at a junior college--took 5 years to graduate! hahahaha--and thanks to a professor who had a lot of faith in me, convinced me to apply to UCLA and the rest is history.

The point, of course, is that I could have given up: "Ah, its too late to change now." But I didn't. I made a conscious decision to act in the present and to dwell on the future, not the past, to finish school--time frame be damned--and see where it would take me. Now if this stupid-ass almost-high-school drop-out can earn a PhD from Stanford, then I'd bet that everyone who's read this far can work even greater miracles: cure cancer, bring peace to the Middle East, get Fox to cancel American Idol, y'know, the hard stuff, the long and heavy lifting. I'm serious...

Now How Narcissistic Can One Get?

Good question. In general, a blog is a log of one's thoughts; to wit, a journal. And a journal by any other name is still a journal: personal, self-absorbed, and free from constraint. So I will indulge myself. Will readership go down? Maybe. Doesn't matter. A weblog is an exercise in exhibitionism/voyeurism: I show, you watch; I write, you read. In a way, this is what autobiographies are like, and in many cases the first novel of new authors. Not that they intentionally write autobiographies, but many of the ideas in a "maiden novel" are taken from life experiences. Relax. I do not intend to write a novel here. But I will jot down the experiences of a Japanese American in LA in the late 60s, early 70s, something that some may find interesting to peruse, in that it is a "reflection" of the thoughts of one member of an invisible minority--y'know the one that doesn't complain, the model minority--at a time when civil rights were blossoming across the U.S. I wrote the following to qualify my above self-portrayal as a "total screw-up." I don't intend to justify it, just present some background in the hopes y'all will not think that a complete idiot got a PhD.

Now, some may be interested in who Ray Kanzaki is, what makes him click, what makes him write all these daily entries. He is, ahem, I mean, I am not interesting, per se; but my life has been different from yours, I'd bet, but I make no claims about my style or the worthiness of the content or my effectiveness as a writer, and I should warn you that I have been accused of writing boring stuff (then don't read it! I wanna say). Those of you not interested, change the channel now. (click, click)

Not Living Up to Expectation

I was raised in a modest home as the good, little Oriental boy--heretofore, Glob--of a model minority family--i.e. hard working, uncomplaining, compliant. In elementary school, I wasn't very bright, I had so-so grades, and my dreams were limited to what people around me believed: work hard, go to college, study economics or engineering or medicine. (In a very Oriental accent) "Oh, rearry? Okay, I try hawd!" But I didn't know how to try hard, or what it entailed, particularly as the son of parents who did not go to college (I'm not ragging on my parents; this is simply the way it was back in the day). I just watched "MyThree Sons" or "Leave it to Beaver" and wondered what I had to do to emulate such a "typical" American family.

I went to a private Catholic missionary elementary school and we were members of the church. We lived a rather isolated life. Actually most of the members did, I think. The school and church was exclusively Japanese American, and we, as kids, never had to deal with other races. We played with each other, and our parents socialized with church and school members.

However, that doesn't mean I was unaware of my difference. Once, when I was 5, Chuckles the Clown came by to East LA, to a nearby shopping center. As loyal viewers of his TV antics, my sister and I went to see him as many of the local kids did. We tried to arrive early to get a good seat and we were in the second row. Chuckles set up his show in the parking lot in front of Thrifty Drugs Store, and we eagerly watched his magic tricks and listened to his jokes. He then went into his balloon routine, you know, the one where he blows up long and skinny balloons and bends them into animals? He started making animal after animal and handing them out to the kids circling him. Moving clockwise, he finally reached us. Hands raised and screaming like everyone else, my heart was pounding in anticipation of getting a balloon from Chuckles himself. He hands over animal balloons to kids behind us, then to kids in front of us. Then he moves on... Didn't he see us? We were raising our hands like everyone else, crying out his name. Didn't he see us? My lasting image of Chuckles was his back, facing kids, white kids, to my left, handing them those stupid balloons.

Of course, my training taught me not to complain. I just accepted it, trying to understand what happened--he didn't see us, or maybe he reached for another balloon and forgot us--trying to justify it, as well as a 6-year-old kid could. As you might imagine, I developed a very real sense of security at school and at church where I was among people who looked like me.

From elementary school, I then went to a private Catholic high school run by Jesuits. "Ooooh." You're probably thinking, "That must have really screwed you up." Well, discipline can be good and bad, depending on how you look at it. The discipline administered by Jesuits is not violently brutal, but definitely limiting, and so usually has the effect of making one compliant or rebellious. As a Glob from a model minority family, I was expected to be compliant and uncomplaining, which I was, for the most part. But fortunately--the good--it planted the seeds for rebellion and festered within me until the most opportune moment: a part time job. "Huh? How can a part time job trigger rebellion?" Well, for a Glob from a very narrow world, getting a part-time job, meeting new and completely different people--including girls--was quite an experience. I should mention that I was kind of a dork up until then--maybe I still am--but the opportunity to meet people who had no preconceived idea as to my lot in life--or simply put, what a dork I was--was a relief, refreshing and even exciting. Here I was, with a brand new slate, ready to fill in whatever was necessary to create a new me: Anti-Glob, the embryo that was to grow into Onigiriman.

Well, as a new Anti-Glob I had to do what all the other anti-Globs were doing: hang out, smoke cigs, drink scotch, go to dances, talk to girls, and of course, NEVER study. "Wow, is this what everyone else does?" I was enraptured with this new, cool lifestyle....

Yes, it was a new, cool lifestyle, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I worked part-time at a Manju shop in LA's J-Town--officially known as Lil' Tokyo. It's there I first began learned to speak Japanese. I had heard it most of my life and even "studied" it in elementary school, but I never really understood it until I worked at the sweet shop, where both the full-time workers and the majority of the customers spoke nothing but Japanese. The first few weeks were a fiasco.

A customer would walk in, look at the sweets in the showcase, and say, "Eeto, kore to kore to kore wo kudasai." Give me this and this and this.With a face that begged for understanding, I stumbled over my own tongue as I tried to fulfill his request using my index finger.

"Uh, kore, ichi? Um, kore, ichi? Er, kore, ni?" Uh, this, one? Um, this, one? Er, this, two?

Whew! Fortunately for me, I understood more than I could speak and the owner did not fire me.

Even more fortunate, however was the weekend. I worked 5 to 10 on Friday and Saturdays and 5 to 8 on Sundays. I guess the hours weren't so fortunate. I was puzzled why the store was open so late. I mean, who would buy manju at 9pm? Well, J-Town was the place where many JAs gathered, especially on weekends, when they came to do their weekly shopping of Japanese goods. At night, however, it was the men who came to town to spend there money. First, there was Frank's pool hall in the basement of the Taul Building on the corner of 1st and San Pedro. It looked incredibly seedy... no, I take that back, it WAS incredibly seedy, with old men and young toughs shooting pool with cigarettes hanging out of there mouths at 45 degree angles. Weenies like me, who couldn't shoot straight, had to play short games, like nine-ball, so we could actually finish a game in decent time. But the regulars played straight pool, calling out numbers, "13 in the corner", then slide over the beads strung around the tables with each shot made. To these 17 year-old eyes, it was so cool to see these guys shooting for the money they had splayed on the table before each game. I would suck on a Coke as I watched the regulars play rack after rack of pool.

But pool wasn't the main form of entertainment then. What everyone did was drink and bullshit of hours. There were a number of places. Some of the tonier people would go to the bar in the Horikawa Restaurant for wine or Chivas Regal. The hard core drinkers went to a couple of the nameless bars on the north side 1st St. But the real action as at Eigiku Restaurant, where there was a form of entertainment that preceded karaoke: Namaoke, or a piano bar where the customers sat around and sang all night. My elder senpais would go and sit for hours.

"Hey, Ray, lets get a drink."

"Uh, I'm only 17," I would confess.

"Whatchu worried about, man. You with us. No one's gonna ask." And they were right, the confession was needless.

Well, all these men who went to shoot pool and drink for hours, had to go home to wives. But they couldn't go home empty handed. They had to take an omiage to appease the missus. So there actually was a demand for manju--or sushi--at 9 in the evening on weekends. These men, often slurring there words, would come in to purchase their peace offerings, as I struggled to complete there orders, all the while secretly wishing they would hurry up so I could close the store and go out.So the weekend hours were not ideal for a young, eager man like me, the presence of my weekend co-workers alleviated the situation: they were all girls from Roosevelt High School, a public high school... ooooh... lucky me. Why? Because all the hot girls who spoke Japanese worked in J-Town. And I got to chat with--and even stand next to--them... m(>_<)m. Of course, this was just my perception, which was actually blown out of proportion, because I was coming from a cloistered life in parochial school. I mean, for me--a dork--any girl was like a gift from God.

"Oh, thank you God, for giving me this opportunity before I die...."

Well, maybe I wasn't that hard up, but it was close....

Besides, I was soon to find out that Eastside girls looked hot, but Westside girls WERE hot. My metamorphoses began one New Years season, Shogatsu. In the sweet shop business, this period began the day after Christmas as everyone began to buy there stock of mochi, the rice cakes everyone eats on January 1....

I was hanging out with a new acquaintance who helped out during the Shogatsu rush. Dave (not his real name) was thinking of starting a band and he had a set of drums. I had a piano, and so he suggested we "jam". Well, I had pretended to be a musician, playing at church and boy scout functions ever so rarely--like once or twice. But of course, I had to say, "Uh, yeah, let's rock." How corny...

Well, one thing led to another and, voila, I was in a band. We were, to be sure, small time and very short lived, lasting nine months--three to get ready, and six to play gigs--in 1973. We played at Asian dances--dances sponsored by and advertised to Asians, mostly Japanese Americans. They were held at places like Roger Young's Auditorium, the Elks Club and miscellaneous restaurants. These dances were the places for the "in-crowd", to see and be seen, where guys came to show off their Camaros, Road Runners or Porches, where an Anti-glob could get an illegal drink without the help of "older" friends. I occasionally saw my high school classmates, which was cool, because it shocked them to see me in this kind of environment. But this was rare, which was also fine, for this meant there was a lesser chance of other finding out what a Glob I was.

This is where I also got my first real lesson in the demographics of JA women in LA. Before our band began playing at these dances, we would go out to scout what the other bands were playing. Bands with a brass section played songs like "You're Still a Young Man" by Tower of Power or "Beginnings" by Chicago. Brass-less groups played standard tunes that were so boring I can't even remember what they were. Of course, on these scouting trips, I was pretty incognito. Not a band member, just another Asian face in a sea of Asian faces. I hung with the other band members and met their group of friends, and soon learned the difference between Eastside and Westside. The Eastside chicks were hot looking, but the Westside girls were just plain hot. They could dance. They could talk. And they would NEVER tease. Eastsiders would act as though they were interested in you, but they'd be looking over your shoulder or at their watch waiting for something better to happen--which usually wasn't a long wait if they were talking to me. But Westsiders, what you saw was what you got. If they liked you, you were good to go. If they didn't, they let you know right from the start where you stood. It was easier and cooler to talk to Westside girls, because they didn't give you the business. It really was straight, and easy to handle, for a Glob like me.

But things changed when our band started getting gigs. At a dance, Eastside girls appeared out of nowhere:

"Aren't you in the band? Ooh, I like the way you played guitar."

"Uh, I'm on keyboard." I would try so hard not to roll my eyes. I mean, they WERE cute.

"Yeah, I know! You guys are so good. I really liked the first song you played. I just heard it for the first time on the radio yesterday. How did you guys learn it so fast?"

"'Free Ride'? By Edgar Winters? Well, we try to keep our fingertips on the pulse of music trends." (I still can't believe I used to say shit like that...) But as I would say this, I looked over her shoulder for something better to happen, because I knew what was coming next.

"Really? No one plays that song at dances. You guys are so good. Uh, I'm Kathy, do you think you could get me and my friends in free at your next gig?"

Yes, dear, even we had groupies.

Alas, fame was fleeting. We got top billing at an Asian dance once, when the other top Japanese/Asian bands--Free Flight, Heavy Nations, We the People--had the flu or something. Our fifteen minutes lasted from midsummer to the end of the year and then we broke up. But not before I got to meet a lot of people who were not Globs, who taught me to smoke, and drink, and partake in other pharmaceutically unsafe activities. But most importantly, they taught me that I didn't have to be compliant, that I could complain if I wanted to, that I could be what I wanted to be, that I didn't have to meet the expectations set by someone else. The downside, of course, was that this was all happening when I was a junior in high school, a Jesuit high school at that. I would be hung-over or exhausted from lack of sleep from band practice, and I would ditch school. On days I felt fine, I didn't want to waste it at school. Better to go to the mall or to the beach. Fortunately for me, I had myself a Westside girlfriend, Aileen (not her real name), whose handwriting was exactly the same as my mother's. What a break. As far as the school was concerned, I was suffering from some sort of incurable malady. And in a way, I was: self-discovery. But while I didn't get into trouble for my attendance, my grades suffered severely. I can't remember getting a single grade higher than a D+ in any of my courses. Of course, if you miss more than a third of school, it's not surprising.

But even after the band broke up, I still had my friends and we still hung out together. I never reverted to a Glob. In my senior year, my grades went up just enough to graduate, third from the bottom, with an overall GPA of 2.1. I was definitely not university material. While all my classmates applied and got into major universities, I was stuck in limbo.But that was okay. I didn't have to meet anyone's expectation except my own. And I decided to bum around. This is when my mother intervened and said: "Go to Japan"....

Working at the J-Town sweet shop, my Japanese language ability had improved steadily. It opened a whole new world to me. Going to Eigiku with Mitchan (his real nick-name), I slowly began to comprehend the Japanese world that was swirling around me. He thinks she's cute. She thinks he's sukebe (horny). Wages were too low. The microphone was too loud. Do you wanna sing?

"Me? Uh, no thanks. I don't know any of the songs..."

But regardless of my unwillingness to partake in singing at a piano bar, my interest in things Japanese grew significantly.

"Hey, Ray," said a worker at the sweet shop. "Why don't you go to Japan? Lots of beppin there."

Beppin, a colloquial term for beauty, immediately caught my attention. While playing in the band and partying into the wee hours, I had learned, among other things, why God created women. So when my mother arranged for me to go to Japan to stay with my grandmother in her Tokyo mansion, I was excited. It was my mother's intention to give me time and space to think about my future--have I ever mentioned that I really loved my mom?--but little did she know that that was the reason she didn't have to tell me twice to pack my bags.

I arrived at Haneda Airport in Tokyo to a deluge of Japanese faces. Man, will you look at this? I look like everyone else here. Confident in the Japanese ability I developed at the sweet shop, I made my way through immigration, dealt with the agricultural control agent--who promptly cut the only twine that held together the case of four honey dew melons my grandmother insisted I bring--and passed customs after having my suitcase thoroughly searched for contraband, I entered the main lobby and searched through the dizzying crowd, finally hearing my name being called by my grandparents. My maternal grandmother was born and raised in Hiroshima and was an atom bomb victim, as was my mother. My grandfather--my grandmother's second husband--was an executive for JETRO, the Japan External Trade Organization. He had lived many years overseas in countries such as Iran, Australia and Switzerland, and spoke English very well. As we traveled to Suginami-ku by taxi, I conversed with them eager to show-off my Japanese. They seemed pleased enough, and I was excited to see my room in this new mansion they had bought near Nishi-Ogikubo station on the Chuo line. The car stopped in front of a white, non-descript structure that looked more like an apartment than a mansion.

"We're here," my grandfather said as he paid the driver.

Puzzled, I lugged my suitcase and the honey dew up to the third-floor of this elevator-less building. Entering in the small entrance, we took off our shoes and they directed me to a room where I was to leave my suitcase. It was, to me, no bigger than a large walk-in closet. "This is where you'll sleep," my grandmother told me. "And, this is where we sleep," she continued, pointing to the only other room with a small TV in it.

"Is this where you live? Mom told me you bought a mansion."

I found myself in a situation that exposed my inability to grasp the cultural abyss between Japan and the US. All my life, I thought I was Japanese. In 1970, when the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! came out, My friends and I--about twenty of us--went to Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood with the intention of cheering the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor. My friend brought his large Japanese navy flag and we ran around the theater waving it. Every time a Japanese bomb hit a U.S. battleship, we cheered. And with each cheer came hisses from the other people in the audience, some yelling to pipe down, but not much more when they realized what a big single group we were. It was, to be sure, childish, unproductive, and insensitive to the many who lost their lives in this war, but for a bunch of JA teenagers, it gave us a sense of pride. Images of buck-tooth Japs being drubbed by the likes of John Wayne were nowhere to be seen, and we felt empowered.

But now, in the fall of 1974, four months after I graduated high school, I was beginning to realize that maybe, I wasn't Japanese. Indeed, my first visit to Japan made it all too clear to me that I wasn't Japanese even in the eyes of the Japanese. I may have looked Japanese, but once anyone found out I was American, they treated me differently. Sometimes rudely, sometimes nicely, but always differently. I didn't think Japanese, and as it was pointed out to me by many, I couldn't speak Japanese either, at least not to their standard. And girls! Where were the girls? There were a lot of cute girls, but I was totally out of my element. I had a lot of time on my hands, but with no money and little knowledge of my surroundings, I was totally lost. I had hoped my second cousin, who was half a year older than me and a college student at Waseda, would help me out, but he was square. I mean four ninety-degree-angles square. Besides, I got the impression he didn't want to have anything to do with me, a borderline high school drop-out.

I ultimately spent four months in Japan getting acquainted with the many relatives I never knew, and returned to the U.S. with a whole new set of questions... Who am I? What am I? Where do I belong? I went to Japan thinking I was Japanese, but learned that I wasn't. I knew that in the U.S. I was not totally accepted or treated as an American either. So where do I belong? For the time being, no one could take away my birth place, and my passport said I was an American citizen, so I had to deal with my inner conflicts in LA, and go from there...

After my return from Japan, I had much to think about. How do I address this new realization that I am NOT JAPANESE. Looking back at this time with the clarity of years of experience, it was foolish of me to even think I was Japanese: I wasn't born there, I had never lived there, I didn't know the language as well as I thought I did, and my understanding of Japanese culture was anachronistic, a vestige of the Meiji/Taisho (late 19th/early 20th cen.) period. But in the winter and early spring of 1975, I did not have the benefit of hindsight, so I did what any confused 19 year-old would do: A little of this, a little of that, and a lot of bumming around...

As I sit here and try to recall the years between 1975 and 1980, I realize that they are not very clear in my mind. Many memories and the order in which they occurred before this five year period are stored in my mind in a clear and coherent fashion. My first major scolding: When I was 4, I managed to open a can of paint and proceeded to redo my red fire engine and my sisters bicycle; I was sent to my room where I think I threw everything I could get my hands on at the door in frustration... My first taste of scotch: 5 years old in our old house in East LA, given to me by my Uncle Frank, "Try it. It's adult apple juice"... The first time I realized that I might truly be different: The father of a friend down the block, Ricky Santa Maria (real name), used to call me tomodach, and I thought he was cursing me... Other times when I knew I was truly different: Getting beat up by local toughs when my friends and I at 12 rode our bikes past Belvedere Park on our way to the Library because we were japs and gooks and chinks (they couldn't make up their minds)... The first time I held hands: At Knott's Berry Farms on a field trip in 8th grade with a girl who today would probably even deny she knows me... My first cigarette: In the back yard, behind the garage at 14, with my mom's lighter and Kent's... My first real part-time job: At the sweet shop at 17, going downstairs with a girl two years my senior, who took me downstairs to get me an apron and had me carry up a case of boxes--it was my first serious crush... I remember all these events and the sequencing with a high degree of clarity...

Yet, the five-year period from the age 19 to 24 are blurred, jumbled together. I recall isolated incidents, miscellaneous dates, different jobs intertwined with each other. Perhaps all these are just proof of how really confused--if not just simply screwed up--I was. As I continue to log portions of my life on this public forum, it occurs to me that I am not here to provide fiction. Many write about current relationships (I argued with my boyfriend, I hate my boss, I love my dog) or about current incidents (I went to school, I saw a movie) or about dreams and goals (I wanna go to Japan, I want to meet the perfect guy or girl). Me, I am writing something that is just as personal--perhaps even more so, since it is something that has been a part of my life for that last 40+ years: my memories. It is something that I cherish and relive in my mind from time to time when I can't go to sleep, or when I'm sitting in the train exhausted, or when I'm feeling frustrated at work, or when I'm just feeling sad with a glass of scotch in my hand... So it really bothers me that I can't articulate this five year period coherently. I don't want to make anything up, so I've even gone back to look at old records and photos to see if they might jog my memory, but no luck. So I will instead provide a basic timeline and relate isolated incidents that I remember that might prove to be salient to this selected record of my life...

Back in LA, I did very little. I went back the sweet shop, but their new hire was competent and I worked only on the weekends. While all my high school buddies were going to universities, I led an aimless existence Monday through Friday. I wasn't sure what to do, and I still struggled to understand where I fit in the greater scheme of things: am I Japanese, or Japanese-American, or American? Compounding to my confusion was the absence of a parent. When I returned to my home in East L.A., I learned that my mother had decided to leave the house. The marriage between my parents had been strained for a variety of reasons--which I am not prepared to discuss on as a public forum as this--but I will say that she was in many ways frustrated by the limitations life placed on her as a wife and mother... or more specifically, as a Japanese wife and Japanese mother.

As a result, I had very little to do during the days except read a book or watch TV. I never reconnected with my band buddies--we had all sorta went our separate ways--except for one: our female lead singer, BA. She had kept in touch with me while I was in Japan, and we saw each other from time to time after I cam back. By the summer of 1975, we had committed to a relationship. Of course, a relationship, as defined by a 19 year-old with no direction, was a pretty shallow thing. But a relationship it was, and BA was just the person for me. She could sing, she could play the piano, she was a cute Westsider, she was an honor student, and went to the other major university in LA (UCLA, of course, being the premier post-secondary school in the city). She had looks and brains. She was kind and generous and thoughtful, and she could cook... Far too good for the likes of me... but she was mine.

Thanks to BA, I had a sense of where I wanted to go. The stability of her presence--her outlook, her attitude--gave me a sense of direction: Go to school, get a "regular" part-time job, and none of this J-Town, coolie-wages gig... Yes, BA was not into the JA scene. She became singer of our JA band almost by accident, through the introduction of a casual friend. She knew no Japanese, and little about its customs and history. I wouldn't mark her as a "banana"--yellow on the outside, white on the inside (Marja tells me that it's "Twinkie" now, but it would seem to me like the skin is too thick)--but she showed little interest in JA issues and things Japanese in general. But actually, we were a pretty good match. I introduced her to a few things Japanese which she liked, and she showed me how JAs coped in the "real" world, outside the insulated environment of J-Town. I went back to school--a local community college, because my grades in high school prevented me from matriculating into a four-year institute. I also got another job, working at a major bank--the one that consolidated with Nations Bank. I felt that I was beginning to understand what it was all about. Being JA was cool, but you had to temper it with a dose of reality. I got along with my fellow workers at the bank--I was the only Asian and that was a completely new experience for me. I could be a bit assertive, casting aside the yoke of the reserved Glob (good little oriental boy). There was a trade off, of course. There was no more running through theaters waving a Japanese flag. But that was okay. I felt like I could cope in this world now.

It sounds so obvious, its ridiculous, but for me and many of my friends it was not so. Going to an all Japanese American elementary school and church. Shopping and working in J-Town, where virtually every worker and certainly most visitors were of Japanese descent. Hanging out and going to dances where practically everyone I associated with was Japanese American. It was a comfortable world, a world where Chuckles the Clown would never invade. But it was also an isolated world, one where I would never grow up.

I owed a lot to BA. She was the best thing that could happen to me at a time when my family situation was rocky, and she and her family accepted me with open arms. But of course, young men at 19-20 years of age are boast a psychological age of a 13-year-old, or at least I did. After about 14 months, we broke up because I was selfish, narrow-minded and just plain stupid... and did what I had to do... find another girl...

Hindsight is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because it allows you to see past mistakes in the context of subsequent--sometimes painful, hopefully, better--experience. The curse is that your selfishness, narrow mindedness, and stupidity stands out in relief, and has the potential to haunt you for an extended period of time. Looking back now, I think the main reason I broke up with BA was because she just wasn't "Japanese" enough. I had been going through an identity crisis of sorts, and I could not give up the notion that I was tied, in some shape or form, to "being Japanese."

After breaking up with BA, I sought--I suppose subconsciously--the other extreme, and found MM, a girl who was from Japan, whose English had not yet fully developed. She was a senior in high school and relatively cute, and in many ways, very Japanese. But--as I was to learn--perhaps too Japanese. I don't want to generalize and offend anyone, but at the time, MM seemed like the typical Japanese girl: spoiled and dependent. One Sunday afternoon in 1976, we spent strolling along the Redondo Beach pier.

"Oh look, cotton candy! How nostalgic! How nice..." "Want some?" I asked. "Sure!"

I got her the cotton candy and she started eating small bites of it when all of a sudden, she noticed apples dipped in red dye 39, lined up in short rows upside down...

"What's that?" "That's candied apple. I used to crave these when I was a kid." "Really? I want to try some too." "Uh, what about the cotton candy?" "This? It's too sweet anyway."

She handed me the cotton candy and told the guy at the counter she wanted one. The stick of the apple securely in hand, she headed down the pier again. The guy eyed me with a "She's with you, right?" look, and held his palm out.

I jog to catch up with her only to find her grimacing. Now what?

"This is too sweet. How could you have craved something like this?" "........." "I don't want this anymore." "You want the cotton candy then?" I asked hopefully. "No, I need something to get all this sweet taste out of my mouth."

She promptly dumped the candied apple into a trash can already overflowing with the wasted food other children had thrown away...

"........."

I had this image of a Biafra poster in my mind, but it was too difficult equate confections with food staples...

As I have learned, subsequently, her actions are not necessarily spoiled, but they reflect what Takeo Doi revealed in his book, An Anatomy of Dependence (Amae no Kōzō). Perhaps, had I read Doi's book first, I would have understood her behavior and accepted it... or maybe never have dated her in the first place. It's hard to say...

MM exhibited what I now recognize as amae 甘え, the Japanese trait that permeates the very fabric of many males and females in Japan. In a broad sense, it deals--as I see it--with two major issues: emotional dependency and security. A child receives unconditional love from a parent--primarily the mother; in return, the child offers complete loyalty to the parent. This act is often taken to the extreme when the child acts as selfishly as he or she wants. This in turn develops into a relationship of dependence: a child relies on a mother for everything--understanding, ; the child can act in any manner s/he wants, fully aware that the mother will always provide love, understanding, and security--have you ever seen a 5 year-old in a supermarket screaming for something--買って買って (buy it, buy it)--and the mother NEVER getting angry or even embarrassed? This relationship beginnings in infancy when a child sleeps nestled against mother who is willing to nurse the child at any moment. This turns into joint bathing, and whenever the child needs love and attention, carrying it in front (dakko) or piggy-back (onbu).

The single element common to all these behaviors is the physical contact between mother and child. I don't mean to suggest that there is an incestuous relationship--although some people suggest it, including a TV show from a few years back called 誰にも言えない (I can't tell anyone). The physical closeness is regarded as such a crucial element in the development of a strong parent-child relationship, that it even has a pseudo-English term, "skinship".

This relationship is neither good nor bad, it is simply the Japanese way of things. Many open-minded people in the West who subscribe to ideals of independence and self-reliance may find this strange, if not unhealthy... Indeed, I've heard of a story where a white female American gained custody of a child during a divorce because the Japanese father had taken baths with their daughter when she was a young child. The wife understood the Japanese practice, but used it to appeal to the court's western sense of "morality" vis-à-vis this case. In the Japanese mind, there is no sense of immorality. Indeed, public nudity with the same sex is not a major concern. Although many may exhibit varying degrees of modesty, nudity at public baths and hot springs is not viewed as abnormal. But still, it is linked to a sense of vulnerability, and so being naked with others fosters a sense of trust. Being naked with a parent--not the same sex, but perhaps more importantly, the same family--nurtures a similar sense of trust.

I'm no sociologist, so I should not go any deeper into this very complex Japanese trait. But I should say that I had a Japanese mother, and as such I too was a participant in this practice. My loyalty to my mother was total, and the amae I indulged in--the belief that my mother offered unconditional love and support--was, according to Musubi-chan, manifest... Which bring me back to MM. She seemed to manifest this desire to amae, to indulge in my unconditional love and support of her. Little did she realize that I was ill-prepared and ill-equipped to offer it... Am I being too honest, or what!?!

MM manifested a characteristic I was not familiar with... at least not on the giving end, which exposes me now as a selfish, self-centered brat. And I was, so I did what any selfish, self-centered brat would do, I broke it off... again. And I was so cool... uh, I mean, so uncool about it. I created a situation in which it made it seem like she was at fault... It was kind of a three-strikes-and-you're-out deal, and I made sure that the strikes were acts she was bound to perform: lies... Not that I have never told a lie, but she had a way of straying from the truth, much like children do when they don't want to be caught... Anyway, she ended up being too Japanese for me, and we did not last very long. Actually, she didn't last very long, for I had another already prepped.

Okay, before you go and judge me as a jerk, please note that I am already fully aware of that fact. Indeed, I was even aware of it back then, but it didn't stop me. I was young and rarin' to go. I won't bore you with the details, 'cuz the point of this story is to convey the idea that I had not lived my life like the Glob--good little oriental boy--I was supposed to be. I did things the way I wanted, and I was very selfish at that...

But I was also trying to find myself within my JA skin. I went back and forth with different girls: YI was from Japan but spent many years in NY and seemed pretty close to ideal, if not for her parents--she was the daughter of a shōsha-man (businessman in a large Japanese multinational corporation)--and they kept us apart very successfully. (Actually, I've always thought that they were pretty perceptive.) CN was a JA who was born in Japan but came to LA at a young age. Her Japanese was good, but her attitude toward life was similar to mine: defy the stereotype. We liked to dance, drink, sex, all party all the time. But I think we were too much alike and we basically got bored of each other.

I soon quit the bank job and school--again--to work full time at the sweet shop in 1978. I had been promoted to plant manager at the tender age of 22, and became a "semi" big-shot in J-Town. It was pretty much a joke, as I think back about it now. A 22 year-old punk planning and managing the plant that supplied sweets for three retail stores and a wholesale market for Japanese confections. I am embarrassed to discuss the details of the job, because I did so poorly, but my social life was active. Unfortunately it mostly involved drinking and drinking and more drinking. In fact, I had turned into an alcoholic. I can't believe some of the things I did. I went to my favorite bar with my buddies from J-Town 8 days a week. I drank Cutty and water, 6-8 double shots a night. I'd flirt with every girl in the bar--many were not so cute, but then, as I was gaining weight from all this drinking, I was no beauty either... After a couple of scuffles in the bar and blow outs at home--my mother had returned by then--I came to the realization that I was out of control. At first, I thought it was cool hangin' with my JA buds, being JA, talking Japanese, being cool. But this "cool" was not worth my sanity, my self-respect, my future, my life...

During this two-year "lost weekend", I met JI who was a tamer version of CN, and I thought it would work. By the end of summer 1979, I had removed myself from the manager's position, and decided to go back to school to see if I could still do something with my life. I came to realize that J-Town was not in my future, that being JA didn't necessarily mean that I had to associate with this particular segment of society. JI was a remnant of this J-Town legacy and she didn't seem to fit into the scheme of things, socially, intellectually... Intellectually? What a ridiculous notion. When the hell did that enter into the equation?

Well, actually, I can't tell you the exact date, but it was a process that began when I entered a singing contest in J-Town... and won...

In the summer of 1979, I was still hanging with my J-Town buddies at the bar we always went to in Monterey Park. There was a singing contest sponsored by Suntory held in J-Town, and the producers--a small, local Japanese TV production company--went to all the local piano bars--there was no Karaoke back in the day--to hold tryouts for the "Second Suntory Kayōkyoku Butsuke Honban Grand Champion Taikai" At the bar I frequented, Sanchō, I was considered--at the risk of sounding immodest--one of the better singers. When the tryouts were held at our hangout, I sang a song by Azusa Michiyo called "Futari de osake wo". The producers chose only two from each establishment they visited and I was not one of them. My buddies and even the owner of the bar were surprised.

"They should have chosen you," said James through his cigar.

"Yeah, who's that guy anyway? He's usually drinking at Eigiku. What's he doing here?" Tom stared at the intruder.

The owner, of course, was all business. After talking to the producers and congratulating the contestants for the contest. She came back to the bar where all the regulars sat. "Apparently, they had more than two singers at Eigiku that they want to compete, so they distributed them to other bars so they can eventually be chosen as contestants... at the expense of one 'legitimate' patron," she explained, looking at me sympathetically.

With my chin resting in my left palm, all I could do was stare at the cutty and water I stirred aimlessly with a swizzle stick. I was not especially surprised, but I was depressed.

"What am I doing here?" a recurring question in my life.

A bit bummed out, I began the process of reorganizing my life. One of the things I specifically pegged as a major problem to fix was my drinking. I had been drinking scotch and water everyday and I found myself uneasy, jittery when I didn't have a drink. I was also dissatisfied with the way my life was developing, the direction in which it was headed. So I forced myself to take stock, to figure out what I should do to resolve these issues. I concluded that life in a JA only world was to small, confining. Everyone knew each other, and everything you did and said was open to scrutiny... and gossip.

"Did you see Marumaru-san last night? He was so drunk."

"Yeah, I heard he went home with the girl from XYZ..."

"Her? That girl went to the doctor the other day because she's been sleeping around and caught something, y'know..."

"Well, if Marumaru-san catches something, he better not give it to his wife."

"Won't happen. I heard they sleep in different beds now..."

"Did you hear about Kanzaki?"

"Yeah, he got the shaft, but maybe he wasn't that good anyway."

"Maybe. Even if he was chosen second, its obvious that he wasn't as good as the other Sanchō singer..."

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And these were guys! Helping to manage a business was pressure enough, but to have your private life hung out like dirty laundry was beyond the pale. Recalling my time with BA, I decided to step away from this JA/J-Town life and the first step was to quit my job as manager of the sweet shop factory--not that I was any good at it anyway. This would lessen the number of times I came in contact with my J-Town "buddies", reduce undue stress, and allow me to clear my head. I have often wondered if I was running away, just because I wasn't chosen to participate in the contest... and I guess, in a way, it was. But there are times when you need to escape, need to retreat, to back up to a previous fork in the road and see where the other road takes you. Life does not always afford this luxury, but when it does I felt that I should take advantage of it. I stayed home, and thought about reapplying myself academically by going back to the local community college again. This was my start, as mundane as it was, going through the ELAC course catalog to figure out what classes I would take for the Fall semester, when I got a phone call.

"Hey! Whatcha doin'? We haven't seen you in a while! Why don't you come by Sanchōs anymore?" asked James.

"Uh, well," reaching desperately within myself to find an excuse. "I've been kinda busy."

"Man, you quit the sweetshop, and you don't come to Sanchō. We thought you committed suicide. Hehe..."

"............"

"Anyway," James continued, "T asked me to call you to tell you to come by. She has something important to tell you."

"I'm kinda busy, figuring out my future..."

"Well, T thinks this will affect your future, too."

"I doubt it."

"No really. The first round's on me."

"Make it the first three." I figured I may as well make him pay for pulling me away from my deliberations.

"We'll be waiting."

I get in my car--did I mention its a midnight blue '73 Chevy Camaro?--and drive the five minutes it takes for me to get there. I walk into the dark bar on this late-afternoon Sunday. The restaurant didn't open until 6, but James an T are sitting at the bar, as the employees run around getting ready for business.

"N-san is on a business trip and can't make it to the contest. I want you to represent the restaurant," T said matter-of-factly.

"Huh? What happened?"

"The TV people were going to replace N-san with someone else, but I told them the replacement had to come from this establishment. And I want you."

"Really." I said, not knowing what else to say. It took a few minutes before what she said actually sunk in. "So what am I supposed to do?"

"Practice," T replied.

And I did. Every night for two weeks. The pianist at the bar, K, suggested I forget "Futari de osake wo" and sing another Asuza Michiyo song called "Melancholy." I didn't know the song and was hesitant at first, but relented after she convinced me that a newer song sung by fewer people at piano bars would have a greater impact. I had to admit that "Futari" was a popular--and hence, tired--song at piano bars. But this also meant that I had to memorize the lyrics of a song a barely knew...

On the night of the contest, I was nervous as heck. I went to the contest with my sister, two high-school friends and one drinking buddy. My parents were somewhere in the Grand Canyon--"Do you think you really have a chance?" my dad chortled as he left the day before. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to see my uncle and two aunts there in the audience, as well as two ladies from the retail shop of the sweet shop.

The contest was held in the hall of Koyasan Temple in the middle of J-Town. When I got there, I found out I was 29 out of 32 contestants. My friends and sister entered the hall and I went backstage to wait my turn. The first few singers were pretty good, nothing spectacular, but passable. The thing that got me though was the fact that each contestant was on stage for a long time. It took thirty minutes to get through the first 4 to 5 singers, meaning it would take another hour and a half before I was called on stage. Nervous to begin with, the waiting made me all the more so. I went out the side door and headed toward a local sushi bar in Japanese Village Plaza. It had a small service bar where maybe four people could sit. Jim, the bartender, served me a couple of Cuttys as I played the lyrics in my head over and over.

After three belts, I returned to Koyasan Hall, no less nervous, but perhaps a bit braver. I went on stage on cue and sang "Melancholy". I'm not sure if my experience with the band had anything to do with it, but once on stage I sang and walked around and always kept my eye on the audience, looking at the judges--which included Mickey Curtis, (fading) star of film and music--looking toward the back of the hall, to the sides, trying to make eye contact, even though I couldn't see anyone beyond the second row. It was like old times, sorta. I wasn't sitting at the piano, but I was center stage... What a ham, my friends would tell me later, but at that moment, I was totally relaxed and confident.

After the requisite interview--Yes, I'm sansei. Yes, I work at the M sweet shop where I learned Japanese--I went off stage. I found one of the producers who informed me that after the last contestant, the judges will deliberate for a while and then they will announce the winner. I stepped outside to grab a smoke and found some my friends out there, including JI. She told me that she thought I would win. The people she was with said the same thing. They thought I had a stage presence that the others lacked--yeah, Ray, you looked like you've been there before.

I became nervous all over again, but with a different sense of anticipation. Did I sing that well? Did I nail it?

They announced that the judges had made their decision and we were to gather on stage. With great anticipation, I waited eagerly as they announced the names of the winners in reverse order. 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd...

"And 1st place goes to Sam F."

I was at a loss. I mean, I felt pretty good on stage, but everyone else also said I performed so well. Shit! I didn't even place in the top five. I should have known better. I should have just ignored all these idiots and focused on selecting the proper courses to take at the community college. I mean, seriously, what am I doing here?!?

Photographic Evidence Yes, that's me in the center. Is this not the face of someone who is completely surprised?!?

I looked around the stage. Which is the fastest way off. I'm sure there's an exit behind that curtain... When suddenly everyone applauds and cheers. I hear my name and some one grabs my arm and pulls me to the front. What's happening?

"....plause for this year's Grand Champion, Ray Kanzaki, who sang...."

I was stunned. I thought I lost and was looking for a way off the stage. It never occurred to me that Grand Champion did not equal first place? What? Oh, yeah, the prize.

"...a round trip ticket to Tokyo, Japan..."

Will someone please pinch me?

Well, I learned that the prize wasn't all that great. I first had visions of grandeur. The Suntory Corporation would pick me up in a limousine at the airport and whisk me away to a posh Akasaka hotel. The reality was much different.

The ticket to Japan turned out to be a one-year open round trip ticket from LA to Tokyo on China Airline. Further, the only connection the sponsor, Suntory, had with the contest was providing money for the low-budget plane ticket. Indeed, the Suntory name was supplied by the local Suntory office, and the Tokyo headquarter had nothing to do with it and knew nothing of this contest. So all dreams of being "discovered" went up in smoke. As I think of it now, I was pretty naive.

But still, I got a free trip to Japan, so I wasn't complaining too loudly. I decided to go in my favorite season, Fall, and left LA around the beginning of October. In Japan, I stayed at my grandparents condo again in Nishi-Ogikubo, but they were not living there. My grandfather was sent to Australia by his trading organization for a few years, but they had my cousin Alvin--who was by then a Waseda student, and still reminded me of a chipmunk--house-sit the place while they were gone. So I had a room to myself, little of my grandparents house-cluttering items, and a cousin who usually spent time at school and with his friends, so I could spend my time as I pleased.

For a week, I puttered around local areas, going to Shinjuku a couple times to get my self oriented to Tokyo, again. I also went to visit my relatives in the boondocks of Fukushima for a week or so. It was kinda embarrassing. I told them that the contest was no big deal, that Suntory was only lending its name and had no real interest in the contest or its winner, but they would have no part in it. One look at the photo, and they figured they had a bona fide star in the making... or something. My cousin--Issei on my dad's side--got all the relatives and a couple of the local council members who were friends to come over for a party to celebrate my winning the contest. My family on that side will use any reason to hold a party. I wanted me to sing the song I won with, and Akio, my dad's cousin, searched the entire village for a karaoke tape of the song--Karaoke was in its infancy back then--but he couldn't find one, so I ended up singing at the party a cappella...

One thing I wanted to do while I was in Japan was meet up with YI, the girl I went out with for a few weeks after MM...

One thing I wanted to do while I was in Japan was me up with YI, the girl I went out with for a few weeks after MM. She was pretty cute and smart and spoke Japanese. Sorta like BA with Japanese and English skills. The only reason why we broke up was because at the time 1976 she was a senior in high school (18) and I was 21. Her parents were not amused. Anyway, I went to see her but she was out with her friends--stupid me, I didn't call before I stopped by--and left with her mother the omiyage I brought for her. Her parents' condo was near ICU, where she went, and I decided to visit the campus--who knows, I thought naively, maybe I'll run into her. Well, you've probably guessed that I ended up strolling the campus by myself, seeing a whole lot of nothing. I decided to head back to Nishi-Ogikubo and hopped on the bus back to Mitaka Station. As I gazed out the window, wondering if I would ever see YI again, some called out to me in English.

"Ray? Is that you?" "JU? What are you doing here?" "I'm a ryûgakusei. From UCLA" "Man, I haven't seen you since when? Boy scouts? Karate?" "About six years, I guess, huh." "Man, no shit." Kinda lonely about not being able to see YI, I thought it would be fun to hang with JU, who was a couple of years younger than me. He was in the same patrol--the Firebirds--in our Boy Scout troop and we also took Shotokan Karate together at our church. "So what you doing now? Got a date? Going to work?" "No, I was just going to go to the station and do some shopping." "Screw that. Let's go to Shinjuku and get a drink. My treat." "Yeah, okay."

Well, we went to Shinjuku, and found a small dive outside Nishiguchi west of the station on the main thoroughfare Omekaidô. We ate lightly but imbibed rather heavily in o-sake. I think we finished more than a bottle (one bottle = 1.8 liters)... I think. I don't really remember much after reaching the bottom of the first bottle. What I do recall is paying 18,000 yen--pretty hefty for 24 years ago--and helping my friend throw up onto the tracks from the platform of the Chuo line. I sorta recall being warned by someone to take care of him as he seemed pretty bad off. I was pretty drunk, but I guess I can "appear" more sober... Anyway, I couldn't send him back to school in this condition, so I brought him home... much to the displeasure of my cousin. Hahaha. He was really put out. Alvin is a really square dude; naive as naive gets--even in Tokyo--and he couldn't wait to call Australia to report to my grandparents. All i could do was put my friend in a futon and let him sleep it off. Next morning, I wake up to find my cousin gone to school. I wake up with JU and he's still groggy as hell, but he insisted that he had to go back to school, so I went with him as far as Mitaka Station to make sure he got on the right bus.

It was November 5, 1979. I remember the date rather distinctly. I returned home with with a headache and a woozy stomach. I laid down on top of the futon and turned on the TV, hoping the static of Japanese would lull me to sleep. News. Some kind of turmoil in some unnamed third-world country. I couldn't really tell, because while my Japanese was passable for everyday conversation, I still had problems with the more sophisticated language of news. I changed the channel and recognized the same footage. Damn, I need some stupid daytime drama to put me to sleep. I click a again and its still the news. What's going on? Something pretty big must have happened, so I tried to focus and understand what the newscaster was saying. Iran, American taishikan? That's "embassy", right. Hitojichi? I look it up in the dictionary: "hostage"... What the...? I wasn't really sure what happened, the newscasters spoke too fast for me in language I was too unfamiliar with. But I got the gist: Some Iranians entered the American embassy in Tehran, Iran and took hostages including marines. Late afternoon, I hurried to Nishi-Ogikubo station to buy the evening paper. I return home and try my best to read the newspaper with a dictionary. I was struggling but I understood more: So-called students stormed the embassy and took marines and embassy personnel hostage. They were crying for the death of the US. I was shocked. And angry. How could they do that to us... "Us"? Did I just say "us"?

I learned two things on this trip. One was the new form of entertainment, karaoke, where one could sing a favorite tune accompanied by music that was pretty close to the original. This was a revelation. This was, to the best of my recollection, the very first time I thought the Japanese were world leaders in "having fun". But, the other thing I learned was more revealing: I was an American.

And that I probably would never see YI again...

Should I finish this story?

A-bomb, Hiroshima and Mom

2006-01-07T12:16:00.000-05:00

Today is the 48th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Every August, this becomes an intense issue for many anti-nuclear groups and opponents. For me, it is just as intense, but for more personal reasons.

My mother is an A-bomb victim--hibakusha in Japanese. That makes me a second generation victim, and the research on how radiation effects second generations is still inconclusive--although a friend has told me that if I'm any indication, the research should lead to illnesses like Peter Pan syndrome. But this is not about me....

My mother--photographed in the early '50s next to Honkawa, a river in Hiroshima (I think the Atomic Dome is visible in the background)--rarely talked about her experience. I had asked her a couple of times, but she would only tell me it was terrible and offered virtually no detail. On my first trip to Japan, I visited my relatives in Hiroshima with her and learned that most victims indeed did not talk about the event... until they were talking to someone who went through the same experience. In my great-aunt's house just northwest of ground zero--the Atomic Dome--she talked very animately with her cousin's husband about their experience. I was mesmerized, and now kick myself in the butt for being so selfish, for not recording their conversation on tape or on paper to share with others. All I can offer you today is my memory--as suspect as it is.

I had interviewed my mother a few times and actually put some of it on audio tape before she passed on last year, but I have yet to transcribe them as it is still too painful even to listen to them. So I will not write about her fateful day--I will do that on some future date relying on her memories. Instead I will jot down some of the insights I have gained through her over the years...

Burns: They were shiny oval areas on her legs. They differed in size, from 4 inches to 6 inches in length. Each had what looked like veins in a leaf: a center vertical vein with several branches sprawling outward from there. I always stared at them and at times tried to run my fingers over them, but every time I tried, she would slap my hand away. These are the remnants of her burns she suffered from the atomic blast. Her burns were severe and promoted keloids--an excessive production of scar tissue. She later explained to me that these keloids would form, then become dead skin that turned black and then peeled away. After a time, as her wounds healed, they stopped forming, but they left these shiny reminders of August 6. Whenever she slapped my hand away, she would just say, "Stop it." But I wonder if it was because it hurt or because she didn't need anyone else to bring attention to her experience. These weren't her only reminders.

Physical Scars: She had an ear--the left one--that looked like a boxer's cauliflower ear. Whenever my siblings and I were horsing around and we accidentally brushed against this ear, she would freeze in pain. Causing the pain were minute shards of glass. They had been embedded inside this cauliflower ear when the windows of her office imploded from the blast. After the blast, she went to a hospital to have them removed, but she was sent away, told that she should count herself among the lucky; patients that demanded "real" care needed their attention first and foremost. My mother just let the wound heal-over as is. Amazingly, she still maintained some--albeit diminished--hearing in this ear.

Psychological scars: Whenever we went outside, particularly when she was driving, my mother wore excessively dark sunglasses. I thought she was just trying to be California cool, but I found out later that there was a reason related to Hiroshima. When she was speaking with her cousin's husband, he mentioned that even today he flinches when he sees a sudden flash of light--a reminder of the flash on August 6. My mother nodded in agreement. She went on to describe to him how sunny southern California is and that when she was driving, a glint of sunlight reflecting off a car's chrome bumper always made her catch her breath...

I was reluctant to reveal these things about my mother--she consistently avoided talk about her scars and she always tried to hide them. But towards the end of her life, she suggested that perhaps her experience might prove to be noteworthy to some. I hope that some might serve as a reminder of the horrors of war and the effects of a nuclear blast--as we all know, there are some who unfortunately still need it...

Growing up J-Town (Unfinished)

2006-01-06T04:48:00.000-05:00

In the summer of 2004, Dad died. Mom had passed on two years earlier in 2002, and now, there is really no compelling reason for me to return to Los Angeles. My brother still lives in LA and works at a museum dedicated to Japanese American history, but I am reluctant to disturb his seikatsu (activities of everyday life) rhythm. He has his own life, and I don't want to just "drop in" as I used to when I visited my parents. Our collective home is not the same as our individual ones.

In any event, I was conscious of the fact that I would no longer be returning to LA with any great frequency and spent time visiting places I used to frequent: Atlantic Square, Santa Monica beach, the UCLA campus. However, the one place I wanted to spend quality time was an area near the LA Civic Center, Lil' Tokyo.

In its heyday, the Japanese Americans--JAs or Buddha-heads, as we used to call ourselves--referred to the area as J-Town. The only one's who called it Lil' Tokyo were the Chamber of Commerce and the tourists that it relentlessly tried to attract. For us JAs, it was always J-Town, an abbreviation of Japanese Town, the term referring to our heritage and nothing else. Monikers such as Lil' Tokyo or Japan Town, as the Japanese community is called in San Francisco, sounded too much like an attempt to recreate Japan. This was not where we hung out. J-Town was a community created by immigrant Japanese for themselves and for their descendants. It was our own little subculture in which we could feel safe, empowered. It was our place.

So I walked around the streets with my family, and visited some stores that have been in business since my own youth. But they were few and far between. I visited Bunkado--a shop filled with Japanese trinkets that also sold Japanese CDs--back in the day, it was 45s and LPs. I said "Hello" to the owner, Mrs. T, but she no longer recognized me and it seemed too much trouble to try to jog her memory for a mere thirty seconds of satisfaction. We also went to the former Yaohan--now called Mitsuwa, I think--but the entire second floor was closed and it was only a shell of its former self. I even visited the Japanese confection store where I had worked for so many years, but was chagrined to find not a single recognizable face. (It was later that I learned that Mrs. H had been feeling ill and visited her for the last time at her home.)

While it was a bit sad that there was little of the J-Town I remembered, I would be the first to recognize that things change, that nothing stays the same. However, it was distressing that the feel of the place had changed drastically. It seemed to have actually changed into "Lil' Tokyo". Virtually every store was owned by Japanese nationals who were obviously new to LA. There were few signs of Japanese Americans, of a presence that suggested that this place was a center for the Japanese American community.

There are, of course, the cosmetic signs: The Japanese American National Museum, the Japanese American Cultural Center. But these are relatively new structures created in a place that was historically Japanese American, and not necessarily populated by them now.

-Town is now an empty shell of what it once was. Portions of the area reek of decline. On the north side of First Street between Central and San Pedro, there is a row of make-shift video rental shops with videos of pirated Japanese TV shows. Most of the retail stores are geared toward tourist traffic--key chains, post cards, t-shirts of Nomo or Ichiro, or worse, with the Chinese character for samurai or love emblazoned in front. Indeed, the decline of J-Town is such that the Japanese Consulate, which used to occupy two floors of the Sumitomo Building on the corner of First and San Pedro, has moved out to the resurgent downtown area of LA. Where it once wanted to be a part of the Japanese American community, the Consulate has now divorced itself from the withering remains of a once vibrant JA center.

It is hard to believe that Japanese Americans living in and around the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area used to gravitate here. This may sound like an exaggeration to many these days, but I assure you it is not. People I know used to come on the weekends from Santa Barbara to the north, Chino to the east and Del Mar to the south, just to feel connected with the community. However, Southern California JAs have gone through a diaspora of sorts, and they have all gone their own way, pursuing the dreams of the middle class, or whatever class they feel they belong to.

I am no historian and certainly no sociologist, and perhaps I should do some digging before I offer any pseudo-socio-psycho-babble. But you know me: I can't keep my mouth shut. In my experience--and this is admittedly a microscopic niche in the entirety of the Japanese American experience--JAs have led, like the ancestors of their heritage, a paradoxical, and at time contradictory life. As I am so quick to say, Japan is a nation that suggests ambiguity itself. It is a nation proud of its traditions and yet so willing to adapt to new and foreign ways. It is always adopting new foreign loan words into its vernacular, and yet vertical writing--anachronistic in today's world of the Internet--still dominates its print publication--newspapers, magazines, novels--unlike Korea or even China. So the Japanese cling to much of their tradition, but adapt to the world, playing the hadn it was dealt.

Japanese Americans have also had to play the hand they were dealt. As a minority, many of us recognize the traditions of our parents and grandparents, and proudly follow those we still remember or understand. I still take off my shoes before I enter my home. I still eat mochi in soup on New Year's day. And no matter how old I got, I woudl always listen to my mother and father. (Okay, there's a gap between the ages of 17 and 22 when I didn't listen at all...) However, I am two generations removed from the Alien Land Law passed in California in 1913, legislation created to prevent Japanese from owning land. In 1922, in Ozawa v. US, the Supreme Court decided to uphold the Naturalization Act of 1790 that restricted naturalization to free white people. As a person of Japanese descent, Ozawa could not become a US citizen. Anti-miscegenation laws prohibiting marriage between Whites and Asians were in the books in California as late as 1948. I am also a direct descendent of a community that was sent to internment camps during World War II, simply because they were of Japanese heritage, never mind that fact that many were born in the US and were de facto US citizens.

Circumstances such as this compelled many JAs to prove their Americanism over the years by mingling with their non-Asian counterparts, by denying their heritage by discouraging their children from speaking Japanese. Many people I have met of Chinese, Korean and Hispanic descent speak the tongue of their heritage at least into the third generation, but not so for most Japanese Americans I know. While being proud of their heritage, they are also victim of circumstances that caused them to lose a part of it. In an attempt to blend into the American landscape, we had to lose a part of our identity.

I'm not sure if I'm making sense...

The point is that Japan tries its best to maintain its traditions, but at the same time it adapts and adopts things foreign to its heritage in an effort to advance or to fit in with the world at large. Japanese Americans show this same trait by being proud of their identity as JAs but forgoing the maintenance of certain aspects of their heritage in a similar effort to fit in with society at large. I have previously wondered if this was part of our genetic code, but this idea was easily dismissed after I'd met Brazilians and Peruvians of Japanese descent whose attitude resembled our Chinese and Korean counterparts rather than my own. While there is room for individual differences, to a greater or lesser degree mainland JAs, as are most people I suppose, are a product of their circumstances.

y Dad's death and funeral coincided with Nisei Week, the signature festival for Japanese American's in the LA. Every August since 1934, except for a few years in the 40s during the war, the community of Lil' Tokyo sponsored a summer festival called Nisei Week. It is a week during which Japanese Americans put on display its heritage with exhibits on a variety of things from calligraphy to flower arrangement to karate. The festivities started with a Nisei week pageant at which one nubile young Japanese American lady would be crowned Miss Nisei Week, and ended with a parade and carnival.

This year, I was with my family. We visited my brother at the JA National Museum and had lunch together, after which we walked around town as we waited for the parade to begin. One of my sons, Chip--for chipmunk--wanted to get some CDs and so we went to some music stores. We headed toward Mitsuwa in which there is an Asahiya Bookstore. Or I should say, was. It had closed it doors for more than a few months. M wanted to eat some Soba and I told her of a place in Weller Court Called Daisuke. While it was there, it was under new management and the menu had been drastically altered. I was hoping for a yamakake soba--soba noodles with grated tororo potatoes. But I had to settle for regular cold soba.

As three o'clock approached we headed out to the street to see the parade on this last Sunday of the festival. It was the first time I had seen the parade since the early 1980s when I worked at the confectionary store. Since the mid-80s, I had lived elsewhere and had not seen it in twenty years and so was quite curious. When I lived in Japan during the early 90s, my father was actually in the parade as a Lil' Tokyo Pioneer as a cultural leader through his Senryu poetry and as a recipient of the Japanese National Cultural Medal of Honor. However, as the parade began, I was struck by the crowd. Or I should say, the lack thereof. There was a time when the crowds stood six to seven people deep from the curbside, but that day, you could easily park your butt on the curb and watch the parade go by. And reflecting this withering J-Town, the parade looked tired and shabby.

One group of Japanese dancers had to stop in the middle of their Bon Odori routine when the generator running the loud speaker died. One young man in his official Nisei Week happi--the colorful buttonless cotton shirt worn my sushi chefs--tried to revive it by slapping it and cursing at it, while the dancers from five-year olds to retirees stood helpless in the hot August sun. Another float broke down and again young men in their official Nisei Week garb rushed to help, if only to push it to the side of the road. These events only confirmed my opinion of a community in decline. And for me it was indeed a sad sight, for I remember when Nisei Week was truly an event. When any and all JAs came to J-Town to hang, to see and be seen.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The death of my father and my last visit to Nisei Week has triggered intermittent memories over the past few months. And when I lied in bed with a fever last week, these memories reconstituted themselves in a deluge of images in my feverish brain. And so, while the images are still fresh in my mind, I thought I would indulge myself by a jotting down these memories before they fade away forever.

y first memories of J-Town are indeed of Nisei Week. Well, they aren't really memories or recollections. They are more like flashes of memories interwoven with old photos and the conversations I have had with my mom. She would dress my sister and me in yukata, the cotton, summer, casual version of a kimono, and took us to Nisei Week to see the parade. We were about four and five and all I remember are the feet and the sticky pavement. We were small, and wearing unfamiliar geta (wooden clogs), I had to concentrate on my steps, so I walked along looking down at the concrete sidewalk stained black from all the spilled soft drinks and snow cones. My dad lifted me up once to see over the crowd but I still could see much, and my dad--not the strongest man--didn't hold me up for more than three minutes. But there were a lot of people at the festival. J-Town got this crowded during Nisei Week because most JAs felt it was their community. It was a place to visit on a regular basis, not just special occasions.

Our family usually went on Sundays after church. We were members of Maryknoll Church, a Catholic mission operating a K-8 elementary school for children of Japanese descent. They stipulated--if I remember correctly--that a child had to be at least one-quarter Japanese to be eligible for admission. I don't remember if there was any specific law passed, but sometime in the 80s it became clear that the school could no longer discriminate based on race and they began accepting all races. As a Catholic Mission, Maryknoll attracted Hispanics from nearby areas, but as the enrollment of non-Japanese went up, the number of Japanese American families went down. In the end, it closed its doors as an elementary school in the mid 90s due to lack of enrollment. It continues today as a community center, the Maryknoll Japanese Catholic Center.

But back then, Maryknoll was segregated. It sounds awful by today's social standards, but it was also a blessing of sorts for Japanese in the beginning. It was established in the early 20th century when racism and the "yellow peril" mentality was still a part of mainstream society. It provided a place where Japanese nationals in America could worship in peace in a language they understood and study without fear of prejudice. The Catholic mission is located about three blocks from J-Town, and unlike the current Lil' Tokyo, J-Town back then was a place where many of the Japanese community lived. There were a few houses, but most rented long-term hotel rooms--some are still there above the stores and restaurants on the north side of 1st Street across from JVP and Koyasan Temple. (My dad used to live there as well.) The kids could then walk to Maryknoll for their education. During my time, the school was still a haven for me. I was born ten years after WWII, a couple of years after the Korean War and was a student there for nine years during the Vietnam War. On the street, away from Maryknoll, I was called a Jap, a Chink, and a Gook. Maryknoll provided me with a place I could study and play without fear of random and malicious harassment, and sometimes violence--I have been beaten up for being "Japanese". While I wouldn't go so far as to claim that Maryknoll empowered me, it did allow me to grow without restraint and, in a way, innocently. Unfortunately, it also cultivated that attitude of being special to the detriment of others; by segregating others, we ultimately segregated ourselves.

In any event, every Sunday after Mass, we went to J-Town to do our weekly shopping of Japanese goods. Back then, soy sauce or short grain rice was not available at the local supermarket, so we went to J-Town to do our shopping. We usually went to Modern Food on San Pedro, and when my dad felt especially philanthropic, he would by a pound of maguro tuna for sashimi dinner that night.

We would also make a number of other stops. As one of the founders of the senryu salon, it was his responsibility to provide some of the refreshments. And he did so with what looked to me to be a scam of sorts. He published a monthly magazine that he distributed amongst those interested in senryu poetry. He had somehow talked the proprietors of the local Japanese confectionaries to donate a couple dozen rice cakes a month in exchange for advertising in his magazine, which had a circulation that included the salon members and whoever would accept the magazine he handed out for free at church and other community functions.

Anyway, he held his senryu-kai once a month and it was a treat to tag along with him on those Sundays. These confectionaries not only sold Japanese sweets, but an assortment of American candies as well, and I would get the chance to "guilt" my dad into buying me something. He was so into "face" that there was no way he could say "no" in front of other people to a kid who was asking for a measly 5-cent pack of baseball cards or five penny strips of candied dots. While there were two stores he visited, it was an unwritten code that I could only do this at one store, and I usually did it at Mikawaya since they had a better selection of candies than Fugetsudo. But I guess it must have frustrated him at times. I was so good at this "poor me" routine that my dad would try to send me to another store with mom.

"Go to Ueda Department with your mother."

"Why?"

"Don't you want to look at the toys?"

"Yeah, but..."

"Maybe there'll be something good."

"Okay!" I said, hoping that he would actually buy me something.

Of course, it was merely a ploy, and so when he showed up at Ueda's and I led him to the toy I wanted, he simply said, "Maybe, Christmas."

Try as he might, this ploy never worked on me again. In fact, I distinctly remember finagling a pack of baseball cards AND five strips of the candied dots on our next visit to Mikawaya and Fugetsudo.

onfections were not the only thing Dad got for his meetings. On special occasions, he would get box lunches, usually sushi at a small place called Matsuno Sushi. It was nothing like today's sushi shops--raw fish was not easily had back them. There was a short counter, which I suppose might resemble today's sushi bar, but there was no refrigerated case on top. The sushi was standard fare, at least by JA standards: inari-zushi, futomaki, shime saba. Of course, we had our own names.

Inari-zushi is fried tofu skin stuff with sushi rice, but we called them "footballs" because of their shape and the fox-brown color. An ex-girlfriend once referred to them as "pillows" because of the way they were stuffed. Futomaki was sushi rice and fillings of kanpyo (re-hydrated gourd), egg, spinach, and this sweet pink stuff that I still haven't figured out, spread out onto a large sheet of nori (dried seaweed) and rolled up into a long roll. This was then cut into three-quarter inch pieces. We referred to these as "tires". But Mom could make these two types of sushi at home so they were no big deal to me. What I really enjoyed was the shime saba. This is a pickled mackerel very similar to the pickled herring eaten by northern Europeans. A filet of mackerel was pickled then placed on top of a long mound of sushi rice then pressed into a bar shape. Man, I could eat this everyday and never get tired of it. Dad had a name for it that sounded like "batter up" so that's what I used to call it. I later learned the word was battera, another name for the same thing. I guess this would be similar to a sandwich called a poor boy, hero, or grinder, depending on where you're from. Of course, despite my love for "batter up", I could not eat more than one at his senryu meetings as they were reserved for the adults. I swore that I would buy my own when I could afford it, but unfortunately Matsuno Sushi closed shop by the time I was old enough to earn my own bread.

One place that was open since my childhood and closed only after the last major earthquake in LA was Far East Cafe. After special occasions at church--like First Communion or someone's birthday--Dad would take us there for lunch after church. It was a Chinese restaurant right in the middle of J-Town. The front glass was painted a pale green so no one could look in. When you entered the front door, a juke box greeted you in the small waiting area. On the right were the cash register and a glass counter filled with sweet and salted dried plums--something I always begged Dad to buy, but never got. Behind the juke box was a wooden partition, with seating down two aisles on either side. Indeed, the entire restaurant was separated by partitions about six feet high making small enclosed eating spaces. Some had two tables for two small parties, but if you had five or more in your party you usually got your own space.

Now, Far East Cafe was not a fancy place by any means. They did not serve some of the food that I have come to expect from the newer Chinese restaurants. Hong Kong Flower Lounge in Milpitas and NBC in Monterey Park serve some of the best sea food I have ever had. I love the sun-dried abalone--it's so much better than fresh abalone to me--sauteed with Chinese greens like chingensai. Steamed any-kind-of fish is as good as it gets. But Far East Cafe was a modest place that offered old-school fare like pi-chayu (sauteed snow peas with chicken, water chestnuts and bean sprouts), pakkai (subuta or sweet and sour pork), char shu (barbeque pork), fried wonton and the best pan fried chow mein.

While we waited for our food, I often went to the back of the restaurant. I'd tell the folks that I needed to go to the bathroom, which was an adventure in itself. The place was not necessarily dirty, but it was dingy, dark and dank. You walked in and had to turn the light on by pulling a string hanging from the ceiling. After taking care of business and washing my hands, I got to wipe my hands on the cloth towels that dangled from a dispenser that you had to pull for a fresh swatch of linen. I used to think that it was a short strip of cloth that was used over and over but somehow ironed straight inside the dispenser. After leaving the bathroom which was right next to the kitchen, I would stop to breathe in the smell of the kitchen. they would usually tell me to go back to my table, that I was in the way. Or at least I think that's what they said because I didn't understand a word they were saying--I always assumed that they were speaking Cantonese--but it always seemed to me that they were angry. Why were they always yelling? I thought. But it didn't matter. They always made the best Chinese food I could imagine back then.

Far East Cafe was perhaps the most popular non-Japanese restaurant in J-Town, but for me, the best place was the Sugar Bowl Cafe...

he Sugar Bowl Cafe was on San Pedro inside the Taul Building. It was owned and operated by Japanese but the fare was mostly American. I only went there a couple of times so my memory may not be that accurate, but I have recalled this place in my dreams and daydreams more than just a few times. In my memories, it was a place that resembled what I would see on TV, a place where girls wore bobby socks and ribbons in their hair, and boys with crew cuts sported two-tone bowling shirts. And there was the occasional guy with his hair slicked back. In other words, it was a place where Japanese Americans didn't belong.

Yet it was full of JAs. Young JAs.

And Dad was pretty old. He had married late and had me when he was 42 years old. So by the time I first went to The Sugar Bowl when I was around eight or nine, he was already 50--not too different from my current age when I think about it. We went there with some of his friends from church, members of Maryknoll's Kibei Club. Kibei (kee-bay) were Japanese born in America but raised and educated in Japan. Except for their citizenship, there was very little that distinguished them from first generation Japanese. Since they grew up in Japan, they followed Japanese customs and their language of choice was Japanese; most of them spoke very little English, Dad among them. There was, however, one major distinction between Dad and the others. The club members were born in the 1930s and were sent to Japan mostly because of the start of WWII. I guess their parents figured they'd be safer in Japan. In any case, they were in their late twenties in the early 1960s, a good twenty years--one generation--younger than Dad.

So when any of them went with us to J-Town, he or she would sometimes suggest that we go to a place where the younger crowd hung out. At 8 years old, I considered myself part of the younger crowd too, so when John, one of the younger Kibei club members, recommended we eat lunch at the Sugar Bowl, I agreed enthusiastically. I figured he would know all the cool places, unlike Dad.

My first visit inspired awe. On the walls around the restaurant were renderings of the available fare: hamburgers with the burger and lettuce protruding out, French fries spilling over the plate, shakes in colors to that aroused the flavors of strawberry and chocolate, and an ice cold Coca Cola in a glass sweating beads of dew. Each picture was designed to make you want to taste it and I couldn't wait to order. As we walked toward our booth, we walked by a long lunch counter, with soda dispensers and rows of Coca Cola glasses and sundae dishes in front of a mirror.

Just like in American places, I thought.

There were six of us--Dad, Mom, little sister and brother, John and me. As we reached our booth, I noticed the red vinyl benches with white trim and a red Formica table. There was a mini juke box against the wall. Well, it really wasn't a juke box. It was connected to the juke box near the entrance, but you could put in your money and choose what songs you wanted to hear with out leaving the table! I marveled at technology. I looked around and saw and even larger table in the back corner. The bench was huge and curved to fit in the corner. I had never seen anything like it, even on TV.

"Can't we sit over there?" I asked.

"You have to have at least seven or eight people to sit there," John said. He knew this, I was convinced, because he was young and came to places like this on a regular basis.

Oh well, they don't have one of those mini juke boxes anyway, I thought. The machine had staggered nibs protruding from the top. I fiddled with one and was surprised when a page inside the glass case of the machine moved. I push these to flip through the pages of lists of song, I realized. Look at all these songs! I wonder how much it cost to play one.

Dad must have sensed something as he told me to pay attention to the menu.

Oh yeah, food...

ad suggested a hamburger but my eye caught something I had never heard of before.

"What's a clubhouse sandwich?" I asked. Menus back then rarely gave a description of an item.

Dad ignored me, and Mom just shrugged her shoulders, since she came from Japan and wouldn't know anything about real American food. So I looked expectantly at John.

"It's a sandwich with turkey, bacon, lettuce and tomato on three slices of toast," he explained.

"Three slices? Why three? And why on toast?" I asked incredulously.

John just laughed. "There's too much stuff to keep on just two slices, so they use three. And the best thing is that they put avocado in the club sandwiches here."

"Avocado?" I knew what avocados were. My friend Rickey lived down the block and he had an avocado tree in his back yard. His mom would occasionally let us eat them when I played over there. I knew that anything with avocado in it had to be good.

"Mom, I wanna clubhouse sandwich," I declared, half wondering if Dad would just flat out say, No, too expensive. I didn't know if it was expensive, but it had to cost more than the hamburger. It had avocados in it. But surprisingly, Dad didn't say anything to me. He said something in Japanese to Mom and John that I didn't understand, but the net result was that I got to eat a clubhouse if I was willing to share a bite with my sister.

"Okay," I said rather reluctantly. "Can I get some French fries, too?"

But Dad ignored me again. John told me that the sandwich came with potato chips, and for me that was just as good. We never had potato chips at home.

John ordered for everyone, as I turned my attention back to the juke box. A nickel for one play. A dime for three plays. A quarter for eight plays.

"Isn't two nickels the same as a dime? Why are the prices different?" This must have been my thirty-seventh question since entering the restaurant.

"They're trying to give you a bargain," John explained. "You get more songs if you pay more at once.

"Oh," I said, feigning comprehension.

"It's a way to make you spend more money," Dad said succinctly, an explanation I understood more readily.

I knew a quarter was out of the question, so I asked for a dime.

"To hear a song? We have records and a hi-fi. You can listen to music at home."

"But... but..." I stammered.

"What do you want to listen to?" asked John.

I didn't know what to say. I had heard a bunch of songs on TV, but I didn't no any of the titles.

"See, he doesn't know any songs anyway," said Dad.

"I like the song I hear on TV. Something like, 'run, run, run, run'?"

"Oh, I know that one," John said and he proceeded to flip through the pages. "Here it is. 'Runaway', right?" He put a nickel in the machine and pushed some random numbers and letters. A few seconds later, the familiar intro of the song started playing, and Del Shannon started singing.

"As I walk along I wonder, what went wrong with our love, a love that was so strong."

At which point the waitress brought out food. My eyes bugged out, but probably not as much as Dad's.

"Are you going to eat all of that?"

"Uh-huh," I smiled.

In front of me was a plate of four triangles, a triple deck club house sandwich cut into quarters. It was completely different from what I had imagined. When John explained that they needed three slices of bread to hold all the contents, I thought there were two slices at the bottom--a firm foundation--upon which was layered the turkey and bacon and tomato and lettuce, and then all this was topped with a single slice. I had no idea that the turkey and lettuce would be on one layer, and the bacon and tomato and avocado would be on a different layer. It looked like two sandwiches stacked on top of each other. I had never seen such an awesome site.

"And I wonder, I wah-wah-wah-wah-wonder..."

Indeed, it was truly a wonder. But, of course, as I had been made to promise, I shared my sandwich with the others, although I must admit that I tried to eat the potato chips quickly in an attempt to share as little as possible. I was such a selfish kid.

Having eaten something wonderful and new like a clubhouse sandwich, and listening to a song I wanted to hear, I had never felt so satisfied. Unfortunately, I went to the Sugar Bowl Cafe only once or twice more before it closed shop. It was replaced by Ichiban Cafe, which served standard Japanese fare--noodles, rice bowls, tempura. I would not longer get to taste the other world, the world that was more American than Japanese. The world for which I would long for most of my pre-adult life.

y the 8th grade, I was old enough to be trusted to roam the city on my own. During the previous summer, a few classmates like Tatts and Rhubarb went to Disneyland on their own. They got bus fare and admission from their parents and they took the Greyhound bus to Anaheim. I told Mom about this, and she just shook her head. She couldn't believe that there were parents who would let their child go to D-Land on their own without supervision. She had certainly learned her lesson over the years.

Now I wouldn't call myself a wild kid. I didn't throw rocks at cars or peak under girls' dresses--at least not openly. And I certainly didn't talk with a filthy mouth. But I did enjoy doing new and different things and making friends. Sometimes the friends around the block weren't always upright citizens.

One summer day, John and Rickey and I went to a house that was partially burnt down and was scheduled for demolition soon, so my buddies thought it would be cool to rummage through the place. It was hazardous and Mom told me not to go near the place, but I couldn't tell that to my friends. I didn't know the word then, but peer pressure was in full force already. And like an idiot, I went in my rubber Jap-slaps. While walking through the ruble, I step full force on a nail. It didn't hurt right away, but I screamed bloody murder. The mere thought of a three inch nail in my foot--even partially--made me go hysterical. I limped home and my mother took me immediately to the doctor where I got a shot with a needle that looked as big as the nail I stepped on.

Of course, there were those incidents that escaped Mom's attention. Once, when I was about five years old, I went with C and a few of the other JA hoods from the neighborhood to the local supermarket called McDonald's. We went just to hang out and fool around in the air conditioned store. We went through the turnstile and entered the produce section. But besides the vegetable stands was a cart of Brach's candy in bulk.

"Let's take one," C told us.

"I don't have any money," we said in unison."Just swipe it," insisted C. And I did as I was told. I took a butterscotch and held it in my hand for a while. A couple of other kids took one as well, while C's brother refused. He just shook his head in disapproval. We went carousing around a few more aisles when I finally thought it was safe to eat the candy I was warming up in my hand. Besides, my palms began to feel sticky. As slickly as I could manage, I unwrapped the golden-yellow cellophane and slipped the butterscotch candy into my mouth. It was sweet and good and illicit.

After a few more rounds around the store, C said it was time to go and we went running out of the store into the parking lot. As we slowed down to a walk, we heard someone yelling at us to stop. It was a store person. I could tell by the apron.

"So you kids gonna pay for the candy you ate?"

I froze in fear. Was he going to call the police? Was I going to jail?

C patted his shirt and pants pockets with his hands, then flipped them over palms up to show the store man that he had nothing on him that belonged to the store, or that he had no money. I wasn't sure which but I followed suit in the universal what he said gesture. C's brother insisted that he didn't take one. Great, I thought. That's as good as saying that we did take one.

The store man glared at us for a few seconds one at a time, then said, "Next time bring money and pay for it like you should." He then turned around and returned to the store.

"Woah, that was a close one," C whispered with a grin. All I could do was listen silently to my heart beating.

For a few weeks, I would refuse to go to the store with Mom for fear of being seen by the same man. I didn't need him to tell Mom what I had done.

ut I think that my classmates going to D-Land obliged Mom to trust me a bit more than she would have wanted. She couldn't deprive her son completely from tasting some level of independence. So by the 8th grade, I was allowed to stay after school on Fridays until the Boy Scout meeting at 7:30PM. I had finally become a peer.

School let out at 3:20PM. As an Eastsider, I usually went home on second trip, meaning that I rode one of the school buses on its second route, the first route being the Westside. The second trip of my bus was around 4:30, so for an hour we would usually play basketball or touch football on the asphalt playground. The last second trip bus was around 5pm and usually left the playground with the stragglers--those who didn't take the bus and waited for their parents to come pick them up after work. For me and my peers, it was time to go for dinner in J-Town.

From Maryknoll, J-Town was just a few short blocks away. We walked passed the warehouses and medium-sized factories that lined 2nd Street, stepped over the railroad tracks on Alameda, then crossed Central in front of the old brick Goodwill building, and we were in Japanese Town.

Friday around 5PM, everyone was heading home and the roads were crowded with cars, especially on 1st street. But for pedestrians, it wasn't too bad, especially for me, a fourteen-year old walking around unsupervised. (I'm sure this sounds quaint to many of you today.) Before eating we would go into stores and check out the merchandise. First on the agenda for us was to walk into any store, often one of the many bookstores--you know how the Japanese love to read. We'd walk into one and look for the nasty magazines. I learned later that they were not really pornographic--especially after I saw real pornography. These magazines--like Gendai and Takarajima--had mostly short stories, serials and essays. But for some reason, the first few color pages had photos of nude women. Back in the 60s the photos were mostly boobs and butts, but it was enough to excite me. The after a few jokes and playful punches, the proprietor would chase us out of the store.

Other times we would go to some of the souvenir shops that dot J-Town. We'd pick up a plastic sword and play samurai a bit and again get chased out by a store employee. Once we went into the sporting goods on the corner of 2nd and San Pedro.

"Hey, Scratch," Rhubarb called to me. Scratch was a nickname based on my Japanese name. "Take a look at this."

He handed me an pen with a picture of a blonde girl wearing a bathing suit, but when you held it upside down--or was it right side up?--the bathing suit flowed away and the girl became naked. I remember asking why they would have such a novelty in a sporting goods store, but my friend just said, "tourists." He meant, of course, Japanese tourists. They'd buy a handful and hand out naked blonde girls as souvenirs to their workmates in Japan.

Next he picked up a small red toy about the size of a pack of gum. It was shaped like a television, but on the back side, it had a small viewer into which my friend peaked. He immediately pulled his face away in embarrassment and almost threw the toy back into the pile from which he picked it up.

"Don't look in there," he cautioned. "Do not look in there."

Well, being the type of person I am, I had to look in it now. So I picked it up and peaked in to see... yes, you guessed it, another naked lady. But this time it wasn't an illustrated image like the bathing beauty on the pen. It was a photo of a real woman. She was again a blonde with large breasts, sitting with her legs beneath her as she gave me that "come hither" look. I was reluctant to put the toy down, but I was too embarrassed to be caught drooling by a store clerk, so I too returned it to the pile, all the while wondering if the girl in the blue toy was different. Well, Rhubarb cleared that one up for me when we left the store.

"This one has brown hair," he said as he handed me the blue toy.

"How..." I didn't finish the sentence. I just held the toy to my eye and indeed saw another naked girl, and indeed she was a brunette.

"So why do you have this. Did you buy it?" I asked naively.

"You gotta be slick, man," he said, and proceed to tell me how it was easy to grabbed two of these small toys in one grab, look into one, feign embarrassment, and toss back only one of the toys back, stuffing the other one into his pocket.

"Ooooh." How ingenious, I thought. There were a number of subsequent occasions when I had thought about taking something from a store--a baseball, a deck of cards, a pack of gum. But I would never be able to bring myself to take this five finger discount. Getting caught pilfering candy from McDonald's supermarket when I was five set me straight for life.

(UNFINISHED)

The Misadventures of Stash

2006-01-06T04:46:00.000-05:00

I've been talking about my memories of J-Town for almost two weeks now, and it is a memory that is close to the heart. I will continue later about my adolescence and early adulthood as well--the memories are clearer and perhaps a bit quirkier. But for today, another story.

M's green card mess is getting more expensive. We go to see the immigration judge next week and so we went to see the lawyers on Thursday. On the way there we were talking about lawyers and accidents and I remembered an accident I was in when I was 17, my band years.

For those of you who haven't read my previous posts--like eating grass--I used to be in a band called, appropriately enough, Stash. It was the early 70s and experimentation was the thing. Yes, we inhaled. And we had a grand old time doing it. But getting high had its hazzards.

After one gig, we returned our equipment to Diddly's garage and started tokin' a bit. And our lead singer, Vos, was really getting loaded, although we weren't really sure at the time. Someone suggested we go to the beach or something and Dragon (organ), El, and DK got into Bazooka's yellow Plymouth 340 Duster, while Jo, Di and I piled into Vos's little Volkwagon bug. We headed west on the Pomona Freeway and switched to the Santa Monica near dowtown LA. We were singing and talking about how well the gig went, when around the Western Blvd. exit Bazooka--our manager--drove up next to us and told us to pull over. Vos was too high and was weaving like a mother fucker. He was definitely going to get into an accident and Bazooka yelled that I should drive. Jo--Vos's girlfriend--agreed wholeheartedly and Vos reluctantly started to pull over toward the right shoulder.

In the back seat, I looked through the windshield between the two front seats and saw something approaching us really fast on the shoulder.

"Watch out! There's a car!"

But it was too late. No sooner had I blurted out the warning, we rammed into a car parked on the shoulder.

"O-man, your glasses! Did they break?" Di asked worried. She was so cute, and so way out of my league, but it was nice to think that she cared.

"I'm okay. You guys okay in front?"

"Vos, Vos!" Jo screamed, but Vos was groggy with his head resting on the steering wheel

Suddenly from outside, I heard Dragon's voice. "Shit! You guy's okay? What the fuck happened?"

"Fuck. You guys okay?" Bazooka yelled over the din of the passing cars.

"The car didn't have any lights on or anything. We didn't see it until it was too late," Jo whined in defense of her boyfriend.

"Hey, you guys alright?"

We all looked up at the strange voice. Standing next to Dragon was a relatively thin black dude looking into our little Beetle.

"Woah, where did you come from?" asked Dragon.

"Man, I was in that car you hit, man."

"Shit, are YOU okay?"

"Yeah, I was having some engine trouble."

"Then why didn't you have some flairs or something," Dragon asked, but the guy had gone to Bazooka's car.

"What the shit is his story?" we all thought, when suddenly the two girls riding with Bazooka and Dragon, El and DK, appeared. "What are you guys doing here?" Dragon asked.

"That guy stuck his head in the window was asking all kinds of questions and we got scared so we came over here," El explained.

When we all looked back to see where the guy was, we were just in time to see him pull away from the shoulder and drive off in Bazooka's yellow Duster westbound on the Santa Monica Freeway.

Cont'd tomorrow...

never viewed my life as special. I went to school, got a degree, and now teach Japanese in college. Most people I meet view me as just another academic whose head is buried in his books. I think my students probably have a better bead on me. They sense, I think, that I am different from most other professors, and they enjoy talking to me and getting to know me more than other professors or even other adults my age. But they don't know the half of it. I was pretty reckless in my adolescence and young adulthood. I occasionally marvel at the fact that I am still alive. Anyway, where was I. Oh yeah, someone had stolen Bazooka's car...

* * * * *

"What the fuck? Hey! Hey, you asshole! Where the fuck you think..." Bazooka stopped yelling in mid-sentence, undoubtedly realizing the futility of trying to get a car thief to stop from driving away.

Our eyes followed his car down the road and we were stunned into silence, except for Vos who was still resting his head on his steering wheel.

"Did you see that?" Bazooka turned around to look at us as he pointed down the freeway. "That fuckin' asshole stole my car!"

I asked Jo to lean forward so I could get out of the back seat of the car. I needed to stretch my legs, as well as divorce myself from Vos's situation. Di followed me.

"Are you alright?" El asked me.

"I was so worried about his eyes; I thought his glasses broke and..." Di's voice faded, as I moved away from the girls and stepped toward Bazooka. He was gesticulating animatedly as he was saying something to Dragon. His voice, drowned by the roar of cars and Mack trucks traveling 65 miles per hour, became more audible as I approached them.

"Fuck, that's everything I own. My car, my tools," Bazooka fumed. Dragon and I could do little to calm him, so we let him rant, but I noticed that Dragon kind of shifted his body, placing himself between Bazooka and Vos's car. He seemed to realize that when confronted with a frustrating, irreconcilable situation, people often need to blame someone, anyone for it. He must have figured that Bazooka, unable to confront the thief, would shift his rage to Vos. And he was right.

"And that shithead, if he hadn't been so fuckin' stoned, this wouldn't have happened in the first place."

Woot. woot. We heard the short blasts of a California Highway Patrol siren. Two officers got out and we walked toward them, slowly.

"What's happening, folks?" one said.

Dragon took the lead and explained the situation, well, except for the part about Vos. Instead of being high, we told him that he was just sleepy. One of the CHP(1) officers who had walked over to the other vehicle immediately grasped the situation. Apparently, the Black dude did not have flares or lights on because he did not want to be noticed. He was trying to rip out the stereo from the car he had probably stolen. By crashing into him, Vos had prevented him from doing so--although Vos smashed up the one stolen vehicle and allowed him to steal another one. But the irony had escaped his drug addled mind. "Man, I stopped a guy from stealing a tape deck" he would later claim.

There was no use staying on the freeway, and it was dangerous, the CHP officers reminded us. They offered to get us to a phone and contact whoever we needed to get everyone home. Vos's car was banged up but amazingly still drivable--a Volkswagen Beetle's engine is in the back, so as long as the front wheel wells allowed the tires to turn, we were good to go. Jo shoved Vos into the back seat and Di got into the front as I drove the banged up bug. Bazooka, Dragon, El and DK got into the patrol car, and they drove off slowly so that I could followed them safely. We got off at the next off ramp, La Brea, and the CHP pulled into a gas station that was luckily immediately to the right of the exit. The station was closed and all the lights were off, I noticed, as we rolled to a stop next to the gas pumps.

Dragon immediately jumped out and went to the pay phone to call a friend. Bazooka was relating all the appropriate information about his car to one of the CHP officers while his partner was on the radio reporting our incident. We left Jo and Vos in the back seat, as Di joined El and DK, and I went to see Bazooka, as did Dragon.

"My friend will be here in about fifteen minutes."

"Okay, that's what I wanted to hear. We gotta roll, too. You guys take care," the officer said. Then nodding his head toward Vos, "And make sure that he doesn't drive anymore when he's sleepy." I guess he knew what was what, but figured we had had enough trouble for one night. Some law enforcement people could be cool, I thought for the first time in my life.

We watched the CHP drive away. Vos was still in his car and Dragon was trying to calm Bazooka down, who was starting to get angry at Vos all over again. Fortunately, Dragon's friend came and Dragon, Bazooka and El left to pick up Dragon's car.

Di, DK and I sat on the step around the closed gas station office, and we talked small talk, nothing I can remember or even make up. Jo would occasionally come out of the car when she got bored of baby sitting Vos, but always returned like the dutiful girlfriend.

"What a fucked up night," I said to no one in particular.

Thirty minutes had gone by and I was getting kind of nervous. La Brea after midnight on a weekend was not the most inviting place. The closed gas station provided us with a cloak of darkness, but it was creepy. Two JA guys, one who was still stoned and totally out of it, and one who was too small to protect three JA girls in a notoriously violent neighborhood. This was not a reassuring thought.

Suddenly, a pair of headlights turned into the gas station, sending these uneasy thoughts into a rapid crescendo. But as the car turned next to the gas pumps, I couldn't believe what I saw: A yellow 340 Duster. Is that Bazooka's car? I thought incredulously, as Di, DK and I jumped up.

El stuck her head out of the window and yelled, "C'mon you guys, lets get out of here."

Di opened the door as I got Vos and Jo out of the Volkswagon. Di got in the front squeezing El next to Dragon, and the rest of us got in the back.

"Where's Bazooka?" I asked.

"He went home with my friend. He's still pretty pissed so I didn't think it would be a good idea to bring him back," Dragon said excitedly. "Besides, we all wouldn't fit in here, right?"

Everyone nodded in agreement. Bazooka was the manager because he was big. About 6 feet even and 240 pounds. He would have made mince meat out of Vos.

"You should have seen him. Dragon was so brave!" El squealed.

"So what happened?" we all asked.

And El proceeded to tell us: Dragon lived around Inglewood, so the quickest way to get back from where we were was to go south on La Brea. On the way back, as he was staring out of the window, he noticed in a parking lot of a local bar a yellow 340 Duster. He yelled at his friend to pull into the parking lot, after which he jumped out and checked out the car. It was Bazooka's. In the parking lot, there were a few brothers hanging out, checking out what the Japs were doing in the middle of the night in Baldwin Hills. Dragon was pissed, and definitely not thinking straight, when he decided to barge into the bar with Bazooka and El right behind him. Dragon immediately recognized the slim Black dude standing at the bar. He walked right up to him, grabbed him by the collar and screamed, "Give me the fucking keys!"

I'm not sure why, and I guess I will never know, but no one in the bar--a dozen or so brothers--moved except for the car thief, who reached into his pocket and handed over the keys. Dragon grabbed El's hand and walked swiftly out of the bar. Back in the lot, the brothers were talking to Dragon's friend very intimately, but they casually dispersed when they saw Dragon and Bazooka walk out defiantly. They decided very quickly that Bazooka should go back home with his friend while Dragon would pick us up with the Duster.

"Wow!" was all I could muster.

While the girls giggled and chattered the rest of the way home, all I could do was stare out the window, in wonder and in awe of someone who did something I would never be able to do.

Okay, guys. Are the past two posts--Misadventures of Stash--Fact or Fiction?

(1) Remember "CHiPs" is a TV show; we never referred to the California Highway Patrol as CHiPs. It makes them sound like pussies. We stuck to the acronym, CHP.

Eating grass

2006-01-06T04:40:00.001-05:00

(Originally posted 2004.04.28)

Yesterday was the last day of class for this academic year. Whew, I'm exhausted. I still have finals to grade, but at least classes are over, so I can sorta relax. To get into the no-school mood, M and I went to our local watering hole, Glory Days, for a light dinner and beer.

We only had two pints--as it was only Tuesday--and left relatively sober. M drove, and as we were leaving the parking lot, I looked over my shoulder and told her there's a cop behind us. I didn't really have a good look at it, but there was something stealthy about the way it appeared out of the shadows in the parking lot. But the car passed us to the right, and we noticed it didn't have any cherries on top.

"What are you talking about? Are you drunk?" M chortled. (I've always wanted to use this word...)

"Hmmm... Maybe, I guess..." But just when I uttered these words, the car let out two short bursts of its siren--woot, woot--and lit its back interior police lights--the one's just above the back seat--and sped off after another car.

"I just got a nose for 'em," I said, perhaps a bit too smugly.

"That's because you were a grass eating delinquent. You always had to keep your eye out." M retorted.

What M was refering to was a story of my more delinquent days. Back in the spring of 1973, I was hanging with the "guys": Voz and Diddly. We were going to start a band--we named our band, appropriately enough, Stash. Besides practicing songs that we wanted to play at dances--Smoke on the Water, Free Ride, Dancing in the Moonlight--part of our preparation included scouting the competition to see what they were playing. We went to the Elk's Club, a private building located near MacArthur Park where a hall was rented out for Asian dances, to see Free Flight and another band I don't remember.

We listened to them play light songs like "Keep on Truckin'" by Jo Mama (Carol King's former back up band), rock like "Situations" by Jeff Beck, and oldies--even then--like "Twist and Shout". We listened for a while. I was young and rather naive, and gulped down sissy drinks like Singapore Slings and Harvey Wallbangers until I got a buzz. But with the exception of "Situations", the rest of the songs were pretty mundane. We grew bored and decided to leave the Elk's Club. We climbed into Voz's new VW Beetle--I'm the youngest, so I got in the back--and headed home to the Eastside. Before long, Voz pulls out a joint, lit it and passed it to Diddly, who then passed it to me. Getting high(er), we started laughing and joking and makin fun of the bands that played at the Elk's Club that night, swearing that we'd make them eat our dust... When suddenly, Voz told us to shut up. Looking in the rearveiw mirror intently, he whispered loudly; "It's the cops..." Well, I was way too inexperienced and I began to panic. I'm too young to go to jail. What am I gonna do! Voz gave the joint to Diddly who then passed it to me without taking a hit.

"What am I supposed to do with it! I can't inhale that fast!"

"Fuckin' eat it already!" cursed Diddly, rolling his eyes.

Oooh. @_@ I was really panicking now. In Japanese, I have what is known as a cat's tongue, nekojita, one that can't eat anything hot. And now these guys want me to eat a lit joint?!?

I'm not the religious sort, but I focused my eyes on the smoldering tip and started to chant a familiar mantra: Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.

"Use your saliva, man," Voz rushed, the tension palpable in his Bug.

Oh, okay. Gotcha, I thought, and tried to build up as much spittle as I could in a mouth dry from the excitement. When I figured I had pooled enough around my lips, tongue and teeth, I slowly and painfully doused it--hacha, hacha, hacha--then stuck the joint in my mouth. Ugh, it tastes rancid. But I chomped on it a couple of times and swallow it as is. Successful, I relaxed a bit, knowing that I had gotten rid of the evidence. But in my panic, I hadn't noticed Diddly laughing hysterically and Voz staring at me through the rearview mirror, eyes wide in astonishment.

"Dude, you're supposed to spit on it. You're mouth is not an ashtray, man."

At which point, the police car whizzed past us on the left, headed to some unknown felony or doughnut shop, leaving me with a awful taste in my mouth.

"False alarm," Voz chuckled...

Cruisin' J-Town

2006-01-06T04:27:00.000-05:00

With the news that the Los Angeles City Council “began a planning process to build a new Police Headquarters, a Jail, Emergency Operations Center, Fire Station, and other facilities next to the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo”, I have been reminiscing about my life there--my salad days.

Born and raised in LA, I went to J-Town for as long as I can remember. Our family was active at Maryknoll, the local Japanese Catholic Mission located on the east edge of J-Town. We went to school there and to church. And every Sunday, after church, the big deal for us was to go to Nihonjin Machi, as the Issei referred to it--hence the referent Japanese Town, or J-Town--and shop. My mom would go to Bunkadō 文化堂, on 1^st between San Pedro and Central next to Kōyasan temple, to buy her Japanese magazines and journals, like Hōseki with the nudey photos on the first couple of pages. She also bought for me my copies of the original Tezuka Osamu’s Atomu 手塚治のアトム--that’s Astro Boy to you and me. Back then I couldn’t read the Japanese, so I used to make up story lines based on the illustrations. If my mom needed something for the home, she would go to Uyeda Dept. Store. It was a really small place with only a first floor and basement and it used to crack me up that they actually called it a department store, but it had everything Japanese that my mom would want--sewing scissors, yukata, and even zori--back then, flip-flops (or jap-slaps, as my friends called them) were still very ethnic.

We also did our shopping there. While my dad might go to Ida Market or Enbun, we usually went to Modern Market to buy rice, sashimi, tsukemono, and Japanese vegetable. Dad was also a charter member of Senryū Tsubame, a poetic salon, and met once a month with his poetry friends to compose poems--I still think it was their excuse to have a party. Anyway, when they had a contest, he would need a trophy and he would drag us to Mickey’s Watch Shop on San Pedro (it’s in Honda Plaza now as Mickey Seki and Son, I think). He also published his own little magazine for Senryū enthusiasts in the LA area.¹ There were a couple of ads on the back cover, one was Mickey’s Watch Shop, for which he got the trophy’s at a discount and engraving for free. There were also ads for two sweet shops: Fūgetsudō and Mikawaya. For these, he got a dozen manjū from each store for free for his monthly Senryū meetings. Now I like manjū, but going to the sweet shops meant more than manjū. It was, for me, more about anpan--which might explain why I look like Onigiriman, now--as well as Tomoe Ame, Glico Caramel, and Marble Choco.

If my dad was in the mood, we’d get sushi at Matsuno-zushi--where I developed my taste for shime saba. Often we would go to Far East Café, the local Chinese place with partitioned seating, a juke box, and the salted plums at the cash register. For that rare treat, we would go to the Sugar Bowl Café on San Pedro. It was the first place I ever ate a club sandwich with avocados in it. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

Anyway, my parents knew many of the shop owners there, and I always saw my friends from school and church. It was a place for us to mingle and associate with others from the JA community. I must admit that J-Town today doesn’t seem to reflect that sense anymore, but it is still a community. It may be small, and maybe even a little run down, but it’s still our community.

¹For his activities, dad received a couple of awards for his contribution to the Japanese American Community—one from the Japanese government and the other from the LA City Council.

And don't forget, if your friends and family haven't signed the petition yet, check on the link below.

Betraying a Friendship

2006-01-01T20:07:00.000-05:00

I was reading JustBeingV's blog which raised a few questions concerning friendship and it got me thinking about my own group of friends. And it occured to me:

I have no friends around me.

One in NY, and maybe 4 in LA and a few of you here on Xanga. But that's about it. Perhaps I should explain. I have acquaintances. Lots of them. And I interact with them as friends. But then, I am friendly with the bartender at Glory Days. So friendship isn't based on how you interact. To me, friendship is defined by honesty, openness and trust... maybe reliability. A friend is:

someone to whom you can tell your deepest thoughts or secrets without fear of being judged.
someone you can trust to keep these thoughts or secrets private.
someone who believes you and believes in you.
someone who is equally honest and open with you.
someone you can turn to when you are in trouble or are in pain.

These sound pretty straight forward, but I must admit that I did not know--or at least practice--these tenets of friendship when I was young. I was not a very good friend. Just a selfish sorta sod.

Back in high school, I was pretty much a nobody. Really. There were those who were really popular--i.e. attractive or athletic--and then there were the brains, and the comedians, and the "best friends" of the popular ones. And then those who were none of the above, like me.

Still, like anyone else, I wanted to be somebody. So I tried my hand at music, as pathetic as my abilities were. I do believe that I had a little talent for it--after all, most of the music I can play is self-taught, I can sing on key, and I can grasp the rhythm of most music. Just a little talent, maybe. In any event, I used to hang out with a guy who enjoyed music as much as I did. Angel played piano and he liked to play drums and we would get together and "jam". In hindsight, we were pretty lousy--perhaps I should be speaking for myself--but at 16 in the early 70s, we were just having a good time.

One day, he told me about a girl he had met, a really cute girl. DKLA was in my grade--I was a year older than Angel--and she went to a local public school. She was, apparently, very popular and the target of many guys. Angel wanted to get to know her batter, and eventually go steady with her. He asked me if I would accompany them shopping or something, so he could introduce her to me to get my input. And I said okay.

Sadly, the details of that day are pretty much blurred. We met somewhere after school and DKLA brought her friend as well. I was pretty naive back then, I wasn't sure what was going on--maybe she brought her to set her up with me. She finished her business--I forget waht it was--and we got on the bus--I had to get to work by 5. On the bus, we sat separately, boys in front and girls in back, like the nerds we were. DKLA was whspering and giggling with her friend, with Angel turning around on the seat to join them. He laughed with them.

"What are you girls whispering about?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing," she said, but started giggling again after locking eyes with her friend as if recalling a shared secret.

Angel looked very happy, but I was bored. DKLA was attractive, to be sure, but she was as tall as I was and she looked way out of my league. Her friend was also cute--she was a half. But the day was Angel's and I just tried to be polite. So as the three giggled, I just looked out the window, admiring the Christmas decorations on the streets of downtown LA in late November.

"What are you thinking about, O-man?" DKLA asked me.

"Oh, nothing," I said, trying to imitate their voices. This got them giggling again, as I smiled wanly.

The bus reached the corner of 1st and San Pedro and I got off, waving at them. DKLA yelled something at me, but I just nodded in mock acknowledement, neither hearing nor caring what she had said.

The next day at school, Angel asked me what I thought, and I told him that she was attractive, and I wished him luck in his attempts to snag this girl. A few days later, when I had completely forgotten about her, DKLA strolled into the confection shop where I worked....

Friendship Tested
A

few days later, when I had completely forgotten about her, DKLA strolled into Mikawaya, the confection shop where I worked. I was quite surprised; I had seriously put her out of mind as I had little, if anything, to do with her. My first reaction was to treat her as a customer. I mean, Angel was interested in her, and I presumed she was interested in him, at least a little, since they did go out shopping.

"Hi."

"Hi," I smiled back, wondering why she seemed to be giggling a little too nervously.

"Tuesday was fun."

Tuesday was fun? What happened on... "Oh, yeah. Shopping? Well, I just tagged along 'cause I didn't have anything to do," I lied.

"We should do it again," she said. She seems kinda jittery.

"Uh, yeah, okay," I said rather hesitantly. What's she doing here? She's never come here before. "So, you here to get some manju?" I asked as I nodded toward the showcase filled with rice cakes.

"Oh, no," she continued to giggle. "I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd say 'hi'."

"Okay, 'Hi'," I said rather lamely.

She giggled some more, then said she had to meet a friend, and just like that, DKLA was gone. What was that all about? I shrugged my shoulders and went back to work. And as quickly as she had come and gone, I forgot about her...

* * * * *

hanksgving came and went and Christmas shopping occupied my every thought. I worked a lot of hours at the confection shop, six days a week, 5:00 to 9:00 Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and 5:00 to 10:00 Friday, Saturday and Sunday. These were the days before mandatory minimum wages, and I received a monthly salary of $120 when I had started six months earlier. By this Christmas, it was about $140.

While the salary was low, I didn't mind. It was lower than some part-time jobs in the area. like being a teller at Sumitomo Bank. But surprisingly, it was pretty normal for these mom and pop shops in J-Town. Besides, the job was low stress, and Mrs. H made dinner for us every night. "Us" included the unmarried FOB employees who worked in the back and one other part-timer. We usually stuffed ourselves at Mrs. H's insistence. It was a casual life and I enjoyed it immensely. But for the first time, I felt in control of my life, and it was empowering...

But we were talking about DKLA, weren't we...

Well, with Christmas shopping on my mind--and budgeting myself to afford gifts for family and friends--I had little patience to even entertain the thought that DKLA might harbor intentions contrary to Angel... until my sister told me something completely unexpected.

"Do you know DKLA?" She asked.

"Yeah? Why?"

"You've never mentioned her before."

"Yeah? Why?"

"I know her through a friend at volleyball. She kinda introduced herself and started talking to me. It was wierd."

"Yeah? WHY?" What is it with sisters?

"I think she wants to get you something for Christmas. She asked me what kind of cologne you use. I told her you don't use any. It was wierd."

"..........." I didn't know what to say. But it finally dawned on me that she might be interested in me. In me! Me, who was totally out of her league. Me, who never had a steady girl friend. Me, Angel's friend.

This was, to say the least, a dilemma for me. I mean, God, this girl was hot and she was interested in ME!

I saw Angel the next day at school and I didn't know what to say. We had our usual chats about homework, Chicago's newest album, bowling...

"I'm going to ask DKLA if she wants to go out. You think she'd want to see a movie?"

"How you gonna take her? You don't have a car. You can't take a girl like that on a date on a bus."

"I know. That's why I was wondering if maybe you'd, like, drive us," he asked hopefully.

"I don't have a car either." I said.

"But you have K's car," Angel replied.

He was right, of course. Technically, I didn't own a car, but my boss, K, regularly asked me to drive her mother home. They lived nearby in Monterey Park, so I'd drive Mrs. H home and then they'd drop me off at my parents house. On weekends, my boss didn't go to the shop, so she would tell me to keep the car on Saturday nights so I could drive her mother home on Sundays, as well.

K was almost like a sister to me. After school, I'd go to the shop early and bum around, maybe do some homework in the dank basement amid 100 lbs. sacks of rice and sugar stacked on pallets, and maybe not. When K went out for coffee or a snack, she'd often come find me and take me along. When I needed extra cash, she'd slip me $20 and tell me to get popcorn and soda, too And she trusted me enough to drive her mother home and to keep her car over the weekend. She also told me that I could drive the car if I wanted to go out. "As long as you don't drink and drive," she said. And I promised I would never betray her trust. And I never did. I had never had an older sibling, so being taken care of this way was more than pleasant. Indeed, I felt very lucky.

But when Angel asked me to drive him and DKLA on their date, I refused.

"Sorry, gonna catch a flick with Cary and Tomahawk. Maybe next time." It wasn't exactly a lie. I intended to ask them about going a movie anyway. Cary and Tomahawk were true friends. We had been together for quite awhile, through thick and thin in elementary school, and we were always together in high school, too. These were guys I was always open with and we had no secrets between us. I wondered if perhaps Angel wanted to be a part of that.

For me, however, friendships developed over time, it wasn't something you did consciously. You don't just think, I'll be so-and-so's friend, and become one. Cary and Tomahawk and I often found ourselves in situations--good and bad--and we had developed a bond over time. By 1972, we were 16 and had known each other for 11 years already.

Angel, on the other hand, was a recent "friend", a year younger than me in my sister's class at Maryknoll. While we had a few things in common, our friendship had not developed to that level yet, so we were not that close.

Or so I tried desperately to convince myself...

Seed of Suspicion
W

hile Angel and I had a few things in common, our friendship had not developed to that level yet, so we were not that close. Or so I desperately tried to convince myself. I seemed to be justifying my feelings, my selfishness. An attractive girl interested in me? And I hadn't done anything to invite this attention? This was a completely new situation for me. I should just back off, I thought, and let the chips fall where they may. If DKLA and Angel got together, great. If she wanted to pursue me, maybe greater. So I acted passively, avoiding Angel's situation by not driving them on his date, but in a way I was aggressively preventing him from advancing his own agenda.

I won't make excuses. What I was feeling in my heart was wrong. And I guess I knew it even then, since I didn't--couldn't--tell anyone what I was thinking. I couldn't even tell Cary or Tomahawk (played by detachable), my two best friends, for fear of accusations. Yes, I knew what I was doing. And yet, I couldn't help myself.

December came and things seem to escalate rapidly in ways that defy explanation. My boss, K, was going to Las Vegas with her husband for a few days, and so she left the car to me so I could drive her mother home after work. I took the car to school, with her permission, and having learned of this, Angel automatically asked me to give him a ride as well. Reluctantly, I said yes.

On a chilly morning, I went to City Terrace to pick him up and then headed toward school. I was planning to get on the San Bernadino Freeway then to the Santa Monica to get to our school located on LA's Westside. But Angel had another idea.

"Let's go through Boyle Heights."

"What? Fuck you. That'll add twenty minutes to our trip," I protested.

"No, really. We can go by Roosevelt High. Maybe we'll see DKLA."

"Oh, man," I sighed. "I would really rather go straight to school."

"C'mon, man. You gotta car! We won't have these kinds of chances that much."

"Alright, alright," I relented. Angel succeeded in getting me to drive him to where he wanted to go. I was irritated at first, but as we drove through the streets of East Los Angeles, I grew strangely comfortable with the idea that Angel was every bit as selfish as I was. The thought of seeing DKLA didn't hurt either.

Angel directed me down Evergreen, then right on Brooklyn where Evergreen Cemetery was.

"Why don't we just go straight down to 3rd street?" I asked.

"Turn left on Fickett," he happily ordered.

"What? Why are we zigzagging to get to Roosevelt?"

"'Cause this is the way she walks to school," he answered matter-of-factly. All I could do was roll my eyes. What didn't he know about this girl?

We went one block down Fickett, made a right on First Street, then another immediate left on Mathews.

"Slow down," Angel whined as he looked at everyone walking the last block to Roosevelt. "There, there," he pointed.

And sure enough, there was DKLA walking on the right side of the street, her arms wrapped around the books she held up to her breast. She was wearing a burgundy letterman's sweater, her brother's. (Why do I remember this?). I pulled up to the curb and Angel opened the window.

""Hey, DK!" he yelled, motioning for her to come over.

She walked deliberately towards car. "What are you doing here?"

"Onigiriman's got the boss's car and so we thought we'd see if we could catch you," he explained.

We thought? You mean, YOU thought...

DKLA hunched over to look into the car and saw me in the drivers seat.

"Hi," I smiled as nonchalantly as I could.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, as if I might have a different reason as Angel's. I just shrugged my shoulder. "So you going to school now? Cool. What time does school start? What classes do you have today?"

She looked directly at me with her questions and I smiled as I gave her short but accurate responses. Angel didn't seem much too pleased at not being the target of her attention.

"The bell's going to ring soon, so I have to go. Bye," she said to both of us. "Then she looked at me and mouthed, "Call me."

I pulled the car back onto the road and headed toward school. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw her receding figure standing on the corner. Why isn't Angel sticking his head out the window waving at her? Why isn't he even turning around to look at her? Could he have noticed her "secret" message to me?

The tension in the car was thick. As I turned onto the Golden State Freeway south toward the 10, the sharp keyboard intro to Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" started to jerk out of the car speakers. But even it couldn't loosen the mood.

Very superstitious, writing's on the wall Very superstitious, ladders bout' to fall Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin' glass Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past

This was a new song that Angel liked, but he didn't sing along as he often did. He just sat silently looking out the window at the rundown houses and storage facilities lining the freeway. I veered west onto the Santa Monica Freeway, a virtual bridge over central LA for about five miles, and saw the city stretch before us. Ah, man. Did Angel really see her? What the shit is he thinking? What the shit am I thinking? What the fuck am I gonna do now? I thought as I glanced over at him.

Angel just sat there, staring out the side window distantly at the buildings of downtown LA. I thought about DKLA and what she had mouthed. Did she really say "Call me"? Call her? Now how am I gonna do that? Then a random bit of truth crossed my mind and I relaxed. I didn't have her phone number, so how could I call her? In a twisted kind of logic, I figured that she couldn't blame me for not contacting her since I didn't know her number, and if i didn't call her, I wasn't betraying Angel. No harm, no foul, I grinned.

When you believe in things that you don't understand Then you suffer Superstition ain't the way

But DKLA called me that night.

Betrayal

inter 1972-73, I was 16 going on 17. I was naive and still a virgin, but it was my time to grow up, to taste the complexities of a burgeoning adulthood. I was never very good at doing what I was told. Mom told me that as the eldest I had to be reliable, my 8th grade teacher discussed being faithful to friends, country and God. But it rarely sank in. I was one of those stubborn kids who had to actually experience things before understanding them, before practicing them. So I learned values such as responsibility, loyalty, and obligation by trial and error. Of course, it sometimes seemed that the greater the error, the better the lesson.

"Hello?" I answered the phone.

"Hi, how was school?" It was DKLA.

"Okay. How'd you get our number?"

"I asked Angel."

"Um... I'm not sure if..."

"I told him that I needed to get a hold of your sister."

"Oooh... I mean," I paused briefly, trying to figure out how to handle this situation. "Do you realize what's going on?"

"Uh-huh. Angel's been pretty obvious," DKLA said.

"Then you know that you shouldn't be talking to me."

"Why? I can't live my life based on someone else's feelings. I have to do what I want to do, not what someone else wants me to do."

"Yeah, but..."

"Besides, Angel's not my type. You are."

She said it. You are... I mean I am. I'm her type.

No sooner had she uttered these words that I had forgotten my dilemma. Angel? Angel who. This was my very first experience of having a girl tell my they like me. It was like an narcotic--not that I would know the effects of an illegal pharmaceutical product, mind you, but if I did, I was sure that it felt like this. I became light headed.

"Yeah, you're my type, too," I said, starting to giggle like her, like a girl. Among other things, I had yet to learn the value of remaining cool at times such as this.

We talked for an hour about everything, about nothing. The only thing that we knew was that we were interested in each other, and it became obvious that we wanted to pursue our feelings regardless. Although, I suspect now, in hindsight, that our reasons were different. While she perhaps was genuinely interested in me, I was more interested in experiencing the feelings of being wanted. I wanted to bathe myself in the euphoria aroused when one becomes the target of another's desire. For too long I had been on the other side of yearning.

When I was 13, our 7th grade class went on a field trip to Knott's Berry Farm. As a bunch of kids suffering through puberty, all any of us could think of was spending the day with a person of the opposite sex. Some of the guys in class already had predetermined partners. I hesitate to use the word "steady" or even "girlfriend" because back then the most we could do was hang out together at lunch or after school. Once we got on the school bus to go home, we re-entered reality and had to lead lives that did not allow for open girl-boy relationships, particularly in our Japanese American sphere. For two weeks, the topic of conversation was who was going to "date" who at Knott's. I too wanted desperately to date a girl I thought was pretty cute, but I knew she was already set. I asked two other girls who I had heard did not yet have a date, but they rejected me. I ended up going with a skinny girl who rode the same school bus as I did--the sister of a Boy Scout patrol mate.

In high school, at 15, I once attended a mixer. I went to a private Catholic school--all male--and the girls who were invited came from other private schools in the area. My friends would never go. Why go? they'd say. There ain't anyone you'd know. This was true, but I went anyway, because I wanted to hear the Flying Burrito Brothers play. (I dare anyone to say they've heard of this group!) At the mixer, I soon learned why my friends would not go. Everyone at the dance was white. There were a few Blacks and Hispanics, but 95% percent of the students there were white. At school the white population hovered around 65% I'd figure, but when it came to social events, this school turned white. I must have asked five or six girls to dance and every single one of them looked at me as if I was a Martian. I espied one Filipino girl and asked her, but she rejected me as well. Needless to say, I did not have a good time.

My first real job was at the confectionary shop in J-Town. I had worked since I was 14 doing maintenance work at my elementary school over the summer. They paid me cash--$1 an hour!--but it was enough to let me buy my own Panasonic radio-cassette player. But for the job in J-Town, I had to fill out an application form and submit a social security number. I was joining the ranks of tax payers. I had inquired K about the job over the phone and she told me to come in on Tuesday and ask for Billie. It was my first day of my first real job, and I was a bit excited. I walked into the store and told one of the lady clerks that I was new and was supposed to meet Billie. She nodded and went to the back room, and out came a cute girl in a white uniform. She introduced herself as Billie. After allowing me a moment to recover, she led downstairs to pick up a large bundle of boxes, then she handed me a stack of labels and a jar of glue.

"Here. Paste these labels on the lid. The black label little from the top and the green address label about a quarter inch from the bottom edge. After you finish, bring another bundle up..."

I was in love.

Billie and I got along well enough as work colleagues. But after a month, she quit. She had just graduated high school and was about to start college, starting with summer school. She had no time to work at the shop anymore, and certainly no time for me. I was crushed but did not give up. I asked her out to a concert, and she agreed to go see Dave Mason at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, as long as someone else came. So Angel came along, too. We had a great time, and even went bowling after that. But the evening ended with a solid "thanks" and a wave "good-bye". While I had a serious crush on her and was still infatuated--I would pine away to anyone who would listen--I was not an idiot. I could take a hint.

So this heretofore unknown situation, of being the pursued rather than the pursuer, had a narcotic effect on me. And DKLA was the pusher.

"My parents are having a Christmas party next week, but, uh, you wanna come?"

"Who's coming?" she asked, perhaps not so innocently.

"Just my parents' friends. No one my... our age."

"Hmmm, your house?"

"Yeah, say you'll come?"

"Well, if I have to..." she said feigning helplessness.

That Saturday, I went to pick her up and we ate dinner at my house with my parents friends. The situation was almost perfect. Since my parents had to entertain their guests, they didn't pepper me or DKLA with questions. We listened to a few songs in my room--a room that I had actually cleaned up willingly--and then we went bowling. (Yeah, it was pretty popular back then.) Around 11 o'clock, she said that she should go home--she was, after all, 16, and I had just turned 17 the day before. The whole evening, I had done nothing untoward. I was the perfect gentleman, mostly because I really didn't know what to do. I was so naive.

But as I drove her home in my mother's Camaro, she placed her hand on my sleeve and I instantly got nervous. Shit, what am I supposed to do when we get to her house? I laughed nervously, trying oh so hard to stay composed. Right, walk her to the door. But do I kiss her? Shit. Why don't I have an older brother? I was turning into a wreck. Okay, I'll kiss her... but what if she sticks her hand out when I try? Damn, do I just shake it? Oh, God, fuck, what am I supposed to do? When we reached her house, I parked in front and was about to get out of the car, but she stopped me.

"No, don't get out."

Oh shit, she wants to avoid the scene altogether, I thought, crestfallen. Was inviting her a bad idea? Was bowling a bad idea? Do I have bad breath? Oh man, here we go again. All these thoughts flashed through my mind in a nanosecond.

"Well, I should at least walk you to the door," I protested meekly. "I think it's the polite thing to do."

"Look at the second window from the left," she said, motioning vaguely to her dark pink house. I looked and saw the drapes pushed aside just slightly and the silhouette of a head peering through. "That's my mom."

Ooooh. DKLA reached into her bag, and took out a box wrapped in blue paper and a red ribbon. "Your birthday was yesterday, right? So here: Happy Birthday."

I was speechless. I looked down at the box to accept the gift. I felt so flattered, so excited, so happy. "I don't know what to..." I looked back up to thank her when she leaned over and kissed me full on the lips...

Flame Out
T

his time, I was truly speechless. But before I could gather myself, she opened the door, got out and skipped up the concrete steps. The porch light immediately turned on and she waved at me. I waved back, and when the door opened and I knew she was safe at home, I left.

She kissed me. I squeezed the steering wheel firmly with both hands as I drove down First Street. She kissed me! My heart raced. I could feel it thumping at my temples, on my fingertips. How old was I? I had just turned seventeen, an age where many others have already experienced kissing, petting, geez, even sex. But not me. This was a brand new sensation.

When I got home, my parents friends had already left. Mom asked if I had a good time, and I told her it was "okay". I went to my bedroom, turned of the night and laid down on my bed, staring up at the dark ceiling.

Now what should I do? I can't keep this hidden. Who do I tell? Cary? Tomahawk? Nah, What would they say? I had betrayed Angel.

I was wary of being judged by my peers. What made it worse was that it seems like I was being so secretive about it. I had to open up, falsely believing that if was honest and up front about it, things would mellow out.

I'll tell Angel next week at school, I thought. But the right opportunity never arose. There were just too many other people around, too many eyes to judge me. Then on Thursday, Angel dropped by the confectionary.

It was nearing the winter solstice and by 5:00 in the afternoon the sky was already black. It had been a drizzling, miserable day in LA, even for December. But Angel walked in rather perkily asking me what I was going to do this weekend.

"Got any plans?" he asked.

"Why?"

"Well, I was gonna ask DKLA if she wanted to go out," he said as he straddled one of the stools at the counter.

"Actually, um, she's going to be sorta... busy this weekend," I sputtered, trying to express this as frankly and reasonably as possible.

Angel just laughed. "How would YOU know?"

"Well..." and I told him what happened the previous Saturday, except for that little detail of her kissing me. Angel kept looking down at the floor as I talked, spinning quarter circles on the stool.

"And that's what happened," I concluded, preparing for God knows what.

After a few moments, Angle looked up and laughed, "Hey, that's alright! Good for you! She's quite a catch, mind you." He stood to leave. "Be good to her," he said in an unexpectedly gay tone, as he turned and left.

I wasn't sure what I had just experienced. Was he really happy for me? Was I worried for nothing? I wasn't sure, but eventually I concluded that he was putting up a front. He really had a crush on DKLA and it couldn't have gone down that easily. I mean, no way, right? He'd have to be superhuman. Still, pretty sure that he was torn up inside and just too proud to admit it, Angel seemed pretty magnanimous about the whole thing.

That Saturday, I spent the afternoon at DKLA's house. It was just before Christmas and her brother had gone to Vegas while her parents were out shopping. The shades were drawn and we were alone. We cuddled on the sofa in front of the Christmas tree. The TV set was on when I arrived, but DKLA turned it off and turned on the radio. This particular winter, it seemed that every station played one song. Billy Paul's "Me and Mrs. Jones".

Me and Mrs. Jones We got a thing goin' on We both know that it's wrong But it's much too strong To let it go now

On the sofa, I had my arms around her shoulder as she rested her head against my chest. I breathed in the scent of her freshly washed hair and enjoyed the warmth she generated.

"Did you tell Angel about us?"

"Yeah. I mean, we are friends, sort of, and I couldn't not tell him, you know?"

"I guess," she replied rather lazily.

We gotta be extra careful That we don't build our hopes up too high Because she's got her own obligations And so, and so, do I

"Do you still work with Billie?" she asked unexpectedly.

What an odd question, I thought. Here we are, spending a quiet afternoon alone and she brings up a name that has no place in our conversation, the name of a girl I still... used to have a crush on.

"Um, yeah, well, we used to work together for a month and she quit. I see her around sometimes but that's about it." You are such a fucking liar. Why? What's up?" I tried to sound so calm.

"Oh nothing. I go to school with her brother and he mentioned that she worked at the same confectionary as you."

"Oh, is that all?" I felt temporarily relieved.

"Why? Is there more?" she asked, almost seductively.

"Oh, no, no, no, " Shit, is this some kind of trick?

Well, it's time for us to be leaving It hurts so much, it hurts so much inside Now she'll go her way and I'll go mine Tomorrow we'll meet The same place, the same time

Suddenly, the phone rang. DKLA got up to answer it, as I contemplated what was going on. Why would she ask about Billie? Did she hear something? But what? And There actually is nothing between us, Billie made sure of that. My uneasiness grew as DKLA handed me the phone. "It's for you."

"Who the..." I took the phone cautiously as DKLA simply turned her back on me and walked to the kitchen. "Hello?" I said slowly as I stood up, no longer comfortable on the sofa

"O-man, is that you? We've been calling all over looking for you."

"How'd you know I was here?" It was a girl who worked weekends at the confectionary.

"I called Angel and he told me to try this number," she was almost screaming. "Anyway, Billie's had an attack of kidney stones and had to go to the hospital. And we're shorthanded. You have to come down right away."

"Is she alright?" I couldn't mask my concern. "Which hospital did they take her?"

"Nevermind that, we need you here at the shop, so come right away."

"But, but," but the line went dead.

I turned around to hang up the phone and DKLA was standing there with her hand extended to receive it.

"What was that all about?"

"Um, Billie, you know, the one you asked about? She's sick or something and I have to go to the shop right away. They're short-handed and I have to fill in. It's kind of an emergency."

"I thought you said she quit."

"No, I mean, yes, I said that, and she did, but K asked her to come back for the weekends during Christmas and New Years, that's all," I tried to explain tripping over my tongue.

"Which hospital is she at?"

"I didn't get the..." I stopped in mid-sentence and looked at DKLA as she stared right back at me with her arms crossed in front of her. Why did she ask that? Was she going to visit her? Of course not. Then, why ask? What fuck does she know that she's not telling me? But before I could sort out these various questions, she showed me the door.

"Well, I think you'd better go. Sounds like they're pretty busy at the shop." And she virtually shooed me out. I walked down the steps and turned around only to get a glimpse of her as she shut the door.

It was the last glimpse in 8 years. What had developed in a blink of an eye, disappeared just as quickly...

Not Even a Goodbye
T

hat night, I called her house. It was just before 11pm. But no one answered. Is no one home? Is it too late? What's next? I worried as I hung up the phone.

The next morning was Christmas Eve, Sunday. I called again and she answered. "I have to go now," she said hanging up the phone.

As I gift wrapped boxes of rice crackers and rice cakes for last minute Christmas shoppers, all I could think of was DKLA. A person who was basically a non-entity just a few weeks earlier now wouldn't vacate my mind. She's the one who showed an interst in me. She's the one who approached me. So I run with... and what? Now she doesn't want to see me? I wonder if it had to do something with Billie? I hadn't really lied to her about Billie. We weren't seeing each other; we didn't have a thing going on. Although somewhere deep in my heart, I still had a thing for Billie, it was a one-sided affair, and shouldn't really matter. What was I supposed to do? I thought. Tell her, "Yeah, I think your a cool chick, but I gotta thing for another girl, but don't worry because it ain't going nowhere"? Yeah, right, that would go over great. But I still couldn't figure out why DKLA had asked me about her. It was so out of the blue. Did someone told her about my feelings for her?

No one's asleep now, it's only 8 o'clock, I thought as I dialed her number from home after long day. But no answer. Okay, maybe I dialed the the wrong number, so I dialed it again and let it ring--nine, ten, eleven, twe...

"Hello?" a sleepy man's voice said.

"Hi, um, I was wondering if DKLA was home?"

"Uh, who's this," he asked perturbed. I told him who I was and he replied with a calm but threatening voice. "I don't think you should be calling my sister... again." And he hung up on me.

And that was that.

I heard what he said. I know what he meant. Don't bother my sister anymore. What started with a bus ride, what turned into something promising with a single kiss, had turned into a train wreck. What the hell went wrong? I thought over and over again. Christmas was the next day and... Shit, I hadn't even bought her a present. Everything had gone up and down so fast that I hadn't even thought about a simple thing like getting her a present. Is that why she doesn't want to see me anymore?

The following week, I saw Angel at work. He had asked me to get him a part-time New Year's gig at the confectionary shop and I had come through for him. He was just as chipper as he was the day I told him about DKLA and me.

"How are you guys doing?" he asked.

"We ain't doin' nothing," I confessed. I didn't go into the particulars. "She didn't give me a reason. She didn't even say goodbye."

"Ah, that's too bad. You still got Billie, right?" he smiled and went back to work.

During the week leading to New Year's, we worked together at Mikawaya. It is a particularly busy time of year and we hire a number of part-timers to help out. On of them was the son of my boss's hairdresser, Diddly.

We talked about J-Town and school and music. After hours, we'd get a bite to eat at Denny's and hang out. We talked about Angel and I jammed together with others on weekends for fun and he told us he used to be a drummer for the Koyasan Boy Scouts. He said he wanted to hear me play the piano and perhaps jam a bit at my house. Angel, of course, was all over this.

Epilogue: What Goes Around Comes Around

In 1980, I worked at a travel agency, MitsuiLine, located in J-Town. I delivered tickets as far away as Costa Mesa and as close as downtown LA. Once, on my way back from a downtown delivery by bus, I noticed L.A. Councilman Gilbert Lindsay, and sitting right next to him was DKLA. I said Hi and she said Hi, giggled a bit, like she did on that first bus ride we took eight years earlier. She told me she had graduated from a local university and now worked for the Councilman. Councilman Lindsay's district encompassed J-Town and DKLA was designated Lil' Tokyo Liaison to the Councilman. As a result, she had to work closely with the Lil' Tokyo Chamber of Commerce which was headed at the time by K, my boss at the confectionary. They became friends and every time I would visit the shop, she would be there. I never stayed long.

In 1982, I met a girl that I thought was really nice. We got along well enough. We'd eat lunch together and sometimes study together at UCLA. I told a good friend of mine all about her, how I felt, and I wanted him to meet her. Guess what happened? She fell for him, and he succumbed. A guy who I thought was a good friend, a solid friend, hooked up with the girl that he knew I was interested in. If I hadn't an inkling regarding how Angel felt before, I had a pretty good idea now. Their relationship lasted longer than my little whirlwind with DKLA--of course that wouldn't be hard for anybody.

While hurt and dumfounded, the irony of it all was not lost on me. And I learned a couple of things. One, in life, there is balance. If you are good to others, good things will come to you. If you screw others, others will screw you. It may not be the same person, but it will happen, I firmly believe this. I'm hoping someday, a student or two of mine will become wildly rich and/or famous and remember little ol' me... *sigh* I wish! I alos learned that friends--really true friends--are few and far between. It is something that can be easily made perhaps, but not so easily maintained.

引越し

2005-04-24T11:48:00.000-04:00

そうだ、引越しました。このサイトを一応キープするつもりだけど、目的を変えるつもりなんだ。ひょっとしたら、文語のために使おうかな？

とにかく、日本語のサイトをここに移動しました。どうぞよろしく！

Memoirs of a Riceball

Christmas Memory

Being a Dad

The American Who Could Speak English

Earthquake! A story I rarely tell...

Unexpected encounters

The scar on my cornea

The Surgery

The aftermath

An old friend

An old friend (2): You again?

An old friend (3): Making new friends

Snow Days

Scout Buddies

First Slow Dance

Jogging Memories of my First Dance

Owning a car

Not Living Up to Expectations

Originally posted on Xanga 2003, July through September--last edit July 23, 2008

Now How Narcissistic Can One Get?

Not Living Up to Expectation

Should I finish this story?

A-bomb, Hiroshima and Mom

Growing up J-Town (Unfinished)

The Misadventures of Stash

Eating grass

Cruisin' J-Town

Betraying a Friendship

Friendship Tested A

Seed of Suspicion W

Betrayal

Flame Out T

Not Even a Goodbye T

Epilogue: What Goes Around Comes Around

引越し

Friendship Tested
A

Seed of Suspicion
W

Flame Out
T

Not Even a Goodbye
T