The following is a story of keen intentions and scatty actualities. I’ll try to set the stage briefly, but skip the logistics if they bore you. The main point is that I had a hundred reasons to feel impatient.
I had spent the entirety of Friday sitting through orientation. It was both boring and frightening, which I didn’t know was possible (no wait, I’ve done college loan paperwork before…). Saturday morning I had a list of things I wanted to get done. The stakes were high: everything would be closed Sunday and Monday (nat’l holiday). But, due to a tedious array of inconveniences and late-learned facts (I’ll skip that rant), I had to rearrange my little schedule over and again until my window was almost shut. Having finished my Japanese placement exam, I was faced with a decision: ‘disappear’ and worry my roommate for the second time in as many days, or spend the next two to three days without a cell phone or an alien registration card. I chose the former, telling myself that I could only promise her it would never happen again if I had a cell. I justified the ward office trip thinking she was probably there herself. But there was one thing I absolutely could not justify: being in Roppongi after dark. I had only spent half of my Friday hearing about why I wasn’t supposed to be there.
Tokyo is a pretty safe city because the police are so harsh. There’s a flavor of fascism in some of their policies: gaijin get 23 days in the brig if they’re caught without their passport; make that five years in hardcore prison, if they’re on a bike and they don’t have the registration with them. Drug offences are even punishable by death.
But the police don’t care about gaijin on gaijin crime. Roppongi is filled with bars owned by foreign mobs--Russians, Taiwanese, whatever--and aimed at foreign men. The US embassy’s website has a list of 75 different Roppongi bars known to drug their clients and take their money. Every single semester, at least two students in my program wake up with empty wallets. Therefore the safety portion of our orientation boiled down to this: never go to Roppongi at night unless you have a police escort.
About 24 hours later, the sun set, and guess where I was? That is, without a phone, or a single soul knowing where to find me…
After walking two miles to the Minato Ward Office, only to find it closed, I walked another two to a shop called Don Quijote. It was recommended by an orientation speaker as the place to get a cheap cell, though it happens to be in Roppongi. When I entered, the place seemed a treasure-trove of kitschy curios; by the time I left, I knew that everything obnoxious about Tokyo is crammed within those four little walls. I don’t want to be too hard on the place; it is quite a spectacle, and spectacle is a valuable thing. But this place was too much. Imagine a wal-mart stuffed into a pulsing, flashing, sweaty little dance club. Now imagine that, instead of a neat row of aisles, it is an ever-growing maze. Its shelves are lined with a plethora of needless crap, and amidst the crap, little TV screens continuously repeat the same ads. Every ten steps you take, you are assaulted by an enthusiastic anthropomorphized sponge (or sock, or dildo…) vaunting about its many virtues in rapid Japanese.
About twenty minutes of Don Quijote might have been pleasurable. A half hour might have been tolerable. But it took nearly an hour and a half for the sales clerk to prepare my prepaid phone. This is probably my fault. I hadn’t known I’d need my full street address, so he may have pushed me through a loophole of some sort.
Even so, the punishment was disproportionate to the crime. Immense irritation sharpened by a tinge of fear. Knowing that every moment I waited, my roommate was getting angrier and Roppongi was getting darker and my own nerves were beginning to fray. Even if I wasn’t putting myself in danger, even if that orientation speech was entirely aimed at the dumb frat boys who would inevitably get themselves shafted... I knew my silly imagination would make every passing stranger into a Mafioso or a slave-trader. And I'd get lost.
As all this went through my head, I just wished the anthropomorphized dildos would shut up for a second. And that's why I don't like Don Quijote... But I guess I'll still buy things at the Shinjuku one. Because they do have a lot of stuff. A lot.
For the folks following along back home: I got out of Roppongi via taxicab, safe and sound, and didn’t have to pay too much to reach a neighborhood I knew.
The silver lining? Having walked around Minato, alone, without getting lost. Seeing the wide gates of Zojoji in twilight, and the elegant kimono-clad matrons walking through them. Shiba park in the golden hour, school-kids walking to baseball practice and businessmen hurrying home to dinner. Women with strollers and young couples holding hands. It was as though all the friendliest people in Tokyo had emerged to greet the evening, united by a common sense of relief and relaxation. On my way from Minato to Roppongi, I even passed the broad feet of Tokyo Tower, which was once the tallest building in the world. Moreover, when I got home, Aki and I went to a dollar store and found an incredibly inexpensive way to outfit our apartment. So, you know how it is when things end well.
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