Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries (25 page)

But though Japanese adults are much easier to convince of your likeability, especially after a few beers, you can’t force their children to like you. It just happens, either by happy accident or after a gradual wearing down of their steely willfulness. But even though it involves much less adulation and alcohol than my business classes, it’s a nice change of pace, especially when Kai insists on lecturing me, telling me that I’m old and I should already be married and that I might end up alone for the rest of my life if I don’t do it soon, especially if I don’t stop biting my nails and picking the dead skin off my fingers; or when Daisuke cross-examines me about my homeland with questions like, “Why America doesn’t have bullet train and only cars? It’s stupid. And why American people so fat?”

But my heart really belongs to Ryuji, who the other day successfully got me to say the word “sex” by telling me to say the letter X five times fast. I knew where he was going with this, but I did it anyway to humor him and myself. He laughed at me for “saying bad word,” then asked me what it meant.

“Um, it’s a little hard to explain,” I said.

“Is it like ‘poop’?” he asked as he folded the phone bill into a paper airplane.

“Yes,” I answered. “I guess sometimes it is.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned I can count on during my time on Planet Tokyo, it’s that every day I step outside my door provides me with a new opportunity to sit in judgment of an entire nation of people. Sure, I did that back home in the States too, but it’s a richer and more rewarding experience here because there’s no way I can be mistaken for those I judge. Most of the time.

The Japanese, like yours truly, are a beautiful, counterintuitive symphony of contradictions. They are responsible, anal-retentive recyclers, yet each day one Japanese person probably goes through an entire continent’s worth of plastic because they are completely obsessed with packaging: i.e., putting things in bags, then putting those bags in bigger bags, putting those bags in one final climactic bag, and so forth. They are hesitant to speak about contentious or embarrassing topics, yet I hear the word “diarrhea” used in conversations in my classroom with mystifying frequency (usually after someone asks, “How are you?”). And as is well-documented in these pages, they are painfully shy and try their best not to draw attention to themselves, yet they are the same people who invented and made immensely popular an arcade game called Dance Dance Revolution where the player must, in full view of others, gyrate and wiggle his body to electro music, mimicking as closely as possible the figure dancing on the screen, thereby gaining points and perhaps beating personal records. And my students shift uncomfortably and turn red when I ask them what they did last weekend?

The other night in the front of a Shinjuku sidewalk arcade I saw a man in shirtsleeves dancing on the Dance Dance Revolution platform as if his very life depended on it, face sweating, armpits drenched, expression determined. He stepped, twisted, kicked, and jumped like a kid on ecstasy at his senior prom. A crowd of people was gathered around to watch him dance and marvel at his high score. I wouldn’t say he danced with any inborn sense of rhythm or flair, but he knew the steps and could put his feet and arms where they were supposed to be at any given point in the dance. When he finished, folks clapped, a person handed him his suit jacket, he bowed graciously to everyone, tried his best to re-fashion his hair into its former slicked-back style, and walked down the street by himself, briefcase in hand, a slight spring in his step. He was probably off to English class, where he’d sit in the corner and not speak above a whisper for two hours.

The quintessential embodiment of this contradictory element of the Japanese character is their love of karaoke. There are few events in Tokyo that are announced with as much fervor and enthusiasm as the opening of a new karaoke venue. I was on my lunch break in Ginza one day and happened to pass by a karaoke place that was having its “Grand Opening Fun,” and I had to swerve to avoid the men dressed in giant blue bear costumes beating on drums, shaking tambourines, passing out flyers, and shouting the good news at the top of their lungs. There were also glittery dancing girls waving, as well as an accordion player.

We’ve all done karaoke. It’s an addictive and idiotic but fun thing to do while drunk, and a reliable way to publicly humiliate oneself/give the world a small taste of one’s undeniable talents. Most importantly, it’s the best way to prove once and for all that those countless and friendless hours spent in my bedroom listening to Top 40 radio during middle school when I should’ve been learning how to not fall off a skateboard were not wasted hours. Not at all. I know lots of lyrics!

My former MOBA colleagues and I used to go out karaokeing regularly to let off steam. Sometimes a Japanese worker would come along, but more often than not it was just us gaijin looking for our moment in the spotlight. One time, Donna had gotten enough beer in her to think she could take on Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights.” If you’re unfamiliar with this particular song, it may assist your understanding to know that Ms. Bush’s extremely high-pitched voice makes Betty Boop sound like Bruce Springsteen. She hit notes not scientifically proven to exist before this song scaled the heights of the British charts in 1979. In short, I didn’t think Donna was up to the challenge, and as it turned out, she wasn’t. It was like hearing Jennifer Lopez trying to sing Maria Callas. It was like hearing Jennifer Lopez trying to sing. One of our fellow teachers, Pete, picked up the other microphone and started singing along, obviously feeling that, well, somebody had to do something. But Donna, eyes closed, face shining, voice creaking, was having none of it, and with a flick of her dainty wrist, she knocked the microphone out of his hand and whispered in a tone of voice usually indicating demonic possession, “Shut up, it’s my song!”

But we couldn’t fault her. We all had the same agenda, i.e., to sing the song we wanted to sing and make everyone else listen. Next up was Big Bob from Wales, who always picked whatever Tom Jones song was in the songbook, especially if it was “The Green Green Grass of Home.” This night he surprised us by bogarting the remote control and programming in “Sex Bomb” followed by “God Save the Queen.” There he was, this huge white man standing up in a tiny room singing “and I am the antichrist!” while the television screen showed a short film of two Japanese lovers at an amusement park, twirling around, laughing, hugging, kissing, and then crying after their star-crossed separation.

As for me, I am probably the worst when it comes to using my time at the mic to make a dramatic personal statement and force everyone to sit and watch, awestruck, as I unfurl my very essence. My song choices naturally tend towards power ballad territory. I strongly believe that there is something deep within us human beings, a profound, inexplicable, emotive force that drives us to do things that we know may hurt other people, maybe even hurt ourselves. But life is full of such dilemmas, and I find it’s best to follow your heart wherever it may lead you. And if not your heart, then your beer buzz. And my karaoke beer buzz always leads me, coincidentally enough, to Heart. Not the biggest muscle in the human body; I’m talking about the legendary rock band led by siren sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, the queens of the rock torch song, the mystical madams who helped get me through sixth grade. There isn’t an emotion too naked, an anger too vitriolic, a love too conflicted, or an animal metaphor too far-fetched for them to sing about atop a glassy piano refrain or a nasty guitar lick. I can’t help but respect that and to do my best to stay true to the original spirit of their songs when I grab one microphone for myself, turn the other one off and kick it on the floor, and open my vocal cords like a flower greeting the rising sun to push out the opening verse to “Magic Man,” “What About Love?” “Dream-boat Annie,” or “Barracuda.”

For a few precious minutes, these songs written by two bighaired girls from Seattle are my own, because no one in the room (or in their right mind) knows them like I do. Not even needing to read the lyrics on the television screen, I can close my eyes and devote myself totally to creating an atmosphere of naked intimacy and flawless grace for my audience. And unlike Bob, I’m not afraid to use a falsetto if I have to. Which I do. Often.

It’s not Carnegie Hall, but it’s not the size of the arena in which you sing, it’s the motion of the emotion when the notion hits your ocean. Or whatever. Anyway, no one really cares when you’re finished. I’d like to say they’re stunned and breathless when I reach the end of my song with a fist in the air, my head back, and the microphone held upside down above my gaping mouth as it wails, “How do I get you alone?! Alone! Aloooooooooooooooooooooone!” It would be a lie, as everyone is already scrambling for the song directory and the remote control like a bunch of attention-starved Mariah Careys, ready to enter in their next musical choice.

In short, I’m comfortable with being a selfish bastard in a karaoke box. I’ll swipe the song catalog out of a bitch’s hands if I have to. But, of course, this is Japan, so one should never get too comfortable. And sure enough, when I go to karaoke with my business students, I learn that, sadly, just because you’re blissfully drunk doesn’t mean everyone is dying to hear your interpretation of Juice Newton’s “Love’s Been a Little Bit Hard on Me” without at least joining in with a little percussion or backing vocals,
even when they don’t know the lyrics!
Yep, in this curious country—or at least among my business students—karaoke is an activity for the group to enjoy together, not one at a time, like God intended. People can all join in the fun, unwind, relax, get drunk, laugh at each other’s vocal shortcomings, and, as one of my pro-karaoke students once put it, “be very too happy.” This is surely how they’d done it in Eastern Bloc countries during the cold war, in their communist karaoke labor camps.

It all happens one night after class. We’re drinking at a company party for a few hours, and once everyone is lubed up enough to start suggesting, nay demanding, that we proceed immediately to a karaoke box, we make a break for it. We all pile into a room, sit down, and order some drinks. Mr. Takeda immediately punches in “Twist and Shout,” one of the easier Beatles songs for Japanese to sing, and he and Yukihiro begin belting it out (“Shek eat shek eat shek eat bebe now!! Tsuist-oh and shout-oh!!”) while Mr. Yamamoto backs them up on tambourine and everyone else heaves glasses full of beer into their mouths and cheers along.

Next comes a Japanese song by Utada Hikaru. A few of the guys sing this one, often passing microphones and swapping instruments with each other. I smile and laugh, but inside I’m wracked with disapproval.

“Why isn’t Junichiro demanding that everyone else shut up so he can sing the song by himself?” I wonder. “Does he not know how you’re supposed to do it?”

Mr. Takada asks me what I want to sing, and I start looking through the book for something good, ready to show the room what I can do. Though I see many that tickle my fancy, like the Eurythmics’ “I Need a Man,” Pat Benatar’s “Hell Is for Children,” or Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” they don’t seem terribly appropriate, and I don’t want to bring the festivities to a crushing halt, so I settle on “Piano Man” and bring the house down with my amazingly accurate (to them, at least) imitation of Billy Joel. Problem is, they all sing along (three of them into microphones!), jingle their tambourines, click together their drumsticks, and generally make a huge racket. So even though it is my song, really, since I chose it, the entire room felt like they could just barge in at any moment like this was some sort of hippie jam session. Soon, Takada starts plugging in songs for me to lead them in, from the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” and the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer” to Bette Midler’s “The Wind Beneath My Wings.” And everyone backs me up. Folks who just a few sober hours ago stared at me blankly when I asked them a question in front of the class, not even able to bring themselves to say, “I don’t understand,” are now fully outside their classroom shell, passing the microphone, shaking the maracas, clapping their hands, and “whoop whooing” like it’s showtime at the Apollo.

And wonder of wonders, by the time we get to David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” I am totally digging it. The selfish, attention-starved diva in me retreats into the background and I become just another member of the gang. The only white guy, yes. With better pitch and melodic sense, sure. And a native understanding (more or less) of what Bowie means when he says “under the moonlight, the serious moonlight”—absolutely. But whereas before I wouldn’t have been happy without my moment in the sun, now I’m grooving with this ecstatic communal experience. No one is the center of attention, and nobody feels embarrassed, because each of us understand the deep-seated human need to sing our favorite songs into a microphone and be backed up by a decent sound system and some swirly lights.

After sipping from this cup of cooperation and collaborative energy, I decide that perhaps the group therapy of Japanese-style karaoke is not so bad. But can I really leave the “me first” mentality of my previous karaoke outings behind? With a group like my fellow teachers, you might try to sing along, but it’s someone else’s solo you’re stealing. And the threat of violence is real. With my business class, the microphones would be passed, the tambourines traded, and the choruses sung, anthem-like, by everyone. It’s an arrangement I’m just not sure I can ultimately be happy with. I’ve turned Japanese a bit, yes. But have I turned
that
Japanese?

I think we all know the answer. The lure of the spotlight is too great for a deluded fame whore like myself. Yes, though we can sometimes come together over a good Beach Boys, Elvis, or Madonna tune, we selfish gaijin tend to use karaoke as an opportunity to stand out from our peers rather than harmonize and clap along with them, and to assert our sometimes offensive individuality. We want to sing our lives and justify our existence. We sit and wait expectantly for each person’s song to hurry up and finish so we can stomp a stiletto on the carpet and announce ourselves to the room, if not the world. We want to show what we know and prove unequivocally to ourselves and to everyone else in that tiny soundproof room, “Dammit, I exist, and I’m gonna fucking sing about it, so hand over the goddamn microphone, bitch. And cool it with the backing vocals, please. We’re not Martha and the friggin’ Vandellas, for God’s sake!”