How Talismans Work Now

There Is No Such Place As Now

“Kachi-Kachi?” Ben says.

And I, still under the firm belief that I should take every invitation that comes my way, agree.

At nine-thirty, we are finished with work. Ben comes into the staff room where I am having a conversation with Masashi.

“Asahi-ji,” Ben says, indicating his watch. Asahi is a kind of Japanese beer. Ji means time. It’s beer ‘o clock.

I say I’ll be up in a minute. The conversation with Masashi has turned into a bit of a gentle wrestling match with a giant mental octopus and I don’t want to leave it just at the moment. I’ve got my knife between my teeth and a good lungful of oxygen that’s not going to last forever--but I think I might have a fighting chance otherwise. Besides, a girl loves a non-Christian eremite.

Ben says he’ll see me upstairs.

In another half-hour before Ben comes back into the room. “It’s ten past beer o’ clock,” he says. My oxygen is holding out. I tell him I’ll see him upstairs.

My oxygen runs out and my knife proves useless--mostly because I haven’t the heart to use it. And anyway, Masashi is Japanese and therefore frightening in that he’ll willingly turn himself into sashimi and serve himself up with a smile. I only realize this later, as I think over the conversation. The lesson for me is, in part, that there are reasons octopi have eight arms (and we--most of us--only have two.) When I finally admit defeat, I am three beers behind the Kachi-kachi crowd (Mayumi, Masakazu, Kyoko, and Ben). I begin with the gin-tonics (they leave out the “and” here, but otherwise, they are exactly the same drink).

Now Is Not The Time For Now Either

The evening ends about three a.m. with me leaving Ben’s apartment after a conversation (that’s not a euphemism). Having thought at the time that I had learned something from the conversation with Masashi, I tried the knife. But I was correct the first time: The knife was useless against someone whose path’s trajectory parallels those men who are Japanese or who are more Japanese than the Japanese.

Next time the knife stays home.

It’s three a.m. when I walk down the 7/11 on Meiji Dori and buy some yogurt and raisin bread and a diet Coke. I eat the raisin bread on the way home and I eat the yogurt while I’m checking my email.

Let me explain this much in this cryptic entry:

We all have things that we won’t, however much anyone argues with us, change our minds about. Try religion. Try politics. Try your own personal beliefs about yourself that allow you to expend energy digging ruts and not changing yourself. In the West, we argue about those things anyway. Perhaps we argue because we like to argue even when there is no point to arguing because we know, and our opponents know, that we’re not going to change anything. I’ll argue politics with you all night, concede points and offer challenges, but when it comes down to it, I’m right and you’re wrong and I’m not going to change anything, especially my own mind.

Here, the same thing happens--only no one here argues. Think about that. You can talk about religion, politics, personal beliefs all you want, you can introduce the subject (in English anyway), and you will get a calm nod and open expression that seems like concession. But nothing changes and there is no arguing. But for me, after years of living as an American, when I open my toolbox, I see one tool. Though here, that tool is completely useless as the underlying belief here is that showing anger is a sign of immaturity, a sign that someone needs--at the very least--a snack and a nap or maybe even a time out. This belief put into practice means that my knife is completely useless. Here, my knife is no more than the badge I carry that shows that I’m from a country that considers itself to be at the top of the food chain. I want sashimi, but I want it on my terms.

That’s not much of an explanation, but I’m finding it difficult to let go of the idea that hostages are things worth taking.

These Are My Terms

Yuko is my boss and we are sitting in the breakroom and she has to ask me to do something. That’s the situation. This is what I want her to say: “Brenda, can you work on Sunday October 30?”

That’s what I want, but this is how it works with Yuko:

She turns in her office chair and stretches out her arms like a five-year old getting up from a nap. She wants me to think she’s cute. That’s not a problem. She really is cute.

Yuko, you’re so cute.

“I have to ask you something,” she says in a singsong voice. What is it? I ask. She says, “I don’t want to ask you.” She tilts her head to one side, being cute. Yuko, you’re just so damn cute. What is it? I ask, still patient. She tilts her head to the other side and then stretches out her arms across the table. “Oh!” she says, her voice getting so that only dogs can hear it.

I paste a very patient look on my face. One of the things that I have to accept about working in this place is that my immediate boss is five years old. She’s not unpleasant about things though. That is the trade off.

I love Yuko--I really do--which is why I’ll tell you without a trace of rancor that she’s girlish and cute and when it comes to dealing with me, completely incompetent at her job.

“Can?” she says. “You?” she says. “Work?” she says. She hides her face. I wait. “Can you work?” she says. “On?” she says. “Can you--pleeease---?” she says. “Can you please work on Sunday?” She hides her face.

Sunday is my day off. I’m not going to work on Sunday. Period. The conversation, in my head, is finished and my job now is to tell Yuko, who is five years old, that I have no choice: Yuko, sweetheart, mommy’s going to shoot your new puppy now, okay? Sweetie?

I’m going to say no, I mean. And this is how I do it. This is me being more Japanese than the Japanese:

“Which Sunday?” I ask.

She points out the date on the calendar. I nod.

“Why are we open on Sunday?” I ask.

Her answer invokes what are (to her and the other management staff) frightening and convincing words: “Head office,” she says. “The head office wants us to do it.”

I’m not impressed but I nod as though this were the most impressive thing in the world. Aaahhh, so ka. Head office, ne. Head offisu...sooo ne.

I think. Soyo. Headu offisu ne. Muzukashii ne.

Last time, I tried to be nice and help out by working an extra day, I’d been paid by the hour even though I’m on salary. The place makes 12 million yen a month and they paid me fast food wages to teach half a day. Half a day’s teaching still means getting up early, getting dressed in my respectable costume and riding the train for 35 minutes there and 35 minutes home. It still means arriving a half hour early and leaving forty-five minutes late. It’s still an eight hour day to me. It still wrecks my day off.

“Oh,” I say, “head office? That’s too bad.”

Yuko says, in her high, girly voice, “So can you do it?”

I don’t say no right away. I apologize first. See how Japanese I’m getting: “I’m sorry, Yuko.” I explain my reasons (which is me being American) and I give her an out in the form of an offer that I know she can’t possibly accept: “I will do it,” I say, “for a full day’s pay or an extra day off.” She understands that this means no. “I’d want the same thing,” she says. Sooo desune Soyo. Mmmm.

I nod. She nods. And we understand each other. Our nods say to each other: See how Japanese we are being by agreeing with one another. Look how pretty that is, that agreement. We agree that my working is impossible. We both accept with some regret that my terms are impossible. She accepts that I can’t give her what she wants and I accept that she can’t give me what I want and we are in perfect agreement about this, right? We understand each other, right?

I didn’t understand Masashi and I certainly didn’t understand Ben, but I did understand Yuko--and she understood me.

But don’t worry: I still have the knife. It’s still sharp. But now, I only carry it as a talisman. And I reminded myself that talismans work whether you carry them or not.