A Stupidly Good Thing

I wrote a while back about how this place was stupidly safe. At the time I wrote that, I was sick of it, that stupidity, because for me, it was the result of a lack of multiculturalism and that situation is always a bad thing.

But is anything always a bad thing?

Here’s something:

The men here? Well, they may be stupidly good, but that translates into men who look into your eyes while they speak to you, rather than directing all their comments at your tits. This means that, though as a foreigner, I do draw attention, I am almost never overtly scoped out or checked out by men in the streets. And even when men do look, I know that that restrained look ends it. Period. I never feel for a second as though I am in danger. In fact, I feel so little danger that I walk home from the gym at two a.m., and I see other women walking alone, home from the station, or to various places.

This is Tokyo, kids. This is one of the biggest cities in the world. Try this in New York. Try this in Mexico City or Rio or Bombay. Try leaving your apartment in not the greatest neighborhood (because, let’s face it, Higashi-Mukojima is not Shiodome) and taking a walk at two a.m. and feeling perfectly, perfectly safe. It is very unlikely that you, male or female, will not feel this sense of safety. I can even encounter men, singly or in groups, and I don’t for a moment ever feel as though one of them had any harmful intent in mind. I may be completely delusional about this, but I’m guessing more often than not, I’m not.

Even Western men feel this overwhelming, almost dizzying sense of safety here. Everyone I’ve met comments that it’s nice. It’s nice not to have to face anger and fear and resentment (your own or others’) at every step. It was difficult at first for me to let go of my habits, difficult to stop feeling as though I were in danger every moment of every day.

I will tell you that only twice in four months have I felt unsafe. Once was when a man stopped me and spoke English. He said he had been looking for me. He said he wanted to be my friend. He said he always saw me around and he wanted to meet me, so he had been waiting for me. He was not, I should say, Japanese. He was Indian, from India. He wanted very much, he said, to be my friend. I put him off. I left the convenience store where he had cornered me. He followed me out and tried to talk to me some more. He said, “I want to be your friend.” I want to be your friend, he repeated over and over. I put him off. I had that helpless feeling that I used to get in America when men got insistent in this way.

“What’s your name?” it always began. Hey, what’s your name? Where are you going? Why are you acting so stuck up? Don’t be that way. Hey, baby, don’t be that way? Why are you acting like such a bitch? Hey, you fucking bitch. Where the fuck are you going? You think you’re so fucking good? Well, fuck you.

No, fuck you.

I walked away from this man, fighting a mixture of anger and fear, just like I used to have to in the States. It pissed me off that someone felt so comfortable violating my space. It pissed me off that I had to deal with this. I was angry at myself for letting my guard down. For several days after, I felt like I always did in the States, like I always had to be looking over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t being followed. The streets felt dangerous again and I resented that. I wouldn’t walk down the usual alleys that I take to get home. Elevators felt like cages again and I had to steel myself to step into them with men I didn’t know.

About a week later, when I was still looking over my shoulder, I was walking to the gym just after dark. It had taken me several days to convince myself that walking to the gym alone was okay. Then I had to convince myself that walking places alone after dark was okay. This is Japan, I said to myself. That was unusual. This is Japan and that is not the usual way things go here. You’re okay, I said to myself over and over. You’re okay. I almost believed it.

As I walked to the gym that night, I was not doing all those things that you do in the States though, to make sure you stay safe. I was wearing my headphones and I was not walking against traffic. Sure enough, someone pulled their car alongside me, the window rolled down and yelled something. This is Japan, I thought foolishly. This doesn’t happen here. I looked to see if I knew the man and I didn’t recognize him. Traffic on the street was heavy, so he couldn’t pull over near me. As I watched, he drove past and pulled off to the side of the road. I saw his tail lights flash as he came to a stop so I turned down a sidestreet into a small mazelike neighborhood and I pulled off my headphones and took out my cellphone. I pressed myself into a doorway and waited, Ben’s number called up so that all I had to do was press the dial button. The man turned down an alley and drove down the street that intersected the one where I was. As soon as he passed, I headed back to the main street and crossed it quickly so that I was walking against traffic. I took the long way to the gym to make sure that I went by the koban, the police station, on the corner. I know they notice me, a foreigner, and I know that I could head there if anything happened.

Later, I told Ben about these incidents, saying, “I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m just telling you this in case anything happens.”

A few nights ago, I ran into the Indian man. I had just gone into Shop QQ to buy dinner. It was the end of a long day of work and I was alone and I wanted to spend a couple hundred yen on some onigiri and a crunky bar and go home and answer a few emails and go to bed and this guy walked up to me again and said, “Hi, remember me?” And I looked at him and I was my American self again, had remembered how I used to be in the US, when I used ot have to put up my guard and deaden my face and give looks that killed at thirty paces.

I looked at him this way and he said, “I haven’t seen you around. Have you been busy? Are you too busy?” And I turned on my heel and walked away without saying anything. He followed me around the store just enough for me to decide to leave, which I did, buying nothing. And for a time, instead of being afraid, I allowed myself to be fucking pissed off. I steeled myself in case he followed me, practiced the Japanese for “Please call a police officer,” in case I had to say it to the clerk at the nearby convenience store.

He didn’t follow me.

So, yes, stupidly good has its good side. Stupidly safe is okay with me on some days.