Confessions of a Gaijin 2: Episode 1 – Tit-Flicker

It’s a Sunday night and I’m stomping around a bitterly cold Kobe, searching in vain for a bar that I’m supposed to be meeting my friend Sasha in. Kobe is a port city that was one of the first major hubs to trade with the West in 1853, when Japan ended its centuries-long policy of seclusion.

The city has absorbed all sorts of cultural influences since then and as a result, is something of a mongrel. It can’t quite decide whether it feels Japanese, European or American. The place I’m looking for is tucked away in a dense network of alleyways that are stuffed with cafes, bars and boutique clothing shops, most of which are closed. Google Maps tells me I’m right on top of my destination but I cannot spot it for the life of me and plod back and forth in vain, my mood worsening as the cold seeps into my bones. I send out a distress call via text message and Sasha instructs me to meet her at a nearby Burger King.

Twenty minutes and our happy band (Sasha has brought some friends along) has found the joint and ordered our first round of drinks. The bar is small and cosy, reminding me of the places I used to drink at around east London. The walls are lined with bookshelves that carry everything from contemporary manga to the Qur’an. A half-disassembled drumkit sits in the corner and the stereo plays a revolving-door of comfortably hip artists like Bon Iver and The Arcade Fire. The owner is a an American with a peaky cap and a pointy beard who is genial and over-friendly, as American bar staff so often are. My first drink of the evening is hot sake, which seems like a mandatory choice on a night as brutally cold as this.

Three of the other people in our group work for the same eikaiwa company as me. Two of them have been in Japan for less than a year and are finding life at their schools to be just as difficult as I did, if not worse (both seem to be at the mercy of vindictive staff members, one thing which I was mercifully spared from). I take no pleasure in their misfortune but part of me is reassured that it wasn’t just me who got the less-pleasurable end of the stick. One of them has only been at it for two months and says he’s already thinking about looking for another job. By the time this piece is published I will only have about 11 weeks left on my contract. I am planning my exit strategy while they are only just getting started. Sasha has finished her two years with the company and will fly to New York next week. It’s all swings and roundabouts.

The evening progresses and we order more drinks, mixing our beverages furiously (in just under an hour I have washed down my sake with beer and a cripplingly powerful gin martini). I am deep in drunken conversation with Sasha about everything from racial politics in America to how weird it is that Japanese people hardly hug and how much we enjoyed the last Kendrick Lamar album. The others are steadily keeping pace, both in drinking and talking. One of Sasha’s friends is a diminutive, flamboyant Japanese-American named Ryu, and he spends most of the night talking about fucking – or wanting to fuck – other men. He has an acidic, razor-sharp wit which has me in stitches every 10 minutes or so (one of his most memorable lines of the evening: “Knock that bitch out and give me her drink”) and punctuates his discourse with attempts to get off with Mark, a young man from the US who sounds exactly like Jay Baruchel when he speaks and has a pretty Asian girlfriend back home. At one point I think I see them kissing.

I’ve missed my last train on purpose; I can’t be bothered with the 90 minutes or so it will take me to get back to my apartment and besides, I’m enjoying the change of scenery and company. After devouring bar snacks and enjoying several more drinks it turns out we are all sleeping on the floor of a fellow teacher who is not out with us but has kindly donated his living space as our shelter for the night. Sasha and I are sat chatting on a late night train out of Kobe and as I so often do when I’ve had a few drinks, I start talking about all my recent trials and tribulations. Sasha is a font of advice and feels confident everything will work itself out one way or another. On the way back to the apartment we stop at a 7-11 to grab more alcohol, pausing briefly to sing the theme from Pokemon in its entirety. I’m hoping the staff aren’t rolling their eyes too much as we holler out the chorus.

The intense cold proves to be too much for us to we grab a taxi. The apartment that is waiting for us is small and abysmally messy, so much so that it looks like it has been lived in – and ransacked by – heroin addicts. The owner has left the front door open for us but appears to be nowhere in sight. We sit up for a short while and take turns swigging from a bottle of cheap wine which we got from the convenience store. Another of Sasha’s friends, Roxie, is a young woman from American who has a mountainous bosom which she is hugely proud of. She spends most of her time in the apartment asking Sasha if she can make out with her (Sasha will in turn spend most of her time fending off these drunken advances). When she’s not doing that, she is asking everyone in the room, including myself, if we want to flick her breasts. Two of our group oblige but I opt not to. I don’t wish to be remembered as some sort of two-bit tit-flicker, particularly when I’m not attracted to the young woman in question.

I’m amazed that anyone would leave their home wide open for a bunch of randoms to pile in, even in a country as safe and civilised as Japan. At one point I ask Sasha where our host is, and she points at a nearby closet. I assume she is taking the piss until Ryu slides the closet door back to reveal a crawlspace where an Australian man named Richard is ostensibly fast asleep. I am utterly stunned; apart from anything else, how the hell can he sleep with all of us making such an ungodly racket? Ryu slides the door closed and takes another swig of wine before going back to flicking Roxie’s tits.

It’s somewhere in the early hours when we all grab some blankets and manage to steal a few hours of awkward, fitful sleep. I am woken up at regular intervals during the night by either snoring, my own discomfort or freezing cold. A few years back I’d regard this all as some sort of mini-adventure but I find myself missing my bed and can feel the onset of a hangover approaching ominously towards me.

“I don’t wish to be remembered as some sort of two-bit tit-flicker”

The following morning we wake slowly, one by one, mumbling nothings to each other before we can muster the energy to get to our feet and leave the premises. We leave the apartment and emerge dazed and blinking into a crisp, sunny morning in the suburbs of Osaka. The others go for breakfast but I want to make the most of Sasha’s company before she leaves Japan so we head into the city together. We chat for a while, using bottles of green tea to ease our way out of our hangovers, before give each a big hug and a goodbye at Umeda station. As we part ways, Sasha gives me a wink and a smile.

I wander round Osaka in the brilliant sunshine, grateful for last night’s entertainment but mindful not to sleep on any more messy floors in the near future. And I’m glad I didn’t do any tit-flicking.

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