Confessions of a Gaijin: Episode 2 – Tom Cruise

“Wow!”

The young man behind the bar looks at me with wide-eyed surprise. He is somewhere in his early twenties, with long, scruffy hair dyed dark brown and a small goatee clinging to the bottom of his chin. He is working behind the bar that I have just walked into. The four or five other patrons, all of whom are Japanese, are looking at me with similar expressions on their faces. If this were a comedy, my arrival would be heralded with the sound of a record needle being scraped across vinyl.

His “wow” is pregnant with meaning; a westerner actually had the balls to walk in here.

“Are you Tom Cruise?” he asks, his English marked by thick Asian pronunciation.

My brain sizes up the question and all its attendant meaning. It’s Saturday night and I have forced myself out of my apartment in order to sample the local colour. This particular establishment is located at the end of a pitch-black alleyway and I had no idea what to expect other than the fact that its advertising made it look like the sort of place filled with people who weren’t salarymen. I decided to give it a go, powering through uncertainty and apprehension and now I’m here, and I can’t tell if I’m welcome or not. And the staff have just asked me if I’m Tom Cruise.

There is only one sensible answer.

“Yes, I’m Tom Cruise,” I hear myself say, as I smile and extend my hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
The young man bursts out laughing. “It’s Tom Cruise!” he exclaims to his friends before throwing his head back and laughing again.
They all begin laughing with him, and possibly at me. “Tom Cruise!” they all yell in joyful unison.
Another young man walks up to me, wearing a yellow beanie and a red flannel shirt. “Pleased to meet you Tom Cruise, I’m Bob Marley.”
“Bob, hi!” I say, and shake his hand warmly. Two more of the patrons walk up to meet me. Everyone is very pleased to meet Tom Cruise. I don’t even look like him.

One of them asks me where I’m from. “UK? Very good!” replies, and gives me a genial thumbs up.
Sensing that I am somehow winning over the room, I plonk myself on a bar stool and order an Asahi. At the far end of the bar, a long-haired man in a fedora is tuning his guitar and is about to perform a short acoustic set.
“Local singer. Play here all the time,” says the guy behind the bar. The singer starts his set as two patrons and the bartender all huddle round me. I am still the object of fascination and intrigue.
They ask a bit more about where I’m from and what I’m doing. I answer as simply as I can as they don’t speak much English and I speak hardly any Japanese (I’m working on that, by the way), but they respond with big smiles and the sound that Japanese people make when they’re impressed by something; a sort of “oooohhhhhhh!” noise accompanied by leaning back slightly and raising their eyebrows.

Language barrier or no, they’re full of questions and want to know more about me. Within minutes I have ordered another Asahi and am now telling them all about my life even though they can only understand about 40 per cent of what I’m saying. They smile and laugh a lot and deliver the occasional comment to each other in Japanese. One of them makes a few unsuccessful attempts to construct a sentence in English before producing his iPhone and using a translation app. He taps and swipes the phone for a few seconds before showing it to me, it says only one thing; “the Italian was in here last night”.

Everyone orders more beer and we all whip out our smartphones so we can follow each other on Instagram. I suddenly realise that we are all “getting along” and it’s amazing.

The singer is playing a mixture of reggae covers and his own songs, which seem wistful and honest and are probably about lost love of some kind. I am offered a seat further down the bar, which I plonk myself on while nodding along to the music and letting a warm, fuzzy beer buzz wash over me. It’s just some westerner in a bar but I feel as if I am achieving something tonight. The singer finishes his set with a cover of Green Day’s ‘Time Of Your Life’. Cooler people than I would sneer and laugh at his choice of song but to me it seems perfectly suited to the moment.
The evening expands. There’s a Sex Pistols CD behind the bar so the staff put it on while I answer yet more questions. They ask me what my favourite anime is, what Japanese actors I like, what my favourite food is and where I live. Every answer I give is met with a chorus of approval.

I decide to try some of the house saké but it turns out that if you ask most bartenders here for saké they will just look at you blankly as the word itself literally means “alcohol” in Japanese. I have to find a picture of the drink on my iPhone and show it to the bartender. “Ahhhhhhhh!” he proclaims, the penny having finally dropped, “Nihonshu!” And fetches me a flask and a small cup. He pours something I don’t know the name of and it tastes amazing.

More questions.They ask me what I think of Japanese women and if I have a girlfriend. By this time I am firmly drunk so I respond to the latter with a passionate monologue about a break-up I went through in autumn last year, accompanied by meaningful gestures and body language, like I’m playing charades. They listen intently to my tale of heartbreak and raise a glass to me. They even give my ex an affectionate nickname; a combination of her first name translated into Japanese with the affectionate suffix “-chan”. Everything is so convivial. The night ends with us all drunkenly posing for a photo at the bar before I say “arigato gozaimashta”, thank you for everything you’ve done, and stumble back home to my apartment. I waged a charm offensive and won. This bodes well for the rest of my time here.