HebertHollins786

Most Japanese people appear polite, but once you're in their country and a little less than a tourist, at least for me, being a guest more than a tourist, an American Caucasian: engaged to a Japanese woman five years my senior, it was quite the opposite; I was in their domain, I was in the land of the ancient warriors with long swords- and they wanted me to know it; prior to this, she had visited Minnesota three times within the past three years, and she wanted me to see her homeland.

Anyhow the story really starts in 1996, when I met Kikue with several of her girlfriends, waiting at the airport in Istanbul to go back home and we talked and exchanged addresses and became pen pals, and as I said, she visited me in Minnesota, then I was asked to come to Japan to visit her. And I did, the summer of 1999, for six-days, on my way to Java.

When I arrived in Japan, she was waiting there at the airport, it was near evening, and I was hungry, so we went to a restaurant, all the waitresses and host were wearing kimonos, and all the other necessities that make Japanese figures, Japanese. Everything very colorful and the food was not really all that tasty, but just being in Tokyo, Japan, gave a certain acceptable flavor to it. It was a full restaurant and many foreigners like I-a few of my fellow-countrymen here and there. After we ate we found our way out of the corridor outside of the bistro, and on our way out to the everlasting hysteric lifestyle of trains, trains packed to the rim with bodies: herds and herds of bodies being smashed into those opening and closing doors. All hanging onto rails, some sitting, and half the bodies were closed eyed as if sleeping.

It would be, the relationship with Kikue, my Japanese girlfriend, be a shrieking and not very promising one, by the end of my sixth day in Japan, I hate to say this so early on in the story but, there are reasons for this-I am not Marlon Brando, and I was not making a movie called "Sayonara," by James Michener, so truth be told, I was not in their eyes of the same blood, and therefore, imperfect, even though we were their conquerors.

But as I was saying, little hands and big bellies and sweat, we were all jammed into these train cars, from one point to another, which for Japan, and certainly for Tokyo, is commonplace and cumbersome.

As we walked downtown, there were more massage parlors than cafes: Kikue told me, they were quite prevalent, like wings on a bird, everybody needed a rubdown from all the stress, and strain of the city life, and I could now see why just by taking one train ride, which really was several, connecting.

(Tama City-July 5th & 6th) Finally we came to what was called Tama City, Kikue's domain, a district of Tokyo, one used by the U.S. Air Force, with a beautiful golf course. From what I understood a rather newer enterprise, than the city we'd visit in a few days, called Nagoya and Kyoto. There in Tama City, I would meet three of her girlfriends, one that owned a small caf�, and we all talked there, had coffee, and rice cakes and so forth, and they gave me hand made postcards, and they giggled a lot, the Japanese women are famous for that I guess, perhaps releases stress, and they were perhaps the friendliest of all the Japanese people I would meet while in Japan.

I took a few photographs, and went to a small apartment she had rented for our visit. Desirous, the Japanese do not mind being photographed, actually they seem to like it, so I had no trouble, innocently minded, and shot pictures when and wherever I wanted to.

The next day I was to meet her whole family, this was to be the Devil's own time assembling, they didn't take to me, no one smiled, there was perhaps ten of them at this restaurant, and only Kikue and her sister could speak English, actually her younger sister could speak better English than Kikue, who perhaps had a vocabulary of fifty to seventy-five words.

By they way they treated me at the table, eating, then every other minute someone asking questions, and so forth, it would have appeared to an onlooker as if they were interrogating me, grabbing the opportunity to degrade their enemy at the same time, their conqueror. Her sister who sat by me, put her hand on my thigh, and fumbled about, and I took it off, "Just checking to see what you'd do," she said: meaning if I was serious about her sister I suppose: never reporting her facts to the family of course, and I let it be, surely she would have denied it, and impersonated the perfect sister.

All in all, the local scene was touchy, and I got to the point I could not take anymore and stood up and said in a near vulgar way, "You people are plainly rude, I'm your guest, even if I'm your disappointment, or your daughter's disappointment to you: cozy as you look you're a bunch of hypocrites." And I walked out into the open air. And Kikue gasped, jumped up and followed, and the family members, the mother in particular, was saying, trying to say anyhow, "Oh, oh we are so sorry...!" which was a lie. She was sorry I could figure out what she was up to, that I confronted her and was bold enough to do so.

We did stay for her sister's show of art, at this nearby gallery, and her sister gave me a water painting she did, one I liked, and we were back to being friends, no more brawling.

That evening I had acupuncture, from a friend of Kikue's, and when I got on the bus to go back to our apartment, I collapsed. My body couldn't take the acupuncture.

We went back to the room; it was mostly furnished with a sturdy bed, Japanese d�cor, outside was two food machines, where you could buy a cold drink or a candy bar-and we waited for morning, where we had breakfast at McDonald's (way over prices); made a phone call to Minnesota, not sure what for, perhaps business I had a few apartments then; and caught a train to Nagoya, which was really a stopover on our way to Kyoto. It was morning, but while waiting for the train, her sister showed up, an even younger one than the artist, I of course was incapable of replying to her grinning face, and they were talking about me: from what Kikue said and from what she didn't say, with an icy cold look at me, it wasn't good, I gathered she felt her Western-style selection of boyfriend was not to the Japanese taste, yet everything per near in Tokyo was bent towards the West. I tried to interrupt several times what they were saying, because everything was just getting gloomy, everything under a gloomy glare, and people walking by. Her face went into cruel and gaudy colors, as I lazily passed the 400-square foot platform, enclosed between two doors.

(Nagoya-July 7th) From Tokyo to Nagoya was perhaps two-hundred miles, and from there to Kyoto, would be a bus ride-perhaps another forty miles or so: anyhow, here we were in Nagoya in time for the events Kikue had planned: she had put heart and soul into this visit of mine, and with enthusiasm I equaled it, and the first thing we saw was the Japanese Castle, with its waving like gables, in place of towers. Below it, it had a great wall and dark green bushes below that, and then the sidewalk. But the most exciting thing of the city was that there was a Sumo event going on. And I got to go to it, an international competition, people from around the world, and the old Champion who was from Hawaii, was present. I actually got to meet three of them, and was told in a light but dramatic way, I should not approach them, but heck, why not, surely that person was exaggerating, and so I did, no problem, they liked their picture being taken.