About an american friend i used to work with.
We had been talking excitedly about the new NIntendo DS for months. When he finally bought one, he brought it into work and wouldnt give me a turn.
He was outraged when i said i'd never been to a gilbert and sullivan musical and proceeded to sing for me something about a baseball world series in his booming voice. When i admitted that i didn't understand baseball either, something seemed to break inside of him.
Each lunchtime he suggested we go to the racecourse for a quick bet. Each time I said no he would tell elaborate fantasies about how sorry i would be when he won a million yen and I didn't. I reminded him of the time that we did go and won nothing, a cold and miserable late autumn afternoon spent in the stands with about a dozen old men staring at numbers on the screen that made no sense to me. Between each race he would sing more Gilbert and Sullivan as we headed to the betting machines.
He loved to tell me about the mother of one of his students, the one with the double D cup breasts. Everytime she came to class they would sing head shoulders knees and toes. It was his favorite punchline. I was never sure what the mothers of his students thought. On more than one occasion I would go into his classroom to retrieve something buried deep in his desk and the smell of last nights booze and BO was overpowering.
In one of his more surreal moments (they were not uncommon) he would confide that he had deep seated ambition to go seal clubbing In Greenland. "Greenland would be awesome." he'd say, "its hardly ever light there, much better than Iceland!" He then made that popping sound when you put your finger in your cheek which I think was supposed to be a seal being clubbed.
Often, he would ring me up from one izakya or another, wondering why i didn't want to come halfway across tokyo to meet him at 10.30 on a Tuesday night.
His only other friend was a chinese guy named Wuan who worked turning yakatore sticks all day at one of the small red lantern izakyas under the train station. They would yell chinese at each other (it is not possible to speak Chinese) and as the Righteous brothers played in the background, bet 500 yen on each sumo match that came from the small television in the corner. Each week Wuan would reveal how much he had lost in the Pachinko parlors that week. it was rumored that he owed his boss, who had several interests in a strip that seemed to only consist of pachinko parlors, izakyas and hostess bars, 6 months worth of wages.
He would win it back though. Even if he didnt If he assured me that if he ever decided to sell the gold chain he wore, it would be worth at least what he owed. Once Anna came down and Wuan was so nervous he hardly exchanged a word with our table all night except to pour us a new beer and bring a fresh plate of yakatore.
Ocassionaly one of the anonymous old men that sat along the bar would approach a table with a "hello" or"where from..American?" One gentleman would come back every so often waving his finger at me as if I have been keeping a naughty little secret from him that he was wise too "Kangaloo" he would say and then disappear for a while, possibly to regroup with the table of men that kept glancing over at us, only to return again later; "Kowala!" he beamed.
Another man who was in the same place almost every night must have been nearly 90. One night when sitting along the tiny bar, he tapped me on the shoulder "Korea" he said, making a gesture towards his chest. It was hard to say whether he he was Korean because the next thing he said was "Marlon Brando" making the same heartfelt gesture.
He was outraged when i said i'd never been to a gilbert and sullivan musical and proceeded to sing for me something about a baseball world series in his booming voice. When i admitted that i didn't understand baseball either, something seemed to break inside of him.
Each lunchtime he suggested we go to the racecourse for a quick bet. Each time I said no he would tell elaborate fantasies about how sorry i would be when he won a million yen and I didn't. I reminded him of the time that we did go and won nothing, a cold and miserable late autumn afternoon spent in the stands with about a dozen old men staring at numbers on the screen that made no sense to me. Between each race he would sing more Gilbert and Sullivan as we headed to the betting machines.
He loved to tell me about the mother of one of his students, the one with the double D cup breasts. Everytime she came to class they would sing head shoulders knees and toes. It was his favorite punchline. I was never sure what the mothers of his students thought. On more than one occasion I would go into his classroom to retrieve something buried deep in his desk and the smell of last nights booze and BO was overpowering.
In one of his more surreal moments (they were not uncommon) he would confide that he had deep seated ambition to go seal clubbing In Greenland. "Greenland would be awesome." he'd say, "its hardly ever light there, much better than Iceland!" He then made that popping sound when you put your finger in your cheek which I think was supposed to be a seal being clubbed.
Often, he would ring me up from one izakya or another, wondering why i didn't want to come halfway across tokyo to meet him at 10.30 on a Tuesday night.
His only other friend was a chinese guy named Wuan who worked turning yakatore sticks all day at one of the small red lantern izakyas under the train station. They would yell chinese at each other (it is not possible to speak Chinese) and as the Righteous brothers played in the background, bet 500 yen on each sumo match that came from the small television in the corner. Each week Wuan would reveal how much he had lost in the Pachinko parlors that week. it was rumored that he owed his boss, who had several interests in a strip that seemed to only consist of pachinko parlors, izakyas and hostess bars, 6 months worth of wages.
He would win it back though. Even if he didnt If he assured me that if he ever decided to sell the gold chain he wore, it would be worth at least what he owed. Once Anna came down and Wuan was so nervous he hardly exchanged a word with our table all night except to pour us a new beer and bring a fresh plate of yakatore.
Ocassionaly one of the anonymous old men that sat along the bar would approach a table with a "hello" or"where from..American?" One gentleman would come back every so often waving his finger at me as if I have been keeping a naughty little secret from him that he was wise too "Kangaloo" he would say and then disappear for a while, possibly to regroup with the table of men that kept glancing over at us, only to return again later; "Kowala!" he beamed.
Another man who was in the same place almost every night must have been nearly 90. One night when sitting along the tiny bar, he tapped me on the shoulder "Korea" he said, making a gesture towards his chest. It was hard to say whether he he was Korean because the next thing he said was "Marlon Brando" making the same heartfelt gesture.
posted by Gram at 8:25 AM
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