Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries Read Free

just the pedestrians), some Japanese folks would just as soon have me step in front of the train as on it, and my living quarters leave much to be desired (a kitchen and bathroom, to name just two). And where the hell is Edward James Olmos?
    But it’s a brilliant city. I finally have health insurance. Every day promises a new and exciting humiliation. And most importantly, I’ve lost twenty pounds.
    I guess it’s perfectly natural for me to be asking this “why” question. Surely all travelers at one point or another have been compelled: Gulliver, Ulysses, Bilbo Baggins, Indiana Jones. Each had his own answers—and I have a few of my own. Number one on the list? The world’s biggest record store is here. And it looks like a spaceship.
    I am no longer simply an American. I am a gaijin . These are my stories.
    Oh, and Brad Pitt will not play me in the movie adaptation. Sandra Bernhard will.

I want to see Pluto,
    I want to have fun,
    I want to turn blue,
    Under an alien sun.
    —Siouxsie Sioux

# of Japanese words learned: 2
    # of Japanese words successfully used:?
    Bowls of ramen eaten: 14
    Replicants terminated: 0
     

    In which our hero (me) gets distracted and lost and many other things besides, the explanation of which is certain to amuse and delight all but the most emotionally unavailable of readers. Read and learn from his story the unfortunate truth that you can run from God’s country, but you cannot hide .
     
    My spacecraft glides over the Shinjuku district of eastern Tokyo as I swivel giddily in my captain’s chair with all the blinking labelless buttons on the left armrest. Looking out the window, which circles the entire ship, I see the blinking lights, sleek skyscrapers, packed commuter trains, and tiny inhabitants hustling and bustling along sidewalks, across bridges, and into and out of the giant beating heart of Shinjuku Station. My craft touches down slowly and alights on top of the Takashimaya Times Square building, which looks like a giant luxury cruise liner. I rise from my seat, remove my goggles, and prepare myself to be beamed directly into the thick of the madness spread out below me. I set the transporter to “Tower Records, Shinjuku,” and seconds later, here I am.
    (Actually, no. I take a plane and then a train and then walk for a bit and then sleep for seventeen hours and then start work and finally get a day off after two goddamn weeks.)
    The giant Tower Records television screen just outside the south end of Shinjuku Station plays a pop video featuring a gaggle of preteen girls dressed in shiny, frilly outfits so bright and cutesy they make American child beauty pageant contestants look like Dickensian street urchins. They dance in formation—not particularly well—and stare at the camera, doe-eyed and hollow. I stand at the bottom of a massive escalator looking up at the dangerous display of chiffon and taffeta and excitedly contemplate the pastel-tinted nightmares I will have about all this later.
    I’m wandering around the city for the first time, enjoying my first day off. I interviewed with a popular language school called MOBA before coming, and they assured me they could place me in Tokyo. An empty promise, it turns out, since I’ve ended up with an apartment in a town called Fujisawa an hour south of Tokyo and a job at a school in nearby Yokohama. A disappointment, yes, like a young small-town Russian with stars in his eyes must feel when he has his heart set on living in the Big Apple and instead is forced to rent a studio in New Brunswick, New Jersey. But I’ll make it to Tokyo, no problem. All I need is thousands and thousands of dollars so I can afford to put a deposit and key money down on a fashionable closet or cubbyhole in, say, trendy Shibuya or, perhaps, the East Village–like districts of Kichijyoji or Koenji. It’ll happen. I’ll just need to teach a few hundred more English lessons, sell my used diabetes syringes and Pia Zadora records on eBay, and limber