Wrong About Japan Read Free Page A

button and the toilet indeed flushed, but then water started gushing from a faucet into a triangular basin in a corner of the room.
We burst out laughing.
It was at just this moment, before we had time to discover that the seat was electrically heated, that the telephone rang.
“Please come,” a woman said.
“Who is this?”
“Front desk. You come now, please.”
“That will be Takashi,” said my son, slipping into his shoes in the vestibule.
“Is there a problem?” I asked the woman on the phone.
“Yes. Please come now.”
Charley was convinced it was Takashi, though I was equally certain there was a problem with my MasterCard. We bickered amiably while proceeding down the narrow stairs. In the tiled reception, the two young women who’d welcomed us so warmly were still smiling, though differently now, with a sort of grimace of embarrassment. Credit card, I thought, credit card for sure!
The elder, she was no more than thirty, did not speak. Instead she made a gesture that foreigners are taught is more polite than pointing: not one finger, but all five digits together like a slap. Looking in the direction this indicated, I saw, by the wide doorway to the lane, in front of the antique calligraphic banner and beside the picturesque sake barrels, the most singular boy. It was not just his hair, or his eyes, or his clothes that distinguished him. There was a certain quality of light he seemed to have brought in with him, one quite distinct from the deep shadows and glowing gold tones of the ryokan, something more like that clean white, almost hallucinogenic illumination in a Tokyo department store. He literally shone .
I looked at Charley. How happy he seemed.
This must be Takashi, I did not doubt it.
In Tokyo’s Harajuku district one can see those perfect Japanese Michael Jacksons, no hair out of place, and punk rockers whose punkness is detailed so fastidiously that they achieve a polished hyper-reality Takashi had something of this quality He had black hair that stood up not so much in spikes but in dramatic triangular sections. His eyes were large and round, glistening with an emotion that, while seemingly transparent, was totally alien to me. He wore a high-necked Cambridge blue jacket with what might have once been called a Mao collar, and which glistened with gold buttons. His trousers were jet black, his boots knee high. No one could doubt his pride, or his sense of dignity.
“Charley-san?” he asked, and bowed.
My son also bowed.
The women in kimonos looked straight ahead as if none of this was happening.
“Perhaps we can take tea,” I suggested.
I had earlier noted a little salon just beside reception. Here, I assumed, such meetings might be held, but there was something about Takashi that— so sorry—made this salon temporarily unavailable. The three of us were ushered back up to our room, and tea was brought to us in this fine and private place.
When the maid left us, Takashi said, “You have cable here, Charley-san?”
They turned together to evaluate the very small television set beside our two suitcases.
“I guess so,” Charley said. “We just got here.”
I invited Takashi to inspect the television. “Very nice,” he said, even though there were only three channels and we were reduced to watching a demonstration of a device sucking wax from a man’s ear. There was a close-up of brown material in a bowl.
“Very clever,” said Takashi. “You have a very nice hotel. Old style.”
“Difficult to keep neat,” I said. “We have nowhere to put the suitcases.”
“Yes,” he said. “Everyone owns many things. In the old days, the rich families, they would have a storehouse for their stuffu.”
“Stuffu?”
“Stuffu,” he said again, then turned to Charley. “You know, stuffu.”
“Stuff, Dad,” Charley said. “Worldly goods.”
“The merchants got so rich, but it was against the law for them to be higher than the samurai. Still, they have lots of stuffu. Dangerous for them to show