T A B L E_T A L K Explore California's Highway 1 with Wanderlust readers in Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Paradise found By Tracy Johnston An unspoiled oasis in the Egyptian desert (01/27/98) Neglected Classics By Pete Hamill Erico Verissimo's extraordinary "Mexico" deserves to be republished (01/26/98) Mondo Weirdo By Tim Wall Bad trip: The pilots locked themselves out of the cockpit! (01/23/98) Passages By Christopher Hunt Waiting for Fidel (01/22/98) How to buy a Turkish rug By Laura Billings A priceless encounter (01/21/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Passages archives		F R O M _ T H E _ B R O K E N _ B R I D G E_+ P A G E+2+O F +2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hello kitty Mutsumiko got on the train at Ikejiri-Ohashi, as usual, and of course I was saving a spot for her. Our school's in Kanagawa, so there are always plenty of seats in the morning. "He isn't here!" she whispered as she plopped into the seat, craning her neck to peer up and down the car. "Maybe he's sick," I said, and she gave me a wounded look. Mutsumiko has a crush on a foreigner who rides in the same car on our train almost every Tuesday. It's the silliest thing -- he's at least as old as her father, and I really don't see anything all that wonderful about him. He's handsome enough, I guess, in an ancient, wrinkled sort of way, but nothing like some of the tall young foreigners you always see in Omotesando, for example, which is where this aged person gets on the train. But Mutsumiko says it isn't a question of looks. "He's so mysterious," she said one time. "What kind of work do you think he does?" "Teacher. Businessman. Bartender. What else could he be?" "No," she said. "His hair's too long, and he doesn't wear a tie, and why would a bartender be up so early in the morning? No, he's not just your average foreigner. I think he's a spy." "A spy?" "A spy, or, I don't know ... a detective ... something like that." I had to laugh. Mutsumiko's strange. We're friends, but it's really only because we're in the same class and ride the same train to school and, besides, neither of us is smart or pretty or funny or athletic or talented enough to be very popular, and you've got to have someone to talk to, right? We don't really have much in common otherwise, though. She wears cute little ribbons in her hair, for example, and has little plastic cartoon characters -- Garfield, Donald Duck, Snoopy, Hello Kitty -- dangling from her schoolbag, and she squeals "How darling!" about seven hundred times every day. Personally, I think that once you've reached the third year of junior high school, it's time to put away childish things. It's only natural that you start thinking pretty seriously about men when you're our age. But middle-aged foreigners? Please. Why can't she fantasize about some of the senior boys in our high school, like everybody else? It's perverse. Maybe that's what happens when your parents brand you with a name like Mutsumiko. My name's Aya -- not very original, I admit, but at least it's not Mutsumiko. I'd kill my parents if they gave me a name like that. All the girls in our class have nicknames -- mine's "Petchan," thank you -- but "Mutsumiko" is already funny enough, so that's what everyone calls her. I do like her, though. She's grown on me over the past couple of years. I was thinking about that lately, and I decided the reason I like her is because she doesn't really fit in, and I don't either. The difference is that Mutsumiko doesn't even seem to realize that she doesn't fit in. It's kind of sad, but kind of endearing, too. Most of the other girls think she's a total geek, but it's as if she's not even aware of that. I know everyone thinks of me as gloomy, but it doesn't bother me, because I know I'm not. If I don't run around squawking like a chicken and bursting into uncontrollable giggles every time a chopstick rolls over, it's only because I have a little dignity. I'm what they call a late bloomer, anyway. One of these days, I'm really going to blossom. "Raoul," said Mutsumiko, as we reached Mizonokuchi. "What?" I said. "Raoul. That's his name." "Whose name?" "That foreigner. Last week, when you were absent? I talked to him." "You're lying." She swears it's true, though. She says that last Tuesday, when she saw I wasn't on the train, she sat down next to him and said, "Good morning," and asked if she could practice her English with him. She wanted to find out what his job was, but she didn't know how to ask that in English. All she found out was that his name was Raoul, that he was twenty-nine (Ha!), that he lived in Harajuku, that he was from South Africa, and that he was tired and didn't really want to talk. We reached our station and stepped out on the platform as she was telling me all this. I still didn't believe she'd actually talked to the foreigner, until the train started pulling away and I saw him. He was sitting three or four cars down from the usual place, and when he noticed me gawking at him, he hid behind his newspaper. Poor Mutsumiko. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Wrong I couldn't believe it when he called me. We'd only had one date, and that was more than three months ago. We first met in a bookstore. He was looking at Ryu's latest book -- glancing through it and actually reading parts of it. I'm mad about Ryu, and I was curious about what a foreigner would think of his work. So I just went up to him and said, "This book is really interesting." I don't know what got into me. It's not like me to talk to people I don't know, let alone a foreigner. Maybe it seemed all right because he was a foreigner. I don't know. I wouldn't have thought I could ever do something like that. We ended up going for a cup of coffee and talking, mostly about Ryu. I offered to lend him the book he'd been looking at, and we agreed to meet for dinner the following night. That was our one and only date, and it was quite a disaster. We met in Shibuya, near Hachiko, and he took me to this little Indonesian restaurant he knew. The food wasn't very good, but the conversation was even worse. I'm too shy to be much of a conversationalist, and I think he's kind of shy, too. Or maybe he just didn't like me. It was hard to tell. He certainly wasn't trying to charm me off my feet, at any rate. After about fifteen minutes of small talk, it was as if there was nothing left to say. He looked very uncomfortable. He kept wiping his face with the moistened hand towel, and he drank a beer in nothing flat and then ordered another one. About halfway through his second beer, his Japanese started to get a lot cruder, and he started complaining about his life in Tokyo. I didn't know what to say to most of that. It made me feel embarrassed, and defensive, and sad, and guilty, and angry, and, I don't know, confused. I always thought Americans were supposed to be cheerful and positive, always joking, but he certainly wasn't like that. Mostly, I guess, I felt sorry for him. Here he's been in Tokyo all these years and speaks Japanese pretty well and everything, but he doesn't really fit in, and he probably wouldn't fit in if he went back to America, either. After dinner, I told him I wasn't feeling very good (I wasn't) and said I had to go home but that I hoped he'd call me again. He seemed relieved that it was over, and I wasn't really expecting him to call, and in fact he didn't, until a few nights ago. The funny thing is that I'd been thinking about him a lot, wanting to see him. It was weird -- as if I was falling in love with the person I imagined him to be. "Mariko-san? This is Raoul, do you remember me?" I have to admit I was kind of excited when he called me up and asked me that. And when he invited me to dinner again, I said sure, I'd be delighted. I thought it couldn't possibly be as big a disaster as the first time. Wrong. I was supposed to meet him just outside Shimokitazawa station, and I got there a little early. Picture this. I'm standing in front of the coffee shop, with a fine rain settling on the patchwork of umbrellas all around me -- people waiting to meet other people -- and I'm watching the crowds pouring out of the station in waves, when finally, a little after seven, I see him hurrying down the steps. He's looking all around, and I wave to him, but he doesn't see me, and finally he goes and stands by the curb across the square. So I trot over and tap him on the arm, and he turns and looks at me in a very strange way, as if he doesn't recognize me at first. Then he says, "Oh! How are you?" "Fine. And you?" "Fine, fine. Long time." "Yes." So I'm waiting for him to say, "Hungry?" or "Shall we go?" or something, but he doesn't say anything. He just stands there, still looking around. I think, maybe someone else is coming to join us, so like a dummy I just stand there too. Then, finally, he turns to me and says, "Waiting for someone?" I don't know what to make of this. A joke? A mistake in his Japanese? Or does he think I've invited someone else? At last I just say, "I'm waiting for you." Well, he furrows his brow and looks at me as if I'm crazy. "Look," he says, "I'm sorry, but I'm meeting someone here. Let's make it some other time. I'll call you." I went home in sort of a state of shock. When I got back, there were two messages from him on my answering machine. The first was, "Mariko, I'm waiting." The second was, "Mariko, it's eight o'clock and I'm giving up. Maybe I'll see you again in Hotown next weekend." I've heard about Hotown. It's a bar in Roppongi where foreigners go to pick up girls. I've never been there in my life. SALON | Jan. 28, 1998 Ralph McCarthy has lived in Japan for almost two decades. He is the translator of two collections of stories by Osamu Dazai, "Self Portraits" and "Blue Bamboo," and of Ryu Murakami's novel "69." Story copyright Ralph McCarthy. Excerpted with permission of the author and the publisher from "The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan," edited by Suzanne Kamata. Published by Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley, Calif.