40 posts from 2007

明けましておめでとう！
Happy New Year!

Year of the rat. The first of the cycle. A year of new beginnings, hard work, foundation laying, etc. I'm looking forward to it.

Here's a quick personal look back on 2007

Best friend became sober. We spent New Year's at my family's, and she drank the house down with my uncles, all the while saying that today was her last day to drink. And it was. I have a picture from that day. She's the tall blond chick surrounded by my very dark-haired, slanty-eyed family.

The Joji Obara trial came to an end -- sort of. He sat with his back firmly facing the public as his verdict was read out in painstaking (and mind-numbing) detail. Who knows what went on in his big, fat melon head when he heard that he was guilty of all charges except those against Lucie Blackman.

Baby sister got into law school. We're gonna have a lawyer in the family, jayzus.

Got financially back on my feet after quitting an awful, soul-sucking job that ruined my 2006.

Lived on my own for the first time in years (no boyfriend, no roommate, just my lonesome), and felt much better about my own personal space.

Despite some highlights, had a severely professionally unfulfilling year. Am ready to pounce into 2008 like a rat on cheese!

Dated a few severely forgettable lads once or twice, but went through the whole of 2007 without ever being in danger of having a boyfriend. When I think about it, that's the first time in...I'm not telling you how long!

So that's it for my 2007.

Here is my one and only resolution for 2008. Get into a good grad school!

Have a good year of the rat, everyone!

I am finally better, thank you. Still not sure what strange bug I had, but for the first time since Sunday evening I've been able to keep my food down (knock on wood). I've been genki enough to walk around and talk and hang, so I think I'm better now. Yay.

Whoa, today was a busy day. I feel like there was a week's worth of customers in one long night. My favorite customer was a guy that had worked with Horiemon and even spent four months in prison for fraud last year. He's still fighting his case in court. I don't know why I thought that was so awesomely cool. He said food in prison wasn't bad at all. For some reason I talked to my father about prison the other day, and he said he would much rather be incarcerated here (in Japan) than where he is (Los Angeles). Hmmm. I just hope I'm never in a position where my freedom is in the hands of power-trippers in positions of authority.

I had a surprise guest at the club today too! He was a big tall visitor from out of town. He got to see how ghetto and boring a hostess club really is. It was early in the night, and the customers were better behaved and less inebriated, relatively speaking. So lucky him I guess.

Alright, time to revel in the joy of not being in pain. Time for my first nice, restful sleep in days!

おやすみ

Maybe I'm just stupid, or maybe my brain works slow, but I have a really hard time remembering customer's names and faces unless I'm at work.

I just got startled out of reading a good book by my cell phone ringing. It was a strange Tokyo land line number, but I answered it anyway. "Hello? This is XXXXX" said a man. I'll be fucked if I can remember who the hell that was. I assumed he was a customer just to be on the safe side.

He was a customer. He said he forgot his cell phone at our club last night. Ugh. What am I supposed to do about it? Called up my boss and told him, then I asked who XXXXX was. He said "that guy you were sitting with in the corner!" I swear people who work in the night industry never learn how to speak politely.

How embarrassing for him that the customer had to call me all sober and shame-faced after acting like a drunk little lustful kid all last night to ask for his cellphone. Don't you just hate it when world's collide?

One of my favorite little customers came by last night. I had been calling him a few times but hadn't seen him in a few weeks. He's a tiny, tiny, old-before-his-time monkey-faced guy. But I really like him.

For some reason he asked me lots of questions about America last night. He said that he's never been there, but he'd like to travel across Route 66 and die on the road. He seems to think this will be a happy way for him to go. I told him about when my family traveled from the west coast to the east coast when my sister and I were very young and my mother was pregnant with my baby sister. He thought it was the coolest thing ever.

He said when he was a kid he lived near some US naval base or something, and that all the kids would pick up canned food that was thrown out by the US navy people. His favorite canned food was the peanut butter. He said he didn't really like the marmalade, and the canned cake tasted weird, but he just loves the US navy peanut butter in a can.

He also said that he used to shout at the soldiers "American go home!" with his friends. Then one time the soldiers turned around and pointed their guns at them! They were probably just joking, but my customer got really scared and fell flat on the ground. I could just imagine him as a skinny, ratty looking monkey-faced kid peeing in his pants as the soldiers pointed their guns at him!

"I wonder what those soldiers are doing now?" he asked.

It just amazes me to think that just 60 years ago Tokyo was completely burned out, flattened, and devastated. You were lucky to be alive, and not one of the bodies lying around the place. You were lucky if you had some food in your stomach.

Sometimes I have an immediate crush on a customer when he walks in. That happened last night. Of course he had kind of a "bad boy" vibe (even though he was 41 years old...and of course married!).

"You've got a face that makes me want to pick on you" says man.
"Really? I'm usually the aggressor. But maybe you're seeing something in me that I never knew about" says me. "So I assume that you like being the aggressor?" adds me.
"Yeah" says man, then says something about his ideal woman that I can't remember.
"So what's your ideal woman like?" asks me.
"My wife" says man with a goofy grin.

Oh how sweet. I hate his wife already.

I also went to another hostess club last night. When trying to catch a taxi we (me and two customers) ended up walking to the funniest hostess club ever. It's in an apartment building, has no signs, and looks like a regular apartment from the outside. You knock, then the manager guy opens the door to a whole new world. Tall Russian girls with looooong legs wearing Santa dresses are sitting around in big comfy red cushions entertaining Japanese guys. I swear one of them was a pro wrestler. I totally recognized him. I almost died laughing.

And the girls were like "welcome!" "You're so beautiful!" "Oh stay!" "Give me your business card!" And then of course sexual innuendo which lead to the girl sitting with us to lift her skirt for some reason. My customer had such a goofy grin and was falling for every compliment. It was funny to see it all from an outsider's perspective (I was a customer after all). I thought to myself, "Is that what I sound like?" Food for thought.

I don't know if men in general are just so cute, or if Japanese men are just particularly cute. I'm talking about the old guys at the company I work for. Our department decided to go out for lunch to celebrate the end of the year (we're not the international sales group so we're not really into drinking all night), and the boss wanted to go out for yakiniku (bbq). His reason? "My old lady won't let me eat it so I have to eat it in secret."

He was so funny. During lunch hour he's usually sleeping at his desk, but today he was rushing into the restaurant, rushing the waitress, then ordering even more food, and cooking everyone's meat as quickly as he could. "Eat this one, no that one's mine, put that one here," etc. So cute. He's got such a simple life. His old lady keeps him clean, fed, and cared for. He goes to work every day and brings home the bacon. And things like eating yakiniku for lunch makes him so happy.

What a day! Days like this make me feel like a real workaholic, but at the same time I don't feel like I'm achieving any of my goals at all, whatsoever. The day started a little fuzzy from a semi-hungover morning off to the old office. And then 7+ hours off pretending to work at my desk, followed by a phone call from a customer right before I was about to clock out. "What are you doing? Are you free?" For a paid date, of course I am!

So rushed back to Roppongi feeling and looking a little bit of a mess. No makeup, normal clothes, flat boots, but who cares, this guy is still shorter than me. He took me out for expensive yakitori (a slight oxymoron), which was pretty good. And then to the good old club, where i assumed he would sit for an hour, maybe two. He stayed forever, getting more and more and more drunk. I finally convinced him to take me to a favorite bartender's place in Shinjuku. He spent a fair bit of money there, so I felt good about helping bartender man out.

They're closing down at the end of this month, and I am just so sad about that. I really am.

And then I realized suddenly that I'm working every single night this week, with the exception of Wednesday. But I might be working on Wednesday too. Crapness. This was not the way my life was supposed to be.

But for now, I'm going to sleep, so I can get up bright and early to go clock in at the office, then wear a dress and heels at the bar, and basically start the whole cycle over again. And people wonder why I don't have a private love life! People really do. "Oh, but you're so pretty" (that's just the makeup), "and you're so nice" (really!?) " and down to earth" (another of saying I'm a bitch), "why don't you have anyone in your life!?"

I wonder. Would any man want to be with a girl who literally had no free time, and who's time was for sale to weird old guys who paid?

Didn't think so!

It was a friend's birthday tonight. She had a small little get together at a little cafe, and then Karaoke until the last train. I usually take taxis or walk, so this was the first time in awhile that I took a last train home.

People on the last train home all look drunk, exhausted, or both. I've always been fascinated by the meeting point of social duty and freedom. Duty is so important in Japan, but you can't kill the independent spirit that lives in everyone. I think every piece of significant art that has come out of Japan embodies this meeting point of duty and independence.

Which makes the last train a work of art. Exhausted salary men passed out in their suits, their previously flawless hair and suits rumpled and worn. I wish I could heal their exhaustion and their liver damage and their stress.

みんなも体を大事に。

おやすみ

Mama was tired so we closed early. All the customers got super drunk then rushed home around 1am. But I'm geared up for a whole night of work so I felt a little dressed up with nowhere to go. I thought about going out for some drinks, or finding some guys that could be future customers, but decided to walk my ass home instead.

As you usually do when you walk for long distances, I started thinking about life. One of the girls at work got married to her boyfriend recently, party because his visa had run out (he had to spend some time in the detention center for that). She said that she feels so much calmer and more relaxed in her relationship. Which got me thinking about the fact that basically all my friends are married, or about to be married, and I don't even have a boyfriend. I'm not even ready to have a boyfriend.

I called my twin sister in America to talk, but she was busy at work. I called my good Russian friend in New York but she didn't answer her phone. I emailed a young guy who came into the club as a customer, but who I'm half considering pursuing an actual real life friendship with, and he emailed me back saying he's busy preparing for some big presentation he's got to do in what sounded like all four corners of Japan. He told me to take a nice hot bath and not catch a cold and to rest up while I can. What is he, my mother? He's younger than me!

Then my head filled up with thoughts about the future, thoughts about the past, thoughts about my dreams and ambitions and struggles. And thoughts about the fact that fishnet stockings start to dig into the balls of your feet when you're walking for a long time. And thoughts about how when you're feet hurt, nothing else matters.

And then I happened to just look up into the sky. As an adult you hardly ever look at the sky. At least I don't. And the stars were just breathtaking. Through the buildings and the electric wires and the flashing lights, the sky was such a deep, deep, night-time blue and the stars just so bright. It really puts things in perspective. The universe is a big old place and we're just a tiny, tiny part.

おやすみ

After a huge inner struggle caused by the realization that my best friend's wedding is rapidly approaching, I almost quit for good (again). Working as a hostess almost destroyed her (best friend), I was the top campaigner for her to quit because I loved her and also selfishly wanted her to still be around to keep me company. She quit, her life improved, and for understandable reasons she wants me to quit as well.

Because for her, working as a hostess was a great way to run from her problems, and get paid while doing so. Actually it'd be more accurate to say that it was a great way for her to sink deeper and deeper into her problems while being paid to do so. And in many ways, ditto for me.

But for now, I've decided to go to work.

行ってきます