14 posts tagged “salaryman”

Kazuhide is the proudly ignorant Japanese salaryman who extols advise/publicly shames ex-pats in his monthly column in Japanzine.

The Hostess is a former bar flower who published a memoir of her decadent days and nights as a paid alcoholic.

Here is their face off!

Sat with an American customer today. He was nice. Not sure if it's just the general setting or what, but American customers always think I'm lying when I say I'm American. They start saying my accent is funny or this that and the other. Not that I really care.

This was his first time in Japan. He seemed a little unsure about what to make of everything at first, but then he got really happy and comfortable and relaxed and seemed to really like me. After an hour he was telling me about his hotel room and how he was alone in it. He had a good time and when it was time to leave, he had to be dragged out by his Japanese business associates (who were paying).

Most foreigners laugh at hostess clubs. Like "what kind of loser has to PAY to talk to GIRLS?" or "what's the point if you don't get SEX?" This is usually followed by some comment about how sexist Japanese society is, and how it's so sad that Japanese men can't communicate with their wives and have to pay for female companionship.

But it usually doesn't take foreign men long to get it (whatever "it" is) once they actually get taken to a hostess club. A lot of foreign business associates who have to take regular trips to Tokyo end up getting hooked on a hostess or two, just like any Japanese salaryman.

Tomorrow is my last day!!!!!!!!

The customer who suddenly stopped coming in because he was undergoing tests for cancer sauntered into the club last night! His flashy taxi driver once said to him, "You love the neon lights of the night," so I'm naming him Neon.

He was staggering around looking pretty drunk already. I was so happy to see him, relieved that he looked okay, and then angry that he was obviously still living his life unhealthily despite his illness.

He said he has some tumor in his throat and he has to go in to the hospital next week. He's scared to go, and he doesn't want to go. "I have work, I'm busy."

He's kind of scared and for once in his selfish and decadent life, he's stopping to think about his life. I checked his lifeline (I always check all the customer's palms, plus I check their facial features, you can tell a lot about a person). It's not long, but it's not short either. It's also strong and deep right to the end, which means he won't die of a prolonged illness.

Actually, my lifeline's strong to the end too, but it's the shortest life line I've ever seen. I might die tomorrow!

While I was opening the club last night, I saw a huge, huge, HUGE cockroach. It was so thick and shiny and substantial, and it even had pincers on his butt, so I thought it was a beetle or something. But it was a big godfather cockroach alright.

I actually don't mind the small ones so much. But these big ones just freak me out. The last time I saw a cockroach this size was when my next door neighbor died and his body was left to decompose for almost a week in the middle of a humid August a few years ago.

Anyway, I tried to deal with this godfather cockroach by trapping it under one of those bucket things that hostess clubs use to keep ice in, but I wasn't really getting anywhere. Then all these salarymen come walking in like they owned the place. They were already drunk and kind of rowdy. We weren't opening for another hour, but we never turn away money, even when it's dirty smelly sweating rude and disgusting money. These guys weren't that bad really.

They saw the godfather cockroach. "Look at that!" they all shouted. I screamed and freaked out because the cockroach was going crazy and the customers were all being stupid and chasing it, then one of the guys grabbed it with a wet towel then threw it on the ground and started stomping on it, making a big stain on the new carpet and probably spreading its microscopic eggs all over the place.

Jesus. I don't think I've screamed more in my life.

I was all alone in the club. Nobody from any of the clubs or bars nearby came to help. They probably didn't hear me. I wasn't being attacked, but I was screaming like I was.

*****

You never hear about underwear thieves in America. But it's just a fact of life here. So I hang my undergarments up to dry in my room.

So I really don't appreciate the stupid annoying Japanese guy hanging up his underpants on the communal clothing line. I don't want to see that! He seems to think that I want to see his bare upper body and his brief-clad butt too. I think he has a problem with boundaries.

Stupid Neighbor's Underpants

*****

Since I'm posting cell phone pics, here are two more. I went to Kanda Shrine a few days ago after meeting Baldy on his lunch break. He's betrayed me by becoming a salaryman. I saw a cute little Yebisu statue (I think it was Yebisu) surfing in a wave. He looks like Princess Leia here. Then I saw a little kitty hanging out by the place where you wash your hands. She posed beautifully for me!

Leia

1 comment

Shrinekitty

Just when I feel like mama's not too bad, she goes and acts like a queen bitch again.

She's stopped drinking so hard, and that has really made her much more pleasant to be around. But she still drinks quite a bit, and sometimes I'm almost certain she's had a few before coming to work. Tonight started out alright, but it wasn't long before she was being exceptionally unpleasant. Almost back to the hard drinking days.

One of my most favorite customers of all time is undergoing tons of tests right now. His doctors think he has cancer of the throat or something. He's a hard drinking, hard partying salaryman. He works hard and definitely plays even harder. So on the one hand it's just time to pay the piper. You can't live a life so selfish and so reckless and expect not to have any consequences on your health. But I'm still worried about him. I can't write him a get-well-soon letter though, because that would get him in all kinds of trouble with his long-suffering wife. There's a famous song by the Taiwanese pop princess Teresa Teng called "Aijin" which means "mistress." Customers love this song, and the song talks about how she's not able to walk with her man in public but she still loves him. I always think "shut the f*** up!" when I hear that song, but I guess that's kind of what I feel like at the moment with this customer. I'm not his mistress or anything, but I do care about him, and I wish I could tell him I care and I'm praying for his health.

I feel kind of sick because a customer took me out after work and fed me tons of sea urchin. I LOVE sea urchin, it's just so delicious. It's like delicious butter. But you're not supposed to eat so much of it. I feel like puking.

Best Friend came to the club to pick up some stuff I had, and she met Dancer Girl. It was weird, because I feel like they know each other, but in fact they had never met before. They both said "oh, I've heard so much about you." Best Friend was acting kind of awkward. She used to thrive in hostess club environments, but I guess they trigger more than a few unpleasant memories now.

おやすみ

Tonight's my first day back at work in what feels like forever. So I decided to get back into the swing of things and text a bunch of customers. I decided to tell them all that my hair's changed. So I spent about an hour trying to take a flattering and appropriate picture with my cell phone. I finally settled on one where my hair looks suitably bright, my face smiling but crooked teeth nicely hidden, etc.

The first customer to email me back was a handsome older guy who has a wife and a long term girlfriend. Or two. I know because he brings them to the club (wtf).  Plus he comes to our club and god knows how many other clubs. Despite all of this, he's actually a very nice guy.

"It suits you. I'll come and see you in person soon," he said.

This one little text message made me so happy. I emailed him back "ok! and really, thank you so much" with a few cute emoticons thrown in. And I really meant it.

I truly do feel emotions for the customers. Unless they are honest to god vile, I usually feel a mixture of heartbreak and maternal affection. Even the truly vile ones I kind of have sympathy for.

Oh, one of the more vocally impotent (as in he never shuts up about his impotence issues) customers just emailed. He says I look very grown up now. Shuttup! Thank god for my baby face. If he only knew I was almost 30.

It was weird hanging out with Marty the photographer in NY. We used to hang out together every single day, and I got really used to having my picture taken all the time. And it wasn't just me, she took pictures of EVERYTHING. At first I wasn't into having unflattering super close ups of my face while I busted a gut and stuff like that. But now i think it's kind of cool that the funnest years of my life so far are so well documented.

I found some old photos of us from those fun days in Marty's apartment. "Marty, we were so cute, and we didn't even know it!" was my reaction when I saw a picture of us looking tanned, young and happy. Youth is so wasted on the young.

She had a good time taking pictures of our hair dying disaster. When I woke up with pink and blond stripy hair, Marty started snapping away and laughing hysterically. When I glared at her through my tears/laughter and tried to tell her to cut it out, she looked at me, held back a burst of laughter, and took another picture.

Oh how I missed her.

For photo stories, I've seen her literally sit right next to people and take a close up of their face when they turned around to look at her. "Ahhhhh!" yelled one victim.

I love her. How can you not love someone that makes you laugh all the time?

I'm really tired. It's been great having skater boy here, he's an awesome kid, but I'm tired. And it was sooooo busy at the club last night.

I had to open the club again last night, so I told skater boy he could come and hang out and sing on the karaoke machine until opening time. He was crooning along to some classic soul and I was brushing my teeth in my street clothes, when in walk two customers. Skater boy kept singing, I kind of panicked. They sat down and acted like everything was normal. Skater boy thought it was hilarious, but went home right away.

I think there's some kind of dust explosion or something, because I couldn't stop sneezing at work all night. It was miserable.

The customer with bad skin that yelled at me and never came back again suddenly appeared last night. He seemed in high spirits. And he wasn't angry at me anymore.

A big scary looking guy from Kyoto came in and decided to make it his goal to take me home. I was like "are you kidding?" He did the whole "well I feel sorry for you, you're not even that pretty, you're broke, you're old, nobody loves you, you're lonely" thing to make me feel insecure so I'd do what he said. But that is just not going to work on me. He eventually got more drunk than he wanted to be and had to pay a big huge bill. He got angry but he paid it.

Again, had my daily telephone call from the customer that calls me every single day. Again, not sure why. Today he said he was walking for his health. How cute is that?

Cookie got waaay too drunk. On the way home she told me the same story over and over and over again about the boxer. I'm not sure if I'm interested in him anymore. Apparently he used to cheat on his ex-girlfriend all the time and everyone knew but her. But she actually knew, and one day she had enough and took a pile of his money that he had been saving for their "wedding" (I know, serious issues) and ran away. Then she called him and told him that she knew all along and was taking his money for compensation. Apparently he flew into a huge panic and was really upset...over the money. He was probably upset over the girl too, but he's got too much pride to show it.

And this is the man I was considering getting to know better. "Go for it, he's a nice guy! He just really likes girls, that's all," says Cookie. He's probably all weird about committing to a time and place to meet because he has to juggle his girl schedule around. That's why he finally suggested a date two weeks from now in the deep dark future. LOSER!

Is there something wrong with me though? Because I still want to go out with him again. I just love going for losers.

Wait, what if Cookie's slept with him? What if some other girls I know have slept with him? Gross gross gross.

Meanwhile a kid from my old daytime job still wants to go out with me. I keep turning him down. He's a nice guy, but he's young and boring.

I'm gonna sleep now. It's 10:30 at night. I've been sleeping after the sun rises every day, so this is an awesome, beautiful, wonderful treat. Love the world right now. Love my bed.

Song of the Day entry:

Hamada Shogo's "America." Here's some Japanese Dad Rock for you! I guess he was the biggest thing back when a lot of my customers were young. At least one customer sings at least one of his songs a night.

I used to always have crushes on older Dad-types, and this guy qualifies. He has kind of a hot voice and everything, but I always imagine him to have the salaryman alcohol-and-cigarettes smell. Maybe because I mentally associate him with customers.

This particular song gets sung fairly often. Once it's established that I'm American (and once they get over the shock of me not being Russian, Romanian, Brazilian or Filipina -- I guess I could pass for all of the above, at least through their drunk eyes), the customer whips out this song. It's called "America," And I guess it's about this one Japanese kid's quest for the American dream. Wide open spaces, dreams, freedom from the constraints of your home country, etc. It's kind of bitter-sweet when haggard salarymen dying of stress, exhaustion, alcohol and cigarettes sing it.

One customer's pretty tall for a Japanese guy (6ft), not bad looking, and kind of funny and sweet. So it's kind of weird that he goes to hostess clubs.

Here's his story.

He got married young, had a son, then divorced early. He was a single Daddy from then on, and it was just him and his son for years and years. Daddy and son shared a little apartment in a corner of Shinjuku and they hung out and took care of each other.

Daddy worked hard as a salary man every day, until one day his son was a grown man, even more handsome and taller than him. One day, Daddy asked his son what he was doing these days, and son took out a business card and showed Daddy. On one side of it was a handwritten name (not his son's, but a weird flashy name), and a handwritten number (his son's cellphone). On the other side was the printed name and address of a host club in Kabukicho.

Daddy recognized the address, because he frequents a hostess club in that vicinity.

"So what do you do here?" Daddy asked his son, even though he already knew the answer. His son was working as a host. Daddy felt unhappy about this. He mostly felt nervous about the inevitable day he would come out of a hostess club and bump into his son working as a host.

His son then asked him if he could borrow some of his salarymen suits. "Yeah, but you're taller than me, they'll be too short for you," he answered. Son said, no problem. I wear the pants low anyway.

Some days, after a long and stressful day, Daddy would walk from the station to his house. He would see a familiar suit coming towards him, then the flashy young man inside the familiar suit would say to him "お帰り！” (welcome home!). Only then would he realize that it was his son in his way to work.

There was even a time when Daddy wore one of the suits that they now shared to work. After giving a presentation, he looked for something in his pockets and pulled out a Kabukicho host club name card, with his son's flashy host name printed on it.

Then one day, his son came up to him and told him that he was planning on moving out. They had shared the apartment almost all his son's life. Daddy could hardly remember what it was like to not be with his son. "Where are you moving to?" Daddy asked his son.

"Maybe Aoyama, maybe Ebisu, I'm not sure," said his son. These were all expensive neighborhoods. "How are you going to pay the rent?" Daddy asked. "Apparently, I don't have to worry about it," answered his son.

His host son had acquired himself a sugar mama. Daddy never was an overbearing father, and it was hard for him to express his feelings. His son moved out and lived out of the pocket of his sugar mama.

They never really communicated too much, and once they stopped living together, Daddy lost touch with his son. He'd hear from him every now and again, usually when his son needed money. Daddy always told him he had nothing he could give him. He found out that his son quit working as a host. His son was apparently devoting himself to his band. He's a bass player, and they're trying to make it into the big time.

Daddy isn't sure if his son is still kept by his sugar mama.

Daddy remembered that when he was a younger man, he also had some sugar mamas. He also hustled wealthy lonely women who supported him.

He misses his son. His son is 23 years old.