Tokyo poverty, Suntory Red and Sachiko

[El_tercero]

I posted this awhile back on a Japan forum. It chronicles my early, horny, booze-soaked, poverty-stricken days of life in Tokyo.

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Not so long after arriving in Tokyo and beginning my new job as English Teacher in Japan, I found myself flat broke and in the midst of an alarming alcohol dependency. I had had high ideals of going to Asia and educating the people on the finer points of literature and English composition. Instead I found myself locked in a glass cubicle eight hours a day asking middle-aged salarymen, “Is this is a pen?” The disappointment I felt with my job, coupled with the alienation and loneliness of living in a foreign land was driving me to the brink. In addition to my growing alcohol consumption, I was developing more than a healthy taste for Japanese pornography. In short, at the young age of twenty-seven I was becoming a very desperate　 and unappealing man. Without money I felt the pursuit of women was hopeless. What would I do, invite a girl to a park? No, you can’t get laid in a park. Well sometimes you can, but I never managed to.
One day at school the name Sachiko appeared on my schedule between the Takehiro’s, Masatoshi’s, Seichi’s and Daisuke’s. A female. Good, I thought.

In spite of my gloom, and feelings of impending doom, I made an effort to gather the last shards of charm I still possessed and bound into the cubicle with energy and enthusiasm, ‘genkiness’ they call it in Japan.

I could see her sitting there smiling cheerfully as I approached the glass box. It was mid-morning and my supervisor and no one else for that matter was anywhere near my teaching space. I strode in happy and ready. I had prepared quite a decent lesson for my young charge on the finer points of the uses of ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’.

She was wearing a little white cotton T-shirt that had the words ‘Cutey Pie’ written under her breasts in bubbly lettering, a very short pink mini-skirt, black knee-high stockings and black, open-toed low heeled shoes. Fuck me this was going to be a tough lesson.

She had glossy lipstick on, but not in a gaudy way, and a short little school-boy haircut that suited her delicate face. She was immediately friendly, open and I would not be exaggerating to say she was flirtatious. We introduced ourselves and she asked the normal questions: “Why come Japan?”, “What Japanese food can you eat?”, “Where come from?”. Then she asked, “Do you have girlfriend?”. I was thrown by this and instantly turned red. I finally managed to stammer out that I didn’t have a girlfriend and asked her if she had a boyfriend. Then she suddenly made a sad face and looked like she was going to cry. Shit, I have made this mercurial beauty angry. Our school had a very strict non-socialisation policy, and just the very mention of girlfriend-boyfriend topics by a student to the staff could have a new teacher suspended. She put her lips in a pouty knot and said, “My boyfriend leave me last week. Now I alone”. At which point she lowered her eyes a little and tilted her head and looked at me pleadingly. I stifled a groan and had to work hard to control my twitching facial expressions, but I managed.

I decided the best thing to do would be to start teaching. When I told her to open her book she made a mock disappointed face but did it. After some crap teaching techniques on my part I got her to look at the section about too/not enough. We went through drills and what not, then I started asking her questions in the target language.
“Sachiko, can you wear my shirt?”
“No! It’s TOO BIG for me!”
“Can I wear your shoes?”
“No! They’re TOO SMALL for you.”
It was her turn to ask me questions. But by this time a chemistry was really quickly evolving between us and it seemed not so much like an English lesson but foreplay. What happened next is something I haven’t told many people because the story already strains credibility, but it happened. I didn’t imagine it. It was real.

Sachiko began asking me questions. First simple things, “Can you wear my shoes?”
“No they are TOO SMALL for me.”
“Can you wear my shirt?” And as she asked the question she brought her crossed arms up in front of her chest and grabbed the lower part of her sternum just above her little breasts. I think I made some kind of audible exhalation sound and then said after a pause, “No it’s TOO SMALL for me.”
Then Sachiko got a mischievous look on her face. Some idea had come over her and I could tell she was playing around with it in her mind. I told her to ask me another question for practice. But she just sat there with a strange grin on her face. Her eyes darted back and forth and then she said the immortal words that I will never forget.
“Can you wear my panty? Hee. Hee, hee, hee”.

But it wasn’t just the words themselves that sent me into such an anguished delirium, it was that while she made the question, she also arched her eyebrows and smiled, turned her legs toward me and with one quick motion pulled up her skirt far enough and quickly enough that I could just make out the lower satiny pink triangle of her little underpants. I am not certain, but I think I could see the characteristic texture that female pubic hair makes when it presses against silk. Just as quickly as her skirt was up, it was back down, and her legs were back under the safe cover of the table.

I turned a ridiculous shade of red and developed a raging hard-on. Time stood still, and I think I just managed a weak laugh. I literally couldn’t speak. Then Sachiko says to me in a voice of great concern, “Your ear turn red color. Are you ok?”. As soon as she said this I could feel flames shooting out the tops of my ears and burning my hair. Then she put her hand up over her mouth and giggled.

We finished a couple of more lesson points and then mercifully the bell rang and I staggered out of the cubicle bumping into seemingly every wall and chair in the room on my way out. She just sat there with a Mona Lisa smile and then held up her hand and made a bye-bye gesture while saying, “I enjoy class. Thank you.”

After I got done jerking off in the bathroom, I went back to the teachers’ room and tried to analyze what had just happened. Mainly I tried to understand how in the hell I could have managed to not get so much as an e-mail address from her. That night I stopped at the convenience store on the way home to get a bento dinner set, a new two liter jug of Suntory Red and a school girls’ porn magazine. I jerked off three times that night before I slipped into sleep in an alcohol-fuelled stupor.

After that day of seeing that young woman’s panties I fell into an even deeper and more desperate depression. I was constantly broke. Always drunk, and sometimes I even had to go hungry. But worst of all, I was beside myself with horniness, Every single minute of my first three months in Japan I spent hopelessly wanking five times a day, getting used to the mosaiced genitalia of Japanese pornography. Funny thing in Japan you can show a video of twenty men gangbanging and then coming on the face of a teenage girl as long as the genitals are digitally mosaiced into a blur of flesh. For some reason you can show anuses but not genitals. One of the many mysteries of Japan.

So on I went, repeating my ever more destructive behaviour, and cursing myself for not taking action during the lesson when I had had a chance. But I had been too speechless and discombobulated to make any kind of real effort at picking her up. By the way, I wasn't going to even mention this in the first place, because the story already strains credibility enough, but this woman was a nursing student at the local nursing college.
Well, after jerking-off to every conceivable image I could incorporate with her starring in the vision, I finally started thinking about the real thing.
I, like many other temporarily disillusioned foreigners in Japan, was wondering when the sex parade was going to start. Three months and I don't think I managed so much as a mixed-sex drinking party.
One of the main problems was that I was broke as all hell. Even after every payday I was paying people back and surviving for 27 days on a stash of noodles, miso, rice, and a giant jug of Suntory Red. This went on for about four months. One of the reasons I came to Japan in the first place was due to my abysmal financial state. I had the twin flaws of gambling every cent I ever had and drinking to cope with the aftermath. I was kind of like that Australian guy who had just won the Booker Prize without the prize, or any hopes of ever winning any prize.

So as anyone knows, scoring babes requires a certain amount of coin stashed and ready. In my opinion you can't really go out on a proper date without 30,000 yen prepared in advance. That is an adult date that takes everything into account. At the very least 20,000 to pay for dinner, drinks, more drinks, and a love hotel, and any other expenses that may arise.
So I was living out of a fucking dresser drawer filled with dried starch. I remember one day, a week from pay-day. I had soba and miso left in the house and pancake powder. But I had no eggs or milk to make the pancakes. It was morning and I had had soba for breakfast the last five days in a row. I decided to mix some water with the pancake mix. I ate as many spoonfuls as I could stomach and then headed off to my 'job' on foot because I had no funds to ride the subway. An hour into my walk and nearing my dreaded branch I started to feel pain in my stomach. It quickly became excruciating and felt like someone had forced a balloon down my throat into my stomach and was then inflating it.

Only later I learned that swallowing raw pancake mix causes death in some humans. The nature of it is that it expands and releases gas and thus should never be consumed raw lest your intestines swell up like mine were at that moment.

I spent the day doubled over in severe abdominal pain. That night when the swelling and pain subsided I got drunk as hell on Suntory Red and beat off like nine times to panty nurse's image.

So you can see that I was in no condition to ask her or anyone out. Also since our first meeting I hadn't even seen her on the schedule let alone in the classroom of my school.

Well, some more time passed. I was broke. I remember all of my fellow drone teachers complimenting me on my sensible idea of bringing my own lunch to work. One day I came into the slave factory and looked at my daily sentence: There she was on my schedule. Payday was a week away. My next day off after the next payday was ten days away. It was my window, and I planned to seize the opportunity.

Surely I would still have 30,000 yen three days after payday. I would ask her to meet me.

I bound into the lesson confidently and cool. Hey! Long time no see. Sachiko smiled perkily and said, “Yeah. Hee, hee, hee, hee. I didn't your class. I happy your class again. Hee,hee,hee,hee.” I was in. No doubt.
So I taught my best lesson and then with five minutes left somehow directed the conversation, as you do, to your day off and what you do. My day off was Friday, and she was a student, so I knew that would be no problem for her. Where do you go shopping? Oh Shinjuku? I love Shinjuku. Yeah I am going there a week Friday. We should meet I say casually and with a laugh in order to affect the possibility that I may be only joking in case of humiliating rejection, But she says, yeah, I love Shinjuku I wanna go to Shinjuku. God was that easy. I say, okay meet me at Alta at 7pm. Ok, Alta 7 pm. I say, here is my phone number, then she says, oh, okay, here is mine. It was like winning the lottery. It was a continuation of the immortal panty day, and now more tangible than ever.
The masturbation resumed over the next ten days at an astonishing rate. Pretty much every moment of my day involved some kind of new and creative fantasy of me and Sachiko in the love hotel.

Payday was fast approaching but so were the people laying claim to my money. I owed everyone. But nothing would separate me from the 30,000 yen I would need for that night.

Payday arrived. I paid off my local creditors, including my rent and utilities. I had 35,000 yen. Friday, my day off, was three days away. Tuesday and Wednesday were spent in an alcoholic, masturbatory delerium. I think it was around that time I discovered Gal's Shower magazine. It only added to the frenzy.

Now at this time I think probably a lot of people are quite naturally wondering why I didn't just go to the meat market Roppongi and pick someone up there. The answer is that I am simply not the kind of person that knows where to begin with that kind of approach.

The truth is, in spite of what I write, I always had looked for women who could hold conversations and be interesting to hang around after the fucking got old. I had shagged my share of women, but not by going to bars and picking them up. I think every guy develops his own style with the babes and mine just didn't usually include chatting up girls in bars and then bringing them home for a shag, minus the time or two the loose bird just flew right home into the nest. But in Japan, without the money, without the language, I felt totally unarmed, until Sachiko the nurse presented herself.

Well Thursday night rang around and I finished my dreaded shift at the factory and clocked out at nine. Some of the boys were heading to Roppongi flush with their new payday cash and heading to GasPanic for a night of wild debauchery, or so they hoped. Those of you in Tokyo in the late 1990s may remember Gas Panic was a pretty wild place. I saw girls dancing on the bar and flashing titties and panties to the crowd of drunken, foolish, servicemen, salarymen and occasional English teaching twerp. But the thing that attracted me was that drinks were only 300 yen, all night Thursday. At that stage I still had 25,000 yen. Yeah, it was a little beneath my goal of having 30,000 yen for the date, but what the hell. It was plenty enough to go through with every thing imaginable I could hope for.

Well, what the hell, I deserve it. Shit, I could drink 15 drinks at Gas Panic and still have more than 20,000 for the next day. I have lived a wretched existence not just in the past three months, but for the past three years. Fuck yeah, I'm gonna have a good ol' time. The suffering is over. The days and nights of solitary misery are over. I am not a bad person. I just did bad things. Forget Vegas. Forget Honduras. Things have changed. This teaching gig is bullshit. This crap's beneath me. Man, now is the time. I always knew I was special. Well, fuck yeah. I am gonna go and get drunk like the old days and have a fucking good time like I used to.

Well, I mentioned about gambling and drinking, but I also forgot to say that somewhere down the line I was variously diagnosed as bipolar, borderline and one MMPT (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Test) determined me to be psychotic. No joke. This fat fucking psychiatrist who my poor Dad paid a fucking mint sat there with spaghetti stains on his shirt, belching garlic, telling me quite calmly that the tests indicate I may be dangerous, but probably only to myself. No FUCKING SHIT you beast.
But that was all behind. Just me and Sachiko and 20,000 yen. And nothing but a night at Gas Panic between us. What could possibly fucking go wrong?

PART II

I woke up at six AM the next morning in a homeless person's blue tent in Yoyogi Park. It was the sweetest morning I could ever remember. You know how sometimes when you are so fucked up that you have some moment of peace in the very wee hours of the morning before the pounding hangover begins? When your eyes are closed and a nice breeze is blowing, and birds are singing. And you feel some kind of great comfort? Well, I didn't experience that. No, it was just sheer, utter fucking horror. Where the fucking hell on earth am I and why in fucking hell am I here? But it was so comfortable. It was a green folding cot. The light was just beginning to show through the blue tarp of the exterior. There really was utter calm. And birds really were singing, and I was snugly rolled in the fetal postion inside a very nice blue North Face sleeping bag. After I opened my eyes I didn't move for about five minutes. I thought maybe it wasn't me in the bag and that was the problem. But it was. I just blinked, but was afraid to move any other muscles. Then it dawned on me. This is a fully equipped, well-used homeless shack, so where is the person who lives here? There was even a clock, and I could see the hour. Knew by the birds it was morning.

I pulled myself out of the bag and noticed that I was wearing my blue faded shorts. And nothing else. No other sign of any of my belongings either. But remarkably in the cargo pocket of my shorts was my phone. Only. No wallet. No keys. No change. No money. Just a phone. With great fear I pulled the phone out to read the dialing history. Please God. No. Please God. No. Please. Please. And then against all odds, nothing. I hadn't placed a single call since the day before yesterday. That meant Sachiko was still on.

In spite of the state of things I was still focused. I teetered to the edge of the tent and just as I began that way a youngish Japanese man poked his head in as if he had no idea I was there. He looked at me with an expression of horror one may have seen on the faces of the Okinawans as the barbarians invaded in 1945. He ran off without a moment’s hesitation.

I staggered out of the tent of course having absolutely no idea where I was or how I got there, but was extremely relieved to see my trusty blue shopping bicycle faithfully standing outside the little shelter. It wasn't locked.

I briefly scanned the ground around me. There was nothing. I just nonchalantly, and in a somewhat relieved way hopped on the thing and headed off toward the fountain area where the capoeira people practice their strange martial dance form.

I was bare-foot, naked but for my shorts and riding through the city to Shinjuku where I lived. It always amazes me how quiet Tokyo is at six AM and that day was no different. Fortunately there were not many people out to see this bizarre ride of ignominy through Harajuku, and then up Gaien Nishi Avenue where I rode past a group of runners from a high school. They saw me coming up the sidewalk in front of the Olympic Stadium. Their faces betrayed no amusement at seeing this dishevelled gaijin cycling naked toward them at 6 AM. Then spontaneosly, as if victorious, I raised my right fist and shouted, "Ohayo Gozaimasu" to which they all robotically and in complete agreement replied in kind.
Buoyed by this moment of early morning solidarity I rode the rest of the way home drunkenly giggling though rather the way a person does before he does something very awful to himself or others.

Thanks to some extraordinary foresight on my part I had a spare key taped to the top of my mail-box. But after a night like that, all bets were off. I fully expected it to not be there. Yet, it was.

Now. My possessions. I had already through simple deduction determined that I must have somehow gotten myself home. Then gotten my bike and returned to the night. In spite of all this, I was in a fairly calm state of mind. I calmly and without high expectations opened the door. Nothing was remotely amiss. My clothes from the night before were just where they should have been, scattered around my floor. And there on my shitty little plastic table were my wallet, keys and other essentials. As far as I could tell, nothing was missing. But I postponed a peek into the wallet the way you don't check a lottery ticket right away in order to let the suspense build. One thing was wrong in the bathroom. And that was a foot long turd, probably mine, was neatly glued to the bathtub in a perfect line parallel to the long side of the tub and directly in the middle of the thing..
I bundled up my hands with toilet paper and calmly removed the shit to the toilet and flushed. Then I thoroughly rinsed the residue with the hand held shower nozzle and even used a scouring soap to clean it. This is Japan after all, gotta keep a clean tub! Then, amazingly, I took another fresh giant shit. This time in the toilet.

But instead of feeling better, the way a shit in the morning should make you feel, I felt worse. I had to practically drag myself back to my one room. I unrolled my futon and lay down. I was really drunk and feeling really woozy all of a sudden. I lay breathing heavily and even moaning. One eye was pasted to the futon but the other was open and scanning the room. I saw the Gals Shower within arm’s length. I pulled it over. Bukkake. Wow. So much semen. I whacked off, and then passed out.
By the time I woke it was three pm. Four hours to 'the date'. By this time I realised it was over. Not just the date, but everything in a philosophical, existential kind of suffering way. I laughed again. Even if there is fucking money in that wallet, how in hell am I gonna right myself for a night with this babe?

It was three pm and I was still entirely incapacitated to the degree that just standing caused extreme pain in my eyes and head and every organ in my body. Of course, money being what it was, there were no remedies around.

But fuck, if there was money I would go. There wasn't. There was ironically, and cruelly, and strangely, and inexplicably, twelve US dollars in my wallet. Twelve freaking US dollars.

I actually cried. Then I jerked off again. But I was only postponing the inevitable, and the later it got the worse. I had to call her and cancel the date. And so I did. And she reacted indignantly and angrily the way I would expect a woman or anyone else for that matter to act. Why? I am sorry, I just can't. I have a problem. Ehhh, I don't understand. We meet at seven, ok? No. I can't, I have a problem. I don't understand. I can't come. I have a really bad problem. Uhhhh?? Ehhh??? I made plan to meet tonight. We have plan. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. But we have plan.

The next night I was recovered enough to go to the local free Internet place across from the Hyatt in Nishi Shinjuku. Not the Park Hyatt of recent Hollywood fame, but the other one. I was dejected, and suicidal. Next to me is this foxy Asian babe. She has her hair in tails coming out the sides of her head like high school girls wear. She was wearing baggy sweats and a tee-shirt. She was a stunner. I couldn’t stop looking at her. Finally, she says to me in perfect, American-sounding English: Hey, do you speak English? Do you know anything about Shinjuku?

I stared at her dumbly. "Well, yeah...sure. Why, are you on vacation?"
"No. I am a flight attendant for Singapore Air. We stay over at the Hyatt if we do more than a night in Tokyo. But it’s my first time here."
Holy fucking shit. I had 200 yen and twelve dollars in my pocket.

PART III

I didn't see Sachiko around the school at all after that. In fact I was hoping she wasn't vindictive. Turned out she was, a little.
About two months after the debacle date that never happened I saw her on my schedule in a group lesson with two other women. I thought, hell, nothing too bad happened, I can get through this one.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that only two women were waiting for me and neither were my Sachiko the panty-flashing nurse. I was even happier when after fifteen minutes of my brilliant lesson she hadn't arrived. Then, about twenty minutes into it she came. Against regulations I might add. But there she was. She saw me through the plexiglass a mile away and I her.

She didn't say a word in the lesson, and even affected a scowl. The mood turned, and the other women began to sense it. I had fucked this girl over the wrong way, and now they were all against me. With five minutes left in this torturous lesson Sachiko actually began to cry, or rather whimper, to which the other two responded by taking very sisterly care of her, while looking at me like I was some kind of rapist.

In the end, I discovered that all along Sachiko was banging another teacher on his lunch breaks at her nurses’ dormitory. She ended up marrying a salaryman and moving to Toyama. I continued drinking and masturbating, and do so today.

[*****]

Excellent story, sir. Told with wit, verve, and poingancy. And even more importantly, it didn't drag.

New guy buys, so I'll take a flagon of house sake, hot. And I've got you for the next one.

[bluebottle]

i thought it was great too, a few laugh out loud moments. i've been studying japanese language to go there. the school girl outfits sound nice. i really loved that part about the poop in the bathtub. funny!

[Gwynn]

this might just be the best drunk story ever! :D , now, please tell me what "Ohayo Gozaimasu" means.

PS: i have been to Shinjuku, and i like Suntory beer too
PPS: where the hell do you pick upp babes in Tokyo anyways?

[bluebottle]

this might just be the best drunk story ever! :D , now, please tell me what "Ohayo Gozaimasu" means.

PS: i have been to Shinjuku, and i like Suntory beer too
PPS: where the hell do you pick upp babes in Tokyo anyways?

that means a respectful "good morning!"

[Gwynn]

AH! thanks BB!

[Wintermute]

Oh my friend, I know the early morning disorientation and the lack of essentials.

My current cell phone has been 'lost' way to many times while my wallet seems to be loyal.

Cell phones are just not loyal, 6 in 2.5 years will demonstrate my point. I live in South Korea and have had too many nights like that.

The delicate archaeology of the wallet. The thing is, Japan is stupidly expensive and Sth Korea is okay. Japan just sucks cash from every orifice while Korea can leave a man in shock at the amount of post drinking cash left in his wallet. Even when I've been worried about not paying my way, turns out I contributed more than my share.

Japanese girls are definately up for it though, Korea can be the land of endless dates without panty flashes. Struggling through a 2nd language over dinner without as much as a kiss on the cheek sucks. Also if you are 30 or over there's the desperation of marriage. 2 dates and you're married to a desperate 31 year old. 30 is to old to marry? A very sophisticated international culture this is. NOT.

[El_tercero]

Thanks for the comments. I did a stint in Korea too. Some good stories from there as well. Now I have to get my head off the poker and into the writing.

Cheers,
El Tercero

Next round is on me.