Halloween in Tokyo: Meishi Man Strikes Again

The Yamanote Line is a Japan Rail surface line that circles downtown Tokyo in about an hour. In the late 1980s or early 1990s, a tradition developed among gaijin in Tokyo to ride the Yamanote Line one full loop on Halloween -- in costume.

I was ignorant of this tradition my first Halloween in Japan and purposefully ignored it my second. But in 1993, in my third year in Japan, my friend Dave S. -- Meishi Man -- convinced me to join him and his girlfriend Chieko for the annual circumnavigation of Tokyo. Although generally I avoided engaging in the kind of gaijin activities that said to Japanese, "We don't care about your customs and rules, we're just gonna have fun!," I knew this was my last chance to experience this event, and I was curious about what would happen.

On the evening of October 31, 1993, hundreds of gaijin, some in costume, some (like us) not, packed the southbound Yamanote Line platform at Shibuya Station, having heard through the grapevine to board the 9:06. Who knows how the train was selected -- whether an actual person dictated the time and place and sent word through friends to disperse through the gaijin community, or whether it was a decision of the collective gaijin consciousness in Tokyo -- but there we were, all waiting on the same platform at the same time, like a pre-email/cellphone/text messaging flash mob. Most of us had taken the precaution of drinking heavily before arriving, a party atmosphere pervaded the crowd, and as 9:06 approached, the anticipation and excitement grew, just like in the last minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve.

In Tokyo, the trains around 9:00 pm are very crowded, as that is the time when the after-work drinking parties break up and the salarymen begin their trek home to darkest Yokohama, Chiba, Saitama, and Machida. Shibuya is one of Tokyo's major interchange stations, where commuters disembark from the Yamanote Line and board lines to the suburbs. When the 9:06 pulled in, hundreds of bleary-eyed commuters had to navigate their way through the crush of costumed foreigners, and then a wave of boisterous gaijin rushed the train.

I distinctly remember the look of sheer surprise on the face of one salaryman as dozens foreigners, many in costume, and most of us drunk, crammed aboard. Suddenly, the car was packed as tight as the morning rush, but without people respecting any of the etiquette that makes packed trains in Japan bearable. Gaijin shouted to friends at the other end of the car. They swung on the hanging straps. One guy even climbed up onto the overhead luggage racks and rode lying down. The same scene was no doubt playing itself out up and down the train. Within a stop or two, every commuter had exited our car. When the train pulled into the next station, only the very intrepid commuter boarded, and most waited for the next one.

The train quickly grew hot, and windows were opened. (The Japanese train systems turn the air-conditioning on and off according to the calendar and not temperature of the car, so in the spring the ceiling fans start turning on a set day, then the air-conditioning, and then, at last, both. In the fall, the reverse happens on a set schedule. No matter how hot it gets after the air-conditioning is turned off, it won't be turned back on until the next summer.) Chieko, Meishi Man, I and a girl I was dating were near a window. The train pulled into the next station, our window right next to the green-uniformed platform master (the guy you see on TV pushing people onto crowded trains so the doors can shut). He stood inches from the window as he scanned up and down the train to make sure all the doors were shut so he could signal the train to leave. The train started to pull out. "Grab his hat!" I joked. Meishi Man smiled as if this were the greatest idea ever conceived. He stuck his hand out the window, and in one perfectly-timed motion, swiped the platform master's hat from his head, pulled his arm in the window, and put the hat on Chieko's head, just as the train pulled away. The platform master stared at us in shock as we rolled away from him. Chieko laughed. I was mortified that Dave had actually done what I suggested. The poor guy would now have to go to his superiors, try to explain why he lost his hat, and probably get fined on top of having to shell out for a new hat. Another gaijin-hater was surely born that very night.

We got as far as Akihabara or Nippori (about 40 minutes) before I had to get off because all the beer I had consumed before boarding needed to return to nature. Meishi Man and Chieko rode on, saying that they would meet us when the train came around again. Disoriented by drink and the desperate need to pee, this made sense to me for some reason, even though it would mean an hour of waiting. We got off the train, I found the station's restroom, and then rejoined my date on the platform. We waited for a while on the platform, watching one Yamanote Line train after another arrive and depart in both directions, before realizing it was pointless to wait. Too tired for any more partying, and finding ourselves on the opposite side of Tokyo from where I lived, we decided to board another train and just go home.

The Curry Shop Girl

After my home-stay went awry, I moved into the Canon dormitory managed by Oshikawa-san and his wife in Musashi-Nitta, in Ohta-ku, Tokyo.

Musashi-Nitta was a working-class neighborhood in the southeastern part of Tokyo, near the Tama River, which separates Tokyo from Kawasaki City. Tokyo lacks zoning laws, and Musashi-Nitta featured a diverse mixture of land uses, ranging from houses to shops (concentrated in the business district near the station) to small factories doing piece-work for Japan's big companies. There were even a few rice paddies scattered in the neighborhood near the Tama River, existing on some of the world's most expensive real estate due to extremely farmer-friendly tax policies. (I always wondered if people would eat the rice if they knew it came from a field next to a car-parts manufacturer, but they probably never knew where it came from.)

Like most neighborhoods in Japan, Musashi-Nitta featured a shotengai (shopping district) near the station, consisting of a street sloping downward in the direction of the river, demarcated at both ends with a gate reading Musashi-Nitta Shotengai. The shotengai featured a couple of convenience stores, a supermarket, a home electronics-goods store, a store where could buy household items like linens, pots and pans, and even small furniture items, and a few restaurants and "snacks" -- the Japanese name for a kind of local bar with a very small number of seats, very personalized service, and a reputation for looking askance at new people. The shotengai always had some kind of seasonal decorations hanging from the telephone poles -- pink plastic cherry blossoms in the spring, red and yellow plastic leaves in the fall -- that added some color to the drab grey exteriors of the neighborhood shops. The shotengai lay directly on my route from Musashi-Nitta station to Oshikawa-san's dormitory, so I would traverse it twice a day.

One of the restaurants was a curry-rice shop, occupying a location toward the bottom of the street at the Y where two streets came together. The shop was run by a middle-aged woman and her daughter, who was a year or two older than me. After a while, I started going there a couple of times a week. I was usually the only customer there, and it was a good chance to practice my Japanese.

The daughter always seemed sort of shy and sad, and I figured that being trapped in a curry shop in Musashi-Nitta with her mother was not exactly the kind of life she wished for, but it was nice being able to talk to someone during dinner. She would pepper me with questions about the U.S. and I would try my best to answer in my still-halting Japanese. She always seemed happy to see me when I came in, and I thought I had made a new friend.

I guess she had bigger ideas than that. She suggested that we go out one Saturday afternoon, and I accepted, thinking it was harmless. I don't remember where we went, but the next day, she showed up at my dormitory with a present for me. It was then I realized that she was interested in more than just friendship. I am not cynical about her motives, but I am sure that part of her interest resulted from the fact that the possibility of dating a gaijin (and Musashi-Nitta was not exactly the kind of place where you met a lot of them) offered her an exciting escape from life in the curry shop.

Although I was not happy to be put in this position and didn't want to hurt her feelings, I knew it would be crueler to lead her on, so I told her, as best I could, that I was only interested in a friendship. She burst into tears, which needless to say, only made me feel worse.

I pried myself away from her and went back to my room. I stopped going to the curry shop after that, and always walked by very quickly from that point onwards, hoping that I would not run into her, which I never did again.

"Please Don't Throw Up on Me . . ."

After another summer evening spent drinking with friends after work, I boarded the Denentoshi Line bound for the nether reaches of suburban Yokohama and found it empty. An empty train in Tokyo is a rare occurrence, happening only early on weekend mornings, and during the magical hour between the salaryman's mass post-drinking exodus to the suburbs around 10:00 p.m. and the jammed-packed last train around midnight. I sat down on the plush seat (yes, subway seats in Japan have cushions made of velour!), relishing the rare opportunity to sit on the train.

A salaryman boarded behind me. He was probably in his late-40s or early 50s, carried a briefcase in one hand and had the look of a man mired in middle management until retirement. Despite having an entire subway car minus one seat of possible places to arrange himself for his long ride home, he made a beeline for me, grabbed the strap hanging above my seat with his free hand, bent over, and began studying me from inches away.

The guy was puh-lastered, and clearly all his inhibitions had long since abandoned him. Maybe he was not as quite as drunk as the salaryman I had recently seen planted face-down in a Shibuya gutter with only one shoe on, but he was about as drunk as I had ever seen anyone who was still vertical. As the train departed the station its motion caused him to weave and wobble above me as he tried to stay upright holding onto the strap one-handed. When the train bent into a curve, he lost his balance and literally pirouetted on one leg, spinning completely around, while still hanging onto the strap. There was no point moving seats, because it was clear he was determined to follow me, so I decided to wait until we reached the next station, where I could switch cars.

As I watched the man twisting and spinning above me, the plastic strap creaking each time his weight shifted in response to the train's motion, I could think only one thing: Please don't throw up on me.

Believe me, when a very drunken and overly curious man hangs inches above your head by a flimsy subway strap, a few seconds is a very long time. The ride to the next station felt interminable. When the train finally pulled in, I quickly got up, leaving my bemused admirer slurring something to me that I could not understand, and went two cars down so he could not follow.

And that was how I avoided a second vomit-related incident on the Tokyo subway.

A Girl Behind Every Telephone Pole

On my third day after arriving in Japan, and my first day on the job, my Canon orienter, Koshiba-san, guided me to my Canon dormitory in the nether reaches of suburban Yokohama. The ride required us to walk from Nishi-Shinjuku to Shinjuku Station, board the Yamanote Line for Shibuya Station, and then board the Denentoshi Line for Fujigaoka Station, almost at the end of the line. Altogether, it was an hour and fifteen minutes from station to station. Once we arrived at Fujigaoka, whose main attraction was a Mr. Donut in front of the station, we had to walk fifteen minutes to the dormitory, up and down a hill -- meaning that my commute in the stifling July and August heat would literally be uphill both ways. I also later found that, although my sweat-soaked shirt would dry off on the hour-plus train ride, by the time I walked through the stifling tunnel leading from Shinjuku Station to the Canon headquarters, I would be utterly soaked again.

After settling in at the dorm and meeting the dormitory master, Arai-san, I walked Koshiba-san back to Fujigaoka Station. Although it's common to see non-Japanese throughout Japan these days, even in remoter suburbs like Fujigaoka, in 1991, seeing other foreigners even in a crowded place like Shibuya was a notable event. In Fujigaoka, we were unknown, particularly to one little girl. As I walked back from the station, I noticed an elementary-schooler walking a few steps ahead of me, wearing her little sailor-suit school uniform and gigantic leather "randoseru" bookbag. She must have heard my footsteps, for she turned around to see who was behind her and, upon seeing a foreigner, took off running down the street as fast as her legs could carry her. Puzzled, I kept walking. A few minutes later, I found her hiding behind a telephone pole, waiting for me to pass. I couldn't tell whether she just wanted another look, or whether she was simply making sure that it was safe to continue on home.

I never did see another foreigner in Fujigaoka during that entire summer.