Shibuya Crossing is, apparently the busiest intersection in the world, so I’m told. And Starbucks sits enthroned above it. It is a cruddy Starbucks, filthy and smokey and cramped, and the sun streams straight through the place in the afternoon, but it has a quality view. Each time the lights change, thousands of people stream across that intersection. So many damn people. I can’t help but to keep trying to find where Wally is amongst them.
And all around the perimeter, enormous plasma screens with crisp mountains clothed in stately pines, and people dancing and cheerful and glowing. One of the screens showed the news, and there was a freaky picture of Saddam Hussein with a big thick grey beard, looking so very tired. But all the rest of it was advertising and music videos of bands with names like ‘Bump of Chicken’.
You know, one thing good about not being able to read or to understand, is that I am completely immune to advertising. The time I spent in Japan, I just didn’t desire anything. I didn’t give a toss about the latest movie, the latest video game, or the latest burger at McDonalds. I didn’t want to go away on holiday, I couldn’t give a shit about the pop stars or TV shows, I didn’t want to buy any CD’s, I didn’t want to have that operation to cut that extra piece of skin off my eyelid. I didn’t want to buy the latest toothpaste, or have my body cryogenically frozen after death.
* * * * *
There is a lot of sex shit going on in Japan. I don’t really understand a lot of it.
In the internet cafes, they supply you with a your own private booth.
They supply you with some convenient but suspicious tissues beside the monitor.
They are also very careful to fully spray and wipe down all the seats and table, and under the tables once you’re done. And it’s more than once that I saw the guy in front of me in the queue to pay, in his work suit, with the front of his shirt untucked.
Not cool.
* * * * * * *
I was in class this one afternoon, and I pointed out a schoolgirl to my student. She was quite clearly a schoogirl. In her little cr , pleated skirt, loose socks, white shirt and blue bag festooned with plush Disney keyrings. I mentioned her to my student.
She said, “She isn’t a schoolgirl.”
And you know, she did look kind of older, but, I mean, hello, she’s in a uniform.
As it turned out, it was the last day of the school year this day.
If you were to hang around the high schools just before the final bell of this day you would get to see gangs of yakuza, the Japanese mafia. They are easily recognised as swaggering men with bleached mullets, bright blue suits, sneakers and hawaiian shirts.
Frightening.
It’s on this day, the last day of school that the yakuza descend on the posh, more exclusive high schools, waiting for the final bell to ring. And when it rings, and the girls stream out, the yakuza wade in, handing out flyers and business cards.
Nothing too seedy, they just want to buy the worn-but-unwashed uniforms off the girls, to sell them to frustrated tired overworked salarymen. Young girls can apparently make a tidy profit out of this little exchange.
And I mean, school’s finished, they have no further use for them. And they can always go and buy another one with the profits anyway.
How they get home without their uniforms, though, I am not sure. I haven’t spoken to anyone about the logistics.
But if all this isn’t odd enough, it in fact goes one step further.
What happens is that, on this day, grown women go out and buy the uniform. They then dress up in it and parade around. They are hoping, you see, to be stopped by the mafia, so that they, pretending to be schoolgirls, can sell their uniforms and make a quick yen or two !!
Hence this fully grown woman in a schoolgirls’ uniform strutting around the train station.
* * * * * * *
And then there is the terekurabu – Telephone Club. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but men sit in booths waiting for the telephone to ring. They answer it, and it is some sheila who wants to have sex with them.
SOMETHING like this, but I really never did cotton on to what it is all about. Sounds a bit too damn easy to me.
And then there are the yakuza again, seriously at every station handing out flyers to the hot girls. Maybe they are recruiting hostesses or prostitutes. Maybe they are finding girls to fulfill the other side of the mysterious Telephone Club equation – I am not sure. But whatever it is, it is serious business, because these guys are everywhere.
And then there are restaurants where the waitresses wear no underpants; hostess bars; and host bars where the entire place, workers and patrons turn and applaud you if you buy a bottle of Moet; love hotels; hotels where you have a French maid waiting on you hand and foot, and hotels where they dress you up in a nappy, read you a children’s story, and rock you to sleep in a cradle.
I kid you not.
You know, I bet God didn’t have any of this in mind when he created Adam and Eve.
But as for soiled panties, well I mean I finally found some. But what about the vending machines that I’d heard so much about? Where were they? And what about this question of proving that they were real schoolgirls panties, and not just crisp panties dipped in brine.
Well, Wako sipped on her latte, and explained it all to me, we are in the new age now, that of namasera….