Voice Four: Hitomi
I get off the subway at Takadanobaba, and as I walk toward the ticket gate I flip open my cell phone and begin composing an email my girlfriends: "3 Rox on train." "Rox" is short for Night at the Roxbury, and it's become our code word for slimy, Asian-playin' foreign guys. They only have three or four different scripts, and - just like in New York - they're too busy following them to notice the grins at the edges of our lips.
I still have my Brooklyn accent, but after living here for two years I've learned to mimic Japanese pronunciation. My parents were both full-blooded second-generation Japanese-Americans, so it didn't quite come naturally. But it's a fun skill, and useful. My friends here are natives; they can speak English pretty well, but sometimes when we run across Roxburys we pretend to be naïve and English-hungry. We get some laughs by helping karma along.
Like this morning. That sleaze isn't really going to meet me for a drink - he's going to show up at the place with his buddies and realize, a half-hour later, that he's brought them to one of the busiest gay bars in Tokyo. And the kid before that, Anjuru ... I didn't see the point in telling him that his girlfriend had written "Let's just be friends" on the back of her photograph. A foreigner like him just wants a girl to fill that role in his Japanese adventure; he doesn't really care who it is.
And as for the pervert who wedged himself into me ... hopefully his Japanese is good enough to talk with the Metro lost and found, because that's where I'm taking the wallet I slipped out of his back pocket.
As I hit "send" on the email, my train leaves the station heading west. The underground whirlwind blows my hair across my face and my cell phone charms into my fingernails. Sometimes I think all the creepy foreign guys should just live on the Metro, riding back and forth through the tunnels. They can spend all day pressing their crotches into women's backs, or pretending they have real relationships, or reciting their only pick-up line over and over. Then, if someone spooks them by understanding them or simply by being understandable, they can just hop on another line and disappear into the dark.
Brandon Carper is a freelance contributor to The Escapist.
