go to work.”
“You bastard! You’ve gone, but I haven’t gone yet.”
(If you thought that was a typo, let me explain: In Japan, the act of achieving orgasm is referred to not as “coming” but as “going.” This lends itself to the joke that Japanese-American couples have so much trouble communicating that they can’t tell whether they’re coming or going.)
“I-chan, I hate to leave you high and dry, but duty calls.”
In perfect English, she replied, “Work, work, work. Make them wait five fucking minutes!”
I had already put on my shirt and was hunting for my
Yomiuri
armband, camera, wrinkle-free necktie, and pen. “I’ll make it up to you. You can be on top next time,” I said earnestly.
We’d been going through a rough patch in our romance lately. I was working nonstop, forgetting to call, and usually so tired, drunk, orhungover on my day off that I was far from entertaining. Things had not been good for a while, but I was hoping she’d get used to an absentee boyfriend. In a passive-aggressive way, I hadn’t been helping by neglecting to make a determination about “our future.”
“Look, I’m really sorry. People are waiting for me.”
“If you walk out that door, you walk out of this relationship,” she said.
“I have to go,” I said.
I got on my bicycle and pedaled to the office in record time. Yamamoto was waiting in the car, I hopped into the driver’s seat, and off we sped toward Chichibu.
Yamamoto filled me in. The victim ran a snack bar 1* in Chichibu. She’d been found in her bedroom, in her pajamas, in a prefectural public housing development at 7:45 that evening by an employee who’d gone to her apartment when she didn’t show up at the bar and who then called 119 (Japan’s version of 911). Initial reports made it sound as if she’d been hit on the right side of her head with a blunt instrument.
Yamamoto dropped me off at the crime scene with instructions to find a photo of the
mama-san
and to find someone who had nice things to say about her. He was heading to the Chichibu police station for the briefing. I was usually the reporter on the scene because the newspaper was reluctant to have me cover a police briefing. They were afraid I’d miss something important—a fear that was probably well founded then.
The victim lived in a dismal apartment complex—row upon row of uniform beige buildings typical of public housing in Japan. They were all faced with balconies with metal railings that had been rigged with clotheslines that always had laundry hanging from them, rain or shine, night or day. The place was ill lit, and the only sound of life within was the vague din of television sets bleeding through the thin walls of the apartments.
The police had cordoned off the entire building where the mamasanhad lived. I played the stupid-gaijin card and ducked under the KEEP OUT yellow tape. I was able to talk to two people before an officer approached me and said sternly, in English, “Go away. No can be here.”
I tried to make conversation with some folks who were hanging around the edges of the police barrier, looking up at the building. I walked into the adjacent beige building, ringing doorbells, asking about the mama-san, until I found a foreman at a concrete plant who’d been a regular at the snack bar.
He even had a picture of her—Snack-mama was surprisingly chubby—and he was willing to let me borrow it.
“Do you have any idea who would want to kill her?” I asked, deep in reporter mode.
“Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe some deadbeat customer who ran up a huge tab. She could really ride your ass if you didn’t pay your bill on time. I’ve known loan sharks who were more easy-going.”
This wasn’t exactly a quotable comment about the deceased. “What about her husband?” I asked.
“Not around. She lived with her daughter. People said they weren’t getting along. Something about the daughter’s boyfriend.”
“Was he a yakuza or just some kind
“You bastard! You’ve gone, but I haven’t gone yet.”
(If you thought that was a typo, let me explain: In Japan, the act of achieving orgasm is referred to not as “coming” but as “going.” This lends itself to the joke that Japanese-American couples have so much trouble communicating that they can’t tell whether they’re coming or going.)
“I-chan, I hate to leave you high and dry, but duty calls.”
In perfect English, she replied, “Work, work, work. Make them wait five fucking minutes!”
I had already put on my shirt and was hunting for my
Yomiuri
armband, camera, wrinkle-free necktie, and pen. “I’ll make it up to you. You can be on top next time,” I said earnestly.
We’d been going through a rough patch in our romance lately. I was working nonstop, forgetting to call, and usually so tired, drunk, orhungover on my day off that I was far from entertaining. Things had not been good for a while, but I was hoping she’d get used to an absentee boyfriend. In a passive-aggressive way, I hadn’t been helping by neglecting to make a determination about “our future.”
“Look, I’m really sorry. People are waiting for me.”
“If you walk out that door, you walk out of this relationship,” she said.
“I have to go,” I said.
I got on my bicycle and pedaled to the office in record time. Yamamoto was waiting in the car, I hopped into the driver’s seat, and off we sped toward Chichibu.
Yamamoto filled me in. The victim ran a snack bar 1* in Chichibu. She’d been found in her bedroom, in her pajamas, in a prefectural public housing development at 7:45 that evening by an employee who’d gone to her apartment when she didn’t show up at the bar and who then called 119 (Japan’s version of 911). Initial reports made it sound as if she’d been hit on the right side of her head with a blunt instrument.
Yamamoto dropped me off at the crime scene with instructions to find a photo of the
mama-san
and to find someone who had nice things to say about her. He was heading to the Chichibu police station for the briefing. I was usually the reporter on the scene because the newspaper was reluctant to have me cover a police briefing. They were afraid I’d miss something important—a fear that was probably well founded then.
The victim lived in a dismal apartment complex—row upon row of uniform beige buildings typical of public housing in Japan. They were all faced with balconies with metal railings that had been rigged with clotheslines that always had laundry hanging from them, rain or shine, night or day. The place was ill lit, and the only sound of life within was the vague din of television sets bleeding through the thin walls of the apartments.
The police had cordoned off the entire building where the mamasanhad lived. I played the stupid-gaijin card and ducked under the KEEP OUT yellow tape. I was able to talk to two people before an officer approached me and said sternly, in English, “Go away. No can be here.”
I tried to make conversation with some folks who were hanging around the edges of the police barrier, looking up at the building. I walked into the adjacent beige building, ringing doorbells, asking about the mama-san, until I found a foreman at a concrete plant who’d been a regular at the snack bar.
He even had a picture of her—Snack-mama was surprisingly chubby—and he was willing to let me borrow it.
“Do you have any idea who would want to kill her?” I asked, deep in reporter mode.
“Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe some deadbeat customer who ran up a huge tab. She could really ride your ass if you didn’t pay your bill on time. I’ve known loan sharks who were more easy-going.”
This wasn’t exactly a quotable comment about the deceased. “What about her husband?” I asked.
“Not around. She lived with her daughter. People said they weren’t getting along. Something about the daughter’s boyfriend.”
“Was he a yakuza or just some kind
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