Gaijin

He remembered every wrinkle on the old woman’s face. She had sat on the steps of an apartment building in the middle of a busy city street in Lima, years ago. Around her, people had passed by, uniform in their mundanity, weaving in and out of her way, leaving nothing behind but smoke and the lingering scent of perfume. The woman had said nothing, her braids falling pitifully down her shoulders. On her back was a brightly colored Peruvian paño, of the kind Indigenous people wore, that contrasted highly with the grim atmosphere that emanated from her. She had dark skin and even darker eyes with nothing inside of them. Those eyes scared him, for the old woman seemed to gaze out at something that he couldn’t quite see, and doubted that he ever could. It seemed to him that she existed as a separate entity to the city, something completely isolated to the people that surrounded her. City life buzzed around her, but she was alone.

Something told him that she would always be alone.

The memory came to him vividly while he was on the plane to Japan. He wasn’t sure why he thought of it so suddenly, this memory from a distant country he was currently in the process of escaping. Yes, he would never return to Peru, for it had never truly been home for him. Sure, he looked like the people that inhabited his country, but that is where the similarities ended. He hated everything about Latin America: the language, the customs, the buildings, the people. Even the air he breathed in there seemed inferior to him, polluted both literally and metaphorically.

For him, the answer had always lain in going abroad. He imagined himself somewhere foreign, so far away from his hellish home that people wouldn’t recognize his native tongue or even have heard of the word Peru. He was a fan of Gaugin, so for years, he would imagine himself living in Tahiti, surrounded by the green island setting and brown women of his paintings, only for him to be disappointed upon learning that Tahiti was actually nothing like that, and that the majority of Gaugin’s paintings had been staged.

He was on the verge of giving up until one day, he had a dream. Up until that night, his dreams had been filled with the green of the rolling hills of Tahiti. However, this time, he found himself immersed in a landscape of pure pink. He gazed with amazement as he saw the cherry blossoms blowing in the wind, the petals falling delicately into a lake which reflected the sun rising from the East. From behind him, he heard laughter, and turned to see Japanese girls in kimonos picking the pink petals from their hair. Their slim fingers, he noticed, were laced with a slight rosy blush, and he watched with amazement as the girls spoke to each other in their foreign tongue, the words light and airy from their mouths. He wanted to go up to them, to taste the sound of their language, which he suspected would be sweet like cotton candy, and to stay forever in this pastel paradise of his.

Upon waking up, he had immediately opened his computer and typed in “JAPAN” in the search bar. He was astounded to see that the reality was not far from his dreams. He saw crystal-clear streams and rivers, majestic mountains, ancient pagodas, beautiful temples, and most importantly, his beloved cherry blossoms. He looked up facts about Japanese culture, and was surprised to see how polite, how gentle, how astute they all were. In Japan they bowed down as a sign of respect. In Japan people queued up for the subway and waited for everyone to exit before they went in. In Japan there was no trash on the streets despite there being no trash cans. In Japan there were robots that greeted you in stores. In Japan there were words to describe the beauty in imperfection, the sound of falling rain, and the act of walking through a forest fully immersed in nature.

        He explained all of this to his sister, who brushed him off with a casual flick of the hand.

“Don’t say such nonsense,” she said, and he hated how the last word sounded in Spanish, how clumsily the consonants clashed with the vowels and brought out a convoluted, jumbled expression. “I don’t understand why you want to go to Japan so much, when Japanese people are simply dying to get out.”

He was annoyed at his sister’s insensitive joke about the high suicide rates in Japan, but decided to ignore it.

“You don’t understand, Cecilia,” he replied, digging his nails into his palm. “Things there are perfect. It’s not– not like it is here.”

“And what’s not there to like about here?” she replied, getting defensive, as all Peruvians did when their country was put into question. “Sure, we have some problems, but so does everywhere else. There is nowhere else I would like to live other than right here in Lima. The people, the food, the city: it’s all idyllic. Latin America is the only place in the world where people bond together and have a sense of humour. I wouldn’t change anything about it.”

“Anything? You wouldn’t change anything about it? Not the fact that women are being killed on the streets, that people starve to death, that our politicians–”

“Did you hear me, Leonardo? I said nothing. I’d rather be a hobo in Lima than in Paris, or Rome, or London, or any of those cities in first-world countries.”

He began to say something about how she knew nothing about being poor, but then decided to swallow his words. He looked out the window and stared at the dirty city down below, which was stained brown by the pollution and the barren barriadas in the distance, and felt an intense hatred for his home. He knew that this was how his culture was: cruel, callous, uncaring, selfish. That was why things were the way they were in Peru, why his country was such a shithole, why he had never found any satisfaction in living there. Unlike his sister, he couldn’t ignore all the injustices that happened in Peru, brush them away simply because they weren’t happening to him. It was, he suspected, the main reason he would never fit in in the Peruvian aristocracy, who were more than happy to spit on the poor and leave the country the mess that it was.

However, that was all behind him now. He was on a plane to Tokyo, where he would start his new life. No longer would he be subject to the humiliation of living in Peru, of having to associate himself with the sinister, backstabbing, classist people of the Peruvian aristocracy. He was going to become a new man now and, for the first time ever, was finally going to a place where he fit in.

The air stewardess came up to him and asked him if he wanted something to drink. Since the airline he was flying on was Canadian, she was too, and she spoke to him in her impeccable, native English. He replied back in an average English; he had never truly cared for the language, or tried to improve it. In truth, he had tried to fly on a Japanese airline, as he wanted to immerse himself into Japanese culture as soon as possible (and had also heard wonders about the politeness of Japanese flight personnel), but alas, there had been no flights.

As the stewardess left, he peered around the edge of his seat to look at the other passengers. All of the passengers he saw were Peruvians who were going on vacation to Japan; he saw no Japanese businessmen that were on their way back home. He sighed, disappointed, and looked out the window at the endless blue expanse, then gently closed his eyes. He wished that he would dream of cherry blossoms again.

He woke up a couple of hours later to realize the plane had landed. He jumped up with such joy that he almost hit his head. It took every nerve in his body not to run out with excitement, to kiss the ground with devotion, to cry out how much he loved Japan. However, nothing could stop him from smiling like a fool throughout the whole immigration process which was, as expected of the Japanese, extremely orderly and pleasant. As he left immigration, he thanked the customs officer with a flawless “Arigatou gozaimasu” which, he noticed with  happiness, made the man’s eyebrows lift up in surprise.

As he waited for his bags, he made sure to appreciate the beauty of Narita Airport. It was, he remarked, impeccably silent. No one spoke, no one coughed, not even the machines made noise as they brought out rows of identical brightly colored bags, which reminded him of Sakuma Drops. He sat in a chair and basked in the glorious silence of Japan, so different from the noisiness of Peru, where people would yell from across the room and speak Spanish as it was meant to be spoken: as if shouted by brutes.

After he had gotten his bags, he went to hail a taxi. A black, boxy cab eventually came his way. The man that drove the taxi, he noticed with pleasure, was dressed as an old English chauffeur, and wore a suit, a driver’s hat, and gloves.  The driver greeted Leonardo in English, and when Leonardo answered back in Japanese, introducing himself,  the man opened his eyes in surprise.

“Reonarudo-san,” the man said with a curt bow, and Leonardo couldn’t help but adore the way he mispronounced his name.  “Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.”

Leonardo tried to converse with the man for a while, but the taxi driver, whose name was Yamada-san, only replied in short affirmations or negations. After a couple minutes, Leonardo stopped, and instead watched Yamada-san glide through the Japanese roads with a familiarity Leonardo hoped he would one day have. He looked out at the buildings of Tokyo, gleaming in the sunshine, and fell in love all over again.

He was home.

***

        The rattling of the train brought him to his senses again. He opened his eyes and found himself staring at someone’s white work shirt, which was expected during the rush hour, when the train was so crammed no one could move an inch. He sighed, trying to flatten himself into his seat, and looked to the sides. Predictably, both seats next to him were empty. No one ever wanted to sit next to foreigners.

        It had been two months since he had arrived in Japan. He had, against all odds, managed to find an apartment, get a Japanese phone number, set up a bank account, and go through all of the tedious bureaucratic processes one had to go through in order to begin to live a normal life in Japan. He had even found a job, albeit a job for foreigners, as an English teacher at a small Japanese school. They paid well enough, enough for him to maintain himself in his small apartment with paper-thin walls, through which he could always hear his next door neighbours arguing.

He was now on his way to an internet café in Shibuya. He was, after a day of work, exhausted, and his head was still spinning from trying to ask Suzuki-san, the literature teacher at the school, to lunch, something which should have been easy for any normal Peruvian. However, he was not as extroverted as people from his country, and thus had stuttered terribly when asking his coworker to do something as simple as share a meal with him. Suzuki-san, looking pretty embarrassed herself, had simply bowed to him curtly and mumbled a quick apology, then run off, leaving him with the other foreign teachers, most of whom were Americans. He had glanced at her several times during lunchtime, eating with the other Japanese teachers, and felt as if Japan were as far away as when he was in Peru. He loved Japanese literature, and wanted to tell Suzuki-san about the books he had read, as well as his opinions on them. He knew she and the other Japanese teachers would often go drinking at night to an izakaya, and wanted desperately to join them. However, he thought it rude to outright ask them if he could join them and, despite being part of the staff, was still waiting for his invitation.

“Don’t worry,” one of the Americans had said to him. “They’ll never ask you out. It’s a Japanese thing.”

They announced his station on the train’s speakers, so he gathered his things and stood up. The people around him glanced at him quickly, as if doing so were something dirty, unsacred. He got off the train rapidly, still feeling their eyes burning on his back.

That was the thing about the Japanese that he had learned during his stay here: they were extremely quiet, both physically and emotionally. He could never truly tell what they were thinking.

He walked through the streets of Tokyo with his head swimming. He hadn’t been quite himself since he had arrived to Japan. In the past, he would have thought that to be a wonderful thing, for him to finally shed the brown dirt of Peru off with the light pink of Japan. However, he knew there was something off about him, something he couldn’t quite explain. Perhaps it all had to do with Suzuki-san. Perhaps the Americans were rubbing off on him. He didn’t know.

He sighed and put down his bag. He originally was going to do work, but he felt he didn’t have it in him now. He was about to turn around when a red lantern caught his eye. An izakaya.

Perfect. He needed a drink.

He wandered inside, slightly brushing aside the pieces of cloth hanging from the ceiling. Cries of the informal “irasshai!” filled the room. He sat down at the bar and ordered a beer.

“Ah!” the barman said when he heard him order. “You speak Japanese?”

Leonardo nodded and tried to smile. It had been a long day for him indeed.

He drank one beer, then another. After a while he decided to switch it up a bit and drink some sake, which he ashamedly despised.

“It’s good sake,” the barman reassured him. “Good for the soul.”

Leonardo nodded and asked for the barman’s name.

“Fujita Shūji,” he replied with a bow. “Nice to meet you.”

Leonardo introduced himself, then downed the sake.

“Fujita-san,” he said. “Have you ever read In Praise of Shadows?”

“In Praise of Shadows?”

“Yes. By Tanizaki Junichiro.”

“Ah, yes! Bungo Stray Dogs, right?”

Leonardo, having no idea what he was talking about, asked for another sake and continued.

“It’s an essay about Japanese aesthetics. It talks about the beauty of the darkness, and how Japanese aesthetic is supposed to be enjoyed in the dark. Did you know people used to go to restaurants filled solely with candles? It was supposed to be beautiful. The candlelight would gleam off of the cups and…”

He stopped as Fujita-san went to greet someone else. After Fujita-san had finished serving the newcomers, he came back to Leonardo’s seat.

“Reonarudo-kun! Ah, Tanizaki, ne? Bungo Stray Dogs?”

Leonardo sighed in defeat, then nodded sleepily. The sake was starting to hit him. His head was spinning even more than before, as if it were a koma, and he didn’t know what to say.

Fujita-san, who realized that Leonardo had lost all interest in the previous conversation, switched topics. “Do you live in Japan?” he asked.

Leonardo nodded dreamily.

“Why are you in Japan now?”

The question stung, as if it were an accusation, and immediately woke Leonardo from his drunken stupor. He looked up at Fujita-san in alarm.

“What?”

“Why are you in Japan now?”

“I–” Leonardo said, racking his brain. “I– I–”

Fujita-san stared innocently at him, waiting for his answer. And the more he stared, with those black beady eyes of his, the more Leonardo could feel himself sweating, stinking up the place.

Why. Why was he in Japan now?

Fujita-san, thinking that Leonardo hadn’t understood the question, repeated it in broken English. Leonardo gave a small chuckle, apologized, and then murmured a bullshit answer. He then quickly pulled out some bills and, without counting them, chucked them on the table and left.

He began to wander through Shibuya without knowing where he was going. He was quite drunk at this point, or so he thought, because he couldn’t make heads or tails of Fujita-san’s question. Why was he in Japan now? What kind of question was that? He couldn’t help but think that it had an accusatory tone behind it, a demanding tone behind it. He knew that was impossible from the little he had been able to glean of the barman’s character, but he still couldn’t help but feel attacked. He didn’t know what it was, but there was something about that question that made him feel like something that didn’t quite fit in, something other.

He noticed his hands were shaking. He stopped in the middle of the street, clutching his hands, breathing quickly. All around him people glanced at him strangely. He couldn’t shake off the feeling of the searing, judgmental eyes on him. Those eyes. They were everywhere, had been everywhere since he got to Japan. On the street, on the train, in the supermarket, everywhere he went, people stared at him, glanced at him, ogled him, gaped at him, gawked at him, peered at him. They would direct their almond-shaped black eyes and, in uniformity, stare at him as if he were at a zoo, as if he were some parasite that had come to pollute their shores. He began to feel tears pooling at the back of his eyes. He felt the eyes on him like an itch on his back, wanted to turn around and scream, to tear off his skin so as to get rid of that feeling of the eyes, the eyes, the eyes–

He stopped as he noticed a group of salarymen drunkenly walking towards his way. He saw them look at him, then burst out laughing uncontrollably. They began to try to throw their empty bottles at him, to leer at him, gape at him, gawk at him. And then, one of the salarymen uttered the cursed words, the words Leonardo had been sure that himself and all of the Japanese had been thinking since he had arrived in Japan:

“Fucking gaijin.”

It was then that Leonardo noticed that there were no cherry blossoms around him. In fact, he hadn’t seen a single cherry blossom tree in bloom since he had arrived to Japan.

He walked around for hours. Everything seemed to be tinted a dull, dirty shade of ochre. He couldn’t understand any of the signs that he read, couldn’t understand any of the Japanese that people around him spoke. His skin felt browner, his eyes wider. His head had stopped spinning and was now numb, quiet.

In defeat, he sat down on the steps of an apartment building in the middle of a busy city street. His face, which had seemed young and light a couple of hours ago, was now dark and wrinkled with shadows. He watched with empty eyes as crowds of people, all uniform in their Asianness, weaved his way around him, leaving nothing behind but smoke and the lingering scent of perfume. And as he sat there, separate, fading, watching city life pass him by, he was connected to that image of his past only through his solitude.