October 23rd 2007

I’m sitting alone at a place called Milky Way. I heard they had a good salad bar, so I thought I’d check it out. There are may people in the restaurant, but everyone is spread out fairly well. It does not seem crowded.

In front of me is a glowing red neon sign reading: SALAD SOUP

I am in the smoking section, which is oddly placed right next to the salad bar. Any health code inspector in America would shit bricks if they saw a place that let people smoke cigarettes a mere yard or so from uncovered food at a buffet table. This country never ceases to bewilder me.

Sitting near me are two women, probably in their forties. They are chain smoking and talking about insurance. I can’t tell if they’re just discussing it, or if one of them is trying to sell it to the other. The conversation seems rather informal. One of the women has disproportionately thin legs. The top of her body is stout, barrel chested, like she might have trained as a competitive lumberjack. But her legs are tiny. There is no fat on them. The veins and muscles bulge through her skin. She could probably put a foot through a front door with little effort. She just got up and walked outside.

The woman she left sitting there is coughing up phlegm. I could hear her swallow the yellow goo from my booth next to hers. We both lit a cigarette at the same time. The people here seem to be of all ages and backgrounds. Groups of women in their twenties, sitting in sets of two or three, laughing about whatever. A salary man with his tie loosened, eating alone. An old couple sitting in silence. A young couple, looking high and in love. Then there’s me. Who knows why I’m here.

The stocky woman just came back inside. She’s carrying several booklets and papers. Now I can tell she’s definitely trying to sell the coughing woman insurance. I don’t know much about the world of insuring. What? there’s life insurance, home insurance, health insurance, auto insurance…probably lot more, I’m sure you can insure anything. Point is, if I were sitting in front of somebody, trying to buy insurance, I probably wouldn't be smoking. Just seems like it would work out to your advantage. Whatever. It’s none of my business. She’s signing the papers now. The deed is done.

***

Yesterday I was sitting at home after work and I got a message from Michael saying to meet he and Rich at Purnima at seven o’clock. I changed clothes and went for a quick run as the sun was setting, then had a shower and rode over to the restaurant. I was the first one there. I went inside and said hello to Baba, the owner and chef. He’s a middle aged guy from India, always wears brightly covered turbans and tunics which do little to mask the belly he’s grown from years of drinking beer. He always asks Rich and me how we stay thin. We tell him it’s all the beer and curry. This makes him laugh.

I sat down at the usual table.

“Hey Foley,” said Baba from behind the tandoori oven where he was forming a massive piece of naan.

“How’s it going tonight? Keeping busy?”

“Oh, you know it man, sometimes we slow, sometime we busy. It’s fucking cold outside but this kitchen is always hot.”

“You like it hot Baba, you’ve always said so.”

“Yeah man, that’s sure thing. Who else is coming? Any beautiful ladies?”

“Not tonight. Just Mike and Rich.”

“You’re so young man, you should always be with the ladies, you know. Before you get fat like Baba.”

“I’ll work on it. No one really piques my interest in this town. These country girls are afraid of foreigners, especially Americans. Our reputation precedes us.”

“That’s no good man. Say, if it’s just you guys tonight, we hookh later, okay?”

I glanced at the corner of the Indian restaurant towards the massive waterpipe on a shelf. Strange trinkets and talismans dangled from it, like a relic of some spiritual significance.

“Yeah, smoking the hookah sounds nice. It’s been a while. But for now, while I’m waiting, I’ll have a beer.”

“What kind beer? You want Indian beer or nama beer?”

“Nama.”

Then, switching to Japanese, Baba shouts towards the kitchen where the restaurant’s only other employee is waiting: Sumimasen, nama biiru hitotsu onagaishimasu!

I finished half the pint of beer before Rich and Mike turned up. They bought Nas along with them. She had recently gotten out of the hospital, where she was held for a week as the doctors tried to figure out why she was having piercing pains in her stomach. They let her out a week ago, after the pain died down. I was surprised to see her.

We sat talking about the weekend, all recalling hazy memories of the enkai we threw ourselves on Friday night. Historically the Iwaki Board of Education throws an enkai when the new ALTs arrive. But this year there were so many of us that they couldn’t afford it, evidently. So after two months of waiting, we took it upon ourselves to all gather for a night of booze and food. Good times were had by most. The ones that couldn’t hold their liquor might have regretted paying 3000 yen for the all-you-can eat and drink event.

After studying the menus we ordered four vegetarian curries, two of the famously giant pieces of naan and more beer.

Right as the food came out Nas grew incredibly ill. Her color faded and her usually cheery face sunk into a grimace of pain. She said that she felt like she did before she went to the hospital, which was evidently pretty shitty. She tried to stay with it, to keep herself in the conversation, but it was no use she was not doing well. She called work and said that she was sick again and that she would go back to the doctor in the morning.

She rode her bike about 30 minutes to get to the restaurant. I told her to ride to my apartment and rest there until she felt better.

“It’s just 5 minutes away,” I said. “The door is unlocked. You can rest on my couch, watch the TV. When you get there, go into my medicine cabinet and take out the orange bottle of pills. Don't take more than two.”

“What are they? Will they make it better?”

“They’re 500 milligram tabs of hydrocodone. I take them recreationally, but they’re quite powerful and good at taking away all the pain.”

“Okay, thanks James,” she said and left the restaurant, not touching her food.

Good thing we were hungry.

“Hey Rich, what are you doing over Christmas?” said Mike.

“I dunno mate. I might go back home.”

“Want to come to China with me and Nas? We’re going to book tickets at the end of the week, once we get the quotes form the travel agent.”

“What are you going to do?” Rich said.

“We’ll wander around. Probably spend some time down in Hunan. Still ironing out the details.”

“I reckon I better go back to England. I haven’t been home since I’ve been here.”

“I’ve never been to Europe,” I said. “I want to go to France.”

“Why?” said Rich. “Everyone there is French.”

“I dunno, if I had to pick a European country to visit, it would be France.”

“I’m done with English speaking countries,” he said. “I don’t want to travel to any more of them. Except maybe Antarctica. I saw an advertisement in a magazine for a job there. The best job ever. Extreme Mountaineer. Wouldn't that look awesome on your C.V.? Five years. Extreme mountaineer.”

“What would you do?”

“Be a research assistant. Climb ice covered mountains, risk life and death.”

“I heard that you can go and live in an Antarctic compound and basically get paid to hang out. I think a professor told me about. No one is in the Antarctica except for scientists. They’re all holed up in these compounds, hundreds of them. They have to have someone to cook the food and clean things up and whatnot. So you can get a service type job down there and make a killing. And where would you spend any of the money? You’d come back home with lots of cash.”

“Maybe we should go?”

“Maybe.”


We ate our dinner. Nas’s too. There were few leftovers. Afterwards Baba brought the hookah to our table, along with three cups of chai.

“Thanks,” I told Baba. “What flavor did you put in?”

“Rose. I was gonna do melon. But I think that’s too sweet with the chai.”

We started smoking.

“I’m going to Thailand in December. I’ll be there for Christmas and New Year’s.”

“You’ll like it,” said Rich. “Just stay away from Phuket town.”

“You didn’t care for Phuket?”

“No, it was a shit hole. I got there and left right away. It’s real seedy. My hostel had holes in the floor.”

“I’m flying in and out of Bangkok. I don’t know if I’ll make it down to Phuket or not. I’d like to see at least one of the islands.”

“I had a great time in Phuket when I was there,” said Mike. “My friend and I stayed in a cheap hotel and hung out on a private beach with a friend who was staying at a resort with his family. Once we went to a girly bar and saw some weird stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Girls doing crazy things with their vaginas. Like peeling bananas and smoking cigarettes. This girl would stick a cigarette inside her and smoke half of it, then pass it around the bar for the customers to smoke.”

“Did you smoke it?”

“No, I don’t smoke cigarettes.”