Kat was this adorable, soft spoken, little punk badass. She dressed largely in black, and always wore dark eyeliner. Also... she smoked. Actually, thinking about it now, that could very well be one of the reasons we became friends so quickly. There weren't many of us who did. Another one was Bill Perrin - this extraordinarily good looking trust fund sort of guy who eventually became another one of our best friends. He was all sorts of irreverent and drank almost as much as I did. Actually... maybe more.
With regard to Kat, we hit it off right away - probably because we were both different from the larger crowd of trust fund Ivy League prep kids that made up the majority of the group. She was actually not sure she even wanted to stay in Japan - apparently it had not really been her idea to come - it was her parents, and she just sort of went along with it. (Despite her badass sort of look, way more so than me at the time, Kat was more of a "go-alonger". I was definitely the alpha dog in our relationship, looking back. The idea gal, as it were).
In any case, during that first shopping trip we hit one of the covered shopping streets - one we were to end up going to all the time ("Sanjo-Dori" - dori means street). There were a couple of punk guys selling engraved jewelry at a kiosk - I expect we looked like easy marks since we were gaizin (prounounced "GAI-JEEN") - which means "foreigner". And believe me when I say that it is impossible - completely impossible - for a foreigner to ever stop being a gaizin. It is your identity in Japan - it is printed on your soul. If you are not Japanese, you are gaizin. Period.
This kiosk was like any you'd see in an American shopping mall - cheap jewelry, custom engraved. The difference being... The engraving was in Japanese. I bought a necklace with my name in Katakana (the only real way to pronounce my name in Japanese came out sounding like "Emmie" - which is how it is spelled in Katakana). Kat bought a lighter. Then the punk guys showed us a picture of a hard core punk band they were in.
School started a couple of days after that first shopping trip. From those first couple of days, Kat and I were inseparable. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we would regularly go to out to a coffee shop called "Big Fun" after school to hang out. This was a pretty typical Japanese place name. The coffee was very strong and ridiculously expensive.
A couple of weeks into my stay, I was invited overnight to Kat's homestay family for a party. Kat's host family loved me - probably because I talked. (Which Kat generally didn't do, in Japanese, very often at all. Her Japanese was weak and... she was soft spoken and, surprisingly, given her total badass look, relatively shy). The party featured sushi and sukiyaki (one of my favorite Japanese party meals). That night was actually my first introduction to the concept of karaoke. We all went out to a karaoke club - which was not a concept that had made its way to the States yet. Of course, probably anyone reading this knows now that karaoke is where they play background music and put the words up on screen and you, the customer, get to stand up and sing in front of a crowd. Unfortunately for the gaizin, the choice of Western songs was pretty limited - we usually had our pick of some Frank Sinatra favorites, and maybe a few others thrown in. I sang "The Sound of Silence" that night. Badly. I was assured, however, by 3 Japanese hosts who were paying LOTS of attention to us, that it was, in fact, a stellar performance. These gentleman spent the evening entertaining us - one even putting his cigarette out on his tongue. Another one, through pantomime, managed to convey that he wanted me to have his baby. Truly.... a unique evening. (Or so I thought... but in fact, it was one of many such outings that in fact became relatively commonplace).
Some other early recollections: we arrived in the fall of 1988. The summer Olympics were going on. I was never (in the States) particularly patriotic. However, I strongly recall the first time I heard our national anthem played on TV when an American was being medaled in the games... and the degree to which I choked up was completely surprising to me.
Another current event that was "current" while I was there was the illness of the emperor. He was expected to die relatively soon, which would signal the end of an era. Kyoto was actually the imperial seat of Japan - the palace was not too far from my school, and was, in fact, a place where we would often go walking.
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| Imperial Palace Grounds |
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| Imperial Palace Grounds |
Also within that first couple of weeks, I started to get the feeling that my host mother was trying to play matchmaker. There was a young guy who was a teacher at Yutaka's school - his name was "Hori-San". He didn't speak a lot of English and was a bit shy. He's the one I think they were trying to set me up with. Then, there was ANOTHER guy that... I think Yutaka wasn't all that crazy about. Who, of course, was the one I was interested in. His name was Murakami-san. He was also a young guy and his English was great. And... he thought I was just swell. I knew he was my type when we were listening to some stoner mix tape I had made and he leaned over and said "this is trip music!". He asked me out one day and he took me for a drive in a convertible driving through the twisty streets of Kyoto up to the top of a mountain where we could see the whole city. We listened to Janis Joplin and sang our heads off all the way to the top of the mountain where we sat and drank beers for hours. He took me out to dinner, and then gave me my choice of going to a bar afterwards, or going to a Shinto shrine. I chose... the shrine.
It was incredibly beautiful and unique.... thousands of orange "tori" gates. The gates covered a walkway that went up and up to the top of the mountain, and from the top, you could look down and see all of the lights of Kyoto.
Also sometime during that first month or so, I had my first trip to the Japanese clinic for follow up of my cyst. The whole thing was pretty nerve-racking. I had to take an unfamiliar bus to an unfamiliar stop - and recall that unfamiliar is more of a problem in a country where you CAN'T READ the signs. I remember getting off of the bus at the stop my host mother had indicated, and looking around in bafflement, trying to figure out where I needed to go. I don't have a clear recollection of how I actually ended up finding the place - but find it I did. This place seemed like more of a public health clinic than the private doctors' offices I was used to. The waiting room was mobbed with moms and (perhaps the only time I ever saw this, because normally they were good as gold), screaming Japanese kids. After a 20-30 minute wait, I got taken in - they took my blood pressure and temperature and I had the usual pleasant female exam. The doctor then wanted to do an ultrasound - somehow we managed to communicate that I did not, in fact, have the requisite full bladder. So... they gave me tea to drink until my bladder was full enough to perform the exam, and off we went to the races. At the end of the day, they decided I needed to get on the Pill, and... to come back in a month.
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