"After awhile, it got to be all normal. None of it seemed like crime."

I write to you from the sofa in my living room, the whiskey is still in my brain addling every word I type, the coffee in my right hand starting to straighten me out, "Gimme Shelter" playing in my ears; but I want to get it all down while I can. My alcohol-shifted perception should be there not only in the perceiving, but in the recounting too. It's just a shot away.

Earlier

I find myself waking as if from a daze, wondering where I am, what I am doing. I know the answers, but I can't piece together the things that put me here. I am in a Snack Bar (a Japanese hostess bar), drinking whiskey with the man that brought me dinner, but who I know of only as "The Doctor". To my right sits Yuki-chan, as 14 year old second year student, and between her and the man is her mum, the same woman that came onto me in March when we met at a dinner party. I am singing My Way by Sinatra, badly, and stealing gulps of whiskey while I pretend I understand even a tiny, elementary portion of the Japanese that is being spoken around the table. How did I get here you ask? I am asking myself that same question. Let's go back to the beginning.

The Beginning

Four weeks ago, during the national holiday, I met two of my students playing in the park near my house. One of them picked flowers from her grandmothers garden and gave them to me as a present (my first flowers given from a girl?), and the other told me about her childhood. She had lived in Milton Keynes (poor soul) for 5 years (dear God, was there no limit to the cruelty!?) and that was why her English was so good. She hadn't muttered a word to me for the whole previous year, and so the whole thing came as a mild surprise. It turned out that she lives in the house right behind mine, and following that we quickly became friends. She came round once a week or so, to drink tea and chat, and we watched anime together (Japanese language for her, English subs for me). Initially I was worried about this - being alone, in my house, with a 14 year old girl - but Japan has a different attitude to that kind of thing. Her mother and her grandparents both knew she was here, they lived only 20 seconds walk way, and I was a respected member of the community because I was a teacher.
Two weeks ago I was invited to her house for dinner. Most of the conversation was in Japanese, and I understood barely any of it (retrospect tells me that I shouldn't expect to know words like "diabetes" and "aubergine", but that didn't make it any easier then) but I powered through and they seemed happy enough to have me, if not for me charming wit and occasional joke in Japanese, then atleast for my ability to drink more alcohol than any standard Japanese alcholic can drink and not show the slightest sign of inebriation. A dinner of fish, vegetables and sake left me sated and drunk, but still with decent-sized concern that I was doing all of this infront of a 14 year old school student who I would be teaching for period 4 on thursday. I told her Grandparents that I wasn't sure about drinking infront of a student, and they just laughed, made me drink more, and then went back to practicing their new found English words ('drunk' and 'hung over'). Yuki was the only English speaker there other than me and we got along well, talking about school and England, and I think she enjoyed the change of having someone at dinner that wasn't one of her family.

A week later finds me there again, this time being pushed even further on the alchohol and enjoying sushi, seaweed and more beer than a normal drunk man can keep track of. After getting a little bladdered and doing a decent job of pretending to understand, I adjurned to my apartment and made a phone call, following which I made the 30 minute drunk-assed march through town to Andy's house, and then proceeded to watch Flight Plan, a mistake so great in magnitude that it made the 3/4 of a bottle of red I drunk seem like a mild accident.

So where are we now readers? Well, I am still drunk. I have been pounding this out for 25 mins, but I won't quit now, I can't. The longer I leave it, the more diluted the experience becomes. I wouldn't dream of trying to record the truth, because we all know by now that the truth is just a creation of words and man, not something that can ever be seen or described, and to be quite frank, i've got more than enough doubts about it's two creators as it is.

Let's skip forward.

The Present Day

I find my phone ringing, a name I know but can't remember - my phone tells me it's a student of mine, but why would I give my phone number to a student? - I answer and I'm invited to dinner. She displays more confidence on the phone that many Japanese English teachers that I know. I agree to sushi and ask no more details, just glad that I am being thought of. When I was dining with Yuki-chan and her family last time, I actually felt like I was part of a family again - her mother, two grandparents and younger brother were there. She was trying to stop her brother playing computer games at the table, her grandfather was far past drunk already and ranting about the differenced between Japanese belly-buttons and American ones, and I felt like I had somewhere I could be a part of - illusional and illusive I know, but it felt tangible, even if just for an instant.
We went to a secret sushi shop in my village - that shop front contained no name or logo, no indication that beyond the door was anything at all, and yet there it was, a delicious sushi restaurant right in my village. All four of us sat down and shortly later that was where I met him, The Doctor. He joined us a littile late and introduced himself to me by name, but I had no indication what his relationship was to this family. He knew me, a local Junior High School teacher, with no problem at all, but his true identity was to remain secret for the rest of the evening. Only 2 hours later did I manage to piece together that he was a doctor, and that still stands as an educated guest.
The sashimi was incredible (sliced, raw fish) - it was truely a meal of epic proportions. Each plate of sashimi came with it's own specific soy dip, and a special plate depicting the fish that I was eating was brought to me so that I could see exacly what part I was eating at any one time. The meal concluded with grilled leek and tuna fish strips grilled on skewers - I can't remember the last time I tasted something so delicious.
After this, we got the bill and began to make our way back. A superb end to a wonderful evening, I felt. He was clearly an interesting man, and the fatherly position he wore could be because of his relationship with the girls mother, or a side-affect of his high salary and valuable job - who could say.
But before I could congratulate myself on an awesome dinner in Japanese company past without a single enbarassing incident, I found us walking into a brightly lit door that I know well because I walk past it to school every day. And so it was that I found myself in my first Japanese hostess bar.

A brief interlude

I'm going to make myself a coffee, but please feel free to take this time to make yourself a bevearage of your choice and join us when you're ready. The intermission will be about 5 mins and there will be an announcement in the foyer for those of you getting refreshments.

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My hands are starting to steady, I'm beginning to think about the words I type - there isn't much time left before I'm completely sober, so we should be quick while we still can.

The Hostess Bar

The decor was almost entirely beige, with hints of pink here and there. Constant muzak seeped from the background care of the karaoke machine (only later would I realise the horror this was going to cause), and the hostess was about 42 years old, with sagging skin and the 26" standard-issue waist of a Japanese woman. The whiskey came quick and the mics followed shortly, and I became accutely aware of just what was about to happen.
I leaned over and whispered to Yuki: "This is a secret" I told her, "just between you and me." She laughed, to let me know that she understood, and then it began.
"On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair...".
Nothing could take it back now, the worst part was over.

What followed was a pleasant evening of singing and misunderstood conversation, with a 1/3 of a bottle of whiskey for me and the same for him. To Yuki: "Do you have English class tomorrow?" I would ask - she looked bored, you see. "Yes, but I don't like English class. It's too easy." She asked me if I liked my job, and I tried to tell her that I loved teaching children because they had an innocence that reminded me of myself when I was her age. The dictionary helped, but the whiskey didn't. Only in Japan would this actually be considered a responsible and community-orientated way to spend your sunday night I thought. Good bless this country.
We were all driven home by her mother, who had put away a pleasant 3 pints and 2 cups of sake throughout the evening (a lot, considering that the maximum level of alchol intoxication permited in Japan before driving is zero, and that being caught can mean a stiff prison sentence) but the fact that it was only 1min 30sec by car eased my conscience enough to make the drive comfortable (that or the whiskey, I forget which). We arrived at my house and all deboarded, and I began to wonder what the mystery-stranger was going to do to get home - the location we had stopped at was fine for me, Yuki and her mother, but how was he going to get home? Was he sleeping there? If so, he can't leave his car here, in the middle of the road. He had drunk more than me and was in twice the state I was (watching him move from the passenger seat to the drivers seat was a comedy classic worthy of Laurel and Hardy themselves), so what was he going to do? While I considered these options and was making my goodbyes, I thought I would investigate the make and model of the car. The inside had been beautiful and the ride as smooth as my barely-stubbled cheeks, so my curiousity had become piqued. Before I could take it all in, he shook my hand one last time and got into the drivers seat. My last shot of him was his hand on the wheel of the navy blue Jaguar XJR taking off with a sublimey smooth acceleration into the distance, following the road round the bend at the factory and off into the night, silent as the stars themselves.

And that concludes my evening. It's 23:24 by GMT+9 and almost time for my bed, so I leave you with this - I got drunk with a 14 year old girl, sang The Eagles, watched a man barely able to walk drive a £40,000 car away and ate stingray, all in one night.

"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a high school teacher."