waiting for him on the Tokyo end, advised me to have another beer—at
least. "Or three, mate. Nothing to do but bloody sleep." Yeah, right, I
thought. Got any Demerol?
As a back-up, I had acquired a few nicotine patches. I rolled up my left
sleeve and slapped one directly over a vein, hoping for the best as they
sounded final boarding.
The flight was endless. The in-flight movie was a slight improvement
over looking out the window: a Japanese film about, as best as I could
gather, fly-fishing. Guys standing around in waders, philosophizing
about carp in a language I couldn't understand, had a pleasantly
somnolent effect and I managed, with the help of many more beers, to
pass out for a few hours.
I should point out, by the way, that I know nothing about Japan. Oh, sure,
I've seen The Seven Samurai and Rashomon and Yojimbo and the
Kurosawa policiers, and Sonny Chiba and Gidrah versus Mecha-
Godzilla for that matter, but I was in every significant way ignorant of
all things Japanese. I knew only enough about Japanese culture and
history to know that I knew nothing. I spoke not a word of Japanese. I
had, with only a week's warning before my trip, not even acquired a
guidebook or a street map for the city of Tokyo. But I did like sushi and
sashimi.
The city of Tokyo is an amazing sprawl—something out of William
Gibson or Philip Dick—seeming to go on forever. The bus from the
airport wound over bridges, down through tunnels, up fly-overs that
wrapped around the upper floors of apartment and office buildings. I
passed canals, industrial parks, factories, residential areas, business
districts, carp ponds, austere temples, indoor ski slopes, rooftop driving
ranges. As I got closer to my destination, it was getting dark, with giant,
screaming video screens advertising beverages and cellphones and
recording artists, garish signs in English and Japanese, lines of cars,