Month: May 2020

Read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.

Wolfe and I took the tram to our hotel. It was in an area of town I had never been to but was still pretty centrally located. We checked-in and were ready to get an actual meal. The yakitori place next to the hotel wouldn’t be open until dinner time, so we went back to our tram stop to get back downtown.

The tram system was a little confusing. Each stop has at least two lines (for the directions the tram travels in and sometimes transfer stations). There are different prices for different lines and destinations, but all the information is consolidated in one place and written in Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese, and Greek. It was odd that Greek was one of the languages, but apparently Hakodate has a notable Greek population, likely related to all the Greek architecture and churches in the city.

Wolfe and I were going back where we came from, so we weren’t too confused. The two Tawainese tourists at the same tram stop were not so lucky. I’ve never seen anyone look more confused than those two women looking at that sign. I wanted to explain it to them, but Wolfe suggested I keep the man-splaining to myself and let them figure it out. They didn’t appear to speak Japanese or English anyway.

The tram came, but instead of looking like a normal street car, this one looked like a boat out of a Miyazaki film. Everyone working on it was in a red uniform to complete that notion. The woman checking tickets seemed to speak every language. The tram ride was surreal. We tried to covertly take photos.

We arrived downtown and the morning market was still open. We walked around looking at food, but since Wolfe doesn’t like seafood, our options were limited. We mostly took pictures of each other in goofy poses and at those boards that have a face-hole cut out for pictures. Some old lady started tagging along with us and requesting that we be in photos with her. In my three years in Japan, that had never happened to me. Wolfe said it had happened to her at least five times in the month she had been there, probably because she was “pale as a damn ghost.”

“Well, it looks like everywhere around here is seafood. It doesn’t have the same reputation as the seafood, but the beef and dairy in Hokkaido are supposed to be good. I actually had the best burger of my life here,” I told her.

“Dude, let’s check it out. I’m pretty skeptical, though.”

“I know, you’re from Indiana and eat a lot more meat than I do, but I nearly wept when I ate it.”

“Nearly?” she chided.

So we went back to Hot Box. The same couple was working there. For a moment, it seemed like they remembered me, but then I remembered that Japan just has incredible customer service. Hot Box did not disappoint. Wolfe was securely on the team. We slammed some gin and tonics with our food and felt it was about time for a nap. Unfortunately, the magical boat tram didn’t take us back to the hotel, just a regular one.

We re-emerged from the hotel, refreshed, and took a regular tram back downtown.

“Do you like jazz?” I asked.

Wolfe started laughing uncontrollably. I didn’t see what was so funny.

“Wait, are you serious? Have you not seen Bee Movie?”

That was the same line that Jerry Seinfeld, playing a bee, used to break the ice with a woman in the movie.

We went to the jazz bar. The same dude was working there. He had a glimmer of recognition in his eyes, but he kept to himself and put on a record. We drank some martinis.

“I don’t know why I ever order these. It sounds good, and never is,” I told her.

Wolfe got a vodka-soda and I had straight vermouth, another questionable decision but it made me feel like I was in a Hemmingway novel. Then we went to Bar Boozer. Taeko was working and remembered me, but she had lost the warmth she had when we first met. We had the bar special, some weird, sweet, blue drink, and left. We walked by where the punk show had been. There was an event the night before, but it would be closed the days we planned to be in Hakodate. We decided to walk back to the hotel and try out that yakitori place next to the hotel.

Wolfe and I are always silly together. I don’t remember how, but on that walk to the hotel, I made her pee herself laughing a little bit. Probably just bringing up how confused those women had been earlier.

We ate some chicken and drank sake at the yakitori place. For being next to a hotel, it seemed like every other customer there came in every day. We got back to the hotel and had sex for the first time in a long time. We used to call it platonic cuddling. Wolfe isn’t a cuddler though, so we slept in separate beds.

In the morning, we got on the tram and went to Goryokaku, an old fort. On a map, you could see it was fort was designed as a six-pointed star. I had seen it on the map before but hadn’t made it over there.

It wasn’t as touristy or magical as we anticipated. It seemed like it was mostly an attraction for Japanese kids on school trips. We walked around for a while, and the only place we kept thinking about eating at was Lucky Perrot.

“If we go back downtown and to the boardwalk, we can go to the original one. They have this clown shit all over the place,” I explained. The ones we had seen looked like regular restaurants.

We were taking the tram back at the same time that all the high school kids were heading home, so it was packed. Everyone kept looking at Wolfe, trying to catch a glimpse of the exotic foreigner and giggling.

The same woman with the high pitch, absurdly silly voice was working at Lucky Perrot. I thought her voice was funny the first time, but Wolfe couldn’t get over how silly it was. Especially the handful of English words she had said. We wept at our table.

We continued walking around and eventually came up Hakodate Brewing. First, we just went in for drinks, but we got some appetizers and a bottle of shochu to go. We were getting hammered. Night fell and I suggested we ride the ropeway up the mountain.

The atmosphere was far too romantic. Even when we were dating, we hadn’t done anything that made me feel like we were engaged. In a way, we were engaged, though. We had agreed that we’d marry when we were 40 if we were still single. It’s hard to buy food for one and use everything, you know?

We got back to the hotel and decided to keep the romantic theme. We took a bath together. The hotel had given us some scented bath salts. We bathed Japanese style–we took little showers outside the tub and then got in just to soak. We polished off the bottle of shochu and I shared some cigarettes with her. Nothing like chain-smoking and hotboxing cigarettes in the tub. A naked woman really improves the atmosphere of any room.

The following morning, we had enough time for lunch before our train to Sapporo. We went to Hot Box one last time. I’ve still never had another burger come close to as good. And I never have fallen in love with another city since.

These days, I’m just tellin’ stories.

Read Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

Two years passed.

My friend, Wolfe, told me she would be coming to visit Japan for a month. She would spend the first half sightseeing with some people we knew from college but wanted to see me, too. We made plans to go to Hokkaido together because my place in Iwate would be on the way. She was mostly interested in going to Sapporo, but I told her I would only go if we could spend a few days in Hakodate. She obliged.

Wolfe showed up a few days before we’d leave. She knew a few of the other Americans living in my town, and they were able to get off work to spend some time with her. She met me in my office building to get the key to my apartment.

I hadn’t seen her in years. She had blue hair, more tattoos than I recall, and was showing a lot of skin for Japan.

We had tried dating for a little while in college but decided we worked better as friends. Then we started sleeping together now and then. It was simpler to just not worry about what our label should be. She would be staying with me, but I wasn’t really sure if we’d be sleeping together. This all rushed through my mind when I saw her waiting in the lobby.

“I probably shouldn’t come up, right? I’m too fucking sweaty and white and apparently scandalous for this country.”

She was right. The people at work already thought I was wild enough for going to all the underground punk shows and for wearing my orange Doctor Heming Grand’Pa baseball cap with a suit every day.

The next day, we went to a punk show, spent the next day being hungover and watching Master of None, and then it was time to go to Hokkaido.

Things would be different this time around. For one thing, I lived in the suburbs south of the city instead of in the countryside to the north. They had also completed the bullet train to Hakodate, so we would be arriving in style. Wolfe, as a visitor, was able to get a rail pass for tourism, and she had already been using it like crazy. I had to pay normal-style.

On the way to the local train station, it was hot as blazes. I had the longest beard I had ever grown at the time, and I had never trimmed it. I had my mirror-like sunglasses on.

“You look like, 80% more African American right now,” she said, laughing.

Spending time with her made me realize that other than the punks I knew, I really didn’t like any of my friends in Japan. We had known each other for about five years. We were in the same tour group when I visited the college we ended up at.

It’s hard to say what we were talking about. Just pure silliness. We got on my local train and had some time to kill before our bullet train ride. We stopped at a coffee shop in the station. When I worked on Saturdays, I would always eat breakfast there. It wasn’t particularly good, but it was cheap. And that’s what you want when you’re killing time.

I spent most of the meal trying to tell her a joke, but thinking about it was making me laugh so hard I was weeping. She took a picture of me crying in the coffee shop.

We picked up some lunch boxes and booze for the train ride. Wolfe didn’t like beer, so she got chu-hai.

“You know, Sapporo is famous for beer,” I said, opening a Sapporo on the train.

“Fuck you, dude,” she said.

Then I read Norwegian Wood until we arrived at the bullet train station. They called it Hakodate Station, but we had about an hour on local trains before we were at the real Hakodate Station.

The final leg of the local train ride was the same line I had taken camping years before. Things looked pretty much the same. I started wondering if I would actually leave Hakodate this time around.

Read Part VI.

These days, I’m just tellin’ stories.