Work in Japan

I arrived in Otsuka station and waited with my bags beside the boiled octopus tentacle stall. I was hungry but somehow found it in me to resist the temptation. A cruel wind kicked in and I turned up my collar and sat on my luggage. The cold didn’t seem to bother the Japanese schoolgirls in mini skirts though. They chatted away on each corner with their mobile phones, their faces displaying an array of pre-programmed expressions.

Identical salarymen scurried to and fro like ants and tried to avoid the massagee girls handing out their promotional flyers. One of them in a sports jacket saw me beside my bags and decided to make her pitch:

“You want fuck? 10,000 yen.”

I shuddered and wondered why I wasn’t on a beach somewhere. Tokyo gets about as cold as London or Boston and it occurred to me that it wasn’t the ideal season to be working in the street

. Like almost every other gaijin here, I had come to Japan to make money. The only people not looking for fat cash are the odd karate or calligraphy fanatic. Through the 90’s Japan was something of a California for the backpacker rice bowl refugees of Asia who needed to replenish their funds. There was a time when the Japanese economy was literally spilling over and travellers arrived from the world over to scoop up what they could.

People taught English or juggled in the squares or sold trinkets in the street for absurd prices. It was an era when you could find electric guitars left in the trash in perfectly good condition - but last year’s model. The Japanese took pity on all these foreign beggars who arrived with their non-designer clothing. Why some of them didn’t even own their own computer! It was a time when you had to be talented not to make money.

Two friends of mine from Goa, Anna and Pete, told me how they had made their season’s fortune. Anna worked in a hostess club – a very Japanese phenomenon where businessmen pay large amounts of money to have girls light their cigars and laugh at their puerile jokes. They weren’t allowed to touch the girls but they take a masochistic thrill of sitting next to a beautiful woman all night. And if she’s a foreign and blonde, well…

Pete walked the streets with his guitar looking for somewhere he could busk.

“I was moved on by the yakuza, the Israeli mafia, the Nigerian mafia and even some guy who claimed to be from the Irish mafia. Finally I ended up singing “Michelle” and “Yesterday” 100 times a day in the metro.”

“We were the Beggar and the Whore.” Anna laughed.

I remembered also Marianna, my friend from Berlin who had worked a few seasons in the hostess clubs of Tokyo. One businessman fell in love with her and continued to send her money for long after wherever she went in the world.

“I finally felt too guilty to accept any more money.” She explained with an awkward smile. “I mean, he had a wife and a kid of his own and we never did anything more than hold hands together.”

The good old days. Any mathamatician will tell you though that unlimited growth is impossible. The Japanese economy had been out of control for a long time but no one in the government wanted to lose face by admitting it. The heart attack arrived in stages and though the country survived the shock it was downhill from there.

There were still pickings to be had, particularly for the hostesses but the angles had grown slimmer with the years. To squeeze any more blood out of the Japanese cherry stone you really had to have your act together. To anyone acquainted with how they do business it will come to no surprise to find the Israelis at the top of the food chain. Their business dealings ranged from drugs to stolen goods but mostly they ran the street trading racket.

In the old days anyone could just turn up and set up shop in the street with whatever stock they’d bought cheap in Thailand or India. Granted, they’d pay whatever the yakuza asked of them when a representative came around but there was more than enough money for everyone. These days the Israelis have sewn up the choice spots in almost all of the main cities and towns in Japan. The Israeli bosses buy the rights to certain locations from the yakuza and then they bring Israelis to come and work for them. The boss gives the worker the pitch, the merchandise, security back up and a brief lesson in Japanese and the art of selling. The worker is then left to do his best to flog the trinkets of the day and he keeps 40% of what he sells. After costs.

I wasn’t Jewish but it made the boss, Sagi, laugh that I could speak some Hebrew.

“You were 8 months in Israel?” He asked me when I called from Korea. “Then you can sell in Japan no problem.”