Blow Job Bars and Fake Rolexes

I was making good money and collecting good stories but at the total expense of my social life. This was practically the first time in my life that I had ever worked and I ended up doing 11 hours a day on average, 85 days out of 90. I closed up at a freezing 2pm every day and the Metro was already closed so there was no possibility of going anywhere. It also seemed stupid to go and out spend what I’d worked so hard to get. A night out might only be $30 or $40 but there were days when I didn’t make that much. In the end my idea of a good time was sharing a few cans of beer in a doorway somewhere with one of the Westerners from the Gaijin-house.

Female company would have been fantastic but then I didn’t relish taking a girl to my bunk bed even if I had managed to bribe everyone else to take a walk. In any case my girlfriend in France kept promising to come and like a fool I took her at her word. I gave up on her about ten times but then always a phone call would come out of the blue and my love would somehow resurrect itself. I’d wait hopefully for days but then I’d hear nothing from her until I got through on the phone to discover there had been a hitch. I spent at least $150 on truncated phone calls that winter.

It was strange to be so sexually frustrated on a street where there was so much sex for sale. Apart from the hostess clubs where only flirtation was on offer, there were the massagee girls and a whole string of blow job bars. Prostitution is an integral part of Japanese society but is very segregated. In one place you might be allowed a hand job. In another you received a blow job from a girl while you sat at the bar. In another full intercourse was part of the menu and the woman in question still called the customer ‘sir’ throughout. If you were looking for a long term escort then there were the schoolgirls and university students who wanted all kinds of cell phone accessories and Gucci handbags that they couldn’t afford…

Every night salarymen stumbled out of the hostess clubs having just paid $500 just to drink a couple of glasses of saki with a few simpering girls. The girls concerned and the Mama-san would wave at the door until he was out of sight and probably call him once he was home with his wife to thank him for coming. But before that he’d be all geared up and headed to the blow job bars to unwind. There a Thai or Phillipine girl came along to give them relief in the darkness and he’s amble back along the street drunk as a coot an hour later. They might be attracted by all the shiny things on my stall but I’d generally have to catch them before they fell headlong into the tables.

I once saw a tense-looking salaryman so mindlessly drunk that he walked in circle for around ten minutes. He collided with walls, lamp posts and cars but never made a sound of discomfort. Throughout the entire episode though he never once made any sign of loosening his grip on his suitcase.

On slow nights the touts and the hostesses and the massagee girls all stood around and complained about how cold it was.

“Where do you suppose you rank in the social order?” A friend asked me one day. “Somewhere between the touts and the whores?”

It was educational to work on the street. You got to learn the regulars and the dynamics of interaction between the various classes. I got big kicks out of watching the evangelical scientologist from Canada who tried at least 200 times a day to convert the young Japanese. He spoke fluent Japanese and would follow them 100 metres down the street as they bowed manically to effect a polite escape.

But then I wouldn’t sell anything for a few days and my spirits flopped like cooked noodles. I could just stand by my stall and cry for hours straight unable to understand how I had come to be so far fro myself. When you’re selling it feels like the easiest job in the world; people just walked up to you and gave you wads of cash in exchange for trinkets. I felt like Colombus buying America with beads.

But when you hit a barren patch you exude failure like a body odour. The customers begin to haggle, hesitate and finally fall back with apologies and bows. You hate yourself for having come down to this: standing in the street with fake Rolex watches in your coat pockets.

I had one day when the wind blew over my tables three times, sending me scrambling in the gutter to collect tumbling silver rings. It was as cold as a motherfucker and no one even looked in my direction all day. A light rain began to fall and I had to pull out the plastic covers to protect the merchandise. I managed to do this, getting pretty damp in the process when a cop turned up who spoke English. He warned me that I had better not be there when he returned in ten minutes time. I waited for fifteen and then opened up again. Midnight came and went and I was just about giving up on life when a drunk businessman came by and asked for a watch half price. That was all I needed. A clown.

Then something happened. He caught sight of the special quality Rolex Daytona watch and pulled out $300 for it. With the Rolex on his wrist he suddenly fell in love with the entire stall and in the space of five minutes he spent $900 all told. Only $270 of that ended up in my pocket but in that moment I decided to see my three months out in Tokyo.