Japanese Culture and Money

My savings were beginning to pile up and I wore them all in a secret money belt around my waist as I didn’t know where else to keep it.

“You can leave it with me and Sagi to look after.” Dudu kindly suggested. Right. I knew they wouldn’t exactly steal it but for sure they could come up with some interesting fines and deductions if I was ever late or didn’t sell enough.

Then one day I moved to another Gaijin-house and for some reason my money belt was stashed in a shoulder bag that I always carried to work with me. I had already been set up for two hours when I realised that my bag was no where in sight. I probably left it in the van when Dudu dropped me off. I called up and he went to check. No. It wasn’t there.

It was like the sky had fallen on my head. Three months of enslaving myself to the drunken caprices of hung up salarymen for nothing. Thousands of hours shuddering in the cold and rain and worrying about the next sale. All gone in the time it took me to lose a bag with $3500 inside.

It was pointless but anyway I ran back to where Dudu had dropped me off, leaving the stall in the hands of a massagee girl. My stomach pitted up before I rounded the corner and saw, leaning against the wall, my grey shoulder bag exactly where I’d left it two and a half hours before. All the money was there and I guess no one thought anyone would leave something of value inside a bag that wasn’t made by Louis Vitton.

The Japanese were like that. They followed rules. However easy it might be to steal something they didn’t because it would involve things like free will, spontaneity and opportunism. For this painfully shy people the best policy was to follow the herd and hope no one noticed them. They even walked in a loose formation with all the other commuters in the street. Cut across in a zig-zag formation and the sidewalk would collapse in social chaos.

I forget the word but there’s a compliment in Japanese that translates as ‘normal’. ‘Ooh, Suki! I love your new coat – it’s so normal! You’ll fit right in with everyone else!’

If you were ever one cent short at the supermarket no one thought to just forget the difference. The guy at the till would just stare at you like a Dalek gone into self-destruct mode at the sight of a mirror. Just entering the local 7-11 got me pissed in the end as the assistants went into the memorised litany of greetings, fawning, gratitude and farewells. They kept up the speel without even meeting your eye and I just wanted to shake them by the collar and get them to say something of their own. If only a ‘hi, how are you?’

One of the funniest things was to watch how they met and parted in the street. Two girls who hadn’t seen each other in a while would run up to each other like they were about to launch into a big hug.

“Yuki!”

“Yoko!”

But when they were about a metre away they’d both pull up short and wave at each other frantically. When they parted it would become a contest to see who would be the person to give the last bow. I’ve seen women backing away as far as 50 metres apart still jerking the chin slightly as they look back.

In the Great Railway Bazaar Paul Theroux commented:

“The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.” That sounded on cue and it was clear that the Japanese learnt long ago that to display emotion might reveal their individuality – a peril to be avoided at all costs. The result is the poker face that all Japanese wear and why you could never really tell if someone was your friend. They were always displaying simulated emotion, playing an act. It was seen as a good thing to role play according to what the other party might expect of you.

Cell phones probably represent the highest ideal of Japanese communication. The phone becomes a conduit for reducing the life to the certainties of ones and zeros on a handheld interaction device. Everywhere people talked on their phones or pushed the buttons as they walked down the street.

“They invent things to make themselves more lonely!” Dudu laughed.

In the new Gaijin-house where I spent my last month I was sharing a room with just one guy, Yaron. He was also one of Sagi’s workers but though he had been in Japan a little longer than me he had never learnt to sell. After three months he was only afew hundred dollars up from when he started. Then one day he came home having sold three watches and a big grin was plastered across his face. I was happy for him until he learnt the next morning that he’d been paid with fake yen. Instead of the $120 he thought he’d made, he had to pay Sagi back $150 for the cost price of the watches. It was nothing short of tragic.

The other residents were mostly Nigerian. They came in on student visas and then hooked up with their own mafia. Many Nigerians sold drugs robbed houses or promoted strip joints but these guys were working with hip-hop clothing. Hip-hop is big in Japan and the youth have their own outfits who copy all the style and body language of the States. All the Nigerians had to do was walk up to a group of teenagers wearing the gear and yell:

“Yo, bro! West coast! West coast!” With all the appropriate shakes of the wrist and secret handshakes.

“Sugoi!” The kids cried, excited about meeting a real black man. Then he’d take them to a clothing store and took his commission on whatever they bought.

The last nationality in the house was a Nepalese chef called Krishna. He earned fairly good money when he could get it together to work but always blew his money before he could send any back home. Even 10% of what he made would have been a fortune back in Nepal but he was too drunk most of the time to do the maths. If he had just saved up for 6 months he could have gone home and bought a restaurant of his own.

I sold him a watch while he was drunk one morning and felt like shit about it for weeks. He bought it as a present for a Japanese girl he liked but she eventually gave it back as she had no interest in him whatsoever. I had fallen so low that I even profited on sad luck cases like this.

My French girlfriend got back in touch and we arranged to meet in Thailand in a fortnight’s time. I left Japan $3000 richer than when I arrived but much poorer in spirit. I had learnt to lie, manipulate, flatter and cheat. I no longer felt any guilt about over-charging and I took every penny I could. I spent every spare moment doing calculations in my head as to how much money I was making and how long it would last me. The hitchhiking hippy I used to be seemed so distant. This isn’t happening, was my mantra; this isn’t real.

In the nomadic lifestyle sometimes your hand is forced. You do what you have to do until better times come along. I made my money but it took me months to shed the opportunistic mentality I’d acquired on the basta. I came, I saw, I sold imitation goods.

I left Tokyo for dust. I wouldn’t miss the antlike businessmen or the girls with their bleached hair and sun-bed baked skin. I’d lined the pockets of my Israeli boss and I was barely on speaking terms with Dudu. The winter had been bitterly cold and I had survived on noodles and beer for too long. I was out of there. History.

I only regret that I never went back to the old Gaijin-house to bust up the coin-operated shower. I reckoned the landlords owed me at least $60 in loose change.