Steven Herman - Tokyo Pink Guide

HAPPY TALK

SEX:
THE INTERNATIONAL
LANGUAGE

P art of the fantasy of the adolescent male in becoming a famous rock star or an all-star lineman are the fringe benefits, namely, the groupies. Unfortunately, few of us have the talent or the perseverance to make it to the big leagues. Reality dawns upon us as we finish school. We realize our destiny will have nothing to do with fancy guitar chords or scoring the goal that wins the World Cup. We suddenly wake up one morning realizing that we are accountants or software engineers, toiling in obscurity. Never will we enjoy, as Kiss did, the legion of pubescent plaster casters. Never will we find outside the locker room a league of women following us around from city to city who know our award-winning statistics and are eager to show us theirs. We are left to pursue the women who want us for just what we are or what we have.

A lot of us don't have that much to offer to the women who prefer material thingsno fancy sports cars, no plush lodge in the mountains, no platinum cards. It sometimes can be slim pickings. Some of us, because of professional opportunity or desperation, trudge off to Japan and find ourselves in what we initially perceive to be one of the least glamorous jobs in the worldEnglish teaching. The uninitiated are stunned. They stand before a class of beautiful but mute young women. The tutorial seems to last for an eternity. After a few months, the newly arrived Brit or American has become desperate. There seems to be not an iota of progress.

As usual, one day after class, Kimiko, a petite twenty-year-old who works part time in a flower shop, is at the sensei's desk asking, it seems, the same question for the twentieth time about conjugating a particular verb. Today she seems particularly flustered. "Jeemu-sensei, I need extra help I sink," she says. Did she just ever so slightly brush her breasts up against my side, Jim says to himself. He thinks, maybe it is just his vivid imagination conspiring with his raging hormones. After all, he hasn't gotten laid since he's been here. How do you ask out these beautiful nubile girls, he wonders. "Well Kimiko I think it's a left brain, right brain problem. You know English apparently must be learned from the other side of your brain." Jim has seen this in various books he is reading in a desperate attempt to find out why his class can't learn. Jim is about to conclude perhaps he is just a failure as a language teacher, something that might be connected to the fact that the only related training he ever had for this job was a freshman college class in public speaking. "Jeemu you are a bery good teacher. I sink if we spend more time together I will make fast progress more." She is rubbing up against him! He tries to correct her grammar. "You will progress more fast, uh, I mean, you faster more progress, yes." Kimiko is looking up at him and smiling. Jim may be a little rattled but he's no idiot. He knows he is being flashed an international signal. "Kimiko, would you like to have coffee or something at a kissaten? I mean, uh, to discuss this further?" Kimiko nods her head ever so slightly and their eyes make contact for a brief instant. Jim will soon realize he will never have a problem getting laid in Japan again. He will quickly discover that he has one of the world's greatest jobshe is getting paid to pick up girls.

Tony Watson (not his real name) has been teaching English in Tokyo since before most of his current students were born. Although he speaks quite fluent Japanese, he has never lost his Tennessee drawl in English and his taste for Jack Daniels whiskey. One night, mixing the whiskey and water in one of his favorite Shibuya hangouts, we talk about his experiences. Tony is currently living with a mid-twenties Japanese lady who is one of the most beautiful and sexy women I have ever seen. He's left her at home tonight to speak frankly. "I'd have to be an idiot to go back to the States," the balding, sandy-haired American says, clinking another ice cube into his glass. "I realized that in my prime I never would have been able to get, let alone find, the types of girls that are here." And things have gotten better, not worse, as Tony has gotten older. "Well, first of all, the girls are more beautiful than they used to be. They have better legs. Because of the diet and all, nowadays you don't see as many daikon ashi (stumpy fat legs) girls. Take a stroll through Roppongi, half the girls are bodicon, wearing scanty body-hugging outfits and they look terrific. I'm not a young man anymore but I've got the routine down. I could probably pick up a girl in ten minutes in Roppongi if I wanted to." In a nutshell, Tony discovered a long time ago that just being an English teacher qualifies him to have groupies. "Yeh, what a great way to go through life," he says laughing in between puffs on a Marlboro. "No, I'll never go back. I'm going to die a happy man here."