Yuji

he's slender, and dressed fashionably in a subtly embroidered white shirt and lean jeans, a fur-lined leather jacket and black boots, amber sunglasses. his manner is easy-going, his mind-set is tolerant. he is probably my favorite cousin, and anne agrees with me.

we meet, the thee of us, in Kichijoji, a hip young neighborhood in western Tokyo which bears a lot of resemblance to my other favorite neighborhood, Shimokitazawa.

what do you want to do? he says. i mention that i'm a little hungry. in fact i am starving. anne concurs, so he takes us to a little cafe that serves pan-asian fusion stuff, for very reasonable prices. we sit upstairs at a plain, sunny table and share a variety of dishes. he mentions that he likes to come here, sometimes with his laptop to work, sometimes just to read a book. living spaces are so constrained in the city that the neighborhood becomes your living room.

after lunch, he asks again, so, what do you feel like doing? anything, we say. i mention i want to check out video games boutiques. he laughs. you really like video games, don't you? i knew that about you, but you really like them. anne says that she wants yuji to pretend he has a day to himself, by himself. what kinds of things does he like to do? i think we are both curious about young japanese lifestyles.

we wander through covered arcades. i am pleased that i get to introduce anne to the multitude of sock choices available in japan. we check out the japanese new releases for games, and various shops around the town. yuji picks up a guide. i tease him - how long have you been living in this neighborhood? and you need a guide?

but anne quickly points out he doesn't usually have time to wander around and discover hidden restaurants and specialty shops. although he suggests we have coffee, a snack, and asks if we'd like to have something japanesey - a little taste of the japanese culture. of course we would!

we descend to a tasteful basement restaurant fitted with dark wood and flattering lighting. the menu features european-style desserts and snacks with japanese ingredients, like matcha milkshakes, puddings, and chiffon cakes. i order lightly fried bread dusted with kinako and drizzled with honey, served with black sesame seed ice cream. utterly delectable. anne has a kinako milkshake, while yuji goes for the green tea chiffon cake.

as we eat, slowly so as to savor the novel blend of flavors, i ask yuji about japan's current situation and what he feels about it. the older generation often criticizes those of yuji's generation for being apathetic. but he's 31, no longer a kid. the kids, in the view of the elders, are much worse - they are maligned as being slackers, parasites, petty criminals - aimless and amoral, interested only in instant gratification. yuji, although he is older than the current evil youth, went through his own phases of rebellion. he wore his hair long, he declared he wanted to be a musician, he failed his college entrance exams, he lived at home and worked part-time and questioned me about drugs. now he is, by his parents' standards, successful: a graduate of a decent university, with a 12-hour-a-day job that requires him to wear a suit. his guitar collects dust.

"After the war," he says, sipping his tea, "Japanese focused on building up the economy, but not themselves. They lost track of culture, of goals. Now, the economic success is empty, and we're lost. We have to build a society of individuals."

he says he was frustrated by large corporate business structure. he works for his friends, who've founded a start-up. it's a tiny company by japanese standards, merely a dozen or so people, all under forty years old. hence his job is more satisfying than others he's had, although it still deprives him of sleep on a regular basis. i remember visiting him last spring, and spending an evening with him that was interrupted every half an hour by a phone call from work.

we have a lot to think about, but the afternoon is still bright and warm. we go to the park.

(we have the same eyes)

there are a lot of people out, walking their well-groomed dogs, or holding hands, or letting their children roam free. it's pleasant. i feel as if i am participating in a part of japanese culture, taking a stroll along the lake with my family, along with several hundred other people.

we stop by a temple. my cousin is a buddhist - he can read the sutras (in chinese). he instructs us to wash our hands, step up to the front and ring the bell. "because they are asleep," he says with a smile, "and you have to wake them up." anne swings the rope hard to hit the gong, and i press my hands together and bow my head but my mind is empty. i am wondering what i should pray for - but there are people behind me, waiting their turn. a young man and woman - she has her hand on her belly. she smiles. i wonder if she is recently pregnant, or praying to be.

we walk up the stairs, out of the park. i said earlier than i wanted to see yuji's apartment. i'm still stuck on the idea of investigating contemporary japanese life for someone like yuji - someone like me. what would life be like if i were a single japanese woman living on my own? what might my circumstances be? what might i do for fun? what would i think about? what would my apartment look like?

he lives on the ground floor of a mansion - a concrete collection of studio apartments. it is predictably tiny, with a kitchenette barely able to heat water and make toast. he uses an electric kettle to make tea for us. i put my bag on the floor, anne takes what she calls "the big boss chair" - a rather aggressively ergonomic black executive chair. i am at a loss. it seems somehow prying to sit on his bed, as it is laden with piles of folded clothing. but he indicates it and says, "please, sit down."

his book shelf reveals his love for art, his passion for manga, and his business ambitions. all of Ryu Murakami's works, including volumes of Japan Mail Media, and some computer science texts, as well. i flip through Akira, but it looks too hard. and besides, i've seen the movie too many times. i glance to my right, and notice with a shock that through the open sliding door of his closet i can see a row of identical navy blue suits - at least a dozen. one more hangs over his bed. i started writing a novel recently about a young japanese man who lives in a bachelor apartment and keeps a suit over the head of his bed. suddenly i am rather depressed. the reality of yuji's life just hit me with the all the force of an army of navy blue suits.

i feel incredibly sleepy - the legacy of jet lag, i guess. i put my head down on a pile of sweaters and scarves. yuji says i can stretch out and take a nap if i want, but i say i am comfortable curled up tight in a little ball. he says okay, go ahead and take a nap. in a very brotherly gesture, he arranges his jacket over me to keep me warm.

he and anne talk. i drift away.

i wake up with a start half an hour later when i hear the words "kimchee nabe". it sounds like a fantastic idea - suddenly i am starving. "yes, let's go!" i say. we get our coats.

yuji takes us then to the third delicious restaurant of the day - a marvelous korean food place on the third floor. the decorations are gorgeous and festive, playing on the colors of green, red, pink, and orange. the pillows are woven silk, and every table has on it a little wooden box inlaid with silkscreened plastic that contains pretty silvery metal spoons and chopsticks.

the food is incredibly good, although they don't bring out the mountains of condiments that they do in korean restaurants in South Korea - or even in the States, for that matter. why is it that in Japan you have to ask for kimchee? it seems unkorean, somehow. and yet the food was spectacular, and just the thing for a chilly winter night.

i feel a little bad that we have taken up so much of his time - time he probably would otherwise have spent working. he seems tired. he walks us to the train station - even onto the platform, although i assure him i know which train to take. he waves goodbye and smiles as our train pulls away.

anne turns to me and puts her hand over her heart. "I really like yuji."

i feel the same way. but i wonder about the life he's chosen for himself - or maybe that has chosen him.

the next day i write him an email thanking him for spending time with us. i try to put into words how much it meant to me, but i don't know if it translates well. japanese is not, in my view, a particularly warm language. but i write at the very end, in a way that is meant to be flippant but serious -

"take care, and remember:

work =/= life

but i don't even know, myself, how true that is.

flirt

another dream of sexuality unbound.

i am living in a large, beautiful house with a handful of men. it's like some sort of sitcom, "Four Guys and a Model" - for in my dream i am stunningly attractive.

i wake up one morning, possibly after a party, and i put on a very short skirt and a clingy strappy tank top. i walk down to the large, open kitchen, which has a huge window that faces the sea. i am in search of juice, i am hung over.

one of my roommates expresses admiration for the top i'm wearing. it's such great fabric, he says, staring at my tits. i smile coquettishly. yes it is - would you like to touch it? he gingerly touches my side. i squirm so that his hand brushes my breast. i reach down suddenly and feel his erection through is pants. i laugh and move out of his reach to open the refrigerater.

later there is a brief scene co-starring an ex-boyfriend, in which he giggles and acts silly as i remove my underwear, kick it aside, and try to climb on top of him. he's acting too goofy, it's putting me off, but i try rubbing his chest with my hands and lying half on top of him on a couch, letting him feel my weight and the way my breasts are crushed against his ribms.

later, Catherine Zeta Jones enters the scene as my best buddy. i make her a cocktail for breakfast. she is dressed like me, sexily and skimpily. i light a cigarette, take my cocktail in my other hand, and suggest we go for a walk.

we saunter out into the sunny summer day. men look at us, of course, openly and unabashedly. i a loving it. in my sunglasses i look so cool.

but then we pass by another girl, in a swimsuit, wearing similar sunglasses and smoking, and taking these tiny mincing little steps, and suddenly i realize how much i might look like her, and i don't feel so cool anymore.

i wake up.

The Scents of Times Past

the fashion section of the nytimes reports that perfume customers are nostalgic for the rich, sensual frangrances of their grandmothers' boudoirs. i remember my fascination with my mother's prized bottle of Chanel No. 5, the only scent she ever wore (and that, only on rare occassions). it was like a magical philtre, the little square-cut glass bottle. i would furtively undo the old-fashioned stopper and breathe in the scent - light and powdery at first, but after a moment slightly like rubbing alchohol, probably because my mother kept it for far too long. to me it was a symbol of ultimate glamour.

later on in life i somehow discovered Guerlain's Shalimar, a musky exotic heady scent totally inappropriate for a teenager. i loved it. i don't think i ever wore it - i don't think i even owned it. i just liked to smell it, and let it intoxicate me, transporting me to a satin-lined opium den perhaps where women in silk pajamas and long hair undone from elegant chignons lounged on Turkish embroidered pillows and puffed long slim strands of smoke up towards the ornately carved ceiling.

i dated a boy when i was 21 who wore Armani - i think it was just "Armani pour Homme". a sweetly masculine scent, leather and wood, like a warm male body after sex. i of course came to associate the scent with lust. we had a passionate affair but we split up in three months very amicably. one morning i was working in the cafe when i was suddenly overcome by a giddy feeling of sensual excitement. a bland lawyer-type stood in front of me waiting to order his latte. i took his order, but i couldn't help it - in a daze i asked him if he was wearing Armani cologne. startled, he said yes. somehow the scent made him seem more attractive, and my heart beat a little faster.

shortly after that incident i met a man who wore Davidoff Cool Water. i didn't particularly care for the scent in the bottle - it's rather chemical-ly smelling - but on him, mixed with whatever chemistry glistened on his skin, it became a potent potion of seduction. it fit him so well that when he changed scents to something else - i forget what - i bitterly complained and demanded he switch back. he just wasn't the same wearing anything but Cool Water.

(next to my cubicle there is a man who keeps a bottle of Davidoff Cool Water Eau de Toilette. just now i surreptitiously sniffed it. there's no mistaking it - it is my ex-boyfriend.)

a few years after that i fell in love with a tall slim elegant playful boy who wore CK One "because it smells like sex!", he would say. i don't know about that - to me it smelled light and innocent, sweet and playful - just like him. even now if i close my eyes and pretend i am in his room on his bed waiting for him as he picks out his clothes for the evening, standing in front of his closet freshly showered in a towel, i can distinctly smell his perfume.

when i got the sort of job that allowed me to spend money on things like perfume i bought myself Gucci Rush - it's just the most overtly sexual, spicy, gorgeous scent. but i found that it was extremely popular. i would often find myself walking behind well-dressed women who trailed a cloud of the scent behind them like ribbons in a breeze. i began to wear the scent secretly - to bed at night, for example - just to enjoy it surrounding me, changing character as it stayed on my skin. the next season i got Rush2, which i also liked. it was more of a spring scent where the original Rush was too rich for sunshine. Rush2 was outdoor flowers on a warm summer day - lilies and narcissus and black currant; Rush was a sultry night - violet, jasmine, sandalwood.

these days i don't have the time or inclination to choose fragrances on a daily basis, although i love the idea of having a posh "signature scent." scent as art, like fashion, like hairstyle - of course that appeals to me. but i do already have a scent associated with me, as far as justin is concerned. every morning i apply Oil of Olay spf 15 sunscreen/moisturizer, from a bottle labeled "fragrance-free." it's not nearly as haute as any of my former favorite fragrances. in Chicago when i ran out of the stuff i used something else that smelled pleasantly of cucumber and citrus, but every time justin kissed my cheek he got a strange look in his eye. "you're not you," he'd say. "you smell so different." and when i finally got to Walgreens to pick up some more (i bought an extra bottle, too, just in case), he welcomed me back in his arms with a smile. "you're you again."

for the moment i am satisfied that my lover should recognize me by this scent. but reading the article this morning made me think of all the lovely perfumes that exist in the world. scents which can take you to a bazaar in Morocco, or to the Latin Quarter in Paris; scents which can dress you in silk or wooly tweed, in evening gowns or wellingtons. which me will i be next year?

heat

it starts like a game, massively multiplayer online game, an immersive and graphicaly beautiful world. i am a lithe thief in a fantasy of an ancient arab world, a time when great cities held majesty over the stunning bleak beauty of the desert sands. my companion and i are in the market bazaar, in one of the large cities. it is a colorful affair, and populated by many people. we are shopping for equipment before we go adventuring.

i buy some clothes that will protect me from the sun. they are robes, light and beautiful. at this point i am truly in the game. i choose robes of shimmery, shifting blues and purples and i wrap my head in a scarf. the light muslin feels wonderful against my skin. then i indicate to my companion that i am ready.

she leads the way, threading through the throngs at the bazaar. she has acquired a horse, somehow, and i can't seem to get one. but i can run fast and light and without food or rest, so i just tag her to follow and eventually we are out of the city, spinning into the desert itself.

it is beautiful. the land reaches before us. the sands glow and shift in the sun. we run.

we stop when we come to a ring of ancient, dusty ruins. surely there is treasure here, we believe. i, cat-like, leap easily onto the low wall and enter the main complex. the ruins are shadowed, sunlight filters through sporadically. it is silent. my companion has fallen behind, perhaps distracted by something. suddenly i hear a commotion outside and i run back to check on my companion. she has been captured by guards. "run!" she says. the guards notice me. the captain points. "seize her!" a guard lunges for me.

but i am quick, and stealthy. i slide back into a crevice, slither into another crack, i use all my hide skill. i am almost invisible. my heart is rattling, my breath comes short and fast. but the guard who follows me is fast, too. he catches a sliver of my cloak. although i let it fall, i am slowed down and, worse, discovered. he is stronger than i, and i am trapped.

i hiss, like a cat. he grabs me like a cat, around the torso, my limbs flailing. i am much smaller than he is, and he can carry me easily. but i've wounded him with my dagger before he knocks it to the floor - he has a small bloody cut, now, above the left eyebrow.

he hauls me back towards the entrance, back to the low wall i jumped on when i first entered. the other guards are packing up, my companion is subdued. he lifts me up, still like some sort of animal, to hoist me over the wall. but as he does so my face comes up close to his neck. in the desert heat his masculine scent is overpowering, i am overcome. the tussle we've had has fired up my adrenaline, quickened my pulse. he pauses, sensing something, he falters and hesitates.

"bring the last one over here!" says the captain from the road. he is already mounted.

but the guard who holds me does not move. he is still, his hands on my waist. i feel the warmth of his palms intensely. more than anything i want to feel them on my skin. i let myself relax into his arms and lean in to sniff gently at his neck, soft and exposed. i am overwhelmed by the scent there. i want to bite it, to lick it. i feel drugged. sluggish. my body feels weak, my desire is strong.

he sighs. i wake up.