It was past midnight on a Thursday night
and I had to head out into the 35 degree weather for laxatives. Without getting
vivid, I’ll say that the culinary onslaught of Japanese white rice wrecks havoc
on regularity.
Sarah researched and wrote down how
to say and write laxatives in Japanese. I took this slip of paper in one hand
warmly gloved hand and a can of Kirin Ichiban in the other and headed down the
four flights of stairs to the streets below. Japan has no laws against drinking
in public so I held my Kirin Ichiban sans-brown bag as I shuffled towards the
main streets of the Juso district.
I passed by groups of salarymen (Japan’s
white collar businessmen) who were stumbling out of bars to smoke or to contemplate
heading home. The salarymen of Japan are famed epitomes of the “work hard, play
hard” mantra – working overtime by day and drinking like frat boys with their
coworkers late into the night only to wake up and repeat the next day. Japan,
also, has no laws against public intoxication, though it is seen as
inappropriate in the wrong context. And I strongly suspect that many Japanese
fear violating social expectations far more than the law.
A group of three salarymen pointed at me and greeted me warmly. “Hello!” one of them called out with
an accent, easily identifying me as an English speaker. At 5’11,
blonde, and in my American blue jeans I can be quite an amusing novelty.
“Hello” I returned with a smile.
Apparently this was quite the one-liner and they threw their heads back in
laughter. I found their reaction equally amusing and stopped to share the
laugh. When it was done they paused for a minute in thought as if trying to
break through their drunken stupor to recall the few words of English they
remembered from secondary school.
“O-K!” He said with smirk, “Cool”.
This sounded more like ‘koo-will’, but I understood well enough and retorted
with “very cool” while flashing them the thumbs-up. Now we all laughed at the
same time and who knows, it may have even been for the same reason.
With our vocabulary exhausted, we parted ways.
Japan’s
extreme urban density actually has some positives and one of these is that you
are never more than a brisk walk from any establishment of your choosing.
Within a ten minute walk of our apartment I can reach several produce markets, two
swimming pools, a train station, many bakeries, three bike shops, dozens of
parking garages, a collection of sketchy hourly rental motels, a private gym, a
public gym, two parks, a high school, a clothing store with everything from
jackets to shoes, a store specializing in shoes, a store specializing in
jackets, three casinos, a brothel, several dozen restaurants (from American to
Indian, from street vendor to coat checks), at least thirty bars (yes really)
and even more convenience stores than that, a place where you pay hostess women
to talk to you, and separating most of these locations from each other are rows
of double-digit storied apartment buildings whose number I can’t even begin to
guess at. About the only thing I can’t find is a building under four stories
tall and an ATM.
Because
of this proximity, it only took me five minutes of walking to arrive at Don
Quijote, Japan’s major discount retail chain. I quickly realized however that
finding the laxatives might prove a challenge due to the design of the store.
When the Don Quijote stores were
conceived I imagine that its creators said “Let’s take everything from the
American Wal-Mart, force it all into a building the size of a duplex, and blast
the same gaudy pop song over our loudspeakers in a cycle so torturously endless
that our customers develop Stockholm syndrome.” (The evidence of this
capture-bonding is already evident in Sarah, who plays the Don Quijote
themesong, officially titled “Miracle Shopping”, on her laptop daily and can be
caught humming it even more often. If you are interested in hearing it and
possess either the necessary mental fortitude or a predisposition to masochism
then you can find it here:
As the hilariously translated subtitles
of this song suggest, the Don Quijote store really is a “mysterious jungle… theatre of bargains?” which “overflows … with a dream?” and is a “perfect
score in volume???”. What the song is trying to tell you is that the store
is packed from floor to ceiling with a wide range of merchandise. What the song
is not telling you is that navigating its narrow, over-packed aisles is akin to
squeezing through a herd of basking elephant seals. The aisles are not much
wider than my shoulders. I find it is often easier to walk down the aisle
facing sideways, rotating 180 degrees at the end, and then walking back up the
aisle facing the other half of the merchandise.
Don Quijote further commits to
their shrinking labyrinth décor by depriving their customers of store clocks
and as I scuttled around the “bargain jungle” I realized that I was completely
losing track of time. It was not until my second pass through the store that I
found the clock and watch section. But it was suspiciously placed in the back
corner of the second floor. And every clock showed a different time, as if time
no longer had any meaning.
I began trying to guesstimate how
long I’d been counting back the number of times that “Miracle Shopping” had
cycled through. I was fairly certain I’d
heard it play between nine to twelve times and, using this as my unit of
measurement, I determined that fifty minutes to an hour had passed.
One “Miracle Shopping” and a half
later I finally came across several rows that at least resembled medicine
aisles. My eyes glanced over the usual collection of band-aids, tampons, and
ointments to a bold and substantial smorgasbord of condoms. There really were
quite a lot of them.
Most notable was the brand of
animal-themed condoms produced by a company called Okamoto. These condoms come
in four sizes and feature progressively more impressive animals for
progressively bigger sizes. First is the striking photo of a bald eagle on the “Smart
Boy Smart Size” boxes. Okamoto wisely goes the route of the Starbucks “tall size”
and Kit-Kat “fun size” and avoids using words like small or diminutive.
(Okamoto may want to consider negotiating with Nestle for the rights to rename
their smallest condom the fun-sized condom).
Associated with the “Super Big Boy
Large Size” condoms is a brown stallion who seems to be giving smoldering looks
to the camera. And proudly representing the “Mega Big Boy XL Size” is a bull
elephant who’s picture so fills the condom box that only his suggestive trunk
is clearly visible.
Next to the condoms was a flashy
assortment of questionable herbal concoctions, tinctures, and capsules all in edgy
looking packaging promising legal highs and newfound sexual stamina. It was
like a larger version of the front counter of an American corner store or a
smaller version of an American head shop. I scanned through dozens of pseudo-aphrodisiacs
which were all competing to creatively suggest that they would induce large
erections. In my book, the winner has to be the Tengu brand maca root powder
which features a mascot with a nose so phallic it threatens to rob the
innocence of any of the children who are free to walk these aisles.
Rounding out the medicine section
was a modest selection of bath salts. The kind that people use to get really
high. The kind that you hear about people taking shortly before eating a
homeless man’s face off. There were not a lot of these bath salts, but there
were enough to suggest that Don Quijote respects its customers’ desire for
variety.
I cannot really be sure why any
major retail outlet would see fit to stock their shelves with psychoactive bath
salts. However, I suspect that it may be because one would have to be high out
of their minds to purchase any other product in that section. I’m looking at
you smart-sized eagle condoms.
At this point I felt I might be
getting farther rather than closer to finding the laxatives. I decided to swallow
my pride and finally ask an employee for help. I searched for a male employee, because
I still wanted to have at least a little pride. When I found him he was stocking
merchandise and I had to get his attention.”
I said “Sumimasen”, and hardly
before I’d finished saying it the man turned full circle and stood looking at
me attentively and waiting for my request.
I pulled out the slip of paper with
the translation for laxative and tried to say it in my awful Japanese. He
looked puzzled so I just pointed to my slip of paper where Sarah had written “laxative”
in Japanese. Immediately his face soured.
He looked up at me with alarm and
then drew his arms in front of him to make a large “X”.
“No! No drugs”, and then he nodded as
if to confirm his stance. Confused and feeling as if I had just solicited him
for methamphetamine, I shuffled away and right out of the store empty-handed.
On my way home I stopped at a
convenience store with the very slim hope that they might have some medicine. Inside
was a drunken salaryman who was swaying back in forth in front of the alcohol
section. He kept trying to put beers in his basket, but instead he kept
dropping them on the floor. An employee came rushing out of the back, picked up
the beers on the ground and put them in the salaryman’s basket for him. The young
employee helped the salaryman to the front counter, took his money, and made
change.
As the salaryman stumbled through
the door and down the street I returned to my search without any hope of finding my drug.
