nodded, blushing at my benefactor’s never-ending bounty. I was grateful, but the invitation would remind Dr. Shinohara I was his friend’s surrogate daughter, something I was hoping to make him forget.
I took a sip from the goblet. It was some kind of chilled cordial, faintly sweet with a tang of fruit, cherry or plum perhaps. Like all sweet liquor, it went to my head immediately. After a few sips, I decided that Dr. Shinohara was actually one of the most handsome men I’d seen in quite some time, in spite of his austere, monkish air. Or maybe because of it.
It was then I hit on my strategy. I’d impress him with my aesthetic sensibility and my knowledge of old Japan—something that didn’t play well with the younger crowd. All that reading I’d done to score an ‘A’ in my Introduction to Japanese Culture class in college might actually help me score in a different way.
‘I saw the preparations for the bonfire on Daimonji
Mountain from my dance teacher’s house today. The clearing is so wide, you can’t even see the shape of the calligraphy,’ I said in my best Japanese. I gestured to the flickering miniature version. ‘I think Japanese artists are skilled at making grand things into something very small and beautiful.’
Dr. Shinohara raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. ‘I agree, but I wonder which you will prefer? The real bonfire or the one the artist painted?’ He answered in Japanese—real Japanese, not the condescending foreigner’s version—a compliment rare enough that my attraction turned to adoration right then and there.
‘Yes, which is better, the real or the imaginary? I think each will have its own kind of beauty. I wonder if I could choose both?’ I gave him the mischievous smile of a child angling for two servings of dessert.
Dr. Shinohara smiled back. This time I did see a flicker of interest in his eyes. My ploy worked. I’d become more than just Dr. Matsumoto’s adopted gaijin girl. One point for the culturally sensitive foreigner.
The waiters brought the next course: a small boat of sculpted ice upon which was arranged slices of sea bream and snow-white conger eel, fluffy as curls of fresh butter.
‘What brings you to Japan, Lydia-san?’ Dr. Shinohara asked. I’d heard that question so often it usually made me yawn, but the way he asked it made me feel warm and tingly, seen.
The honest answer was that I came because I craved adventure, a life of surprises, a non-stop feast of exotic sensual pleasure, anything but a job in investment banking like most of my college friends. But at this point it was probably better to give the doctor my safe, standard line.
‘I came to Kyoto to learn traditional Japanese dance.’
‘I see. Do you enjoy wearing kimono?’
Should I tell him the truth now—that it feels unspeakably sexy to wear one, and I loved being bound by the column of cloth hobbling my legs and the obi’s snug embrace at my breasts? It probably meant I was a sexual masochist, but I didn’t really want to admit it. More exciting was the promise of transformation through that bondage, the chance to shed my foreign awkwardness for the Japanese dancer’s gliding grace.
‘Yes, I do like wearing kimono, but it’s a challenge, too. I have to move my body in a different way, so maybe I can understand, just a little, what it’s like to be Japanese. I think it is the Japanese way, in dance and in life, to transform . . .’ I pulled my English-Japanese dictionary from my book bag and quickly leafed through it for the right word.
‘Constriction,’ Dr. Matsumoto read out for me.
‘To transform constriction into art.’
‘Lydia-san understands Japan very well,’ Dr. Shinohara said to his friend, who nodded, as proud as any real papa.
‘No, I just study too much. You see, I’m a Kyoto-style foreigner. We come here to study a traditional art so we can try to understand the heart of Japan. Foreigners who live in Tokyo only care about money. Isn’t it the same for Japanese? In Tokyo, money is the most important thing. In Kyoto, it’s heart.’
Both men laughed loudly. I definitely racked up a few points with that one.
‘I do believe you must have been Japanese in a past life,’ Dr. Shinohara said with his Buddha’s smile.
I bowed my head, my cheeks burning with pleasure. I’d not only been seen, but embraced. How could he have known that was my secret fantasy—the fantasy of all true Kyoto gaijin—that our wandering spirits had reconnected us with our lost home?
CHAPTER FOUR
In Japan, almost every social occasion continues with a nijikai, a smaller, more intimate second party. In this case, it would not have been unusual for Dr. Matsumoto to send me home in a taxi so he could take his old friend to a hostess bar for some male bonding. We were all having such a good time, however, he invited me along as well.
I was supposed to meet Jason in less than half an hour, but I’d never been to a hostess bar and was dying to see what it was really like. Should I go deeper into the mysterious neon canyons of Gion with Dr. Shinohara? Or trade predictable banter followed by equally predictable sex with an American tourist I’d never see again?
When ten o’clock rolled around, I was sitting in a hostess bar tucked away in the basement of a narrow high rise a few blocks from the restaurant, agreeably tipsy on whisky and compliments. Sorry, Jason, but in my place, you’d probably do the same.
The room was tiny, no bigger than my eight-mat apartment, and papered and upholstered all in red, like a womb. The mama-san seated us at a small table and brought out more snacks and a bottle of imported whisky wearing Dr. Matsumoto’s name on a necklace resting on its shoulders. I wondered what picture we must make to her: a twenty-two-year-old Western girl with a middle-aged dentist on either side. Back home my dentist was just a silver-haired guy with stale breath and hair on the backs of his hands, coming at me with metal probes and a water pick. If he had a private life, I wouldn’t imagine it was taking young Japanese women to dinner at fine restaurants followed by drinks in the company of ladies who made a living from their charms.
As if on cue, a slim hostess, no more than a few years older than me, slipped onto the free seat at the end of our table. I wouldn’t call her beautiful, but her sleepy eyes and full lips gave her an undeniably seductive air. She greeted Dr. Matsumoto with a pout and a flutter of her eyelashes—it had been such a long time since he’d visited and she’d missed him. He smiled and made introductions. Her name was Yukiko and she shook my hand in the American fashion. Her hand was faintly moist and as soft as padded satin.
With a perceptiveness I would appreciate later when I was in her shoes, Yukiko immediately sensed that Dr. Matsumoto was the customer in need of her attention. She invited him to sing a duet at the elaborate karaoke machine set up near the bar, leaving me and Dr. Shinohara to entertain ourselves.
‘I would like to see you dance some time, Lydiasan,’ he said, bending close. I got the impression he meant what he said.
‘No, I’d be too embarrassed. I’m not very good. The lessons are so different from ballet. My teacher never explains anything. She just walks through the steps, and I have to try my best to follow her. We do the same thing over and over again until I get it right, which often takes a long time.’ Rather like sex, I thought, remembering my morning’s lesson with Hiroyuki.
‘That’s the Japanese way, to learn
