Memories of Japan: Mrs. Ishihara

Today is Thursday, January 23, 2014.

Mrs. Ichiko Ishihara was well-known in the Japanese corporate world back in the 1970s and 80s, because she was one of very few women to make it to anywhere near the top of the Japanese corporate ladder.   Since there still aren't that many women in upper echelons of Japanese businesses, I would have to say that Mrs. Ishihara didn't really break the glass ceiling; she only managed to bend it for a little while.  Rather than being a pioneer, she seems to have been an outlier.

For such a well-known outlier, though, there is precious little written about her on the web, and there are no photographs to speak of.  How I wish I had taken a photograph of her as a memento!  All I have left to remember her by is her business card and a pearl necklace she presented to me as a gift.

Mrs. Ishihara (Her business card specifically says Mrs. on the English side.) was probably in her fifties or sixties by the time I met her.  She was one of my students at the Yaesu Branch of the Berlitz School of Languages in Japan.  She came to the Yaesu Branch school because she worked for Takashimaya Department Store, a very high-class store that strove to emulate Macy's in every way possible.  Her business card says she was a managing director of the public relations department, but she described herself as a "buyer" for the store.  Takashimaya's flagship store was located only about a block away from the Yaesu branch school, in the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo.  I used to laugh to myself a bit, because the Chinese character they use in their logo means "high."  It also means "expensive," and I couldn't even afford to breathe on some of the stuff in that store.

Takashimaya flagship store in Nihonbashi, Tokyo,
about a block away from Berlitz Yaesu School

According to its own website, Takashimaya started business as a store in Kyoto that sold only kimono back in 1831.  By 1840, the store was beginning to spread throughout Japan.  I was shocked to realize, however, that there are only 20 stores currently doing business in all of Japan.  Apparently, they have continued to sell only high-end goods, regardless of the fact that fewer and fewer Japanese can actually afford to shop there.  I remember that there was a Takashimaya store in Sakai, when I lived in the Osaka area, not that I bought much stuff there. 

Like other department stores in Japan, Takashimaya sold high-end food items in the basement, and one of its upper floors was always dedicated to year-end and midsummer gifts.  They had an upper floor that had exhibits of various kinds, and a top floor that had some restaurants for shoppers. 

As a minor celebrity in the business world, Mrs. Ishihara got click-heel service at Berlitz, and she was permitted to more or less cherry-pick her teachers.  Most people just scheduled a lesson with whoever was available to teach during that time slot, and there were no guarantees about which teacher you might have, although I suspect that some students figured out who worked when and scheduled their lessons accordingly.  In any event, I was one of Mrs. Ishihara's favorites, and I was regularly invited out to have dinner with her, both individually and with a few favored others.  She told us that she was doing it because she appreciated us, but I also realized that she was probably also trying to get in a little more English conversation practice.  I started calling her "Mrs. I" and others at Berlitz followed suit.  I got the impression that she thought it was cute when she found out.

In the late 70s and early 80s, when I knew her, Japanese department stores had just figured out that even though women didn't work outside the home after marriage, they still made many of the purchasing decisions, and Mrs. Ishihara's claim to fame was to bring a feminine perspective to Takashimaya's business. Her other contribution to her company was finding items from foreign countries that the upscale Takashimaya customers would want to buy.  When I knew her, she was still actively on the lookout for foreign products to import.  She used to ask me, "What do you miss about home that you can't get here?"  It became a bit of a game, after a while, because if I said I missed something, then it would appear at Takashimaya as if by magic a few weeks later, especially food items.  Bagels and cream cheese?  Rhubarb jam?   New York-style cheesecake?   You asked for it, you got it!  

A pearl necklace like the one Mrs. Ishihara gave me.

I remember another lady student who came into the school once for a lesson wearing a Chinese-style cheongsam dress, a form-fitting silk dress with stand-up collar and cap sleeves. With the dress, she was wearing this pearl necklace that was actually multiple strands of seed pearls strung on a nearly invisible wire in such a way that it resembled a cloud of small pearls of various sizes.  I remember telling Mrs. Ishihara about it, and sure enough, a few months later, I got one as a gift.

Mrs. Ishihara was a creature of habit.  She enjoyed Chinese food or traditional Japanese, but rarely ate at Western-style establishments.  At a Chinese restaurant, she always ordered everything, and her order always included shark's fin soup, which she insisted was good for the bones.  Maybe it was, but it was not my favorite thing to eat.  Nor was the abalone, but she always ordered it. 

I do remember having some French-style cuisine with her, one time.  Nouvelle cuisine, it was called, and it featured small portions of light, healthy, seasonal food, just the sort of thing the Japanese like to eat.  I remember that the bottle of wine she bought to accompany the meal cost more than my monthly salary.  You have to understand that at the time, I was making a lot more than many Japanese men.  The restaurant was located in the lower level of the building where the Ohara School of Ikebana had their headquarters.

Another foreign restaurant she introduced me to was an Italian place in the Aoyama area.  One of the Berlitz secretaries and I decided to take our boss out when we heard he was going to be transferred to another Berlitz school.  We decided to go to this restaurant, and I tried to warn her that the meal was going to be expensive.  I remember bringing several hundred dollars in cash with me, knowing what the bill was likely to be, but when the waiter sang out the total, I could tell that the secretary was shocked.  I think she was a little mad at me for suggesting such an expensive place, but I only made her pay for the amount she had originally agreed to, meaning that I paid for well over half the meal.  I didn't tell her that I was surprised at the amount, as well.  Mrs. Ishihara had made it seem like no big deal, and I was determined to do the same.

If we ate in the evening, she always provided a private car for me to be driven home in.  It wasn't a cab, exactly.  There was no fare meter.  It was a private car she hired, and she told me that Takashimaya would pay for it.  All I had to do was tell the driver where I wanted to go. 

Another thing I got to do because of Mrs. Ishihara was attend some really high-end fashion shows.  I remember shows by Thierry Mugler, Emanuel Ungaro, and Hubert de Givenchy, attended by the designers, themselves.  My tickets were always complimentary, but that didn't mean I got a seat right by the catwalk.  I remember watching the Givenchy show with a small pair of field glasses.

Mrs. Ishihara had a personality that was pretty much like a steam locomotive.  She had more drive than I saw in many men, and I knew she had overcome many obstacles to get where she was.  In one American newspaper article, Mrs. Ishihara was briefly interviewed as a participant in a member of a buying team that came to the United States looking for products.  She told the reporter that when she was in school, her teachers told her that she could leave two hours early because women don't need as much education as men.  She refused.

When she started working for Takashimaya, she would clock out right at 5 p.m., but continue to work for free.  She wanted to prove to her bosses that women could be just as productive as men, but she didn't want them to have to pay her overtime in order to find that out.  She never told me that particular story, but I wasn't surprised when I read it online.  It sounded just like her. 

Mrs. Ishihara's motto – and this she did tell me in person – was "Think like a man, act like a lady, work like a dog."  I remember being very impressed by this advice, and resolving to follow it to the letter.

She always made it a point to say that she was a "Mrs." and now I understand a bit more why she did that.  She wanted to convey to people that it wasn't necessary for a woman to renounce marriage and family in order to be a success in the world of business.  Unfortunately, the weight of opinion said otherwise, and even today, there are many young women who are "desperate" to marry and have kids.  Very few, if any, are "desperate" to get ahead in the corporate world.    :-)

Memories of Japan: Apple Pie and Cheesecake Gone Wrong

Japanese gas-powered convection oven

Today is Wednesday, January 22, 2014.

The kind of pastry they have in Japan is filo pastry, puff pastry, or choux pastry, mostly.  They don't really have what I would consider a true type of American-style pie.  When I taught English conversation to private students in Osaka, I often told people about our apple pie, and taught them the expression "as American as apple pie."  I had no idea how much of an impression I had made until the mother of one of my young students showed up at my door one day lugging her gas oven. When I asked her why she brought me her oven, she told me that her little girl had come home and bragged that the teacher knew how to make a real American apple pie.  Now, she wanted me to prove it.  

Let it be known that Japanese women can be hard as nails, and they really know how to throw down the gauntlet.  The ball was in my court.

Typical two-burner gas stove

I have to back up a bit and tell you that Japanese women don't bake.  They boil, broil, sauté, and fry, but they don't bake.  That's because they don't have convection ovens.  Most Japanese kitchens don't even have room for an oven.  Instead, they have a stainless steel counter space where a two-burner gas hotplate can be installed.  Most of these hotplate stoves have a small, shallow broiling oven for broiling fish or making toast, but that's it. 

Some women do have steam ovens or convection ovens that run on gas, but they tend to be the size of a medium-sized American microwave, and they are meant to stand on a counter top.  Some people who have these ovens don't even keep them hooked up unless they actually need to use them, because they take up so much space, something that is sorely lacking, even in the kitchens of large houses.  

Typical Japanese kitchen, with the 2-burner stove at left.

Ovens are considered a luxury, rather than a necessity, in a Japanese kitchen, so people who had them tended to be the ones with discretionary income.  I often wondered what these oven owners actually made in their ovens, because other than little individual pastries and "Christmas cakes," Japanese people don't actually eat much cake, and of course they always buy it ready-made.  Their cuisine has nothing like the casseroles and hot dishes that we routinely bake in the United States, nor do they bake meat loaf or other meat dishes.  Having an oven in Japan is like having a specialty item such as a waffle iron – very useful for making one or two things, but otherwise it just takes up space.

I never did have an oven while in Japan.  I have no memory of my little student asking me whether I could make apple pie, but she must have, and I no doubt told her that I couldn't because I didn't have an oven.  She knew that her mom had one, and she must have asked her mom to make an apple pie.  Since most Japanese women have no idea how to do this, the neighbor lady obviously thought of the next best thing: take the oven over to the English teacher's place. Let her make the pie.

Really, me and my big mouth... I had never actually made an apple pie in my life.  Why had I made such a big deal about it?  On the other hand, I had seen my grandmother and my mother make fruit pies many times.  How hard could it be?

In Japan, the answer was "pretty hard." 

If you don't read Japanese, it can be
pretty hard to tell that this is flour.

My biggest problem was now solved.  I had a borrowed oven, complete with a rubber hose for the gas.  All I had to do was hook it up, which I asked my husband to do.  

Next, the recipe.  Well, that was easy, as my good old Betty Crocker cookbook with the foodstained pages and the cover already falling off had been included among the books that I schlepped all the way to Japan.  Recipe: check. 

Then the ingredients: those were a little harder. Since women didn't do much baking, there was no such thing as a pre-baked pie crust shell or canned fruit pie filling to be had anywhere in Japan.  I would have to make everything from scratch.

Items such as butter and milk were widely available, although the milk in Japan is a little sweeter there than it is here.  That's because a very high percentage of the Japanese population lacks the necessary enzyme (lactase) to break down the lactose sugar in dairy products. As a nation, they are what we would call "intolerant" to dairy products.  In fact, almost all Asians have this issue, as do most Native Americans, and up to 80% of African Americans and Latinos also experience lactose intolerance.  It appears that cow's milk is less of a "perfect food" than the U.S. dairy industry would like us to believe.  It's certainly much kinder to white folks' digestive systems, even though, as you may be aware, some white people have this digestive issue, as well.  The solution in Japan was to sell milk with the lactose already broken down into simpler sugars called glucose and galactose.  That's essentially what the product called "Lactaid" is - milk that has been processed so that lactose is already broken down, and that's why Lactaid tastes sweeter than milk straight from the cow.  If you want to know what Japanese milk tastes like, drink some Lactaid. Unfortunately, a normal recipe for pie does not call for either milk or butter, so my local grocery store was not a big help for ingredients. 

Baking powder

Nowadays, I have read that you can find baking essentials such as flour, baking powder, granulated sugar, and chocolate chips in a regular grocery store, but they come in really small packages and are very expensive.  Thirty-five years ago, you couldn't find these items anywhere except at an import store.  I can't remember, now, exactly where the "American" grocery store was, but it was at least a two-hour train ride away – I remember that much, and the ingredients were hideously expensive.  

I didn't have a pie tin, rolling pin or pastry cutter, so I invested in those.  Flour was sold in impossibly small packages, not nearly as big as the bags available at home, and I wanted to  have enough flour that if I messed up the first time with the pie crust, I could try again, so I bought way too much.  (This is the story of my life.) 

If you guessed vanilla, good for you.

Shortening was another thing on my list.  Even though Japanese women do a lot of deep-fat frying, they always use liquid cooking oil, rather than shortening. Lard wasn't even an option. 

For the filling, I didn't have a great deal of choice in apples, so I bought what was available.  Fuji apples (not named for the mountain, but for the town of Fujisaki, where they are grown, in the Tōhoku (northern) area of the main island) were first brought to market in 1962.  These apples are fairly sweet, rather than tart, so although they are not generally used in the U.S. for pies, they will work.  I did not know about pre-baking apples, but I did know that I would have to slice them pretty thin in the pie.

I also bought some lemon juice, granulated sugar, brown sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon.  Back in those days, normal groceries weren't that expensive, either in the United States or in Japan, but these specialty items must have cost me over two hundred dollars, plus it took two hours to get to the store, two hours to get back, and a good while to find all the ingredients on my list, so it was pretty much a whole day's job just to do the shopping.

Back at home I realized that I would have to use my kitchen table as there was no real counter space in my kitchen.  I made the pie crust according to directions as well as I could, but I wondered if the difference in altitude was an issue.  (Osaka is only about 273 feet above sea level.  Southwestern Minnesota ranges from 745 to 2000 feet.)  

I preheated the oven while I made the filling.  I cut the apples and arranged the slices in the crust, then covered the pie with a top crust, remembering  my mom's instructions about sealing off the edge of the pie crust and cutting a little vent in the center.  Then I put the pie in the oven and waited.  

The day I made the pie, I had a surprise visitor.  My friend Mitsuya Amano, who lived in Tokyo, was in Osaka on business and called to tell me he was coming to visit.  Great!  I had a "company dessert" all ready to go. 

The pie was done by the time Mitsuya arrived, and I had called my student's mother to tell her to send her daughter over to taste the pie.  She brought her little sister, as I recall.  I cut everybody a slice of pie and one for myself, and the tasting began.  

Dead silence.

Finally, Mitsuya said, "Mmmm.... pretty good!" though puckered lips.  The girls were not eating their pie, either.  I tasted mine.  It was... tart, very, very tart.  Why didn't it taste like my mother's pie?  Mitsuya started laughing. 

Bag of sugar.

"Did you forget the sugar?" he asked. 

Well, sure, that's exactly what I had forgotten.  I remembered putting lemon juice on the apples, but when I looked at my expensive packages of brown sugar, granulated sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg, they were still unopened!  I hastily sprinkled some granulated sugar on the pie, but it didn't really help. The girls went home, and probably told their mother that American pie was not at all what it was cracked up to be. 

I cleaned the lady's oven and returned it, thanking her profusely, and explaining that I had bungled the recipe.  I should probably have tried to make another pie and present it to the neighbor as thanks for the use of the oven, but I didn't.  In fact, I never made a pie again.  Ever.

The cheesecake was another story.  

Once a week I went to the home of a doctor's wife, Mrs. Kitagawa, who asked me to teach her and her children English.  In fact, she wanted me to teach not only her kids but a couple of neighbor kids, as well, in a small group. 

She scheduled a private lesson for herself in mid-afternoon, with plenty of time after the lesson for the two of us to enjoy some coffee and cake with "free conversation."  During this time, the mother of the other kids apparently picked all the kids up from school and kept them at her home until it was time for the children's lesson. 

I had a great time doing these lessons.  I enjoyed visiting the Kitagawas' beautiful home and chatting with the doctor's wife about her passion, Japanese flower arranging (ikebana), in the intervening time between her lesson and the kids' lesson.  Every week, I would see different arrangements displayed in the genkan (entryway), as well as in the tokonoma (recessed niche) in the main room of the house, and I asked her all kinds of questions about how she had achieved her arrangements.

One day Mrs. Kitagawa told me that she had bought an oven, and that she wanted to learn how to make cheesecake.  She said she had a recipe, and we read it over at one of her lessons, to be sure she understood it.  She promised me that we would have real cheesecake at the next lesson.  

They didn't make what I considered to be real, New York-style cheesecake in Japan, any more than they made real American pie, so I was excited about the possibility of eating something that I missed from my home country.  I knew from experience that Mrs. Kitagawa would have to go to a lot of trouble and expense to get all the ingredients for a real cheesecake, but I also knew that she certainly had the money for it, as well as the time.

The next week, she proudly served coffee made from real coffee beans that she ground herself – another thing that the vast, vast majority of Japanese never had at home.  (Most of them thought that Nescafé instant coffee was the bees' knees.)  When the coffee was made, she brought it to me on a fancy tray, along with her homemade cheesecake.  It looked pretty good, and I was anxious to try it.  

I cut myself a piece and took a bite.  Whatever this was, it did not taste like cheesecake.  It tasted like... rubber!  It felt like rubber in my mouth, too.  It was hard for me to mask my shock and dismay, but I continued to chew slowly, hoping the dreaded thing would somehow make it down my throat.  Mrs. Kitagawa watched my face intently, immediately realizing that something was wrong.  

"It isn't very good, is it," she said, apologetically. "What did I do wrong?" 

"What kind of cheese did you use?" 

"Melty," she said. This is pronounced "meh-ru-chi."


You have to understand that the product called Melty was processed cheese, like our product in the United States, called Velveeta.  You might possibly use this for grilled cheese sandwiches, but not cheesecake!

"Oh, my God, you were supposed to use cream cheese!"  Now I realize that Mrs. Kitagawa probably had no idea what real cream cheese was, as it was not a well-known product in Japan.

"I couldn't find any. I thought Melty would be OK."

"Did you bake the cheesecake?" 

"Yes." 

You could tell.  If I had rolled up the hardened cheese in a ball and thrown it at the wall, it would have bounced back. Mrs. Kitagawa was mortified, but we had a good laugh over it, and I assured her that the expensive coffee was very good. 

And you can be sure that I told her my apple pie story.  :-)

Memories of Japan: My Interactions with the Police

Friendly neighborhood police officer

Today is  Tuesday, January 21, 2014.

I had several interactions with the police (keisatsu) while in Japan, each of them providing a clearer picture of how they operate.  

My first interaction was when I left my purse behind in a taxi in downtown Osaka.  I had taken the taxi with my husband, and I realized immediately what I'd done, but the taxi had already sped away.  My husband told me that we would have to wait until we got home to deal with it.  I was particularly upset, not because there was a lot of money in the handbag.  In fact, there wasn't more than about 4,000 yen, which in those days was worth considerably less than $15.  Even 40 years ago, $15 wasn't that much, and it certainly didn't buy much in Japan, either.  The thing that had me worried was that my Alien Registration Card was in my purse, and the law stated that all aliens were to carry their AR Card with them at all times.  My AR Card went with me everywhere I went, which is why it is so beat-up looking.  Fortunately, there was nothing else really personal in my purse.  Maybe a handkerchief and a tube of lipstick, that's about it.  In those days regular people didn't have credit cards or ATM cards, and stores didn't give out "reward cards" or "discount cards" the way they do in the United States.  You carried cash, your AR Card, and your train pass or drivers' license. Most people carried lots of cash, since credit cards and personal checks were not in use in Japan at that time, but I didn't have to carry a lot that day, since I expected my husband to handle the expenses.

The cover of my AR Card.  In Japanese this is called
Gaikokujin Tōroku Shōmeisho.

Page 1.  Name, sex, date of birth, nationality (They call the United States "Beikoku,"
which means Rice Country - rice being worth a lot of money, you know.  Occupation
is "English Teacher".  Passport number and issue date at the bottom.

Page 2: Port of entry was Haneda Airport in Tokyo, which is
only used as a domestic airport now.  Date of original entry
was January 9, 1977.  I think the authorized period of  stay
was crossed out when I left Japan.  It gives my place of
birth (Madison, SD) and my parents' address at the time,
then my address in Japan.  The bottom part says I am the
head of household and my relationship to the head of
household is "self."  On page 3, it gives my employer's
address.  This AR Card had been issued in 1985 (Showa 60)
and the signature (red stamp) was that of the head of
Bunkyo-ku (ward), the section of Tokyo where I lived.

On page 4, my photograph and fingerprint.  To the left of
the print, it says it is my left index finger.  Foreigners always
hated being fingerprinted like a criminal.  I was no exception.

In Japan, any non-Japanese who is not a citizen must carry this identification with them.  It isn't really a card.  It's a little booklet, like a mini-passport.  Inside it tells your name, date of birth, sex, where you're from, where in Japan you work, your passport number and date of issue, when you first entered Japan and at what port, your foreign "home address" (I always gave my parents' address rather than argue that I didn't really have a home address in the United States), and the name of your "head of household" and your relationship to said head of household.  It also told where you lived in Japan, as it if was just a temporary thing, not your permanent domicile.  The document had a passport-style photo and the one thing that every foreigner hated: your fingerprint.  There was a place to note which finger it was, too. 

My husband called the taxi association, saying where we had picked up the cab and where we got off.  It would have been quite easy for a dispatcher to ask all the cabs out on the road in Osaka whether they'd picked up a "foreign woman and a Japanese man" and ask them to check the back seat of their cab.  Sure enough, our cabbie noticed my purse and took it to the police.  We got a call from the downtown Osaka police station that my purse had been found. 

So just go down there and pick it up, right?  

Wrong.

I went there by myself with my passport (something you do not have to carry around, as long as you have your AR Card), and asked for my purse.  They showed it to me and I said, "Yes, that's mine."  I was shocked when they refused to give it to me.

Neighborhood police get around on bikes. 

The explanation was that I had not given the cabbie the required gift.  In Japan, if you lose something valuable, you are, by law, expected to give the finder at 10% finder's fee.  Since I hadn't lost that much cash, a 10% fee would have been ridiculous, so we were advised to send a bottle of whiskey.  This is a standard type of status gift in Japan, and nobody questioned whether the  cabbie drank or whether he would appreciate such a gift.  It was just assumed that he would be thrilled to get a bottle of whiskey.  And not a cheap one, either. We would have to spend at least 10,000 yen.  At that exchange rate, it was only about $35, but that was beside the point.  We were legally only obligated to pay the cabbie 400 yen, but socially speaking we were obligated to give him a nice gift.  So much for 10%.  

Well, we had ordered and sent the whiskey to the cabbie's home, having got the address from the police on the phone. The police always collect the address of the finder.  However, the cabbie hadn't bothered to tell the police that he had received his gift.  I had to go home and have my husband call the cabbie personally.  The cabbie told my husband that he wasn't really from Osaka, that he was from a suburb, and had just been in downtown Osaka only because he'd taken a fare there, so downtown Osaka wasn't his normal territory.  He had indeed received the whiskey but told us that it was too far for him to go all the way into downtown Osaka to inform the police.  

My husband told him that his refusal to do this meant that I couldn't pick up my handbag.  The man promised to talk to them in a day or two.  I had my husband call the police every day until we were told that the cabbie had finally come in and signed a release form.  Then I went to pick up the handbag.  By the time I got it back, it was almost an anticlimax.   The policeman at the desk sternly warned me not to lose my handbag again.  

Duh.  Certainly I would make an effort never to lose anything ever again, especially if it was this much trouble to get it back!

*** *** *** *** ***

A pair of police officers on official police bikes.

My second interaction occurred at time when a friend of my mother's and her pre-teen daughter came to Japan to visit, and I agreed to "show them around."  The woman had breast cancer, which was pretty much of a death sentence back then.  She had decided on "one last trip" with her daughter to a place she had always wanted to visit.  It was her way of spending quality time with her daughter before she died.  One thing that struck me was that neither one of them had a camera or wanted to take pictures. I knew the woman didn't care about pictures, because she knew she wouldn't need them, but I wondered why the daughter didn't want to take pictures to remember her mom.  At any rate, I agreed to give them the full tour while they were in Osaka.

Police bikes, parked.

Their flight arrived in Tokyo, and I knew that they planned to spend a couple of days there, first.  I also know what hotel they were planning to stay at, and when they planned to take the Shinkansen Bullet Train to Osaka.  Part of the problem was that a political summit meeting was being held in Tokyo, and the Japanese police and customs authorities had gone into security overdrive, as the leaders of several nations were in Japan's capital city all at once.  The police and customs officials were taking no chances, and they were checking out everyone's story.  

I got a call at what would have been about 45 minutes after their plane landed in Tokyo.  

"This is the Sakai-city police. I'm calling for Linda Matsuda," said a brusque male voice.  I assured him that I was the person he was looking for.

"Are you expecting a guest?" 

"Yes." 

"How many people?"

"Two."

"What are their names?"

I gave their names, and the spelling of the names.  

"Are they planning to stay with you?"

"Yes, but not today. They are staying at the _____ Hotel in Tokyo tonight and tomorrow night."

"When will they arrive?" 

"I'm going to pick them up at Shin-Osaka Station from the Bullet Train.  They will call me before they leave their hotel."   (In those days, there were no cell phones.  I had told them explicitly how to use a pay phone, but didn't know if they had any coins yet.  Some of you may know how hard it is when you first get to a foreign country, even if you have already exchanged your money for the local currency, because there are some things that you can't do with bills.  You have to have coins.  And for that, you have to spend some money.)

"How long will they stay?" 

"They'll be here for four days, then they're going back to Tokyo."  

"All right, thank you." 

Keep in mind this was my local police who were calling, not the ones in Tokyo.  That means that my guests' information had gone from the customs office directly to my local police in a very short time, and most probably also to the Tokyo police, who no doubt confirmed with the hotel where they were staying.  My guests were being watched six ways from Sunday, and so was I. 

Japanese police car

*** *** *** *** ***

Very old-style koban near the Imperial
Palace in Tokyo.

When I moved to Tokyo by myself, I sublet a very small condo from a lady whom I never met in person.  I simply sent my rent to her every month by genkin kakitome, "registered cash delivery," which was a service provided by the post office.  You put your cash in an envelope, then sealed it with a special stamp that you paid for, and they would deliver the money to the person.  The post office gave the sender a receipt, and if the addressee never got the money, the post office would be responsible for it, so they made sure it was securely delivered.  It was a good system.  But I digress...

I rode the subway every day to work at the Yaesu Branch of the Berlitz Schools of Languages, Japan.  That was only a few short blocks away from the newer Yaesu entrance of Tokyo Station.  At work, I met a lot of foreigners who were also teaching English, and one of them was a fellow named Joe from Minnesota.  Joe was married to a Japanese girl, and they lived with her parents.  He was working as hard as he could in order to go back to the United States.  

Whenever foreigners left Japan, they would get rid of a lot of stuff, and that is how I ended up with some of it.  I used to drive a pretty hard bargain, since the people were always in a hurry to get rid of their "stuff," and they knew that they would be charged an arm and a leg to have it taken away to a public dump.  I picked up a washing machine this way and sold it to someone else when I left.  I also picked up various pieces of furniture and other assorted useful items.  But from Joe, I bought a woman's bicycle that had belonged to his wife.  It was a good bike, and I rode the heck out of it, all over Tokyo.

Very soon after I bought the bike, I was transferred to the Aoyama Branch School, a little farther away from home than the Yaesu Branch.  I quickly figured out on a map how I could get to work on my bike and started to ride to work.  I really loved riding my bike to work in the summertime.  I would just put on a pair of shorts and a tank top, with my dress clothes in a bag.  I would sponge the sweat off my body in the bathroom at work and dress, putting my shorts in my locker.  There are plenty of bike racks all over Tokyo, and it was easy to get a bike lock from a hardware store.  On cooler days, I just rode my bike in my skirt, my only adjustment to the bike being a pair of tennis shoes that I exchanged for heels when I got to work.  (I had no idea that Yuppie women were doing this regularly in the United States at the time – this was the early 1980s.)

Modern koban somewhere in Tokyo.  I notice that they
have taken to marking them using ABCs, so even
foreigners can see what they are.  That's an improvement
over when I was in Japan.

My path to and from work took me around the outer moat of the Imperial Palace each day.  You have to understand that although English language schools like Berlitz did have some students during the day, their prime time for giving lessons was in the evening, after work.  Most days, I worked evenings until closing time, which was 9:10 pm.  (Each Berlitz lesson was 40 minutes long, and the last lesson began at 8:30 pm.)  By 9:20 or so, I was out of there and pedaling home.  I can't remember how long it took, but I was probably home between 10:00 and 10:30.  Biking home didn't save me any time from taking the subway.  It was just nicer, as long as the weather cooperated. 

I hadn't been working at Aoyama that long, and this may have been only the first or second time for me to ride home on my bike.  For some reason, I had stayed out later than usual that evening, probably having gone out with some friends after work, so it must have been close to midnight when I rode past the main police box in front of the Imperial Palace.  A police box, or koban, is a very small office for local beat policemen.  There's at least one in every neighborhood, and the Japanese police are pretty good at keeping tabs on people in their own local neighborhoods.  Koban are very small offices, with room for no more than about four people, max.  Around the Imperial Palace, there was one every few hundred yards or so.  I passed at least three of them on my way around the palace.

When I moved into my place in Tokyo, I got a visit from a white-gloved local policeman, asking me to fill out a little information on a little green card.  The man seemed friendly and helpful, and I gave him the information he wanted and thought no more about it.

This particular photo had a map attached, so I think
it was the very police station where I was stopped. 

Now it was midnight and I was being stopped by a police officer, who stood in the middle of the sidewalk and motioned me to get off my bike.  Was I riding too fast?  Did they smell beer on my breath?  Well, at least I had my AR Card with me. 

I stopped and gave the officer my AR Card as requested.  

"Why are you here so late at night?"

"I work at the Berlitz School in Aoyama.  I teach English there.  My work ended at 9:10, then I went out for dinner with some friends."

"This says you work at the Yaesu Branch."

"I know, but I got transferred. Berlitz has a lot of branches in Tokyo." 

"Where is this Aoyama Branch?"  

I gave the address.

"What's the phone number?" 

I gave it to him, but sold him that the school was closed for the evening.  I'm sure he must have used it to confirm my story later.

"Where do you live?"  That information was listed in my AR document, but I reeled off my address.  Then he made a phone call, presumably to the police box nearest to the address I had given him.  They confirmed that I did indeed live where I said I did, so that little green card I had filled out had been useful, after all.

While the officer made his call, I looked around and noticed in alarm that when I had been stopped, there were only two police officers, but now there were something like fifteen, all standing there silently gawking at me.  The officer finished his call and turned to me.

"So how do you usually bike from Berlitz in Aoyama to your home?"

I explained my route.

"Are you usually out this late?"

"No, I have different hours each day, but my work ends at 9:10 at the latest.  Sometimes I go out for dinner with friends, but most of the time I come right home."

"I've never seen you before." 

"I haven't ridden to work much before now.  I haven't had the bike that long." 

"Whose bike is that?"  

"Mine." 

"Where did you get it?" 

"I bought it from a friend." 

"Who is this friend?"

"His name is Joe Palumbo.  He's married to a Japanese, but he and his wife left Japan a few weeks ago.  I bought the bike from him before he left." 

"Where does he live?" 

"I don't know.  Somewhere in the United States.  In Minnesota." 

"Where did he live in Japan?" 

"He lived with his wife's family."

"What are their names?" 

"I don't know." 

"Where do they live?" 

Thankfully, I still had a phone number for Joe written in my address book, which I had with me.  "I don't know, but I have their phone number."  I dug out my address book and gave them the number, hoping that they could just confirm it and let me go.  Oh, no, that would have been too simple.  They had to call the number!

"It's midnight, they're probably sleeping," I protested, frightened that some older couple was about to get a call from the police asking about their American son-in-law.

Fortunately, someone answered the phone and confirmed that, yes, they had a daughter and that she was the wife of a foreigner, that their daughter and her husband had just left the country, and that, yes, their daughter had sold a bicycle to another foreign lady.

The policeman still had my AR Card. "You haven't updated this card. It's out of date." 

I knew why he was saying this, because there had been a change in the law very recently.  Foreigners who lived in Japan no longer had to update their cards quite so frequently, and we had been advised that even if the card was out of date, we were to wait the newly-prescribed amount of time before applying for a new one.  

"The law has changed, sir," I said.  "I don't have to get this updated until next year." 

At this point, some of the officers were smiling, and a couple were obviously holding back a snicker.  One of the guys said, "She knows more about it than you do." 

Embarrassed, the officer decided not to press me any further. I was advised to paint my name and address on the fender of the bike, which I did later, and I was told very sternly to be careful  I got on my bike and rode home, grateful that nothing worse had happened.

An ordinary neighborhood police box, with
living quartersfor the officer and his family
above the box.

After that episode, I noticed that every time I got to the road around the Imperial Palace, the guys at the first koban I passed would smile and nod, or maybe wave or salute and then pick up the phone.  I knew they were calling the next koban to advise them of my arrival.  I would wave to the guys on duty at the second and third boxes before leaving the street surrounding the palace and heading along the street that led to my home.  

Interestingly enough, I see now that my home address was written incorrectly on my last AR Card, which I was allowed to take with me.  (All the other times I had left Japan, I intended to return, so my AR Card had been surrendered and returned to me when I arrived back in Japan.)  If I had stayed much longer, I probably would have gotten into some scrape or other and would probably have had to prove that I lived at 1-5-10-403 instead of 1-5-15-403.  Oh, well, I'm glad I never did have to deal with that. I see that I never updated my place of work, either.  It still says Berlitz Yaesu Branch.  I would have had to talk my way out of that one, too. 

*** *** *** *** ***

A white-gloved policeman on duty.

My last interaction with the police was frightening, but the police were not what frightened me.  It was Easter Sunday, 1986, which fell on March 30 that year.  The weather had been OK during the day, but it was chilly and drizzling a bit that evening.  I had decided to attend an Easter worship service at a certain Protestant Christian church where a lot of foreigners gathered, because I knew that they always invited members of the audience to sing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah.  I knew that song backward and forward, so decided to go and sing.  I dressed in my best for the service.

After the service, I was invited out to the home of foreign friends who lived in Kawasaki.  I had brought some casual clothes with me in a shopping bag, and changed when I got to their apartment.  I spent the day with them, and left for home on the last train.  I knew that if I got on the train that left at 10:30 or so, I would get home by midnight.  

I had my shopping bag full of dress clothes, a black umbrella for the drizzle, my purse, and my SONY Walkman, which I was listening to as I walked from the subway station to my apartment.  I lived on the fourth floor, and I remember noticing that the elevator had last stopped on the fourth floor when I called it down.  When the door opened, I had the shock of my life.  Keep in mind that this elevator had an automatic light that went off when the elevator was not in use.  (I found that out one day when I got into the elevator and absentmindedly forgot to push the button of the floor I wanted.) 

OK, so I called the elevator down from 4th floor and when it arrived on the ground floor, the door opened.  Inside was a young man, stark naked, with a woman's nylon stocking over his head.  He was holding his hand in front of his private parts.  It was bizarre!

The man slowly advanced toward me, and I remember the stupid music from the Walkman blaring in my ears as I held my closed umbrella in front of me, ironically just like a Japanese sword, to keep him at bay.  I had to think fast, and what I decided to do was just dash past him, run inside the elevator, hit the "close" button, and hightail it to fourth floor.  I ran to my apartment and locked myself inside.  

As I was locking the door, I looked out the peephole and saw that this monster had followed me to my apartment, probably by climbing the stairs.  I banged on the metal door to make a noise that might alert my neighbors, and shouted to him that I was going to all the police.   He turned and fled. 

Fortunately, my curtains were closed, so he couldn't see inside my apartment.  Shaking, I talked myself into calling the police.  

"I'm a foreigner and I don't speak Japanese very well," I said, "but I'm going to tell you what I saw." 

"All right, start by telling me your name."

I gave him my name, my address, and then started to tell him what happened.  I emphasized that the man was naked and that he'd been wearing only a woman's nylon stocking over his head.

The officer was skeptical, but he kept me talking.  "Did he say anything to you?"

"No."

"Did he hit you?  Did he touch you?"

"No."

"Did he threaten you?"

"No."

"Then why are you calling?"

"You don't understand!  I told you, there's a naked man running around in my neighborhood!  You have to find him!"

"All right, you just sit tight. I'm sending two officers to your place.  When they knock, you answer the door, but not until you see policemen outside, OK?"  

I agreed.  No sooner had I put down the phone, when I heard the doorbell.  I peeked outside, and sure enough, there were two white-gloved officers. 

I went outside to talk to them.  

"What did he look like?" 

This is a hard question.  I'm not the kind of person who says all Japanese look alike, because that's not the case, but I hadn't really learned how to describe an individual's appearance very effectively.  And I hadn't really had a very good look at the guy's face.  

I told them how tall he was, that he had dark hair and looked like a Japanese guy with a slim build, maybe in his 20s or 30s. That's all I could tell him.  Obviously, I couldn't tell them what he was wearing, because he hadn't been wearing anything.  

Except the stocking.

The police confirmed my story and told me to stay locked inside my apartment that night.  Then they saluted and were gone.

That night I called my parents and told them I was coming home, for good.  They had called me not long before this incident to tell me about a possible job teaching Japanese at a school in Oregon.  At the time I'd said I didn't think I could really do that.  Now, the thought that I might have a teaching job in the United States, even though I had no teaching credentials, was exciting. 

The police never did tell me whether they found the guy, and I later realized that it might have been a very nutty neighbor of mine from upstairs, who I think had some sort of sexual fantasy about me.  I still think it's totally bizarre that a man would stand naked in a cold elevator at midnight with a woman's stocking over his head on the off chance he might meet up with the object of his stupid fantasy.

I made plans to visit the United States as soon as possible, and about six weeks later, I met my parents at my brother's place in a suburb of Seattle, Washington. (They had flown there from Minnesota.)  My dad drove mom and me down the coast to Oregon in my brother's SUV, where I interviewed for a job with a fellow that my father had known in university.  We drove back to Oregon, then I flew with them to Minnesota, where I had one other job interview with the Minneapolis Public Schools, also for a position teaching Japanese.  I was offered both jobs, but decided to take the one in Oregon.  I flew back to Japan for the last time, to wind up my affairs there and pack for the journey home.  :-)