The Curse Of Pink

Shoko and I were going to see her friend, Ayaka, in Nagoya the day after staying over at her parent's apartment. The trip to Nagoya from Kobe is about four hours, so we arrived late at night because we ate a big lunch with her parents. We might have never made it to Nagoya because I found it hard to get up out of my chair due to the large amounts of ramen and tempura I consumed at Shoko’s house.
During the drive Shoko arranged to meet Ayaka and her boyfriend, Ryosuke, outside Nagoya Station. I protested about this meeting spot, predicting that it would be swarming with other cars, aggressively eager to fill any empty space available. My prediction proved correct when we approached the goliath structure of Nagoya Station.
As expected, the dropping-off point outside the station was suffocated with cars and taxis swerving in and out of each other as they searched for spaces with eagle eyes and thrashing expletives. I entered this fiery cauldron with light dabs on the gas pedal. Within 0.54 seconds I received the first ear-splitting horn-honk. I turned towards the direction of the honk and saw a furious bald headed cabbie shaking his fist and cursing like a wild carnivore. Why he was livid with my driving, I couldn't say, but I adopted the general spirit of proceedings and stuck my middle finger up at him before driving on ahead.
A few seconds later a car came crashing out from around a corner causing me to do an emergency stop. This driver had long scraggly hair and a cigarette drooping from his mouth. He may have looked different from the bald headed cabbie, but he used the exact same movements and started to furiously shake his fist at me, nearly chocking on his cigarette as he did so. Again, I couldn't understand the anger directed towards me. He was the one who pulled out of the corner too quickly, not me. With this in mind, I stuck my middle finger up at him and drove off.
Where I ended up was the worst possible place in existence. It was a small car park crammed with cars. It was unfortunate that as I entered this parking space, I inadvertently blocked off the exit for the other cars. As a result I received a tidal wave of car honks and angrily contorted faces. The exhaust of all the cars created a hazy shimmering mist around the cars and their drivers, which made for a hot and uncomfortable atmosphere. It was like Dante's Inferno.
I looked to the left side of me and saw a juddering driver with a ghastly frothing face screaming swear words at me, and to the right of me was a little old lady working her angry jaw in unfathomable shapes and sizes. Punctuating this scene was a small procession of fez-wearing Turkish tourists walking through the car-park which made this horrendous experience even more unsettling and surreal. I tried to reverse out of the car park but was blocked off by another honking taxi. I closed my eyes and dreamt of swimming in a placid ocean with a group of smiling dolphins. Shoko shook me out of my comforting reverie and told me to get out of this area so that we might escape with our lives. I agreed and jauntily reversed out the exit. I spied a tiny space at the drop-off point behind a garish pink car in my rear-view mirror and duly parked behind it. Fearful that I may have been blocking the road, I parked dangerously close behind the car. Just as I turned off the engine in victorious relief, a petite girl in her early twenties launched out of her car and inspected her bumper. She then accusingly pointed a finger at me. I didn't know what she was so angry about and was about to raise my middle finger in protest, when she yelled out: "Crash! You crash!"
I had an innocent rabbit-caught-in-a-headlight expression. She walked over to my window and started to shout in Japanese. I made some calm-down gestures with my hand as I got out my car. She led me to her bumper and pointed to a spot. I assumed a manly crouch as I inspected the spot, hoping I would give off the impression I knew more about cars than she did. I studied the spot she pointed at with strained eyes but could find no reason why she would be angry with me. I looked at her and said "Where?"
She pointed to the spot and forcefully thrust my face to the offending area. What she was upset about was a minuscule scratch that was no bigger than an ant’s leg.
I looked at her with astonishment and asked what she wanted me to do about it.
"You pay!" she said.
I wanted to tell her that by damaging a pink car I was doing her favour because no pink cars should be allowed on the road.
I shook my head, pointed to the tiny-scratch and said, "You have got be kidding."
She took this adversarial battle to the next level when she called her boyfriend who was talking on his phone nearby. Moments later this lanky six-footed creature came lolloping towards us. He put his arm around his girlfriend and asked what the problem was. She pointed to the spot and he had the same vacant expression I had when he inspected the spot. "Where?" he said.
His girlfriend stomped her high heeled foot in annoyance and said she wanted me to reimburse my heinous act otherwise she would call the police. For such a harmless scratch, I suspected the police would enact punishment by tickling me.
It was at this point that Ayaka and Ryosuke joined us. They parked their car behind mine with annoying ease. They were an impossibly good looking couple and were somewhat surprised to meet me for the first time in this circumstance. In a perfect world, we would have all met, shook hands, exchanged pleasantries about the weather and wandered off to the nearest bar and to get trashed. But they wandered over to find a physically and mentally exhausted bloke, with his hair messed up and greasy by all the exhaust fumes, and waving his arms about as he remonstrated with a girl standing next to a bright pink car. Naturally they seemed perturbed by this unruly sight. I still found time to shake their hands with them whilst the girl with the pink car continued to scream at me.
Shoko whispered in my ear that Japanese people can't stand the slightest mark on their cars and will move mountains to get it fixed accordingly. To prevent an encounter with the police I paid the ridiculously expensive bill for a new paint job.
When the girl and her daddy long-legged boyfriend sped off in their pink car, satisfied at having depleted my wallet, I was properly introduced to Ayaka and Ryosuke.
I started coherently with a chipper, "Konichiwa."
It then rapidly fell apart.
They knew very little English and, as mentioned, my Japanese knowledge stretches to pointing at things and pulling faces. The onus was on me because I was a guest in their country. The onus had apparently scuttled away when I could think of nothing more to add to this exchange.
Ayaka, Ryosuke and Shoko started to discuss where we should go to drink in Japanese, whilst I stood at the side and pretended to understand all that was being said. I would nod at appropriate intervals and go "Hai, hai" when I felt the moment needed my input. This led Ayaka to believe I understood Japanese, so she asked me a question in Japanese. I guessed she was asking me where we should go for the evening so I made drinking motions with my hand and, for comic effect, pretended to act drunk. Shoko pulled me to one side and said Ayaka wanted to know how long I had been living in Japan. Ayaka, naturally, was spooked by my behaviour.
I recovered and said, "Er ...9 months."
"Wa Kari Masen (I don't understand)" she said.
I started to wave nine digits in her face and said "months, months"
She understood, but she still had a perturbed expression on her face.
Shoko spoke to them in Japanese and made short motions to her hands towards me. Ayaka and Ryosuke laughed. I think Shoko reassured them that I was quite normal but a bit of an idiot.
To escape the crowded area of Nagoya Station we all went to a nearby yakitori restaurant. Like a baby, I asked the others to order for me because I couldn't read the Kanji on the menu. Ryosuke chuckled and assured me he ordered the best dish for me. He did so in Japanese so I initially didn't understand what he told me so I responded by laughing hysterically and slapping my knee thinking he told a humorous joke. Shoko translated what he said and told me it wasn't really that funny. I apologized to Ryousuke for my social gaffe and made some hungry "mmmmmmm" sounds which on hindsight may have sounded quite sinister.
Whilst we waited, Shoko, Ayaka and Ryosuke started to converse in Japanese, no doubt concluding that I was a lost cause. As they joyously chatted away, I practised holding my chop-sticks in a beastly fashion. I couldn't get my hands to morph into the right shape. Each attempt resulted in the chop sticks falling out of my hands and clattering on the floor, disturbing the conversation around the table. I whispered an apology and motioned for them to continue. I turned in my chair and faced the wall as I discreetly continued my chop-stick etiquette. I was like the school dunce.
I gave up this practice when an attempt to wrap a finger around one of the sticks resulted in it flipping out of my hand and falling with a plop into Ryosuke's beer.
As we finished dinner, the talk centred on how to continue the evening. It was decided that we should go to a club which had a dancing competition that night. "Body-popping" was the term used for the dancing. I had no idea what this meant, but Shoko informed me it was a particular style of street dancing used in hip hop. I was still none the wiser but she highlighted that I wouldn't have to converse with Ryosuke and Ayaka a great deal and I could crash into people and wreck havoc without seeming out of place so I was delighted.
The club was small and a lot of bodies were indeed popping to the hip hop beats. I tried to entertain Shoko, Ryosuke and Ayaka by pointing one finger in the air and doing a crude Saturday Night Fever disco move which seemed inappropriate in this charged hip-hop atmosphere.
We ordered drinks and sat at a table on an elevated platform allowing us to view the competition taking place. Ayaka and Shoko went off to the toilet, leaving me and Ryosuke alone. There was an awkward silence as we watched the dancers. I tried to kick-start a conversation by pointing towards the mayhem on the dance floor and said "Su-goy! (great)" he smiled back and repeated what I just said, and returned to staring at the dance floor. I tried to further our conversation by tapping him on the shoulder and saying "Su-goy" again. He nodded and smiled and returned to staring at the dance floor. Trying to come up with any more Japanese phrases was so mentally exhausting that I nearly collapsed. Thankfully, Shoko and Ayaka returned and I could talk with Shoko in English.
As the hours ticked by, I became progressively drunk and uninhibited, so much so that I started to do impromptu body popping myself. My rubbish attempts to contort my body to the beats had them in hysterics. I was in their good books. I now knew what made them laugh, but I couldn't exactly continue this dancing all the time. Walking down the street or eating in a restaurant whilst doing some body popping would be beyond the pale and deeply disturbing so I basked in the momentary good relations we were igniting.
When the poppers had finished the competition, we all went our separate ways, with Shoko and I arranging to meet Ayaka and Rysoke the following day for dinner.
We all left in good spirits, but the following day things got off to a remarkably bad start.
As Shoko and I waited for Ayaka and Ryosuke by the ferris wheel in Sakae, Ayaka came running towards us weeping, followed by a grimacing Ryosuke. Shoko and Ayaka exchanged a few words before Shoko informed me that they had just had a row and she was going to comfort Ayaka for a while. So off they went and Ryosuke waited beside me. There was a prolonged silence.
I don't even know how to deal with these lover's tifts with my friends back in England let alone in Japan, so I was in uncharted territory. What the hell was I meant to say to the guy? Small talk was impossible because I didn't know the Japanese for "Did you check the latest Sumo scores?" As a result, I tapped him on the shoulder, pointed to the ferris wheel and said, "Sugoy". Unlike the last few occasions I used this opening gambit, he didn't even crack a smile. I continued regardless of his sullen expression.
"I like it," I brightly ventured.
Nothing. Not even a smirk. I shifted the topics from ferris wheels to careers and asked what he did for a living. He pulled a constipated face as he tried to find the right English word.
"Temple," he finally said.
"You're a......temple? How did you become a temple?" I said with concern.
"No, no. I'm a student. I study temples." he said.
I was still confused. I never knew temples were on the curriculum in any country but I made sincere nods with my head pretending to know what he was talking about. He asked what I did, and I told him I was a teacher. He asked what age range I taught. I mimed that I taught all ages. For the kids, I crouched down and made baby sounds and for the old folks I adopted a hunch back and pretended to walk about with a cane. He was laughing aloud. Unfortunately for him, he was guffawing when Ayaka returned with a sad, mascara smeared face and the sight of her boyfriend in a jovial state of mind left her distraught so she ran off crying again.
After twenty trying minutes they had reconciled and began holding hands again.
We decided to eat at a nearby Ugandan restaurant and as we were seated you could tell Ayaka and Ryosuke were in high spirits again. They laughed at my attempts to converse with them in Japanese, which I didn’t know whether to take as a show of warmth or a sign of cruel goading. Seeing as we weren't getting anywhere with the conversation, Ayaka, who is a talented graphic designer, started to sculpture a set of ducks from the napkins on the table. When her squad of ducklings were complete we all amused ourselves by playing with the model animals and making quacking sounds for the rest of the evening. I may be incompetent at Japanese but at least I am skilled when it comes to incoherent quacking.



With everyone in a good mood after a delicious dinner we all made our way to a Pricura shop. This is a popular pastime in Japan where young people take pictures with each other against cartoonish backgrounds. Upon entering the shop, I was struck by the amount of pink adorning the interior. There was pink wallpaper, pink photo booths and pink clothed shop-workers. To complement the sugary pink colour scheme was the bubblegum J-pop blasting out of the loudspeakers. All this dizzying pink nearly caused me to vomit - pink puke probably.

Shoko, Ayaka, Ryosuke and I huddled inside one of the photo booths and smiled our best smiles. I consistently managed to miss-time the photo shoot as I always bleated, "When does the machine take the photo?" only to see the camera flash as I turned towards the group with a confused expression on my face.
The pink colours and sugary-sweet pop music was making me hyper-ventilate and was dangerously close to castigating me. I was in desperate need to feel a man again. I was relieved therefore to discover an arcade area near the pricura machines. The sight of arcade games consisting of gunning down zombies, driving fast cars and playing in football tournaments filled me with ecstasy and testosterone that was dearly lacking before.