Japan by Lisa Fineberg Cook

Author:Lisa Fineberg Cook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Downtown Press
Published: 2009-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

And so my day continues. If it had ended after my phone call with Stacey and an evening spent with Peter at home, I might be feeling pretty accomplished right now. Instead, this is what I am up against: crowds that make my mornings look like a zen garden party, people moving so fast that I have to remind myself I haven’t taken speed since high school, nowhere to sit on any of the FOUR trains I have to take to get out there. Best of all, it seems that once I am off the subway and walking toward my destination, everyone is leaving the place that I am going to. While hundreds of people rush toward me, I fake left, move right, and sumimasen -my-ass for three long blocks to get to the pearly gates of Denso.

I am met in the lobby by a Mr. Yamaguchi. He is wearing a name tag with the company logo on it, so I walk up and introduce myself. This is not a man who, in my opinion, was voted most likely to be charming in high school. He nods, looks me up and down, and turns to the elevator. He pushes the up button and we stand in silence and wait. I follow him into the elevator, thinking that if he tries anything I could easily take him, but he barely acknowledges me, which I find equally offensive, considering we’re the only two people on the elevator. We get off on the seventh floor. As I continue to follow him (which, by the way, I am doing instinctively as he has not said anything like “follow me”) down several very long hallways, I feel a bit like Persephone must have when she followed Hades into hell.

We enter a large conference room and I see several other teachers sitting at a table. I quickly surmise that they are teachers rather than students because they look as foreign as myself. I sit down next to a black guy who’s stuck in the seventies: burgundy leisure suit (I kid you not), brown cowboy boots, and handlebar mustache.

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