Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein Read Free Book Online Page B

office.
    Yamamoto, number two to Ono on the police beat and the man who would prove to be my mentor and sometimes tormenter. Yamamotowas my university
senpaí
—that is, senior to my sophomore. His features looked almost Mongolian, and for some reason he reminded me of a porcupine. Then there was Nakajima, his sidekick, who was hair-challenged, like Chappy, and had a long Ichabod Crane face. He’d been a science major in college and fit the classic image of the classic scientist: cold, analytical, dry. Unlike the classic image of the classic scientist, however, he was dressed better than anyone else.
    Finally Hojo, the bureau photographer, whose nose was so red, with so many broken blood vessels, he could have been Irish. By virtue of his seniority, he could say anything to anyone without fear of incrimination, and this night he did.
    We rookies were made to stand at the table in the back of the pub and introduce ourselves. Ono was the first to fill our cups with sake, and we then spent the rest of the night filling his in the Japanese way, saying
kanpai
(“cheers”) with every pour. The inferiors pour the sake of the superiors. Occasionally the superiors reciprocate.
    Ono and Hara told war stories, and I, in my cold-ridden, befuddled state, tried to keep track of the conversation as best I could. Even on a good day, my listening skills were still wanting, but I didn’t want anyone to know that. Hara raised his glass for a toast.
    The sake wasn’t helping my congestion, though. In the middle of Hara’s toast, a giant sneeze suddenly made its way through my passages and exploded before I could raise my hands to cover up. Out of my nose flew a giant ball of snot, slicing through the air with a whoosh, winging The Face and Chappy before splattering its target—the unsuspecting Hara, my first boss and holder of my future.
    There was a sudden, horrific silence, which seemed to last forever.
    Then Chappy whacked me on the head with a newspaper. “Jake, you are such a barbarian!” he howled. Yoshihara bonked me too. That broke the ice, and everybody laughed, including Hara, who wiped his glasses with the
oshibori
napkin The Face quickly handed him. I bowed profusely in apology. Hojo joined the lineup, hitting me right in the head with his wet oshibori. “Do you know how to use this, idiot?” he said.
    What could have been a terribly awkward situation had turned into a joke in a matter of seconds. Even Ono was amused.
    “Omae,”
he began, using the second rudest form of “you” in Japanese, “you are one ballsy gaijin. Omae, I’ve never seen anyone do that before and live to tell the tale.”
    I continued to bow and apologize, but Ono just swept his handthrough the air as if it was already nothing. He poured more sake in my cup and told me to drink up.
    Shimizu dragged us all to his favorite hostess club afterward, and I passed out listening to Ono belting out some karaoke. Then someone put me into a car and sent me home.
    My new apartment was a small flat above a traditional tea and confectionary shop, a five-minute bicycle ride from the Urawa office. In 1993, many places would still not rent to foreigners, but the company had found it for me and signed on as my guarantor. The wonderful thing about the flat was the shower/bath unit that came with it. In my five years as a college student in Japan, I had never lived in an apartment with its own bath; I had to go to either the public bath or the coin shower down the street. Five minutes of hot water for 100 yen in the coin shower, 300 yen for the public bath.
    As I soaked my aching body in my very own
furo
that night, praying that the hangover would be mild, I felt great! I’d really moved up in the world. I had a job, had survived a potentially fatal sneeze, and had my own bathtub. What more could a man possibly want?
    The next day, April 15, 1993, at 8:30 in the morning, I showed up at the Urawa office of the
Yomiuri Shinbun
and sat down in the lobby along with the