Tune In Tokyo:The Gaijin Diaries by Tim Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

movie is. And she doesn’t mess around. The first day I taught her I’d learned that she’d separated from her husband because he’d had an affair and later shacked up with his secretary. We discuss her marital situation at length during each lesson—how he stops by her business every week to drop off money, how his secretary just wants his money, how Yoko won’t divorce because if she does, she’ll have no legal right to his money due to Japan’s weird divorce laws that service the men and screw the women. I begin to feel more like a therapist, who, in addition to offering emotional support and acting as a beacon among the rocks, corrects his patients’ grammar and pronunciation.
    I mention to her how clearly backwards these divorce laws are to an American.
    “Oh my God, Yoko, if you divorced him in the U.S., you could take him for every sorry yen he has.”
    She furrows her brow and tilts her head to indicate she doesn’t understand.
    “I mean, in America, you would be able to get his money,” I try again, this time adding some hand motions. “He was screwing around on you, right?”
    A nod, then another furrow and tilt.
    “He was…uh…having sex with his secretary, right?”
    “Yes,” she says with a roll of her eyes. She obviously feels the same way I do about this. Really, an affair with a secretary? That is about as imaginative as dipping your french fries in ketchup. I would have given the guy a few points if he’d strayed for the love of a trapeze artist or a bass player, but come on, a secretary is just a slap in the face.
    “Well,” I continue, “all that you would need to do is get a private investigator to follow him around and take pictures of them necking in the park during lunch.”
    Furrow. Tilt. Nervous smile.
    I repeat what I’d said slowly in more basic terminology and act out the parts about the taking of the pictures and the necking. Her eyes widen.
    “Then, you take the pictures, text them to your lawyer, and BAM! Money.” Here I rub three fingers across my thumb in the international signal for “mucho dinero.”
    Her brow unfurrows, her head untilts, and she sighs, wishing desperately she could litigate a divorce in New York City. As it stands, they just live separately from each other and Yoko does what she can to bleed him dry of his and his secretary’s funds.
    She lives in Kamiooka with her twenty-eight-year-old daughter, Fumiko. Both of them are currently studying to be Japanese language instructors, and they are nearing the completion of their course.
    “Oh, reeeeally ?” I think.
    I feel like I’ve started to develop a special closeness with Yoko, one that transcends the confines of our cramped classroom. We’ve discussed her marriage, her business, and Fumiko, whom she fears is too awkward to ever marry and will live with her forever. Could I maybe take things to the next level and ask her to be my Japanese teacher?
    “You know, I am very interested in studying the language.”
    She says, “” reverting back to Japanese. “Really?” She pauses. “We can to teach you.”
    Yessssss. And, better yet:
    “We do for free, because these days we cannot charge for to teaching. Not yet get certificate.”
    Now, if I were the uncertified teacher, I wouldn’t likely be paying much attention to such an inconvenient rule, but this is a good example of the tendency of many Japanese towards being honest and law-abiding. There are, of course, exceptions, like, I don’t know, the Japanese mafia, whose hobbies include getting ungainly tattoos, carrying automatic weapons, and using their chopsticks to put a person’s eyes out, but generally, the Japanese respect the rules, as opposed to Westerners who would cheat their own mothers if it meant turning a profit.
    So on a Wednesday evening a few weeks later, I meet Yoko and Fumiko out on the street in front of the school, and they lead me to their home behind the Keikyu plaza, high up on top of a very, very steep hill. For the