Sayonara, Re-entry Permits!

   As I was working on a translation job for the city of Yanagawa I came across the following good news: 

The procedures for alien registration will change in July 2012

◯ Alien Registration Cards will become “Residence Cards”. 

   The procedure will be conducted when you pass through Immigration at an airport or port in Japan. The alien registration card you currently possess will remain valid until it has expired. There is no need to apply for the new residence card until then. The maximum three-year period of stay will be extended to five years.

◯ The Re-entry Permit System will change.

   Foreigners with alien registration or residence cards re-entering Japan within one year after leaving will no longer be required to apply for a re-entry permit. If, on the other hand, they fail to re-enter Japan within a year after leaving, they will lose their residence status.

◯ In the following circumstances, you must notify XYZ within 14 days.

   Please be aware that if you are late in notifying the following items, your residential status may be nullified.                       

● When you change your name, birth date, sex, nationality, or region.

● Whenever your status changes, such as your Employment Eligibility or Studying Status.

● When your Status of Residence has changed such that you become the spouse or dependent of a Japanese national, or in the event that you divorce or are widowed.

◯  A Special Permanent Resident will be issued as a “Special Permanent Resident Certificate”. The procedure can be conducted at your local governmental office, such as a ward office or city hall.

   Holders of special permanent resident status who re-enter Japan within 2 years of leaving the country will no longer be required to get re-entry permits. If, however, they do not re-enter within two years, they will lose their special permanent resident status. Re-entry permits will be valid for a maximum of six years, rather than the current four years.

Yusentei

   Yûsentei (友泉亭) is an oft overlooked, though more than worth-its-while sightseeing spot in Fukuoka City. Originally built in 1754 as the second home for Kuroda Tsugutaka, the 6th feudal lord of the Kuroda Han (present-day Fukuoka). Yûsentei, which features a subdued, yet beautiful garden, was named after a poem by Kuze Michinatsu in which the coolness of the spring water in the summer and the cloistered life at the house is depicted. The residence was designated a ‘Site of Scenic Beauty’ in 1998 and has since been open to the public. A short drive or bus-ride south of Ropponmatsu, it is a must-see in autumn.

 

Giving Thanks

   At a time when Republican presidential hopefuls are tripping all over each other in their mad scramble to be tougher than the next candidate on the issue of illegal immigration, I like to remind people that Thanksgiving is more than a day on which we give thanks to God and others for what we have. It is the day we remember that America's first illegal immigrants and undocumented workers were our Pilgrim forefathers. Luckily for the English settlers, the Wampanoag didn't ask them to show their papers!

   Incidentally, the painting above is by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, an American painter known for his series The Pageant of a Nation. His paintings have been criticized for showing idealized and historically inaccurate portrayals of key moments in American history. In The First Thanksgiving 1621, the black outfits the Pilgrims are shown wearing are not correct, and the Wampanoag did not wear such feathered war bonnets. They would not have been sitting on the ground, either.

Ducks

   If it hadn't been a quiet Sunday evening, I might have missed it: a subdued exclamation mark breaking the silence. And it came from none other than my wife.

   "Surprised to hear ducks this time of year," I said from across the room.

   "Sorry."

   And we left it at that, choosing to pretend that it didn't happen. Though it amounted to only one of the many bricks that had been laid in the wall that had been growing between us, it was significant enough that I was tempted to say something, to the effect that not even the greatest of love could overcome a woman's flatulence.

   But then, who was I to condemn? Did Jesus not say, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone?" I could not justify even looking upon the rocks when you considered what often percolated from me, releasing a cornucopia of foul odors. Moreover, I had no qualms in the least about putting the physical and emotional health of friends and family in harm's way. No, there was nothing I could say, or even hint at; my sins were serious, my stench incorrigible. Compared to the juvenile delinquent sitting across the room with her ducks, I was a hardened criminal, an unrepentant recidivist.

   But then, I was a man, and flatulence with indemnity was a prerogative of my gender. As difficult as it had been for men to warm to the idea of women's suffrage in the early twentieth century or to accept equal rights in the latter half of that century, I could not reconcile my ideal of femininity with cutting the cheese. No, I was adamant in my belief that a line should be drawn for if we men were to give in, to allow women to encroach upon those things which once made men the men they were, or worse to usurp from us any more than they already had, why what would be the use of genders at all? Man and woman, alike, pissing into urinals, spitting, and scratching their arses. Why, even the most heterosexual of us men would have no choice but to give into homosexuality if only to get a taste of that increasingly scarce femininity.

   The next day as I was in the kitchen making tea and Hiromi was in the bedroom at the extreme opposite side of our moderately spacious apartment, I could not ignore the unmistakable sound of a large volume of warm air rushing through a narrow, relaxed orifice.

   "Hiromi!"

   "It was a duck," came the reply. I needn't have to see her face to know that she was tickled by her own wit. She, however, could not have known that the mortar had just dried around yet another layer of bricks.

   The following day, the morning calm was once again disturbed. A small pack of angry dogs was let loose and there was nothing I could do but stand there in disbelief, mouth agape, not quite sure where I was in the world or what I was doing in it. I felt like a child who presented with the most damning piece of evidence has no choice but to accept the truth. There is no Santa, there is no god, little girls are not made of sugar, spice and everything nice. Worse, my wife was no longer capable of doing it for me as a woman.

   After a moment of awkward silence, I said: “It's heartening for me to know that you're able to feel so relaxed around me,"

   "You probably don't want to know this,” Hiromi said, “but I haven't pooped in over a week."

   That my wife was prone to constipation was nothing new; that she could go so long without taking a nice big one, exceeded the limits of the imagination of a man who enjoyed a double visit to the WC each day, more if he had been drinking. Two days, three days was still within his faculty to imagine, but a week? Seven days without crap bordered on the miraculous. Saints had been canonized with lesser deeds.

   "I tried to go this morning," she began.

   "Ah, Hiromi . . . "

   "And only this much . . . "

   "For the love of Christ . . . "

   " . . . came out."

   “Hiromi! Please!”

   Two masons in soiled work clothes passed through the kitchen where Hiromi and I were talking, nodded goodbye to me, and continued out of the apartment. The wall was complete.

   Throughout our four years of marriage I'd been abused with this kind of talk, and had often asked her if it was her intention to repulse me. I was not being my usual sarcastic self. I was dead serious.

   "Um, Hiromi?"

   "What?"

   "You know, you were right."

   "About?"

   "About my not wanting to know."

   "I see."

   "Right, I'm going to take a shower."

   Seven days. It was a distractingly huge stone to have in the mind's eye. Seven days was a long time to go without, er, going.

   For as long as I could remember I'd been having two healthy craps a day, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. Whereas Hiromi had trouble squeezing the buggers out, I often had trouble keeping the fuckers in. And, quite a few pairs of skivvies have been lost in the line of duty, protecting my trousers from the raw contents of my being.

   Seven days.

   She'd said that the best she could do was lay a small robin's egg of a turd. And it's not as if she hadn't been eating during those seven days. She had. Far more than me, mind you, which got me to thinking about what she was hauling around and how she managed to keep from exploding right then and there. We all have our crosses to bear. I had Hiromi. She had her constipation.

A Slice

The Atago-hama neighborhood of Fukuoka City

Get your slice of the Japanese Dream in 360 monthly installments!

F.O.B.

   I’ve been reading old letters and journals from my early days in Japan hoping to find some gems worth buffing up and posting but so far no luck. I was awfully whiny two decades ago. But then, I had plenty to whinge about: that dreadful boss, “Bakayama”, the miserable state of my lovelife, student-loan induced austerity, and so on.

   The only really good thing about my first year in Japan was the friendship that developed between “Blad”, “Hoka”, and me. Never having been in the military myself I can’t be too sure, but I think what we had was as close as civilians can come to being comrade-in-arms. I might not have taken a bullet for them, but I would have quickly told off that idiot of a boss of ours if he ever treated the others unfairly.

   That’s another thing I noticed about myself. I had quite the temper. I’m happy to say that like a good wine I’ve mellowed with age.

   Anyways, there’s one funny story from those days that is worth mentioning.

   The more interesting episodes of that first year usually involve Blad. He was the first in a long slew of people I would come to know over the years who had a Masters Degree in TESL/TEFL and yet couldn’t master a foreign language if their lives depended upon it.

   And, in a sense it did: twenty years ago in Japan, it was hard to find people who could speak English, especially in that working class town we were living in, Kitakyûshû. You had to speak Japanese to get by.

   The root of Blad’s struggle with the Japanese language was the fact that he was tone-deaf. The guy could not have carried a tune even if he’d had a bucket. Seriously.

   The Japanese can be very polite and will encourage even the poorest of singers to finish their karaoke song, but with Blad they couldn’t help but throw their hands up. “Pulease, Bladorey,” they would beg as he sang Killing Me Softly. “You are killing us!”

   Thanks his imperfect pitch, Blad could never quite get his tongue around Japanese words. I can clearly remember how the word for “toilet”, o-tearai, used to give him a lot of grief.

   “Why don’t you just say, ‘toiretto’ or ‘benjo’?” I suggested.

   “No!”

   He could be stubborn, too.

   Some of the best times Blad and I had together were the evenings after work. Since we lived next door to each other, we would often get together, share a bottle of beer and talk about the things that had gobsmacked us during the day.

   “You know all those little mom-and-pop shops are up the hill?” he said one night.

   “I do.”

   “Well, I found what looked like a little garden shop/florist and there was a woman out watering the plants, so I picked up one of the pots and asked, ‘Kore-wa ikura desuka?’”

   We had recently learned how to say, “How much is this?” in Japanese.

   “The woman babbled something to me that I couldn’t understand, so I went to another plant, picked it up and asked, ‘Kore-wa ikura deskua?’ She said something to me again, but as I was picking up a third plant, she turned and ran into the shop. I could hear her shouting something to someone inside.”

   “And?”

   “And a few seconds later a man came out—I think it was her husband—and he gestured wildly at the plants and shouted, ‘No!’ He turned to some flowers, shouted ‘No!’ again. Then he turned to me and shouted, ‘No! No! NO! This . . . is . . . our . . . HOME!’”

   I laughed so hard that I started crying. When I finally regained my composure, I asked what Blad did next.

   “I put the plant down and continued on down the road.”

Kitsuki

   What is "wrong" with this photo taken recently in Kitsuki, Ôita prefecture?

Introducing HKT48

   'Tis a good day for the nerds of Hakata: the first twenty-one members of the newly launched HKT48 (Hakata 48) were announced in late October. They include, among others:

Yûko Sugamoto (菅本裕子), second year high school student.

 First year high school student, Chihiro Anai

Kyôka Abe (安陪恭加), second year junior high school student

Third year junior high school student, Mina Imada

Nao Ueki (植木南央), a second year junior high school student

 Another second year junior high school student, Sayaka Etô (江藤彩也香)

First year high school student, Chiyori Nakanishi (中西智代梨)

And, Maiko Fukagawa (深川舞子), who is in the sixth grade of elementary school.

Armistice Day

   Armistice Day.

   Never forget what this day was originally meant for: peace. May it prevail on this crowded little planet of ours.

   From St. Kurt:

   “I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

   “It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

   “Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ day is not.

   “So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.

   “What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

   “And all music is.”

   Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions, 1973

Out of the Mouth of Babes

   You won't learn this in your Japanese class, not if you have the kind of stuffy teacher who is mortified by the prospect of her charges speaking improper Japanese like I did. My six months of Japanese lessons never prepared me for the way people actually spoke. I'm not talking about the dialects, the hôgen, about which I sometimes write. No, what I'm getting at is the colloquial Japanese spoken by young Japanese.

   Teaching young women at two different universities, I am exposed to this fairly new kind of speaking on a daily basis. The classes I am in charge of at one university are called "Supisuki" by the students. That real title of the class is "Speaking Skills" (スピーキングスキル → スピスキ). I once taught a Reading Skills class that the kids called "ライスキ" (ライティングスキル → ライスキ).

   It doesn't stop with class names, of course. Nearly everything can be abbreviated--nouns, adjectives, verbs. The above word uzai is a corruption of uzattai, an adjective meaning nitpicky, troublesome, a hassle, persisitent, and confusing.

   More examples:

   Gurotesuku (grotesque) → GURO (グロ！)

   Makudonarudo (McDonalds) → Makku (マック)

   Suma-tofon (Smart Phone) → Sumaho (スマホ)

      ★ Incidentally, I'm trying to get young people to say kashiden (カシ電) as in kashikoi keitai denwa (clever mobile phone). There have been precious few converts.

   Kimochi warui (uncomfortable, disgusting) → kimoi (キモイ)

      ★ The slang form, like guroi, sounds more disgusting than the original.

   Nomi hôdai (all you can drink) → Nomiho (のみほ)

   Tabe hôdai (all you can eat) → Tabeho (たべほ)

   Mabushii (bright, as in blindingly so) → Mabui (まぶい)

   Keitai denwa (mobile phone, cellular phone) → Keitai (携帯)

   Riaru ga jûjitsu shiteiru yosu (The sense that "real life", namely that life when not working or going to school, is fulfilling. Used among otaku and NEETs) → Riajû (リア充)

   Kashisu Orenji (Casis Orange cocktail popular with young women) → Kashiore (カシオレ) 

   Gûguru de kensaku suru (Google something) → Guguru (ググる)

   Kurisuto Kyôgaku (Christianity Studies class) → Kurikyô (クリ教) 

   Chûtohanpa ja nai (Not half arsed = great) → Hanpa janai → Hanpa ne~ → Pane~ (ぱねぇ)

   Muzukashii (difficult, hard) → Muzui (むずい) 

   Mendôkusai (troublesome, meddlesome, a hassle) → Mendoi (めんどい) 

Harazuru

   An old photo of a cormorant fisher on the bank of the Mikuma River in Harazuru, Fukuoka Prefecture (in the southern part of the prefecture near the city of Hita). Note that the caption is written from right to left as was common before the Pacific War. Today it is far more common for captions to be written from the left, like English: 三隈川の鵜飼 (Mikuma Gawa no Ukai)

   An on-line guide to the Chikugo area says this about Harazuru: "This is the hot spring with the highest amount of hot water. The water is a bit thick, and the skin becomes smooth, making it popular as a spring for beauties." Any questions?

   In addition to the thick water of the Harazuru hot springs, you can also enjoy fishermen tease birds (literally yank on their chains) this time of year: also known as cormorant fishing. 

Keisai Eisen's woodblock print of cormorant fishing in the Edo period

Tatami

   Tatami comes to my place with an apology and a present. She never fails to bring either.

   This time, as she is begging forgiveness for the impertinence of her unannounced visit, she pulls out some pastries and sweet rolls from an impractically frilly bag and places them on my coffee table. She also produces a bottle of mineral water, and some apple juice. Tatami's pedigree and upbringing ensured that no matter how physically unattractive a woman she may have become, she would still have the manners and grace to allow her to move among the most exclusive of Japanese social circles. In the presence of the bourgeoisie, I suspect, she is something of a curious anachronism, but among working class boors like myself, who have little use for the formalisms imposed by privilege, she seems to be adrift in the sea, weighed down by too much baggage.

   Tatami sits down next to me on the sofa and tries for the next hour to engage me in conversation, by which I mean, several minutes of niceties followed by anodyne chit-chat.

   There is something on her mind, something she seems to be eager to say, or something she wants me to do, but she won’t come out with it. It has always been that way with her: she expects me to read it in the subtle signals of her body language.

   Sweet as Tatami is, she can be annoying as hell, and so I feign illiteracy.

   When I’ve had my fill of her snacks and there is little left that her company can offer aside from irritation, I politely suggest that she leave.

   She stands reluctantly and straightens her dress. She picks the frilly bag up and moves with reluctant steps towards the door where she takes her time putting her shoes on. Suddenly, she pulls me into me into those bony pale arms of hers, presses her face into my chest, and sighs, "I don't want to leave."

   Oh dear!

   "Well, as a matter of fact I was rather busy when you ca..."

   "J-just let me sit for a moment."

   What can I do? I have little choice, but to say yes, just as I said yes when she had first asked me in the most pained and circumlocutory manner to sleep with her a week ago.

   That, I realize, like so many things in life—far, far too late—was a grave mistake. My friend Shinobu had been right: the poor girl was indeed a virgin. A thirty year old virgin. I didn't think there were any left. Much like devout Christians back in the States, girls from good Japanese families tended to keep their pants on until marriage.

   How Tatami had gone from insisting that, in spite of my intransigent lack of interest in her, she could never be my girlfriend to her insisting upon my popping that long neglected cherry of hers boggles the mind. I had merely been going with the flow, expecting and wanting nothing more than friendship, someone to talk to. How the devil did I end up becoming a debutante's boy-toy?

   There had been no forewarning. None so ever.

   Okay, so I had twice joked about taking her to a love hotel, but I had only been only joking, trying to get a bit of a rise out of the woman. I hadn't been serious about it at all, yet somehow those two jokes, mentioned off-handedly and soon forgotten by myself, had been crafty little seeds which would by and by germinate in her mind and grow into a verdant, lascivious fantasy. 

   On her thirty-first birthday, I took her to a Spanish restaurant where—surprise, surprise—I ended up having a bit too much to drink. It was then that Tatami asked me to have sex with her.

   Not that she put it so directly. She could never have said, "Peador, I want you to fuck my brains out right this minute!" No, all she could do was offer some vague hints and hope they would be concrete enough for me to catch them.

   “It’s my birthday, so I’d like you to do something special for me.”

   “Oh? And what would that be?”

   “I’ll give you two hints.”

   “This a game?”

   “Please listen,” she said. “The first hint: you said it when we were walking in Ôhori Park last month.”

   “Last month in Ôhori Park?”

   “Yes. We were near the Boat House and I asked you where you’d like to go and . . .”

   Gulp! And I said, How’s about we pop into the Love Hotel over there?

   The first hint was as concrete as the sidewalk leading all the way back to my place, as concrete as the steps we climbed to my fourth floor apartment, where for the third time in my life I spread the legs of a virgin, trembling with fear and excitement, and slowly violated her sanctity with the profanity of a semi-hard cock.

   Let me tell you, I'll never understand why some men desire virgins. As far as I'm concerned, they're not worth the trouble.

   Tatami manages to coax me back to the sofa, where she then pesters me until I embrace her. I put my arms around her and give her a cold, perfunctory hug. With my arms hanging loosely around her, she presses her cheek against my chest, and moves her thin fingers towards my crotch. Finding a half-enthusiastic bulge there, she grabs it softly. Then, ever so gingerly and cautiously, as if she was afraid of letting something feral out of its cage, she unzips my pants.

   I’m not really in the mood, and can't get too worked up about doing it with her of all people, but what can you do when you’ve got a defiant boner? It’s high treason! Mutiny, I say! And, Tatami gleefully commandeers it. She slips her hands into the front of my pants, fumbles around as if she is searching for a pen in her handbag--an exceptionally large pen I might add—and, finding it, clamps onto it tightly in case it changes it's fickle mind.

   Tatami then lets out a deep sigh. Is this what she has been after all along? Turning her face to mine and with her eyes closed, she parts her lips, inviting me to kiss her. As enthusiastic as my backstabbing little friend has become, I just can’t get fired up about kissing her. When I hesitate, she takes the initiative and starts kissing me. Big, sloppy, clumsy kisses. She puts her tongue down my throat and is now squeezing Lil' Paddy for all it’s worth. If she isn't going to pleasure the sperm out of me, then it appears that she is going to force it out of me the way you might get the last bits of toothpaste out of an old tube.

   Though the effort will prove futile, it is nevertheless amusing to watch a woman give head for the first time.

   Holding my cock in her thin, pale fingers, Tatami eyes it with caution and wonder. She lowers her head towards my erection, pauses for a moment as she deliberates whether or not to go through with it, and then, mustering all the courage her thin frame contains, gives Paddy a preliminary lick.

   It has been nearly month since someone last fellatiated me. Not long for most men, I suppose, but long enough to make Paddy stand at stiff attention, as if he’s been defibrillated back to life.

   Tatami flinches and jerks quickly away, worried, I can only guess, that overwhelmed with ecstasy I might ejaculate right then and there. She lowers her head again, my cock twitches. She hesitates. But once she is reassured that I won't spontaneously blow the contents of my viscera all over her face, she takes the head into her mouth and waits again. She hasn't yet figured out that fellatio is something to be performed, not something which is going to just happen all by itself. I guide her head down until she nearly chocks on it, and let her come up gasping. I shove my cock back into her mouth, then guide it in gradually. Only then does she begin to understand that some movement is required.

   She works at it for about thirty minutes, up and down, up and down, and yet never quite getting me to the station on time, always missing the train. After a while, I've had enough. I pull my cock out of her mouth, holster it, and zip up my pants.

   Tatami protests at first, insists on her wanting to make me “feel good”, but I just wave her off. All I want is for her to leave so that I can have some Q.T. with a girlie magazine and the “lascivious hand” and go to bed.

   She lies on the floor at my feet. Her blouse is half open, revealing an elaborate pink brassier. She raises her white, boney arms towards me and beckons me to join her. I’m not interested. When she raises her dress and spreads her legs invitingly, I turn and look out the window into the dark night.

   "Who is the most important person in your life?" she asks from the floor.

   "My sister."

   "And then?"

   I know what she is playing at, so I decide to have a bit of fun. "That's tough,” I say. “Maybe one of my closer friends—André, Dave, Brad, Geoff, Rowland. I don't know."

   "And then?" Disappointment rises in her voice.

   "My brother. Yeah, probably my brother . . ."

   "What about me?" she whines. “What about Tatami?”

   From the depths of my generous heart, I reply: “Tatami, don't whine. It drives me up the feckin’ wall."

   "But what about me," she asks again.

   "Look, Tatami, I like you. Like you. I have always liked you, but I have never loved you."

   "Why not?"

   "Why not?" This tickles me up and it is all I can do to restrain myself, to keep from laughing at her.

   "I want to be your girlfriend!"

   "No!"

   "Why? Mie was your girlfriend. Why can't you love me?"

   That simple question threatens to dredge up a wealth of memories and emotions. I don’t really want to get into it. Not with Tatami. She wouldn't understand.

   "Why can't you love me?"

   Why can’t I? Why couldn't I love Yumi? Why couldn't I love Aya or even Reina for that matter? Why couldn't I love any of the women I’ve met over the past seven months? Is my heart no longer capable of love? Was my love only meant for one person, and now that she is gone I am no longer able to love anyone again? I don't want to believe it. I still have faith, however tarnished it may have become, that I will meet someone I can love, but as far as I can tell this woman who is half naked at my feet with her pale arms reaching out for me will never be the one. She will never be the more I have been searching for. She will never be the enough that Philip Roth wrote about in The Professor of Desire. She isn't anything to me but another regret at the end of a long string of regrets. And, all I want from her now is to watch the wiggling of her bony little arse as she pads out the door and down the steps.

   "Why can't you love me?" she asks for the third time.

   "I'm sorry, Tatami, but you're not my type."

   "Hidoi", she whimpers. "You're terrible!"

   A genuine tear collects at the base of her right eye, such a small tear, so cute, so her, that it makes me smile. Whenever Yumi cried, the Self Defense Forces were put on alert, ready with bulldozers to act in case any innocent bystanders got caught up in the relentless flow of gunk that would ran down those heavily concealed cheeks of hers. But Tatami's tear, that solitary tear clinging to the lower edge of her eyelid, grows slowly in size, then rolls like a drop of mercury down her soft white cheek.

   When the tear falls, I giggle at the novelty of it. I've never seen someone cry this way, so controlled. I laugh again, but not out of cruelty, for I don’t mean to be cruel. I laugh at the silliness of life. Sometimes that's all you can do is laugh to help you forget how much pain you’re in.

   Tatami reiterates her low opinion of me, but rather than decide that she is wasting her time, she chooses to try endearing herself to me by lunging for my cock. When that fails, she starts swinging at me, pitiful punches that fail to connect and serve only to frustrate her further. When I wonder aloud if she was taught these tactics at finishing school, she kicks me.

   It is just too much and I start roaring with laughter.

  With great difficulty, I finally manage to push her towards the front door. She kicks and screams, her arms flail about wildly, and then just when I’ve got her halfway out the door, she tells me that she is pregnant.

  "Yeah, right!" I scoff and give her a final push out of the door.

   As I am shutting the door on her, she threatens to quit the school and to tell everyone that I am the father of her child. She threatens to follow me to America.

   It is pathetic and ugly. It is opera, very, very bad opera.

   Realizing that her threats are having little impact, Tatami changes her tone and says, "What would you do if I died?" Tears are now steaming down her cheeks. "What would you do if I died?"

   "Well, for one, I'd probably get to bed sooner."

   "Hidoi!" she screams and runs down the stairs. I can hear her steps grow distant, followed by the angry slam of the gate downstairs.

____________________________________________________________

   The above was edited out of a longer version of my second novel, A Woman's Nails, the first several chapters from which can be read for free here. I am debating whether or not to reintroduce the chapter into the novel. If you have read the novel in its entirety, your imput would be greatly appreciated. 

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Woman's Nails is now available on Amazon's Kindle.

Beachcombing

Cover Up

   It's that time of year again.

Call the cops!

   Two days ago the local Marukyo supermarket was robbed. 

   A man, armed with what appeared to be a knife, threatened four employees as they were leaving the store after closing hours. The robber, a man in his twenties or thirties, 175 cm tall and of medium build, ordered the employees to open the store’s safe. When the employees replied that they didn’t know how to open it, the man then bound the employees’ hands and legs with masking tape and stole the money from the four employees’ wallets. No one was injured in the robbery. 

   The robber, who is still on the lam, made off with a total of ¥9000 ($115). Crime doesn’t pay . . . much.