Persimmon People

Today I asked a student what he was afraid of. I told him I'm afraid of ghosts and he said, "I'm afraid of homo." I checked, and that was really what he meant.

The persimmons at my grocery store have become rotten. I should have eaten them all before winter arrived. Now it's too late and there's nothing I can do.

The one pictured here is inside my belly since last night. I like to eat them with the skin intact, like apples. They taste better that way and I'm afraid the Japanese bodies all around me don't know what they're missing.

L'Arc-en-Ciel

Every time I walk past this poster, young men and women are taking photos of it. I wonder what they like about it, but feel pretty sure it's the homoeroticism. And the bigness. It can't be that they like the band.

Gatsby

I had tea with my friend Ken last night. He was busily showing me photos of the Maserati he's going to give himself for Christmas when he pulled out a small white package of what looked like baby wipes.

"I get sweaty sometimes and these refresh my skin," He explained, "but they're a little spicy around my eyes."

Minty things do seem spicy. It's the same sensation, but sweeter and colder, don't you think, reader my reader? My little brother used to say that mint gum is spicy, and we all knew what he meant, so what was the difference? Would you have corrected him? I didn't. It's too cute a mistake.

I didn't correct Ken, either. Instead I asked if I could try one (they're made by Gatsby), and kept it away from my eyes. Is anyone else startled by the existence of a mentholated tissue made for men of fashion to dab refreshingly about their faces and slender necks?

Gatsby, you blur the lines further.

Are you Jonile Tonight?

Because it had the word "MAN" (男) boldly slashed into its lid, Otokomae tofu intimidated and taunted me for months from its arrogant perch on my grocer's cooler shelf. It was over a tofu-supported dinner with my two female bosses last night that I finally divulged my shame over being unable to ever bring the masculine package to the register, even though my urge to devour it bordered on the perverse. Voicing this dilemma aloud clarified its pettiness.

Tonight, shaking off fears that the delicate young lady at the supermarket counter was repulsed by my baseness, I bought the tofu with exact change. I took it home, undressed it, and will never look back. I will devotedly purchase Otokomae tofu from this day forward, knowing that I have as much right to enjoy it as any Handsome Man. Maybe it was all the built-up emotion surrounding the experience that made this textured, loose variety of bean curd seem like the best I'd ever eaten, or maybe it really was.

The website is dizzying and excessively confident, but I was heartened to see a couple of women on it. I think they're supposed to be aerobics instructors.

Render Your Gender

On the scale of who is manliest, it's widely understood that with my 26 cm feet, foreboding appetite and hairy neck, I surpass your average Japanese gentleman (and I'm a woman, if you're just joining us). Of course there are those who are bigger, hungrier and hairier, but allow me to make a generalization: I have most male Tokyoites my age beat when it comes to masculinity.

For example, I spent the other afternoon helping a straight male friend select an organic lip cream while he fretted self-consciously about the puffiness under his eyes. Then he showed me the best places to buy lightly used designer-label fashions. Then, over espressos and macrobiotic sweets, we talked about how to maintain a slender figure (he likes to take his French bulldog for walks). I could barely keep up with his refinement.

If these are typical interests for straight guys in Tokyo--they certainly don't appear to be atypical--then it's no wonder that Japanese women are pushed that much further to the high-pitched, vulnerable extremes of girliness.

Do you see the adorable necklace pictured above? I think there's a pink telephone woven into it, a purple strawberry, and a yellow choo-choo train, too. I wore it to a bar (because my friend made it for me) and was complimented endlessly on my neckwear, in a very sincere and reverent (and high-pitched) way. It's only one small example, but it reiterated for me Japanese womens' unique interest in the painfully cute. It once baffled me, but when offering a girl a facial is a way of hitting on her, it's clear to which side of the gender spectrum it's more popular for both sexes to gravitate. And if young Tokyo men already rival the average American woman in knowledge of skin care products, then I guess there's nowhere for young Tokyo women to go except toward child-like sweetness. This is all making a tiny bit more sense.