T A B L E_T A L K Explore California's Highway 1 with Wanderlust readers in Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Paradise found By Tracy Johnston An unspoiled oasis in the Egyptian desert (01/27/98) Neglected Classics By Pete Hamill Erico Verissimo's extraordinary "Mexico" deserves to be republished (01/26/98) Mondo Weirdo By Tim Wall Bad trip: The pilots locked themselves out of the cockpit! (01/23/98) Passages By Christopher Hunt Waiting for Fidel (01/22/98) How to buy a Turkish rug By Laura Billings A priceless encounter (01/21/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Passages archives		Four Views of Raoul - - - - - - - - - > A FICTIONAL PORTRAIT OF < - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > AN EXPAT'S LIFE IN JAPAN. < - - - - - - - - - | E X C E R P T | THE BROKEN BRIDGE EDITED BY SUZANNE KAMATA STONE BRIDGE PRESS 359 PAGES Editor's note: As a former expatriate resident of Japan, I found much to savor -- and to reminisce about -- in "The Broken Bridge," a new collection of fiction written by expatriates in Japan. The quality of the book's three dozen stories varies considerably, but in toto, the collection powerfully re-creates the spell that Japan casts over foreigners, a spell that combines frustration and fascination in equal parts. Reading "The Broken Bridge" provides an immersion into the eccentricities, exasperations and exhilarations of expatriate life in Japan -- as the following excerpt amply shows. -- DON GEORGE - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Alien BY RALPH McCARTHY | As I walked past the police box at Roppongi crossing I noticed one of the officers watching me. It was Sunday evening, and I had about an hour before I had to be at a studio down the road. I'm an assistant professor in German language and literature at a university on the outskirts of Tokyo, but I live in Nogizaka and often do narration work. I have a beautiful voice. That's the only beautiful thing about me, though. There is, I fear, some truth to the stereotype of Germans as lonely, gloomy people, and I am lonely and gloomy even by German standards. I first came here three years ago with a Japanese woman I'd been teaching at my university in Tubingen. I was madly in love with Emi; we planned to wed, and she helped me find employment here. I started to study Japanese even before we left Germany, thinking it would help me blend into the society, and learned to read and write 2,000 kanji in less than a year. Emi changed after she got back to Japan. She moved in with her parents and took a part-time position teaching at a junior college. At first we met at least three or four times a week, but she gradually started inventing more and more excuses for not being able to see me. Just a year after I moved here, she told me it was over. A few months later she wed a Japanese man. I was devastated. I probably should have gone back to Germany, but didn't like to waste the knowledge I'd acquired about Japan. Wait. That is not exactly true. The truth is that depression had robbed me of the energy to make any major decisions. I've remained at my university, going through the motions, but I must admit to being even less motivated than most of my students. The longer I'm here, the less I understand these people. This is what I was thinking as I walked around Roppongi with over an hour to kill and no one to talk to. When I approached the intersection, the WALK sign began blinking and a herd of loud young Americans ran across. I was in no hurry and stopped at the curb to wait. A moment later, someone shouted in my ear. "Hi!" My nerves were on edge anyway, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I spun around to see the little police officer who'd eyed me as I walked by. "Understand Japanese?" he shouted up at me. "To a certain extent," I said. "Oh! You're good! Show me your alien registration card!" "What?" "Are you carrying an alien registration card?" "Why?" "Because, if not, you're breaking the law! You don't have one, do you!" "I have one." "Show it to me! No, wait! Come inside the police box!" He took a firm hold of my arm and steered me inside. I was livid with rage. Another policeman was sitting at the desk, doing paperwork. He glanced up at me indifferently while I showed my card to the little officer, who seemed impressed that I was a university professor. "OK, you can go now," he said. "Why did you stop me?" I growled. "Did I do something bad?" "Don't let it bother you!" he said. "We ask everybody!" "Ha," I said, and gestured outside, where a group of foreign models were laughing and shouting as they waited for the light to change. "You mean you ask everyone who looks suspicious to you." "No, no! Today's Sunday, right?" "So what?" "It's Sunday, and you're all alone! Everybody else is walking around with friends, but you're alone! That's unusual, right? Just checking! It's my job!" I didn't know whether to burst into tears or strangle him. Fortunately I did neither, but stormed outside and marched straight to a bar around the corner. There was one other customer in the place -- an American named Raoul, whom I knew slightly. He was drunk. I don't believe I'd ever seen him when he wasn't. I bought two large beers, plunked one down in front of him, and began to relate what had just happened to me. I was so distraught that my knees, my hands, and my voice were shaking. "Ha!" he interrupted me. "You think you've got problems. I've just been stood up again. Third time this month ..." I spent the rest of the evening buying this dimwit beers and listening to his woman problems. I never made it to the narration job. I did, however, decide to return to Germany. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Rhinoceros At Charlie Congo's the head of a rhinoceros protrudes from the mirrored wall behind the bar. A real rhinoceros. The eyes aren't real, of course, but very realistic. Amazing how gentle-looking those eyes are. "What am I doing here?" they seem to say. "The last I remember, I was romping through the savannah with my mate and child ... then a sound like thunder ... a searing pain in my heart ..." It's one of the saddest things I've ever seen. Not as sad as the character sitting a few stools down from me, however. He is surely European -- perhaps German -- but he is studiously ignoring me, staring now at his beer, now at the muted variety show on the television. On the sound system, Jimi Hendrix demolishes and recreates the cosmos, but this person is wallowing in misery and doesn't even seem to notice. I want to help him, to offer some words of encouragement, if not a moral sermon on the evils of negative thinking. Or, then again, maybe I just want to talk. I do like to talk. I pull out my cigarettes and ask if he has a light. He smiles shyly -- look, he can smile! -- and slides a white disposable lighter toward me. I've got him now. "I feel sorry for this rhinoceros," I say, and he looks up at it as if noticing it for the first time. "I know what you mean," he says. He sighs and shakes his head. "Human beings are disgusting creatures," he mumbles. Ah, we come straight to the crux of the matter. "You are German?" I say. "No, American." He doesn't sound American. "You were born there?" "Yeah." Perhaps he is lying. "New York?" "No, no. The Midwest." Where is the Midwest, I wonder? Texas, perhaps? Impossible. No, he must be lying. But never mind. Probably he has his reasons. "And you?" he says. "Me? I am Parisian, of course." I have a beret, a goatee, and a thick and unashamed French accent, and I chain-smoke Gauloises. Even the Japanese can usually guess where I'm from. "Oh? I love Paris," he says. "You have been there?" "Well, just once. But I couldn't believe how beautiful it was. And the women! Why would anyone ever leave?" I stub out my cigarette and give him a stern look. "It is true," I explain to him, "that Paris is the most civilized and cultured city in the Western world. But one must spread one's wings. I am quite happy in Tokyo. And I like very much the women here." "Oh," he says. "Ah." "What is more," I add, "they like very much me." And I proceed to tell him about Mitsuko. At the moment I have three women, but Mitsuko, ah, Mitsuko ... We met at a small reggae bar in Aoyama called maze. I knew she liked me right away, and I explain to this Texas German named (he claims) Raoul that the reason she liked me was that I was obviously not only intelligent, but sensuous as well. It is not enough to be merely intelligent. "Perhaps," I tell him, striking a somewhat personal note, "that is your problem. You are too much in your mind." He squints at me and smiles again. "I'm not in my mind," he says. "I'm in your mind. Who says I've got a problem?" "It is Friday night. You sit there alone, sighing into your beer. You do not look happy." He thinks about this for a minute. "And you are?" he says at last. "Yes. I am happy because I believe that someday I will be happy." "Say that again?" "Happiness," I pronounce, "is believing that one day you will be happy." His eyes go out of focus for a moment, and then he comes back. "I'm not sure I know what that means," he says, "but it sounds good. I'd better write it down." And he takes a little notebook from his pocket and begins scribbling in it. He scribbles for some time. I fire up another cigarette with his lighter and try to steal a glance at what he's writing. But all I can see, at the top of the page, is the word RHINOCEROS. N E X T+P A G E : Hello Kitty