A Postcard From London Carrot
Haresh Shah
Keiko (Shirokawa) of Ray Falk’s office takes me out for what I thought to be the most expensive Chinese dinner. Apparently, what is French cuisine is to us in the West, in Japan, Chinese cuisine is considered a notch above any other kind – exquisite and exclusive.
After dinner, we stop at a cozy little whiskey bar. It reminds me of the Booze & Bits in Chicago, located right in the heart of the hubbub of Rush Street, invisibly tucked away behind an inverted L-shaped narrow passage north of Oak Street. Must have been a storage room turned into a nice little watering hole for the people in the know. A bunch of us at Time Inc. used to hang out there frequently and collectively we all had incredible crush on Sherry – the blonde bombshell of the bartender. No one could ever touch her, but she did well with her smiles, excellent service and bit of a coquetry thrown in.
Back to Tokyo. The bar we are in is a private club and every member has his or her own bottle lined up on the shelves. They are all filled only with whisky containing every known and some unknown brands. Majority of them are the different grades of the two top Japanese labels: Suntory and Nikka. Bottles are all outfitted in variety of clothing, most of them custom made, but you can also buy them ready made in the department stores. Some of the ones in my line of vision are adorned variously with a white furry puppy and black cuddly teddy bear. Short Chinese silk jacket, the like of what Suzie Wong wore and the long Japanese kimono and even a frilly floor length white bridal dress. Keiko’s bottle is dressed a bit differently. It’s wrapped in a maroon colored suede cowboy jacket, with frills and all. Cute! I look at Keiko sideways and could easily imagine her wearing a grown up version of just such a jacket, over a checkered blue shirt, wrapped around which a blue paisley bandana, tight leather pants, cowboy boots and the cowboy hat, riding a wild horse, tightly held reign in on hand and flaying lasso in the other.
Five some years later, Japanese Playboy editors host a dinner for us – myself and the staff of four from Ray Falk’s office – the Americans. After dinner, Ray and his crew excuse themselves leaving me alone with the BOYS. They are to take me out on the town. Kayo (Hayashi) winks at me and wishes me luck. The editors I am left with barely speak any English, except a word here and there.
We all pile into Mr. Nanao’s Nissan.
‘Do you like Turkish bath Mr. Shah?’ Sugimoto asks. I don’t know what he is leading at, but as tired and jetlagged as I am by now, I wouldn’t have mind also to have left with Ray and company and crash. Alternatively, a nice serious oriental massage wouldn’t be bad either.
We’re driving through Ginza, which is a mob scene, the kind I have never seen in any other big and crowded city. The streets are swarming with people like hoards of ants climbing on top of each other over a lump of sugar crystal. And they are loud. Many drunk out of their minds and absolutely out of control. A group laughing and screaming has one of their men lifted up above in the air and they are swinging him up and down like a hammock in the storm, while a group of women standing on the sidelines are laughing and applauding.
And then suddenly, Mr., Nanao hits the breaks. For a small moment everyone and everything comes to standstill. As if to observe a moment of silence in honor of someone or something. We’re at the crossroads at the multiple streets merging on a large square. In an instant the square is completely emptied out. Not a car in sight, nor a human being. And then I see tidal waves of pedestrians rushing forward upon it from the eight different directions – crossing the streets in swarms, crossing each other in a hurried but at a uniform pace. And then it’s all over. Mr. Nanao puts his car back in gear and we’re on our way. Just like in that first scene of My Fair Lady, which begins with a peaceful dawn – not a thing or a creature in sight, empty streets and the store fronts, deserted stalls – the damp looking streets lying lifelessly in slumber. And then the morning kicks in. There is a flurry of motion. Every empty space is occupied. The frenzy of the day begins. I’m told that what I just saw is called sukuramburu kosaten – the scramble crossing. And the chaos resumes.
Now I see a man slung over the shoulders of two women, barely able to walk. The women are practically carrying him. And here is the winner! A young man has unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis and begins to pee right in the middle of Ginza, the district wide awake and full of bars, clubs, the late night shops and all. He is quite oblivious of the people skirting around him. No one noticing him as if it were the most natural thing to do, like a stray cow letting a long string of a stream out on a street of Bombay.
We cut through all of that and arrive at what looks like an office building. We take a smallish elevator up to the seventh floor and enter what looks like a cocktail lounge, which it is. But there is a difference. A different kind of a private club, it’s a hostess bar. The place is filled with business men, most dressed in their dark suits and ties. And there are a stable of young hostesses, who sit next to and entertain men, pouring drinks, dancing with them and converse as if the customers were their long lost friends.
The atmosphere is relaxed, even though the hostesses hop from table to table or run to the new arrivals to greet them and to bid bowing goodbyes to the ones departing. But their attention to details and to each individual is incredible. They don’t push, but make sure that everyone’s glass is full, like any attentive host would. It’s not like damen unterhaltung’s places in Germany or the rip off joints of Rush Street in Chicago. The girls are employed by the place and receive a fix monthly salary. The price of drinks include the company of the ladies on the premises.
The girls don’t try to dry hustle you or make you buy them expensive drinks. Their clients are big corporations, who maintain an account with the establishment. Every girl seems to know every customer who comes in. They refer to them as their “friends”, and it shows in their congenial hospitable behavior.
The place is called London Carrot, its ambience is definitely English, with the colors and the lighting somber and sophisticated. I am their regular friends’ guest and being bestowed extra attention. The first two hostesses that snuggle up to me on the couch, try to converse with me in less than rudimentary English, depart after a short spell, replaced by the third one, who stays with me through rest of the evening.
Nana is her name and her English is better than the others, which is not saying much, but she seems to have infinite amount of patience and the curiosity and genuine interest in what I have to say. As difficult as it must have been, she is still interested in hearing about my impressions of her country and the people. To make sure she understands what I say and that I understand what she does, she repeats every single word I say, like my five year old daughter Anjuli does at home. She is barely twenty one, a bit on the plump side with the rounded baby fat on her frame. She asks me to dance with her, and we dance a couple of slow songs while the editors gently pull at my coat sleeves.
‘Time to go to another place, Mr. Shah”
Nana politely releases me and bids me goodbye, extracting a promise from me to return to London Carrot the next time I am in town. And she asks me for my address, telling me that she would write me a Christmas card.
All the girls are lined up at the exit, and bowing, bid us goodbye, domo arigato and sayonaras are exchanged and we are out back on Tokyo street.
Most everyone excuses themselves, leaving me alone with Sugimoto and Oniki. They hail a cab. We are in Ginza, which is the south east part of the city, the cab is to take us diagonally across the city to the north-western Shinjuku. The cab drops us off in a quiet residential neighborhood. Not much going on. I see a couple of rundown buildings that are being renovated and their construction work is blocking the way to where they want to take me. We walk around the construction and enter a very narrow, dark and dingy entrance, which reminds me of the crumbling old tenement buildings of Bombay. The cage like tiny elevator takes us to the third floor and delivers us in a strip of a dark hallway.
Another hostess bar. But this one is dark and dank. Even a bit sleazy. Hostesses are not as pretty or as nicely dressed. They are still restrained and polite in the Japanese way. They serve you and keep company with you. But then when their turn comes, they rush to the stage. In addition to being a hostess bar, it’s also a small cabaret. The girls preform comedy skits on the little squeezed-into-the-corner stage. They are more sparsely dressed than their sisters at the London Carrot and from the frequent and what I perceived to be lecherous laughs from the crowd, tell dirty jokes. It all goes over my head of course, except the lewd physical motions that accompany their speech. From what I can tell, they are pantomiming various acrobatic contortions of the sexual positions. The one I still remember is three of them huddled together in a chorus moving their hands made in the fists that come out of their crotches and move upward in vertical rainbow, suggestive and jerking their fists as if masturbating a giant cock. And then they would look at each other and burst out in lewd laughs. The place is crowded with flesh pressing against flesh. By then I can hardly keep my eyes open, let along pretend to enjoy the show. By the time the editors drop me off at my hotel, it’s past three in the morning. I hit the sack. Feeling I’ve had enough education in the rituals of the night life in Tokyo.
Switching back to the gentler of the two clubs, towards the end of the year, I receive a Christmas card in the mail bearing a postage mark of Tokyo and on the top left of the envelope is the red rubber stamp of London Carrot.
© Haresh Shah
Illustration: Celia Rose Marks
SISTER SITE
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Next Friday, May 9, 2014
FOR THE LOVE OF MARY JANE
When I arrived in America in 1968, pot smoking was already around, especially amongst the young and the “hip”. Something I never got into, other than having tried it here and there as I would a menthol cigarette – without inhaling. Honestly:). While it was still a hush-hush backroom and the campus phenomena in the east, when I arrived in Southern California some years later, it was offered openly and abundantly at most of the parties. Fresh, dynamite and homegrown!
you keep leaving me hanging – i want to hear more 🙂 living vicariously through your life and experiences. lol
to day’s story is too short and flat somehow, anyways could have been more detailed. since very few people knows Japan or have visited. wish you could rewrite or add in coming Fridays.
khav