Читать книгу Accidental Office Lady - Laura Kriska - Страница 9
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Uniform
ON MY FIRST DAY of work at Honda’s headquarters in Tokyo, I walked into the seventh floor Administration Department and stared into a black-haired sea of Honda employees. The Japanese men were dressed in dark business suits, but the women wore blue polyester knee-length skirts and matching vests. I was shocked to see only women in uniforms. They looked like tall Girl Scouts, missing only merit badges and knee socks.
More than one hundred desks and at least as many people filled the wide-open office space, and considering the number of people there the room seemed suspiciously quiet. Two women approached me looking like paper cutout dolls in blue uniforms, white blouses, and black, shoulder-length hair. Nothing about them seemed particular enough for me to grasp; if they were to turn back into the crowd of people I felt sure I would never find them again.
In polite Japanese one of the women asked me to follow her. We walked down a long, empty hallway. No one spoke. We stopped in front of a closed door and one of the women knocked timidly. Then she opened the door which led into a small, dingy storage room; brown cardboard boxes stood along the windowless walls. The women effortlessly slipped off their shoes before stepping up onto a low landing. I imitated their actions.
Without saying a word, the two women began digging around in the boxes; when I realized what they were looking for, a shiver ran up my spine. The boxes were full of uniforms. All I wanted to do was run away from the room; but I had to stand there, pretending not to hear them discuss my waist size.
I was wearing a new cream-colored suit—a light wool, tunicstyle Liz Claiborne design I had purchased just weeks before at Nordstrom with one of my first paychecks.
A pretty beige briefcase was slung over my shoulder, a graduation present from Grandma Mozelle, and I wore matching beige pumps. I had tried to mold myself into the image of an international corporate woman—an image that did not include polyester.
I hadn’t minded wearing a uniform when I worked on the assembly line in Ohio. Everyone there, including the president, wore the same white coveralls with a red name patch on the front. The only problem I’d had then was that the newness of the clean, stiff cotton betrayed me as a temporary college kid, so I’d had to make liberal use of black sealer paint to give myself a broken-in look.
There had been times in my life when I actually welcomed uniforms. In elementary school I idolized my neighbor Kiva Guss who was a Grandview High School cheerleader. Every Friday I watched her leave home wearing a smart blue and white pleated skirt and a sweater with our school’s roaring bobcat emblem on the front. Wearing the uniform was part of my motivation to try out for the cheerleading squad when I got to high school. I wanted the uniform to set me apart from the other girls. I wanted it to tell everyone that I was part of an elite and talented group.
“Please, take it,” said one of the women handing me a skirt as though it was the latest design from Issey Miyake. The material was thin and insubstantial. This uniform offered no expression of status—it sent an entirely different message. It said, “I’m just a woman; don’t take me seriously and don’t treat me with respect because I am as replaceable as this polyester.”
I could see by the woman’s expression that I was expected to wear the uniform; my resistance would not be understood. But I felt like I should put up some kind of fight. I wanted to formally register my displeasure before submitting. Shouldn’t someone take note that I was consciously making a choice to fit in here? I wanted credit for compromise, but instead a got a perfunctory smile. I took the skirt behind the privacy curtain to change.
The skirt was simply cut and had a zipper in the back. As I got ready to step in, I noticed a small paper tag attached to the waistband. In Japanese characters it said “Ms. Tanaka.” She must have been the employee who had previously worn this uniform. I wondered if she had retired from work to marry. Had she done her time and, like so many women, lived with her parents to save money for her big wedding day? I knew that she had not been promoted out of the uniform because all women, no matter what job they did or how long they had worked at Honda, wore the same uniform.
I did not want to follow in Ms. Tanaka’s footsteps even though I didn’t know where they would go. I was twenty-two and new to this corporate world; but I felt certain that if she had started by stepping into this polyester straitjacket her footsteps would lead someplace that I didn’t want to go.
I stepped out from behind the privacy curtain dressed in Ms. Tanaka’s discarded uniform. My clones smiled pleasantly. “It looks fine,” one said as the other nodded in agreement. They gave me two uniforms to take home along with an oatmeal-colored long-sleeved blouse, which I noticed was not mandatory. They were both wearing short-sleeved, nonprescription blouses of their own.
When I got back to my hotel room I put on the entire uniform and laughed hopelessly at my hideous reflection. The exaggerated collar of the blouse touched my chin, and the holes of the vest constricted my arms. My image was nothing like I had anticipated. As if to capture this point of departure I used my self-timing camera and took a picture.
It had been the same month two years earlier when I had arrived under very different circumstances as a twenty-year-old exchange student to spend my junior year at Waseda University. On that first night in Tokyo, I had gone with a small group of students to explore local bars. We immediately discovered that if we spoke a few words of Japanese, red-faced, drunken businessmen would buy us beer. We went from bar to bar drinking free beer and practicing our textbook-inspired introductions. That night, I learned that in the eyes of many Japanese I was singularly intriguing because I did not have black hair but could utter Japanese syllables that made sense.
My particular group of exchange-student friends were, like me, continually searching for the quintessential Japanese experience. Unlike some of the other Americans, we were not interested in re-creating a Little Los Angeles or Little Ann Arbor on the Waseda campus. We were the kind of exchange students who immediately started drinking green tea and earnestly tried to eat everything—from spaghetti to yogurt—with chopsticks.
We found inherent value in participating in almost any activity that involved Japanese people who did not speak English— activities like camping with the 4-H Club or practicing grueling martial arts that we never would have considered doing in America. In our minds, going to Tokyo Disneyland with other exchange students ranked much lower than attending a traditional tea ceremony dressed in full kimono with one’s host family. An adventure at a hot spring was in and of itself a valuable cultural experience, but going there with a new Japanese friend was considerably more interesting than going there with an old beau visiting from Missouri.
This authenticity-ranking applied to our choice of everything from extracurricular clubs to part-time jobs. When I got my job working as a weekend Welcome Lady in the Honda showroom I felt I had exceeded the authenticity quotient in every way.
In preparation for my job, Honda provided a two-day training course for me on how to be a Welcome Lady. I learned how to graciously accept business cards and how to delicately decline sexual advances without using the word “no.” Above all, our job as Welcome Ladies was to smile and create a friendly atmosphere for the customers. The Welcome Plaza was a place for them to relax. The most expensive item a visitor could buy was a rum raisin ice cream cone at the California Fresh snack counter.
The eight Welcome Ladies were in their early twenties. They wore an outfit that reminded me of the television show The Jetsons: blue short-sleeved tops with pink piping that flared out at the waist, white skirts, and high-heeled white pumps. Manicures were a requirement, but no rings were allowed. All the women had the long, well-coifed hair that comes only from hour-long styling sessions. Their makeup and glossy pink lips were flawless and checked every hour. All day we smiled and greeted customers and handed out brochures. On special occasions, the Welcome Ladies stood on platforms next to sparkling new Honda products and used the soft, agreeable tones of formal Japanese to explain its features into a microphone.
I was treated as a guest by the women and sometimes even by the customers themselves. The Welcome Ladies included me in after-work drinking parties, took me on day-trips, and told me secrets about turbulent and clandestine love affairs. Young men in thousand-dollar leather riding gear and schoolgirls wearing sailor-suit uniforms asked to have their pictures taken with me and requested that I autograph their Honda brochures.
At six in the evening the thank-you-and-goodbye soundtrack played as we ushered all the visitors out the sliding glass doors, bowing and smiling sweetly as though it pained us to bring the eight-hour workday to a close. After the doors were locked and the bright lights dimmed, all the Welcome Ladies lined up in a row facing the showroom manager. With our hands clasped gracefully, we continued to smile as the manager made a few closing remarks. We listened politely, as though with great interest, then bowed to him in unison saying, “Otsukaresama deshita, You are the tired one.”
The Welcome Ladies then retreated into the dressing room, where a shocking transformation took place. They shed the Jane Jetson costumes and put on expensive, funky black dresses. They concealed their pink lips in deep red tones and reapplied eye makeup several shades darker. Checking to make sure their cigarettes were pocketed, the women emerged from the Welcome Plaza purged of their girlishness.
I enjoyed watching this transformation, and I admired the women for it. Their new appearance was rebellious and in a way explained how they could generate eight continuous hours of sticky-sweet pinkness to strangers and then listen nightly to a patronizing speech from the manager on how we would have to try harder to be more friendly the next day.
During the year of weekends that I worked as a Welcome Lady, I never went beyond the first-floor Welcome Plaza of Honda’s Headquarters. I knew there was a bank of elevators that transported people to the building above, but I had no idea what it would be like.
“This is an intelligent building,” a young woman from the Personnel Department said as she handed me a schedule for the next six days. “We will begin your orientation with a tour of the headquarters,” she explained.
I sat at a table in the center of the seventh-floor Administration Department across from this woman, who was dressed exactly like me in blue polyester. All around us was a buzz of activity: phones ringing, people moving around and in-between aisles of desks and cabinets that gave some order to the huge open office space. I had hoped that wearing the uniform would have at least helped me blend in, but instead I felt curious eyes watching me, and sensed people wondering, “Who’s that redhead in the uniform?”
The orientation schedule was meticulously organized into daily and hourly columns according to the twenty-four hour clock. Lunch at 13:00, a lecture at 14:30, and the end of the workday at 17:30. Each event on the schedule included a room number and a list of participants’ names.
Just as Mr. Yoshida had promised, the woman told me that the Personnel Department would help me get settled in Tokyo—set up a bank account, review company policy, and, most importantly, find a place to live. My understanding was that I would choose from two or three apartments found by the Personnel Department. I was familiar enough with the city to have an idea where I wanted to locate, but I had never looked for my own place so I was glad to have their help. As I was a foreign employee, the company would also pay my rent. I assumed there would be a ceiling on how much could be spent, so I asked the woman how much was allowed.
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about the amount,” she said. “We’ve already found a place for you to live.”
“What?” I asked in English, hoping that I had misunderstood her.
“It’s all settled. We’ll go visit the apartment later this week,” she said and pointed to the schedule. “See here. ‘Visit apartment in Nerima.”’
I was stunned. Nerima was over an hour away from headquarters by train, including several transfers. But more than the location, I couldn’t believe that I didn’t have any choice in the matter—especially with something as important as my home for the next two years. The woman explained that another foreign employee had recently been transferred to a facility outside Tokyo and that I would be taking over the recently vacated apartment. It was obvious from her explanation that the Personnel Department had taken care of absolutely everything.
Honda’s intelligent building was like a self-reliant city. In addition to eight business floors, a cafeteria, and the Welcome Plaza on the first floor, the building housed a travel agency, a bank, and a dry-cleaning service. One floor had a health clinic including a pharmacy and dental office; there was an exercise room, a coffee shop, a VIP restaurant, a gift shop, and a formal Japanese tatami room.
What made the building intelligent was the internal computer system that operated like a network of nerves throughout the building. Communication between the intelligence network and the employees took place through a magnetically coded identification card. So that attendance and overtime could be monitored, every day employees ran their identification cards through an electronic sensor located on each floor. The network went up the center of the sixteen-story building like a spinal column. Other sensors throughout the building controlled air conditioning and lights. The cash registers in the coffee shop and cafeteria were also in the link, so all purchases were recorded on the identification card and then automatically deducted from the employee’s monthly paycheck.
The woman from Personnel who explained all this to me was Ms. Uno. She was in her mid-twenties and spoke cautious English, carefully articulating each syllable. She didn’t make the usual language mistakes like replacing the L sound with an R and calling me “Rora” or telling me it was time for “runch.” Often, before speaking, she would pause, and her eyes would dart around the room as though she were searching for the correct words spelled out on the walls.
I learned that Ms. Uno had been hired right out of college as one of the first career-path female employees at Honda. Unlike most women who were hired as clerks, she was trained along with the male employees. She spoke fluent French and English and, compared with the other women I had seen on the seventh floor, had an unparalleled flair for wearing polyester with style.
Ms. Uno patiently guided me through my first days of work. She seemed confident and well organized. My admiration for her grew, and like a friendless camper I attached myself to this knowledgeable counselor. Our first days consisted of a series of meetings with managers in the company who taught me about the history of Honda and company policy. My Japanese wasn’t good enough to understand the lectures, so Ms. Uno acted as a translator.
The first lecture was on the “History and Management Philosophy of Honda.” A man in his fifties from the Training Department met us in a large conference room on the fifteenth floor. We gathered at one end of a long table, the speaker on one side, myself opposite him, and Ms. Uno in-between but just out of the speaker’s direct line of sight. From the moment the meeting started I saw a side of Ms. Uno that disturbed me.
“Wouldn’t you like to sit here?” she asked the speaker, motioning to another chair that looked more comfortable. “Shall I order some coffee?” she asked him, waiting for his nod before placing the call. When we started the meeting, she sat somberly, as though banished from conversation, and quietly translated his words. She seemed to withdraw into herself, occupying the smallest space her body could possibly manage. When the lecturer stopped for a break she asked if she could clean his ashtray. Her comments were barely acknowledged with smoky nods. I couldn’t understand why he was treating her this way. The scenario was repeated every time a new manager showed up for a lecture.
During one lecture I stopped the speaker to ask a question. Not only was I curious, but I also thought that an informed question would show the speaker that I was interested in his subject. Later, Ms. Uno told me that I had been rude.
“When you ask a question you need to be more polite,” she said. “Next time use this phrase first: ‘Mōshiwake gozaimasen ga, chotto kikitai to omotte orimasu.’” She recited this phrase again: “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but I was wondering if I could ask you something.” It seemed as familiar to her lips as her own name. Over and over again I repeated her until I had mastered the unfamiliar sounds.
The apartment situation still concerned me. Even though I hadn’t even seen it, I wanted to resist it. I wanted a choice. Corporate authority already determined how to speak, what to wear, and how to behave. When would my opinion count? I was perfectly willing to give up space in order to live closer to the city. As long as I could find a place within the budget I didn’t think it was the company’s business where I lived. I couldn’t move into the Nerima apartment without at least voicing my dissatisfaction, so I had a talk with Ms. Uno and let her know that I was unhappy with the idea of living way out in Nerima. If this was the only choice, I told her I would look for an apartment on my own. She sucked in her breath and looked at me as though I had announced that I had decided to leave the country.
Ms. Uno looked distraught as I explained my feelings, but she agreed to ask her boss about it. She timidly approached a man sitting at a cluster of desks and bowed her head repeatedly as she spoke. The man hardly looked up from what he was doing. Ms. Uno’s shoulders were hunched, her head was down and her hands were clasped. Again I felt disturbed by her subservience. The man barked a few words and Ms. Uno retreated, walking backwards. She sat down at the table and reported his response in English. “You will take the Nerima apartment,” she said, shaking her head. “This is the rule.” Suddenly I noticed that the armholes of my uniform seemed unbearably tight.
It seemed like every time I approached the Personnel Department I left feeling disappointed. One day I asked Ms. Uno how to order my business cards. I had purposely delayed having a card made while I was still in the U.S. because I wanted one with both English and Japanese. She deferred to her boss for an answer. Through her he told me that I wouldn’t be needing a business card. None of the other women working in the executive office had business cards, so I wouldn’t get one either. I protested and tried to argue that surely in the next two years I would be in situations where having a business card would be useful. “What if someone gives me a card and I don’t have anything to give back?” I asked him. He handed me a few generic cards that said “Honda Motor Company, Ltd.” with a blank line underneath where a name could be written. “Use these,” he said.
In the evenings after orientation I returned to the President Hotel located just around the corner from headquarters. After a day of speaking in Japanese the hotel lobby offered the illusion of escape, where guests sat in European-style antique chairs reading the International Herald Tribune and a corps of bell boys dressed like a marching band called me “Madam.”
The only illusion my room offered was that of being in a cell. The room seemed to be a complete unit, as though every piece had been perfectly engineered to fit into place. Although the bed was designed for one person no taller than five and a half feet, it took up two thirds of the room and touched three of the four walls. A small nightstand with a lamp touched the bed and was connected to a narrow desk that took up the fourth wall. On the desk was a mini entertainment center consisting of a compact twelve-inch television, along with a tea set and complimentary tea bag. Next to the desk, a small luggage rack loomed over a pair of beige plastic slippers.
In a small closet-sized room was the unit-bath. It was one continuous piece of putty-colored plastic with a drain in the center of the floor making it look like what you might find on an airplane if the bathrooms included a half-sized tub and shower. Like a one-man band with the drum, cymbals, and banjo all included, the unit was so compact that I could shower, brush my teeth, and flush the toilet all at the same time.
I couldn’t do much in my room except lie on the bed and think. Usually I brewed my complimentary tea bag and worried about work. Besides the uniform and the way women were treated, the apartment situation troubled me. Taking the apartment represented total compliance. I felt the corporate walls forcing me into a mold as though I were trapped inside a Fisher-Price playhouse, in which each piece of furniture fit perfectly into its assigned space and had a single hole for a peg-shaped doll. I didn’t want to be that doll, and the more threatened I felt, the more I wanted to resist.
I decided to call Mr. Yoshida and ask his advice. He didn’t take sides but suggested that I present specific and convincing reasons to the Personnel Department as to why I wanted to live somewhere besides Nerima. He thought I should find an alternative apartment and gave me a general idea of what would be a reasonable rent. Because I was thinking about living near my parents’ friends, he also thought I could make the argument that living there would be safer for me. Mr. Yoshida said he would call the Personnel Department the following week if I wanted him to, but I got the feeling that he thought I should try and work this one out on my own.
I called one of my mother’s Japanese friends. She welcomed me to Japan and asked how everything was going. I told her that things were great and that I would soon be looking for an apartment in her neighborhood. She offered to help me look, and we made a date to meet.
When I hung up I was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness and started to cry. I thought about calling a friend in America, but it seemed so far away and I wasn’t even sure that I could explain my feelings. I didn’t want to admit to anyone, especially to myself, that my dream job was not everything I thought it would be. I felt more alone than ever before. My head ached from crying, so I swallowed a packet of bitter Japanese aspirin powder, took a bath, and ate an entire chocolate bar.
The headquarters building stood on one corner of an intersection in Aoyama, a chic business district in Tokyo where wide streets house boutiques, cafes, and showrooms. The Honda building was less than two years old and was the most modernlooking concrete high-rise on the block.
The front of the building protruded out toward the corner. Each of the sixteen floors had a window running round it that sat back from the smooth, gray stone surface of the building, making it look like a modern bunker. The entryway was clad in austere steel and glass. It was easy to miss the understated sign above the sliding glass doors that said Honda.
On the corners across the street to the right and left of headquarters were similar tall concrete buildings. Kitty-corner from Honda was a conspicuous gap in the landscape. No building or construction existed—only a six-foot high, moss-covered stone wall. In this bustling commercial district, the empty corner stuck out like a gaping hole in a smile.
The stone wall circled an area bigger than the size of a hundred football fields. It belonged to the Imperial Family and housed an immense garden, a guest palace, and lots of wideopen space. Commoners were not permitted inside the walls and were even discouraged from viewing the grounds. When a thirty-two-story building across the street from the garden was built, a special agreement was made to prevent people from looking inside the wall. Not a single window exists on the entire north face of that building.
With help from my mother’s friend, I found an apartment in her neighborhood that was within my budget and only a thirtyfive-minute subway ride away from headquarters. I presented my case to the Personnel Department, emphasizing, as Mr. Yoshida had suggested, that I be allowed to live close to a family friend who would surely be helpful in case of an emergency. Ms. Uno’s boss was unsympathetic but said he would consider my request. I went back to my hotel room that night feeling entirely at his mercy. There was nothing more I could do. I had decided that I wouldn’t bring Mr. Yoshida into the battle; it was clear to me that this was the first of many to come.
When I got back to my hotel room I put on my favorite baggy pants, put my hair in a pony-tail, and walked around the neighborhood looking for ice cream. The cool, dainty scoops didn’t seem like enough on the hot September evening, so I ate three.
The next day Ms. Uno told me that we wouldn’t be going to visit the Nerima apartment because her boss had decided I didn’t have to live there. Arrangements would be made to rent the apartment I had found.
My new apartment wasn’t quite finished when I moved in one Saturday morning with two large suitcases. The apartment was on the first floor of my landlord’s house. Like many homeowners in Tokyo who wanted to profit from high real estate prices, the family had recently renovated their lower floor into two small apartments.
The apartment had two rooms, which were measured using the standard dimensions of a tatami mat. A single mat is about three feet by six feet, making it easy for me to fit my whole body into the space of a single mat. The front room had a blond hardwood floor and was measured as a six-mat room. The other room was four-and a-half mats and had a tatami floor.
I sat in the tatami room enjoying the quiet and sunshine that filled the apartment. Sliding paper screens softened the light coming through the windows, and the brand-new mats smelled green and fresh. All morning, workmen and the landlord’s children had been trekking in and out of the front door, which still didn’t have a lock. It was lunchtime and everyone had taken a break, including me. The landlord’s sister had brought me some food, which I laid out on top of a blue suitcase like a picnic: seaweed-covered rice balls, glazed doughnuts, and a can of iced coffee.
I looked around and admired the space—the hardwood floor was flawless and the kitchen gleamed. Next week I would pick out furniture from a leasing company. I would also be getting the equivalent of $2,000 from the company to buy dishes, appliances, and other start-up items. It seemed like so much money.
Just by moving to Japan I got a fifteen-percent raise and a per-diem allowance. I knew the raise was given to any employee who accepted a foreign assignment, but I didn’t feel that I had done anything to earn it. The extra money was supposed to compensate for the sacrifice of living overseas, but I wanted to live here.
It wasn’t as though Japan was a Third World, hardship assignment where I couldn’t drink the water or get medicine. In many ways Japan seemed more advanced than America. The streets were safe for a single woman at night. Subways and trains were clean and ran on time. The taxis were impeccable—drivers wore white gloves and covered their car seats with lace doilies. Even the bathrooms at headquarters were exceptional: every sink had a mouthwash fountain and many toilets were equipped with an electronic bidet. I liked the polite way salesclerks treated me even in places like the drugstore where I had gone to buy powdered aspirin. The clerk had said, “Please take care of your health.” I felt my living standard had improved.
A man from the Administration Department accompanied me to the Tokyo Lease Company. I paged through several brochures, examining tables and refrigerators. It was hard to make choices because I didn’t know exactly how much I was allowed to spend. The Honda man would not tell me what the limit was. He weaseled his way around my questions, holding his authority like the gavel of a parent who makes all final decisions. I didn’t understand his attitude. He acted as though I couldn’t be trusted to make my own choices.
While I was looking at a low Japanese tea table with two floor chairs without legs called zaisu, I heard the Honda man discussing my situation with the man from Tokyo Lease. Suddenly the two of them were deciding what items I should have. I couldn’t believe it. Ignoring me, they made a list and even started to decide what color scheme would be best. My stomach tightened. Maybe they thought I didn’t understand. Maybe they thought that I wanted their help, but they didn’t even look at me, let alone ask for my opinion.
I wasn’t sure how much authority I had. I felt my cheeks getting warm. “Excuse me,” I said, interrupting them. “I think that maybe I would like to make some suggestions.” The Honda man looked shocked, as though he wasn’t used to having a woman tell him what she thought.
The first thing on their list was a bed. “I don’t have room for a bed,” I told them. “I’m going to sleep on a futon.” They were both incredulous: an American sleeping on the floor? “It is much more practical for the space I have,” I explained. The Honda man acted as though I needed his approval for every item. I finally persuaded him that I was going to buy a futon, but I had to agree to lease a sofa that opened into a mattress just in case. We haggled over the number of chairs and where to fit in a washing machine. I insisted on having a clothes dryer, which the Honda man felt wasn’t necessary. He was crazy if he thought I was going to hang my laundry out to dry like a virtuous Japanese housewife who fervently believed there was some inherent value in clothing dried naturally by the sun. I felt like telling him to shut up. If I wanted to have an apartment without a single chair, or a dryer instead of a microwave, then it was up to me.
When I showed them the picture of the tea table they both laughed. “You want zaisu?” the Honda man asked, as though I had requested a water bed filled with goldfish. “It will fit perfectly in the tatami room,” I told him. He acted as though without black hair and hundreds of years of Japanese ancestors, I couldn’t really want to sit on a zaisu or sleep on a futon.
I exhausted my immediate cash supply after buying a few things for the apartment. My bank account wasn’t set up for international transfers and I hadn’t received the $2,000 setup allowance yet, so I found myself with less than ¥5,000 (the equivalent of about $35 at the time) to last for two weeks before my first monthly paycheck. I had already purchased a train pass so I could get to work; I really only needed money for food. I asked Ms. Uno if it would be possible for me to get an advance on my next paycheck. She didn’t know and said I should ask her boss directly.
“Be very polite when you ask him,” she counseled. The thought of imitating Ms. Uno’s obedient posture and subservient behavior made me feel ill, but he was the only one who could authorize my request. Ms. Uno helped me practice the solicitous words, “Mōshiwake gozaimasen ga, chotto onegai ga arimasu keredomo …”
When I saw her boss hunched over his desk I felt like abandoning my plan. The thought of surviving on $35 for the next two weeks seemed like a more appealing option. By going to him I felt as though I would be admitting my unworthiness as a responsible adult, that my request would prove I was incapable of making good decisions or budgeting money. Approaching him made me feel like a little girl asking for a nickel to buy some candy. I heard myself reciting the words and conforming to the role.
“I’m sorry to be such an inconvenience, but I’ve run out of money and I would like to make a request for a small advance on my next paycheck.”
He thought about it for a moment, shook his head, and said, “That would be very difficult.” It was the Japanese equivalent of saying no.
I felt like an idiot, but I didn’t know what to do. My anger got confused with doubt, and I simply bowed and thanked him for his time. I had been selfish, I told myself. I couldn’t depend on the company to always bail me out. His cursory indifference immediately erased my earlier feeling that I deserved some credit, and even a little respect, for getting this far on my own. Instead I started to feel like he had been treating me—like my voice didn’t matter.
Later in the day, after I got over feeling foolish, I approached one of Ms. Uno’s colleagues, who was the most popular man in the department because he was so genuinely friendly. When I told him about my predicament he immediately checked the petty cash supply and graciously offered me ¥70,000 (about $490 at the time), asking if that was enough.
One evening I made a delightful discovery—a sentō, or public bathhouse, just blocks away from headquarters. The small building was stuck between small wooden homes. I was astonished to find an area still untouched by modernization located so close to some of Tokyo’s highest-priced real estate. A bluetiled porch and a small cloth banner hanging outside modestly announced the establishment as a bathhouse.
While an exchange student I had gone to a sento with a small group of American women—we all wanted to baptize ourselves into the Japanese world. We spent most of our visit laughing nervously at the man who took money and could see into the women’s bath. At this sento a woman took my ¥500. I left my shoes outside in a wooden slot and put on a pair of pink plastic slippers. The changing area was only the size of a family room in an American home, and had a smooth wooden floor. There were several chairs in the center of the room, with well-worn, sunken cushions. On the walls were several wooden shelves with old wicker baskets for clothing. I took one of the baskets and stripped.
Through a sliding glass door I could see a few women in the white-tiled bathing room. The steamy room echoed the sound of women’s voices and the soft rush of running water. I walked into the bathing room carrying my towel cloth discreetly in front of myself. The warm moisture of the room embraced me.
I sat down on a blue plastic stool in front of a pair of spigots and grabbed a yellow bathing bucket. Cold and hot water gushed out of the spigots and filled the bucket in seconds. I poured bucket after bucket on my head, drenching myself and letting the water spray all over. Every splash was a release.
As I soaped my body and washed my hair at the spigot, I listened to the echoing chatter. Other than a few prepubescent girls with their mothers, the women were wrinkly and saggy. These women, I imagined, were probably regulars and had likely been coming to the sento since they were young, when the public bath was their only bath.
I felt soothed by the warmth of the room and comforted by the community of women. After I was all clean, I walked to the soaking pools in the back of the room. Three deep, tiled pools held water of varying temperatures: hot, extra hot, and superextra hot.
I slid into the hot pool without stirring up the water and sat still until my body adjusted to the cooler water at the bottom of the tub. The heat swallowed me completely. Leaning my sweating head back against the wall, I felt my muscles release my bones. My head felt light and I let go of every worry: the frustration of being treated like a child, the language, the uniforms, Ms. Uno’s boss. Everything was still, and I felt no impulse to rebel. For a moment I was at peace in my body.
I got out of the tub and went back to the cold-water spigot, filling the bucket with icy water. As I doused my steaming body my skin shrieked. My head tingled and every pore was in shock. I kept pouring the cold water until my skin felt numb. The coldness became heat, and I felt totally refreshed. When I got into the extra-hot soaking pool I didn’t even feel the heat of the water. I repeated this cycle several times.
When I returned to the spigots for the last time I noticed a middle-aged woman with a young girl, maybe her daughter. They were talking while the young girl washed the woman’s back. The woman smiled at me and said in Japanese, “You didn’t get your back very clean, did you? You’re supposed to bring a friend to wash it.”
I smiled back and said, “Today I’m alone.” She pulled her stool behind me and said, “Well, I’ll wash it for you.”
She soaped my washcloth and started to rub my neck. I bent my head down to my chest and held my arms folded together. Her strong movements made my shoulders shake. I let go of my arms and let my body feel everything.
“It’s a good feeling, isn’t it?” she said. “Oh, you’ll certainly sleep well tonight.”
I could feel the washcloth sliding up and down my back. Each vertebra of my spine felt like it had been loosened. The tension from my body was released, and I crouched over with my arms hanging to the floor. The woman filled a bucket and poured warm water over my shoulders. A rush went through my entire body. She poured again.
