Ejovi Nuwere

I was in “Bar Isn’t It” in Shin Shibashi when it happened. In an area where at night the streets all look the same, nameless and dark, full of bars each with their own crowd, their own story. I can’t count the number of times I’d gotten lost looking for this bar.

You can hear the music from outside and you can see foreigners, hostesses getting off of work and guys looking for stragglers to pick up lurking outside the spiral staircase that leads upstairs to the infamous house of sin.

It was a house of sin because people only went there for one reason. Like the many gaijin bars throughout Japan its sole purpose was to take advantage of the fact that there are Japanese who want to have sex with foreigners, and foreigners who want to have sex with Japanese. They lure foreigners with cheap imported beers and the Japanese follow…


Walking up the narrow stairs you have to keep an eye open, opportunity is always there in Japan, guys have hooked up with women before even getting inside the bar, it happens I’ve seen it. But I’ve seen and heard a lot worse, I always feel uncomfortable going into these types of bars.

The bouncer is sitting down at the door, a huge Japanese guy wearing a black muscle t-shirt. I’ve seen him around before but he doesn’t recognize me. “1,000 YEN” he says looking me in the eye longer then necessary, he’s looking to see if I’ve caused trouble here before or if I’m looking to cause trouble tonight.

I always feel uncomfortable in these types of bars, but for less then $10 I get two drinks and get to listen to music. Bruce and his Japanese guy friend are already inside. I squeeze past the group crowding the entrance, which is only four feet away from the bar, I don’t pay much attention to the group, but I know who they are, even if I’ve never seen them before. The four girls are hostesses. I can tell because they never change after work they come straight here. The sexy evening wear stands out in a dive bar full of jeans and t-shirts. The two young guys are their friends but they don’t usually come to this type of bar, those guys go to Japanese trance and house music clubs. There is one guy in the group, an older man about 35, he’s a customer, though he doesn’t look particularly rich, I’m sure he spends a lot of money on one of those girls, otherwise they wouldn’t have invited him along.

As I squeeze my way further inside catching up to Bruce and his friend who are waiting for me I think of how sometimes it’s a benefits to be able to type people so accurately, that’s the way Japan is. And the reason this bar never works for me. I don’t fit this crowd. The Japanese girls, who come here, come here looking for white guys, and regardless of what I say, they never believe that I’m a white guy with a dark tan. To these Japanese people, gaijin means white. This may be a gaijin bar, but it isn’t my gaijin bar.

I wouldn’t have come her if it weren’t for Bruce. Friends can be hard to come by in Japan so whenever you meet a new one you have to try to make it work. Bruce is a good guy. His Japanese friend is funny as hell and in love with foreign women.

“So what do you think?” I asked them the three of us standing in a circle near the bar scanning the crowd.

“I don’t see much” Bruce responded. We were looking for women, at least they were, I didn’t bother, I’d tried this club the first two weeks I was in Osaka and decided it wasn’t for me and besides I had a girlfriend.

The Japanese guy broke the silence “Lets drink!”

I gave Bruce one of my tickets “get me a corona, I’m going to check out the dance floor.” I walked towards the back of the club, past five or six tables with various groups of twos and threes sitting. Whenever I walked by a woman I would smile, as if to say hello. But they simply ignored me. This isn’t my bar I thought to myself.

I entered the back where a DJ was spinning a mix of top hits from the last 20 years, songs that any respectable DJ would have thrown away long ago.

The dance floor was packed it was always packed and dark. I could smell body odor and sweat coming from the raging crowd bouncing in unison to whatever rock hit was playing. A group of Africans and Mexicans where lurking around the edge of the dance floor, almost fighting for girls that tried to walk past. It was a technique I’d seen in gaijin clubs in Tokyo too. Grab a girl and hold her long enough and she might dance with you she may even go home with you. I always tried to stand as far away from those guys as possible fearing I might be labeled as a grabber. Such a mistake could ruin ones night.

Near the back Japanese guys danced with Japanese girls and some foreign women, one of the hostess crowds. The always came here after work, it was early, the later it gets the more they come.

I walked into the middle of the crowd and in order to blend in I started bouncing up and down with everyone else. I was enjoying myself. I turned to my left and I saw a tall white guy flanked by two young Japanese girls who were obviously attracted to him. He made his move. Unable to decide between the two he hugged them both. Pulling one girl in front of him while the other voluntarily took the back. I was still bouncing but observing this scene that no one else seemed to notice.

When you hook up with a girl in Japan, you know from the first moment you make eye contact if something is going to happen. You can visualize the entire night and the next three months from those first few seconds. It’s like magic. I saw that look in those girls’ eyes and for some reason it upset me. I don’t know if it was because I was sure they were only attracted to him because he was a tall white guy, the fact that they were what I would consider “loose” or if it was because I wasn’t the guy sandwiched in between them.

Whatever the reason, I decided to go back to the bar. It was time for a drink, and I don’t even like drinking.

Bruce was standing there with another guy. “Hey, let me introduce you to Martin he’s from Australia too”

“Hey Martin, my names Ejovi, like bon-jovi” we shook hands and Bruce explained that Martin was some sort of television actor. Martin was probably 6’0 with red hair clean cut and a decent build, but he didn’t all that special and if you asked me to name someone famous that he looked similar too, I wouldn’t be able. He was just an average joe.

Martin was talking to a tall model type black women, she was easily 6’2 and slender but not anorexic. Her hair was braded down to her shoulders. She had an accent that seemed African to me, but she was telling Martin she was from London.

Who was I to meddle we all make believe in Japan. For foreigners Japan is a world of make believe where you can be anyone and do anything you want. Sometimes a clear escape from the life they once lived at home.

I wasn’t surprised she might lie, people look down on me just because I have an African name, sometimes it doesn’t even get that far, if they assume their might be some chance I’m African the treat me differently. So I’m never surprised when people create new identities in Japan, its hard for me because African guys usually lie and say they are from New York so its take awhile for me to convince the skeptical that I’m really a black American from New York.

I was standing around, trying not to get involved in their conversation and chit chatting with Bruce about the apparent lack of opportunity that night. Our Japanese friend was sitting in a corner drinking his beer alone. He didn’t look sad he just didn’t want to stand.

Martin turned to me and said, “Hey, do you have a girlfriend?” with a quizative expression on his face. I looked around for the African London model and thought to myself “how many wild nights in Japan start like this” I looked over at Bruce for some sort of explanation, but Bruce was as confused as I was before walking away.

“Uh, no?” I responded.

“Really? Gee, you don’t do kickboxing or something like that do you?”

“Uh, yeah…” I was getting nervous.

“And you moved over here from Tokyo, and you are from New York?”

“How do you know this about me?” responded.

“I know your girlfriend!”

I was dumbfounded. There was no way in the world he could know this about me, there was no way in the world he could know my girlfriend because I was the only gaijin she knew, I’d even asked her before.

“Your girls name is Eri right?”

He knew my girlfriend. I felt like the world had come to a crawl, but the music was still pumping and Martin had this dumb grin on his face. I felt numb but all I could do was smile, the type of while you do when you realize you’ve been screwed over and there is nothing you can do about it.

I grabbed my beer bottle tight and gave him a big grin, as if to say, “OK, you’ve got me!”

“How do you know my girlfriend?” I said, thinking to myself how ironic this all ways.

“We met online, we’ve been talking for a month or so but we haven’t met yet” he said.

I felt like I’d just been shot. I wanted to collapse. Not only because my girlfriend was keeping this secret friendship from me but because Eri and I also met online.

In Japan there are three types of girls, those who will never date foreigners, and those who will only date foreigners and those who are open to both. I usually meet the women who are open minded but have no real desire to only meet foreign guys. Every serious Japanese girlfriend I had, I was the first foreigner they dated, including Eri. In other words, I avoided relationships with women who visited Bar Isn’t It and other gaijin bars like the plague.

But Eri was talking to another foreign guy online, what could this all mean? I sure it was some sort of misunderstanding that Eri would clear right up.

Behind Martin I saw the tall foreign guy standing at one of the circular tables leading towards the dance floor, he had his arms around the waist of the two Japanese girls he was dancing with. This is a world of make believe I thought to myself.

We talked more about Eri, Japan and other things I cant remember. It was all a blur after the first three minutes. I wanted to run outside past the big Japanese bouncer back down those spiral stairs to call Eri. I wanted her to tell me that it was all some sort of mistake, that she’d forgotten to tell me about Martin that I could go on trusting her until the day I die.

I couldn’t sleep that night, thinking about how I should bring up Martin. Wither or not I should even mention him. I was sure that Martin would email her. I thought about the fact that Martin was probably sending emails to her cell phone while we were on dates, her ignoring them until she could read them in private. The deceit.

You might be a bit confused, why is an email friend such a big deal. For this you would have to understand the importance of email in Japan on cell phones. For guys, foreign and Japanese alike, email communication with a girl via cell phone is often prelude to action. It’s the equivalent to talking to a girl on the phone every day, calling her at night just to say “good night.”

You gradually work your way into her system like a toxin circulating through the air she breaths. The goal, if you succeed is that she will grow to expect your email and go into with drawl if she doesn’t her from you.

I managed to wait until 8:00 am before calling her.

“Hi, did I wake you up?” I started

“No, no, no, I was about to wake up. Good morning” Eri said. It was obvious she was sleeping.

“I’m sorry, I woke you up. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Oh thank you, that’s so sweet. What are you doing now?” she managed to mumble while finding the correct positioning for the phone against her ear.

I wanted to just ask her, who the hell is Martin? The question was sitting at the back of my throat. Waiting to come flying out like a bad case of flam.

“Ok, that’s all. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Ok…” she said and waited for me to hang up.

“Oh! I was wondering… do you have any foreign friends like… besides me?”

This was the magic question. I wanted her to say yes, I wanted her to tell me about her Australian friend I met in the gaijin pickup bar.

“Foreign friends? No why?”

My blood started to boil, her deceit sinking into my skull slowly, I started to imagine her as one of the two Japanese girls I’d seen in the bar the night before. One of the gaijin lovers. I tried to coach her into the right direction.

“I mean, like, you met me online did you meet any other guys online?”

“Other guys? No that’s crazy. You know that.”

“So who is Martin?” I said calmly. I couldn’t take it anymore I wanted answers. I wanted to understand. There was silence on the phone. My heart was melting away with every millisecond of time that passed my soul was collapsing under the weight of a ton of sand.

By now I was home, sitting in a small gaijin apartment housing on a futon her family had given me when they helped me move in. Her family meant a lot to me she meant a lot much to me. But at that moment I was too confused to care about our history, to confused to see anything other then the bare plywood that covered the wall in front of me and horrible images of the innocent girl I’d thought I knew destroyed.

She admitted to having an email friendship with Martin, she admitted to exchanging emails while we were out on dates. But the damage had been done. I’d seen a lot of bad women in Japan and I was beginning to believe like many other gaijin guys that trust and honesty didn’t exist in women in Japan.

It may be a horrible way to live, but plenty of guys in Japan feel that way. Once you’ve seen what goes on in the gaijin world its hard to think otherwise.

We mustn’t forget, this is the world of make believe, where nothing is what it seems.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2003 at 12:00 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.