2009.17 McDonalds and the Exorcist in Tokyo 35 years ago
On the subject of the cultural sameness, I loved Robert Silverburg's "Schwartz Between the Galaxies", written oddly enough the same year as the moments I'm about to share! Here's a quote from that book jacket note.
It’s not easy to be an anthropologist in the 21st Century. All the primitive cultures are gone, assimilated into a neo-Western global socio-economic sameness. Professor Thomas Schwartz is that useless anthropologist, globe-hopping from lecture to lecture, from Montevideo to Port Moresby, New Guinea, and all the cities are the same. But in his fantasies, he travels on a great interstellar liner surrounded by the representatives of many alien cultures–something to study!
How funny it seems today that when we left LAX for Tokyo, I saw a billboard for Suntory Whiskey and upon arrival, I saw one for Johnny Walker! Both claimed to be number 1. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
We played at an outside venue where the trees looked like broccoli stalks, and this without the help of controlled substances. Every single head out there had black hair, which I'll bet is no longer true in Japan. I'm going to guess that the broccoli trees were near Kyoto, but I can't recall that detail, only the image.
When in Tokyo, we went to a disco/bar and were kind of partying when a Japanese woman walked up and literally tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to her, expecting a question or comment in more or less stilted English. I was surprised when she instead lifted a small phrasebook up to my field of vision. It had a few phrases in Japanese on the left page and English on the right. She pointed to the English side which read: "I long to feel your manly arms around me." I laughed, certain it was some kind of cultural joke and went back to whatever was happening before, but the woman pointed to another, even more explicit phrase. She was not kidding. Her name was Akiko. She wore a crucifix on a chain around her neck.
Cut to the hotel. We walked to the elevator and a bunch of the staff came over, three or four bellboys, who grabbed her just as the door was closing and pulled her out. Although I expected her to show up later she didn't. The desk people explained to me the next day that "this sort of thing didn't go on in their hotel".
Fortunately, Akiko came back to the club the next night and when we got to the hotel, the 5 other band members, much more imposing physically, ran interference for us at the elevator. Don't expect any details from that night, the part I told above is what I think was worth sharing.
However, I did hang out with Akiko for the week we were there. I tried communicating with her in French and English, she spoke a tiny bit of each, but in fact, we were not able to say much to each other without the phrase book. I took her to a movie, which it turns out was about the most inappropriate one possible, The Exorcist, but I thought at least it was in English. In the first scene, with subtitles in Japanese and Arabic being spoken, I thought it possible that the entire movie was going to be that way. Not speaking Arabic or reading Japanese, I was nervous until English came in a few minutes later. That was the scariest part, those minutes where I didn't get anything.
Akiko came over one day with lunch, which was adorable. She had brought both a typical cheeseburger/fries-based tray from McDonalds and a tray of Japanese sushi-looking stuff, which was very cool. You should know that in those days, sushi was not at all known in the way it is today. I thought that said a lot about the image of Americans abroad, not wanting to try anything. The image is confirmed when I walk past a Parisian McDonalds, filled with Americans who pretend they're there because it's cheaper.
