HER NAME IS ALWAYS JUNKO
David Galef
Let’s call him Steve. In May, Steve graduates from a second-tier college in the Midwest, not knowing what to do with himself. He’s thinking about law school, but meanwhile, his mother’s dad never saw the world and wants his grandson to know otherwise, so the old guy springs for a trip to Japan. Steve knows a guy who spent a year there, in Osaka or somewhere, and he had a great time, so off Steve goes on a cheapo flight, crammed into a coach class seat, long American legs folded up like origami. Onboard are all these Asians returning to where Steve’s headed. They fit in their seats just fine.
Steve gets to Osaka after a layover in L.A. and a two a.m. stopover in Honolulu, at which point he’s lost all track of time. For the first week, he stays at a youth hostel in Suita, eating cheap rice balls and touring a bit—seeing Osaka castle, taking a side trip to view some temples in Kyoto, that sort of thing. And he meets some cool people, including a California surfer dude and an English girl who might have slept with him, but then disappears to Hokkaido. He gets acquainted with a lot of trans-continental drifters—drunks from Australia, exchange students from New Zealand—but sees they don’t speak the language or dig the culture much, and all they want to do is head to Nepal, where the ganja is better and cheaper than anywhere else on the planet.
But Steve’s been bankrolled for only two weeks and is nearing the end of his stay when one afternoon he meets someone in Mino Park who teaches English at a nearby training center—business English for a lot of companies, including those guys who made Zeroes during World War II; best not to bring that up, or, on the other hand, Hiroshima.
They like the same retro-grunge rock groups and hit it off pretty well. This guy has been here for almost five years and is finally going back to the States, but he’s got all these connections and passes his job info along before he splits. Since Steve’s got nowhere to go but home and nothing but the prospect of a boring law job if he’s lucky, he makes a quick decision that leads to an interview two days later with a Mr. Nakada at English Pro, who offers him tea and asks a few questions. According to his mother, Steve always did have good, clear English, and he was an English major (of course), but this is the first time in his life anyone told him that his major was good for anything. Mr. Nakada offers him a teaching job starting the week after, with a special salary in escrow until his new visa gets approved.
Meanwhile, Steve sells his return ticket for some quick cash. He uses it for key money and the first month’s rent on a place in Fuku, and yes, he knows a joke when he hears one. Getting a cell phone here is a big deal, so he uses his landlord’s phone to call his folks and let them know what’s up, and they say okay, it’s your life, though his mother is, always will be, a bit concerned. In a few weeks, he’s commuting to work like all the other straphangers on the Hanshin line.
It amazes him that he can already teach, standing in front of a class and posing as an expert. After all, he never got great grades, but here he is, a certified native speaker, laying down the law. After class, the students like to take him out and talk about American culture, picking his brains for dirty words and slang.
One weekend in the park, Steve meets a girl named Junko with two other chicks who soon melt away because Junko is bolder, chats him up, laughs at all his jokes, even the dumb ones. Her English is fluky but not too bad. She says things like “Do you have chance to see Ryoanji in Kyoto?” and “I want go to America one day.” They go out for a coffee shop date and the next time to a movie, where she lets him roam a bit. The third date, it’s back to his place and his narrow bed—jackpot. He never had such luck in the States.
This is such a familiar story, and her name is always Junko.
Junko turns into a steady thing, teaching Steve the language, cooking for him, giving him cultural tips like how to place his chopsticks or the several kinds of bowing. He develops a taste for yakisoba and eel. He even likes listening to some of the tinny Japanese pop; plus, he gets paid just for talking, practically. Hey, he thinks, when he thinks about it at all, this place was made for me. He embraces Japanese culture with a passion, or several passions, getting into aikido and calligraphy, tea lessons (these don’t last), and learning the language, but after mastering hiragana and katakana, he finds that kanji are awfully hard and stops at twenty or so—so long as he doesn’t get lost riding the subway. He does know the characters for Junko’s name, which mean “pure child,” and they have a little laugh about that. She calls him Suteivu, which sounds like “Steve” if he sort of slants his ears.
Steve looks up one day to find that six months have gone, with Junko happily nestled in his arms. Bits and pieces of Junko reside in his apartment: her Love Me Tender shampoo, a toothbrush with a blue mermaid decal. Things seem to be getting serious, and once or twice she’s mentioned taking him to see her folks in Chiba, though so far it’s just talk. Junko’s still a college student at Kobe Jogakuin, and he’s met some of her friends, who all seem, well, kinda young. They even had a scene or two about that, the closest they’ve come to an actual quarrel, but he’s resolved to try harder. This could be it, he thinks.
His friends back home are surprised, but hey, what do they know about what life’s like in Japan? Or what life’s like for a gaijin, which isn’t the same, as Junko occasionally points out when he gets annoyed over something they can’t do, like walk around downtown Umeda with his hand jammed into a tight back pocket of her You-Me jeans. What he’s got, she tells him, is Gaijin Power, the ability to make your own way in a closed society, to be taller, stranger, or just different. Which is kind of funny, since he’s making every effort to fit in, even going to the sento on Sunday.
It’s hard to spot where the downturn begins. He finally realizes that his job is going nowhere, so he gets irritated at his students and lets it show. He gets sick of rice one day and binges on bad pizza and burgers. He has a fight with Junko, sweet Junko, over absolutely nothing. She makes some comment about how he could at least make some effort to conform, and then it hits him: The homogeneity of this culture—why has he never noticed it, all those brown-eyed, black-haired people and their patient faces, bodies in lockstep on the sidewalk? He needs air.
Also, it’s been almost a year now, and he feels that he’s not utilizing his full potential, something a guidance counselor once told him. Hell, he could be teaching bonehead English to tired office workers for the next twenty years, and a few incidents have made it clear to him that he’ll never be Japanese. He hasn’t even met Junko’s parents.
He feels as if he’s just drifting here and figures it’s time to go home and get a real job. A few of his friends are already partway through law school or training for something or other. He buys a plane ticket—at least he’s saved some money here—and packs up, surprised at how little crap he has accumulated. At the airport, Junko (with whom he’s already broken up twice), gives him a daruma and tells him to make a wish by poking out one of its eyes,
“—and when your wish come true, then poke out other eye.”
He nods and half blinds the round doll, but he doesn’t tell Junko what his wish is. She stays at the departure area a long time, though he remains at his gate.
Back in the States, he finds that just riding a bus is strange: so many different kinds of humans. And so many things to do, things he put on hold while he was away, like a career. He applies to law schools and gets in at a third-tier place in the South. He’ll try again. That will be his goal, to get in somewhere half decent, and it helps fight against the aimlessness he felt during his final months in Japan.
For the next year, when he’s still living at home, trying to find his connection, late at night, he thinks of Junko, who has emailed him uncountable times and called him twice. She even wrote him some real letters—calligraphy like her black hair flowing down the page, and he knows he really should answer her more often, but instead he likes to pretend that she’s there in bed with him, calling him Suteivu and running her slender white fingers up and down his body as he closes his eyes and wills himself to sleep. For the rest of his life, long after he has become a mediocre lawyer with a wife and a mortgage and two kids, he’ll dream of Japan and tell himself that one day he’ll go back.
