Sleaze Special

Sunday 23rd August 1998

Shit Jobs | Mobile Phones | Sophisticated TV | Japlish

Quantity is one thing. Qualtiy is another. See? I misspelled "quality" there, just because I was rushing. So in the name of quality I've slowed down the old Tokyo Tales recently, as I'm sure you've noticed. I could have written this last week, or anytime in the past month, but it just wouldn't have been as funny or invigorating as it's going to be. Trust me, it's a corker.

Shit jobs (literally)

If you're a foreigner working in Tokyo, the chances are you're a member of one of two professions. You're either:

a) an English teacher, or
b) a hostess

Having recently met someone who has been a (b) but is now an (a), I've heard a couple of interesting stories about what some of the hostess-type jobs involve.

We should remember that Tokyo at the height of the bubble economy, or even while the Japanese were busy picking the remnants of said bubble off their faces after it all went kablooey, was a phenomenally rich place. Salarymen had money to burn, and largely they chose to burn it in hostess clubs in Roppongi, largely with foreign women. Even so, the excess of yen swishing around the city manifested itself in some rather weird ways.

For instance: imagine being paid to lie on a table for two or three hours at a stretch. Not bad, huh? And the money's superb, too. Let's say a coupla hundred quid. Obviously there's a bit more to it than that. You're female. You're naked. With food all over you. (Uh, what?) (*You* heard.) And basically you're the silver platter for a bunch of businessmen who eat off you. This might not all be so bad were it not for the fact that the human tray isn't allowed to move, cough, whatever, no matter what the diners get up to.

And I'd like to be able to report that Tokyo salarymen (especially the obscenely rich ones who think it's amusing to eat dinner off a gaijin) are models of decorum and not at all liable to grope anything that has a pulse. Unfortunately I can't, because basically they're arseholes. So use your imagination.

Brings a whole new meaning to the question "Do you mind if I use my fingers?", doesn't it?

The other particularly bizarre one, although I understand the Marquis de Sade may have got there before Tokyoites, is being paid a small fortune to eat nothing but one type of food for a month; strawberries, perhaps, or chocolate. Then, at the end of the month, what do you think happens? No, really?

You're right. The guy eats your dung. The theory being that if you've stuck to your diet, the stuff that comes out of the other end should be fundamentally (pardon the pun) pure strawberries or whatever. Again, it's very well paid; it would have to be, because I can't imagine you could do it for more than one month in three or so without getting malnutrition. Mind you, you could always do it on the side whilst holding down your day job - provided you could hold down the strawberries. And I guess they pick up your shopping bill, too.

Foods it would probably be best *not* to use:

* Marmite
* Squid
* Pickled onions
* Chicken Korma

But don't let me stop you...

Technology

From munching feces to mobile phones. (Seamless, huh?) I went and got myself a mobile last month, for one reason or another. This being Japan, I was unable to find a reassuringly large, chunky, model, and had to settle instead for one the size of a packet of cigarettes, whose battery lasts ten times as long as my Nokia's ever did back in the UK. Oh well - I'm coping.

There are advantages to having a mobile phone, as we all know. It's that much easier to order pizza from your sofa, for starters. Or the side of a mountain, if they deliver (pizzas, not mountains. But go ahead and try, anyway: "Yeah, I want extra snow on that. And hold the ski resorts.").

But by far the coolest thing about my phone is the range of melodies that it plays when it receives a call. Three separate "ring" sounds, namely "Riiiing", "Ring ring" and "Ring Riiiiiing". Or any one of fifteen different tunes, including (because this is [still] Japan):

* "It's a Small World After All"
* The Mickey Mouse theme
* Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"
* "Moonlight" from, er, Cats? Not sure.

Now these are undoubtedly tacky. I would never be seen dead reaching inside my handbag to silence an electronic rendition of "Who's the leader of the club that's great for you and me....". But I will make an exception.... for the Star Wars theme.

Oh yes, oh yes indeed. The music to Star Wars, as The Greatest Film of All Time (TM), deserves to be played proudly, preferably with everyone humming along and swishing an air baton. (If you can have air guitars, why not air batons?) There's only one problem. If it's set to Star Wars when I'm asleep and it goes off, I'm afraid I'll just start humming along in my sleep rather than be woken up. So, "Ring ring" it is, then. Darn.

Sophisticated TV

I was tickled by the closing credits of a typical late-night show a week or so ago. The show itself was run of the mill; girls-in-bikinis get leered at whilst riding bucking broncos situated inexplicably in the middle of a LARGE paddling pool of jelly. (Actually I made that up. You probably spotted that it's far too highbrow an idea. Seriously.)

The closing credits were something else, though; a series of four-second shots of girls' bums in bikinis, jiggling from side to side. Sometimes two girls at once! But never anything other than their bums. In bikinis.

But even that ain't the best bit. The name of the programme, displayed across the screen for the whole sequence?

"For the sophisticated people!"

I kid ye not. I've seen enough now, I think.

Japlish du Jour

(as seen on a bag from *another* bakery:)

SCANDINAVIAN NATURAL ROMAN
BEST BREAD MESSAGE

Our little friend "TOMTE" use magical secret-power for delicious BREAD that. Well enjoy in next morning. Children who living in NORTHERN EUROPE tell us secret that just baken BREAD. Yes...... TOMTE's secret. HOKUO as. BREAD country SAPPORO is very similar with TOMTE's land.

(Okay then. Those Northern European children, eh; what scamps. Why are bakeries so good for Japlish? Maybe the drudgery of folding croissants all day gets to you after a time. More research to follow.)

Bye then;

(Altogether now: Da-da-da daaa DAAA, da-da-da DAAAA DAA da-da-da DAAAA DAA da-da-da duuuuur....)

Chris

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