I stared blankly at my watch. After one. In all the excitement of spilling Manhattans across my notebook and quietly hoping I had missed the last train, I had missed the last train. I stepped out into the brisk air, a solid four hours to fill before the trains resumed. Though the arcades had ceased hosting half the planet, there was more life in the streets than I had expected. Maybe a picaresque journey through the wee hours was not such a ridiculous prospect. I paused on a bridge, gripping its chilly railing. Blunt boots, black jacket, wind-tousled hair, I lingered for some time, the canal strolling impassively beneath me, before I arrived, as if by divine providence, at the idea of trying another bar.
Following some cursory research I set myself up in what transpired to be a dreary approximation of an American sports bar. Its sole plus was its span of hours; if I held out here until closing, there would be a negligible wait for the first train. Nestled in a booth with a mug of beer and a basket of all-batter fries, I surveyed the bar's collection of untiring youth and found myself wincing at their gaiety. Old fool. Had I not semi-willed this eventuality, I could have been blissfully face-down on a futon, or greedily consuming umeboshi over the sink at my accommodation. Instead, I was licking grease from my fingertips and glaring at strangers for failing to exalt my existence.
I lasted an hour. The walk isn't all that far, I reasoned, ascending to street level. But it had begun to rain. I trudged with my umbrella to the outskirts of the city, frequently having to duck under shelter to plot my path. The rain grew heavier and my progress slowed. Looking out from under an awning, I ground my imperfect teeth at fate. I had missed the last train in Osaka and not a single thing had happened that would fuel even the dullest of anecdotes, let alone several drawn-out paragraphs. Granted, my strategy for adventure boiled down to sitting on my own in bars and rendering my beer mugs in Biro, but sometimes that was enough.
I set out once more, feeling the cold touch from the darkened bottoms of my trouser legs. Then I stopped. A warm orange light in a second-floor window had caught my eye; in fact, both of them. I could make out a middle-aged woman polishing a glass in a narrow lamplit room and a couple of figures seated at a counter. An external stairway led up to a door, beside which I could see a small sign with a picture of a flamingo on it. Whatever it was, it looked achingly cosy. Well, of course it was a bar. It has probably become obvious at this point that I am essentially just "cataloging the world's seedy bars so as to deliver a user's guide to the bewildered and bemused", as my father puts it. But through the world's seedy bars the cosmos opens up and all of creation is revealed, hunched over and half-drunk and desperately sad.
I considered not going in. Wouldn't I be a conspicuous, unwelcome interloper among regulars? But the deadening rain convinced me. I deposited my umbrella into a pot by the entrance and slipped nervously inside. The room held little more than a counter and a few tables by the window, but the limited space was enlivened by an eclectic selection of pop culture artefacts, some familiar, many obscure. The woman I had seen from the street welcomed me with a kindly smile and gestured towards the vacant seats. As I took up a spot at the counter, I noticed a vintage Yoda figurine hanging in its packet beside the till, giving me the once-over.
I ordered a bottle of Asahi, the only beer they offered, and began my customary sketch. When, a few minutes later, I had completed my masterpiece, a compact young woman on the next seat decided to engage me—as if it had been a viable strategy after all. So rescued from artistic exile, I began conversing in an easy manner I hadn't realised I possessed, even, at one point, pretending I could solve a Rubik's Cube behind my back—and I had to concede that this reality was preferable to the one in which I caught the last train, gorged myself on salt plums and passed out. I failed to record the names of the woman and the bartender, but I do recall that the former's meant 'love child' and the latter's meant 'wings'. Love Child worked at a market stall in town and had not long finished for the day. Wings, I was surprised to learn, had only opened up at 10 pm that night. Guess this was the place to be.
An unshaven man in a narrow-brimmed hat entered part way through my second bottle. He had a wild smile and apparently some familiarity with Love Child and Wings. Ordering a whisky and joining us at the counter, it wasn't long before he took an interest in my presence. I quickly dispensed the usual bits of biography and shifted the questioning to him, asking first his profession.
"I am Poinko," he said.
I was understandably puzzled.
"Er, what's a Poinko?"
He apologised for his limited English and beckoned me to wait. For a time he looked as if he were attempting to conjure the right words through sheer intensity. Though it is true that most people in Japan are not fluent in English, I have been consistently impressed by the efforts people made to communicate with me, whatever their proficiency. Certainly no one's English was as poor as my Japanese.
"You know Docomo?" he said finally.
"The phone company?"
"Yes! I am Poinko for Docomo."
Love Child leaned in to show me her phone, amusement dividing her face. I observed what I can only describe as a mad-looking chicken puppet thing. It had googly eyes and red circles for cheeks and a goofy, gaping beak, and it stood before a Docomo logo.
"I am Poinko," said the man again, grinning.
Due to communication difficulties, I was regrettably never quite able to determine if this man had created Poinko, operated Poinko or merely thought he was Poinko. If he hasn't succeeded in dying and I happen to meet him again, I will get to the bottom of it.
More details emerged, often in unexpected bursts. He had recently turned 60. He was a Yakuza. No; he had a Yakuza face. Then he began to describe an island. Its name was unfamiliar to me but from his attempts to detail its location I placed it somewhere in Southeast Asia. He said he wanted to go to a particular volcano there, a volcano that was still very much active. A hiking pack fixed to his back, he would trek across the dark grey earth, climbing through streaks of hot smoke until he reached the crumbling lip. And he would stand there, somehow numb to the bludgeoning heat, and he would jump. No; this was not suicide. He would not jump. He would take out a 1-litre bottle of sake from his hiking pack and he would begin to drink from it. And he would drink until he could no longer keep his balance. With enough momentum he might penetrate the lava. More probably he would dent its surface and remain buoyant, his yellow feathers bursting into searing flame, his goofy plastic features blazing off his face.
He explained that he was 60 years old and it was time for him to cease being an annoyance to others; indeed, to cease being. A return to nature, he called it. He spoke with disarming geniality and not a hint of self-pity.
"I am crazy!" he announced suddenly. He laughed and threw back his glass.
"I'm crazy too," I said, raising my bottle.
"Me too," said Love Child.
"Me too," said Wings.
Though we diverged when it came to volcanoes.
In fact, the volcano idea turned out to be Plan B. Plan A was less poetic: euthanasia in Washington, D.C. under the Death with Dignity Act. Based on a quick review, I can not see how he could possibly qualify. But he would always have the volcano to fall back on.