“The problem is the word looks like rat,” I said. “Who’d want to drink something called caffe rat?”
“Rats are considered very clever animals in Japanese folktales. They’re loved by everyone! Let’s keep it.” Richard had the kitchen section manager and two clerks nodding in support.
“If we allow one misspelled sign, the misspelling might make its way into the brochures and packaging. How can Nichiyu ever hope to compete against Braun and Krups if our brochures are written in Jinglish?”
“Find me one expert who says people even read the brochures,” Richard scoffed.
“Okay, I’ll find a second opinion,” I insisted, wondering who I could ask. Mrs. Chapman, maybe? She was as typical an American as I could think of, and I doubted she’d approve of any Jinglish brochure.
The argument over the espresso maker was postponed for now. We said our good-byes to the department store team and walked toward the train station, Richard pointing out how close we were to Mariko’s bank.
“Lets go there. It’s just one subway stop away.”
“Richard, we’re working! I don’t know about you, but this job means something to me. I’d like to keep it.”
“We’re not expected back for a while. If we’re a half hour late, what’s the problem? We can say we got caught in bus traffic. Vouch for me, and I’ll vouch for you.”
He became distracted on the way when he spotted a branch of his favorite source for leather and denim, New Boys Look. I had no patience to wait while he shopped, so we agreed to meet after I found Mariko. It was almost three o’clock, bank closing time.
JaBank was on Shinjuku Dori, underneath the super-sized TV screen where Chisato Moritaka was singing “Jin Jin Jinglebell.” The bank was considerably more sedate, with a cordial employee who showed me upstairs to the foreign exchange section. A moon-faced woman in her mid-twenties was counting out yen to a foreigner with a backpack.
“Is Miss Ozawa here?” I asked as she finished the transaction and prepared to call the next person in line. I was surprised that someone sharing Setsuko’s bloodline could be so plain.
“Please take a number if you want assistance,” the clerk sing-songed.
“Don’t be so uptight, Hatsue!” A young woman with dark curls rose from a sea of desks behind the customer service counter. “I’m Ozawa.”
There was something undeniably cocky about the way Mariko Ozawa stood with her hands on her hips. Her navy uniform fitted her a little too tightly and her makeup was exaggerated, as if she were trying to put ten years on top of her twenty-something. She tapped a scuffed high heeled shoe impatiently and stared me down.
“I’m here on a family matter.” I handed her my card and bowed.
“I have no family.” She chewed on her full lower lip, smearing purple lipstick.
“I’m from America,” I said, deliberately vague in the face of her eavesdropping coworkers. “My Japanese isn’t so good.”
She gave me a long look. “I’ll be off in ten minutes. Wait right there.” She pointed with a dragon-lady fingernail to a small couch in the customer waiting area. I opened the latest edition of Tokyo Weekender but kept sneaking looks upward to make sure she wouldn’t vanish on me.
Promptly at three she came back, carrying a fake fur coat and a black bag with MOSCHINO written across it in big brass letters. I watched it swing against her hip as she led me out a back exit, past a guard who looked at both of us carefully and recorded something in a notebook.
“Your bank has a lot of security,” I commented.
“A teller was attacked a couple of weeks ago, so they’re being careful.”
“Robbery?”
“More likely someone’s lunatic boyfriend.”
“I met your great aunt, Mrs. Ozawa. She had no idea what had become of you,”
“It’s supposed to be that way,” she snapped. “I’ll have nothing to do with the Ozawas.”
“You look so different from the Ozawas, with your height and that great curly hair—where do you get it done?”
“It’s not a perm, okay? It’s natural, and I hate it. In junior high, the girls pulled it all the time to make it more straight, more Japanese. It got so bad I dropped out.”
“What happened to you after that?” I’d heard how terrible bullying was in the schools.
“I started working.” She glared at me and I kept quiet during the rest of our walk through the east side, watching the businesses around us change from clothing stores to slightly seedier pachinko parlors to strip bars and the soaplands where prostitutes worked. This was Kabuki-cho, the infamous red light district I’d blundered into while naively searching for “public relations” work during my early days in Tokyo. I pulled my parka around my body and tried to ignore the doorway droolers.