parasitegirl | TBS Japan, part one (Reply)

At approximately 4:50 AM on Friday the 17th I sat in a messy room trying to remove a sliver of glass which had been imbedded in my heel for a few days. This delicate surgery was performed with an oversized safety pin. I am happy to say that this was not the high point of my day, but neither was it the nadir.

After work on Thursday I returned home to pack up an overnight bag. I then boarded the train to Gaijin #3’s abode located in a small, quaint shopping street in a nieghborhood north of Nippori. Now that I have spent a night in her room I feel I am ready to call her by name, Claudia.

Claudia is the trilingual Romanian who translated for us during meetings. We’ve talked here and there but didn’t really know each other very well. I’m happy to say that within moments of greeting each other we were cracking up over how insane, unprofessional, inauthentic, and absurd this whole adventure had been thus far and would continue to be. She’s my kind of non-girlie-girl. We were both looking forward to debacle Friday would be, but we worried about Gaijin #4. We hypothesized as to what #4 might have thought she was agreeing to, or what our teacher had said to get her involved. We wondered if we would be given the costumes after the show was over. And then we found a small cosmetics shop in which to buy the false eyelashes our teacher had made us promise we’d wear with “shit loads” of makeup.

Claudia and I are on the same page in regards to make-up. We don’t understand or trust it. Furthermore, Claudia’s idea of accessorizing an outfit consists of which Van Dutch baseball cap she’ll be wearing. It was a good thing that Claudia asked the shop owner to explain how to apply the false eyelashes. We received a friendly in-depth explanation and demonstration in Japanese. It was one of those moments where I was shocked by how much I understand, but I still know that my speaking skills are still lagging behind….so, Claudia did most of the small talk. We explained that, yes, for two girls in their late twenties who don’t usually wear make-up, the specter of putting false eyelashes on during the wee hours of the morning would certainly be a challenge…but we would rise to the challenge! And the usual answers about how old we are, where we are from. I realized that it must REALLY suck when the only famous person every one knows from your country is a former, mass-murdering dictator.

We settled in for the night, talking, listening to CD’s, watching Terminator with one of her roommates ( Loki, a Scottish ALT in my area…it is proof that I suck with names that I can’t remember meeting a person named Loki.) I turned in early when Claudia’s salary-man/drummer came home. I stuck a strange mentholated pad on my chest (like Vics-vapo-rub in an adhesive sheet) and slept.

At 4:30 AM, Double-O-Dark, Too Fucking Early, on Friday the 17th the alarm went off. I hate mornings, but I wake up quickly when I must. I sat up in my futon; Claudia made a noise from hers. It took us an hour and a half to get showered, drink coffee, and apply shit loads of make-up. We agreed, make-up never makes us feel more feminine…it only makes us feel like a drag queen who is having an off-night. I swore a lot. I think I swore all day. The taxi arrived at 6AM. Claudia greeting the few people in the street who were starting preparation for another day of work…Claudia knew that the make-up, the other highly made-up gaijin, the Taxi, and the early hour would all become fodder for local gossip…similar to my former land-lady who used to grin manically at my male friends in a way that always made me think she assumed I was getting more booty than was actually the case.

After an hour in the cab, during which we kept staring at each other’s make-up in disbelief, we arrived at NK Hall. We were the first to arrive. We met the director and Ochi, his assistant. Ochi has been present for all the meetings and we had met the director at the last meeting. Over the day we developed warm fuzzy feelings for both of these individuals. Despite the mess that the production was at times, they were always respectful, humorous, helpful, and calm in regards to us. We loved Ochi the most as the unfortunate nature of his being everyone’s bitch/whipping-boy became evident. And heck, they were our stand-in-idols during rehearsals.

They took Claudia and me on a tour of the set. As soon as I saw it all I just started giggling. The set looked just like the rendering we’d been given…except now there was a giant King Tut head in back which would slide open to reveal us. Dude! I totally never knew that King Tut shot green laser beams from his eyes! Educational!

Thank goodness Claudia did the talking, because they would be explaining important points such as the fact that once the head opened they would put stairs in and we’d climb the stairs to the run way…and I’d just look at the green lasers, and the serious faced crew members, and start giggling again. If you get me up at 4:30 AM you’ve got to expect I’ll be a little cracked. I giggled and swore.

Gaijin #4 and the Circus Girl arrived. Circus girl was as sweet and touchy feely as Gaijin #4 was cold and prickly. Oh, boy! Costume time!

Our dressing room wasn’t a real dressing room. It was a section of unheated hall that had been partitioned off for the lesser extras and gaijin connected to the project. The partitions had been set up along a wall of windows, which made them problematic as changing rooms until we’d moved some mirrors around.

Two costume ladies brought in 4 bags of red costumes, a box of gold colored bangles, and, inexplicably, lost of fake pearl necklaces…just like they had in Egypt! Oh, and 4 pairs of handcrafted hot pink panties.

I don’t yet have pictures, but let me try to explain the costume. The tops were red bras…with a smattering of gold-colored pallets (giant one-holed sequins) and a few smaller sequins stitched on. Our cleavage was framed with the sort of cheep fake-gold-fabric trim that not even a Mexican Cabbie would decorate his ride with. Circus Girl’s bra was too small (I suspect she made the mistake of giving her American cup size) and thus she had massive mounds of cleavage. My bra fit, but looked slightly monster-sized if I stood near Claudia or #4…no problem really…because of the veil. The veil was a giant red polyester lace square with a ribbon of elasticized gold to keep it firmly on our heads…it covered our faces and bras. The skirt was made of some sort of stiff sheer red fabric (and in the case of Claudia, too short) with a wide swath of gold lame at the top, a gold lame bow in front (it doesn’t matter that I can’t find the accent key, it was lame’ and lame), and another smattering of gold-colored pallets. My swath of lame caused the costume ladies some sort of consternation, I may have had more ass than cloth, and I endured much ass adjusting without prior warning through out the day.

There is something strange about knowing that you’ve been hired because you’re a gaijin and yet no one will see your face. “My belly dance experience, in combination with my glow-in-the dark skin and gaijin tits and ass got me this job…my family is soooo proud of me.”

Oh yeah, the panties. We all received pink panties. This troubled us. Red panties or flesh colored panties worn under semi-sheer red fabric would have made sense. We wondered if we would be expected to show these panties at any point. Japan likes panties…this is a known fact…it’s a panty-shot kind of country…luckily this was not the case.