But she persevered because Aya couldn’t get off work early enough to help her, and the interpreter she had hoped to hire as a business expense couldn’t make it on such short notice, either. Nor could the contractor wait another day for anyone to help Genevieve. Not if she wanted him to start working immediately. The deposits were paid, and the (overpriced!) building materials were already showing up. The other active tenants in the Shinjuku building had been informed of construction, both in what used to be Ladylike and the overall structure for maintenance and improvements. The gay bar for men wasn’t open on the first day of construction, at least. I still haven’t met anyone who works there. All communication with her tenants had been done through a bilingual management company.
“Name?” the contractor asked toward the end of the meeting.
“Sumimasen?” Genevieve said.
“Ah…” The middle-aged Japanese man in a jumpsuit and hardhat stepped out of the door and pointed to the sign by the entrance, where the remnants of Ladylike’s old sign remained. “Bar name. What is the bar name? I write.” He pointed to his clipboard.
“Shirimasen,” Genevieve apologized. “Raishuu. Next week, I can tell you.”
Although that wasn’t what the contractor wanted to hear, it would have to do. He wasn’t about to tell the client she was stupid for not yet having a name to make his job easier. And mine. It would make my job so much easier, too. Genevieve would be having a brainstorming session with Aya later. She had more expertise on this subject – such as what would instantly capture a patron’s attention, assuming said patron was a woman looking for a place to meet and mingle with other women.
Luckily, a combination of Genevieve’s growing Japanese skills and the fact that most of the meeting was conducted with pictures meant they eventually covered all of the important parts. She still wished she had an interpreter with her.
Genevieve had some time to kill until Aya was off work. After she locked up the bar – and attempted, once again, to meet some of the other tenants who were never around at that time of day – she took the train back to Shibuya and set out to explore her new neighborhood. While it was strange to be in an unknown neighborhood without a friend or bodyguard, she also enjoyed the thrill of being out on her own, going where she pleased and taking in the sights as they came to her. A shrewd shoe saleswoman reminded her of Rika Sugiya. A homemade nikuman stand smelled as appetizing as the Singaporean hawkers. Yet it was the small produce shop that lured Genevieve in because it reminded her she had no food stocked in her newly furnished penthouse.
“Irasshaimase,” welcomed the woman behind the back counter. She counted the money in the till while Genevieve grabbed a small handbasket and perused the wares. From giant green apples to sizable eggplants, all she had to remind herself was what was grown in Japan and which had markups for coming from overseas.
Everything, save for a few foreign words, was written in Japanese. Some of the kanji were the same as Chinese hanzi, but most of it was written in the syllabic hiragana and katakana alphabets, both of which Genevieve was blessedly fluent in already. The hardest part was remembering her rudimentary food vocabulary. When attempting to look at the price for daikon, she initially mixed it up for the locally grown strawberries and was taken aback by how much they cost. More than once, the woman in the green apron checked in on her after seeing the confusion on her face.
“Doko kara kimashita ka?” the woman asked in clear Japanese.
Genevieve knew what that meant, at least. “Singapore,” she replied.
“Ah! Shingapooru.” That was the end of that conversation.
A few minutes later, however, the woman came out from the back with a small plastic crate of mangos.
“Here,” she said. “You like mangos?”
Genevieve didn’t know if she was pleased that the storekeeper was speaking in simple, slow Japanese. “Yes, I like mangos.”
“Ah, Nihongo jyouzu!” After complimenting Genevieve’s Japanese, the shopkeeper motioned to some of the bruised – but still perfectly edible – mangos in the crate. “Take some. It’s free. Singaporeans like mangos.”
While this could be very true, Genevieve wasn’t sure what to think about some random produce shopkeeper handing out free mangos. “You sure?”
“Can’t sell. Came like this. You like? You take.”
Genevieve held up her basket. “I’ll take a couple if you let me buy these.”
It was a deal.
“She just let you take some free mangos? That couldn’t have been cheap.” That was Aya’s response to the story, and it wasn’t until Genevieve told her they weren’t the ruby red Japanese mangos that cost an arm and a leg that the full story finally sank in. That was around the time the chef presented them with two big bowls of ramen on top of the counter.
“She said they were bruised.” Genevieve attempted to stand up from her stool to get her ramen, but Aya was already handing it over. As Genevieve broke apart her disposable chopsticks, Aya raided the ginger box. “Looked mostly fine to me, but it was kinda funny she gave me free mangos after she found out I was from Singapore.”
“Look at you, making friends with the locals.” Aya mixed her ginger with the bean sprouts and green onion of her ramen.
”Is that what you call it? She was very nice.”
“She must have agreed with me without realizing it.”
“Huh, about what?”
Aya left a dollop of red pickled ginger on Genevieve’s noodles. “That you’re the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen.”
“Oh, stop.” Genevieve glanced at the head chef, who diligently accepted the orders of two salarymen who stopped in on their way home from the local train station. Or so Genevieve assumed. Now that she had a new neighborhood to explore, she was keen to make up stories about the locals. Only nice, flattering ones, of course. She grinned to see a schoolgirl, still in her uniform, come in with her father. They stood in front of the ticket machine. Genevieve now understood enough Japanese to know that the father was encouraging his daughter to get the big-sized bowl. She protested, saying she wasn’t hungry enough. “You haven’t eaten all day. I saw you didn’t touch your bento.” When his daughter grumpily told him he had packed the wrong kind of tofu in her lunch, he hit the “big” button on the machine and told her he’d eat whatever she couldn’t.
“What’s up?” Aya asked.