Shitagi Dorobo and my Hot Date

     A week after my singing debut, Antonio called me to invite me out on Saturday night. A musician friend of his had given him two tickets to a chamber music performance, and would I like to go? I had to work hard not to sound too eager. I’d have happily gone with Antonio to watch paint dry, so listening to chamber music with him sounded fantastic.

   I was way behind with my housework and laundry, though, so I got up early on Saturday to get a head start on this. It was late May, and the weather was sunny and mild– a perfect laundry drying day. There was a fresh, warm breeze blowing and my little back-garden was filled with dappled light and birdsong – and the sound of my neighbors’ wind chimes.  I went about my chores singing and humming and smiling to myself.

    Pegging out my freshly-washed laundry, my head was full of the coming evening and my date with Antonio. The concert began at 8:00 and presumably finished around 9:30. The big question in my mind was whether I would be taking the train back to Yokohama by myself – or staying overnight in Tokyo. I didn’t have a clue what was going to happen and the suspense was making me antsy.

   Once I’d hung up all my laundry, I went inside and used up some of my nervous energy blitzing the kitchen. In my fridge I found a package of something that completely puzzled me. It was green and amorphous, and the consistency of sherbet or ice milk. But green?  Was it a takeaway that had gone bad?  But if so, what?  All I brought back to the house in doggy bags tended to be Indian food and this mystery foodstuff had no smell at all. Had I actually purchased green yogurt and then forgotten about it entirely? But why would I have put it in a clear plastic bag?  I prodded it with one finger and then suddenly realized what it was. A cucumber wrapped in cling film.  Dear God – when was the last time I’d cleaned out my refrigerator?  Come to think of it, when was the last time I’d cleaned this kitchen?

   Two hours later, I was well satisfied with myself. I’d thrown out half a pint of milk, a package of stale biscuits, two wrinkled apples, and the disgusting cucumber slush. I’d scoured out the refrigerator – a perfectly vile chore given my recent lack of attention to housekeeping.  I’d scrubbed every inch of the kitchen floor, thoroughly cleaned the toilet and bathroom, and hung my futons out to air on the clothesline.  And I’d wiped my tatami room from one end to the other with a slightly dampened dust cloth, just like my Japanese teachers had told me I should, and opened the sliding glass door that led to my garden to let the room air. Just on the off chance that I had a guest to entertain that evening, I wasn’t taking any chances.

   After a well-earned bath, I was towelling my hair dry when I thought I heard someone in my back garden. It sounded for all the world as though someone was moving the laundry on the clothesline; there was the unmistakable click of plastic clothespins snapping on taut cord, followed by the thud of someone running. I wrapped the towel around my head and went out to look, but I couldn’t see anyone. I went back indoors and began sorting out the contents of my small chest of drawers, trying to figure out what to wear that night. Café-au-lait corduroy trousers and a cream silk blouse? My green and black cotton skirt and matching green leotard?

   While I was trying to make up my mind, I brought in my freshly-aired futons, folded them neatly and put them away. Todd and most of the other gaijin staff at Sony, had confessed that they left their futons down all the time as if they were beds and not sleeping mats directly on the floor. This, I had since learned, was a big no-no in Japan; tatami flooring needs air on it whenever possible and a futon should be put away every morning and hung out to air on bright, sunny days at least once a week.  Every fair day in my neighborhood – all over Japan, in fact – you could see housewives hanging the family’s futons over poles, walls, even sturdy hedges, beating them, turning them, and leaving them to air. So I was determined to follow the correct practice of airing my bedding and folding my futon up every single morning and putting it away in the futon cupboard. Then I went out to collect my laundry. Some of it, I was puzzled to find, appeared to be missing –  two very old pairs of underwear, to be specific. My decent smalls were still there, disconcertingly enough; it was the old, familiar stuff that was gone. Could I have brought it in earlier and just forgotten about it?  I went inside to check, but no – it was not there. I scanned my backyard, wondering if it had been blown off in the wind. Then I remembered the sound I had heard earlier and knew what had happened.   Someone had stolen it.

   Some women, I have discovered, throw out old underwear as soon as it starts looking pitiful. Not for them the much-washed baggy knickers with frayed fabric, stretched-out elastic and the odd hole.  I am different. I follow the Henry David Thoreau philosophy of keeping your clothes until they are old and threadbare and all but falling off your body: I keep shoes until they are virtually disintegrating, swimming suits until they are shapeless and unflattering, and underwear until it is so ugly and shameful that no one in their right mind would dream of stealing it. Or so I had always thought.  And yet, here were my decent, irreproachable briefs all present and accounted for, while my holey, comfortable old pals were God-knew-where, balled up in the pocket of some pervert.  It was disturbing, but true:  a 'shitagi dorobo' -- underwear thief  -- had paid me a visit and left with a trophy.

   I first heard about underwear thieves from my students. This crime is so widespread in Japan that when I was looking for a place to live, I was cautioned more than once that a downstairs apartment was not wise considering my age and gender. But underwear thieves are shameless and determined, and very little deters them, whether it is husbands, dogs, walls, fences, hedges, or upstairs apartments. While a young single woman living on the ground floor ought to resign herself to losing a fair amount of her underwear if she persists in hanging it outside to dry, the smalls of a fifty-year-old on the fifth floor of a fenced-in apartment building are not necessarily safe on the balcony at night either.  One of my students, Mrs Ogasawara, a full-figured divorcee in her late forties, told me that she had been plagued by underwear thieves for the better part of two years ever since moving to an apartment a stone’s throw from a men’s college.  

   “My underwear!  Can you believe it!” Mrs Ogasawara said angrily, her bosom heaving.  “And I even used the plastic cover!”

   When I asked what this was, she explained that it was a product specially designed to shield one’s underclothes from the eyes of passersby. I laughed, but all of the women claimed they had them.  “Though it doesn’t do that much good, really,” fumed Mrs Ogasawara. “Anyone who’s out to steal your panties sees that cover and knows very well what’s behind it!”

   “Perhaps they thought it belonged to one of the younger women in your building,” murmured her friend, Mrs Tagami.

   “No, no – that’s what I thought at first,” countered Mrs Ogasawara. “But I think I’ve figured it out. What they’re after is a complete set – a collection. They start off with 32AA and work their way up to 42D. You can’t imagine how much it’s cost me these past two years!  And I’ve taken to hanging all my underwear inside the apartment!  They never go for my older things!”

   Well, the thief had gone for my older things. Perhaps he already had a full collection of fancy items with lace and properly functioning elastic and was now in the market for something truly scruffy. I shuddered at the thought of having to identify my miserable drawers. Throughout childhood I was cautioned to make sure I had on clean underwear every day just in case I was in an accident. Now my grungy smalls were loose in the world and the underwear thief knew my embarrassing secret. The shame of it! I imagined being confronted with them, trusty five-year-old veterans of hundreds of washes that they were. You could put a gun to my head and I wouldn’t admit they were mine.

   I made a mental note never to hang my underwear outside again and got ready for my date. I was meeting Antonio for dinner at 6:00 in Tokyo and I wanted to leave myself plenty of time.

   On the train, I obsessed and fretted about the coming evening’s events and how they might pan out.  It had been difficult knowing what to take with me. Lipstick, compact, my brush and my wallet, of course. My Japanese-English dictionary, too, accompanied me everywhere I went, as did my foreigner’s card with my fingerprint and photograph on it and the keys to my apartment. But wasn’t it a little presumptuous to pack a toothbrush and a fresh pair of underwear?  I’d finally decided that it was tempting fate to bring these items and I’d left them behind. If I got lucky with Antonio, I was sure I’d figure something out.

   I was meeting Antonio in the center of Tokyo; we were going to find a restaurant and walk from there to the concert hall. By the time he was due to arrive, I was so nervous I was beginning to feel a strong sympathy for my ex-boss Mr Tachiyama with the numerous tics. My heart was going at a frisky gallop, and when I sat down, one of my legs seemed to move spastically of its own accord.  Mercifully, Antonio was right on time.  Virtually propelled by adrenalin, I leapt up when I saw him approaching. He was grinning broadly.

   “Maria! You have come. I am so glad.”

   I smiled tremulously. I was pretty glad to see him too, and I knew it must have shown all too well.

   “Shall we go and find a restaurant? What are you in the mood for eating?”

   Anything, anything at all. Or nothing, really. I almost didn’t care if I never ate again. I babbled away about Indian restaurants in Yokohama and not having been able to find decent Chinese food in all the time I’d been in Japan. Antonio laughed. “But I have Chinese friends from the university!  I will have them to introduce to us a very good Chinese restaurant and you will think you are home in San Francisco.”

   We found a nice Italian restaurant and sat down. I willed my leg to stop jiggling and smiled foolishly at Antonio.

   “So Maria, how have you been amusing yourself today?”

   When I’m nervous, I have an awful habit: I tend to tell the truth. I regaled Antonio now with the events of the afternoon and the theft of my underwear. I left out the part about the embarrassing condition of what was stolen, however.

   “But Maria, the men who do this thing – they are pitiable!  They have no lovers, no women friends they can talk with, and so they are reduced to taking the under garments of women they do not know. Somewhere there is a man who has your underclothes and he is happy tonight with what little he has. He is not a good or  respectable man, of course, but surely you cannot begrudge him his small amount of joy with the lovely, lacy underclothes of Maria.” 

    Jesus, if he only knew how lovely and lacy they were not! Fortunately, however, I managed to stop myself before I confessed all.

   I remember that the chamber music performance was very good. Or at least, I remember telling myself that at the time. I usually love listening to violin and cello music, but on this occasion I was in no position to concentrate, sitting next to Antonio as I was.  I could feel the heat radiating from him, hear his breathing, see him out of the corner of my eye as he leaned forward to get a better view of the musicians. I don’t think my pulse dropped beneath 100 the entire time I was sitting there. I think the selection that night was Schumann, Brahms and Beethoven, but we might as well have been listening to nursery songs or the Country Countdown.

   After the performance, we walked out of the concert hall into the warm Tokyo night. Antonio spoke softly.  “You may take the train back to Yokohama if you wish, but I hope that instead you will come home with me. I would like it very much.”  I could barely nod. To hell with playing hard to get or pretending that I had something better to do.

   On the train, I felt giddy with happiness and desire. Tokyo’s flash and neon moved past me in a blur; the other passengers on the train were just props in the background. Antonio was the focus of all my thought and feeling, and I got the feeling that he felt much the same way about me.

    We got off the train at Shimokitazawa and walked to the house he was living in through a quiet, older neighbourhood past traditional Japanese houses and the occasional temple. Walking past one garden, I could hear the splash of carp in a pond and smell the buttery sweetness of a gardenia, the white blossoms still visible under the soft light of a streetlamp.

  “Soon, the rainy season will be here,” said Antonio. “Every day it will rain, zaa zaa zaa – you have not experienced this yet, have you, Maria?”

   “No, not yet.”

   “It is awful. You will soon see: your entire apartment will become wet and sticky.”

   I nodded and resisted the urge to giggle.

  “All your shoes in the genkan, they will be covered with mold. You will have a time trying to keep them clean!  This country can be very difficult, Maria. I know because I have been here for over two years now.”

   It hadn’t been all smooth sailing for me either, but things were definitely looking up.

   “Ah, here we are.”

   The house Antonio had been living in was magnificent by Tokyo standards, with three bedrooms, its own garden, and a spacious kitchen.  The owners were currently abroad but would be returning in autumn. Some of the furniture had been put into storage, but there was a sofa, a small table, and a few chairs.

   “Would you like something to drink?”

   “What?  Oh!  No, not really. Well – maybe a glass of water.”

   While Antonio fixed our drinks, I walked around the house and noted the lack of furniture. There was a drafting board set up in one room, though – and a bed. I couldn’t help but notice that.

   “So, whose house is this?” I asked him, when we were both sitting on the sofa.

   He smiled. “It belongs to a former professor of mine. He has gone to Austria for a year with his family, but they will be back in September. So when I get back from Spain, I will have to find some place else to live until December, but it will not be impossible. There are people who go on holiday, who need someone to look after their place, perhaps feed their cat.”

   “What do you mean ‘when you get back from Spain?’” 

   Antonio smiled again and took a sip of wine. “I am going back for the summer, for six weeks. But I will be back in September. Then in December, I go back to my country for good.”

   Ah. Well, that still gave us a few months, though, didn’t it? And at the very least, tonight . . .

   Antonio moved closer to me and gently put one arm around my shoulders and pulled me to him.

   I was so nervous, I hardly knew what to do with myself. Fortunately, Antonio did. I had my hair down, and I made a move to pin it up, but he stopped me.

   “Don’t. Please, Maria – leave it down.” 

   For the next few hours, it got in my face, my eyes, my mouth. It tangled around my arms and tickled me and generally drove me wild – but Antonio didn’t seem to mind a bit. Quite the contrary.

   I almost wished that my underwear thief was having half as much fun.