THE FUTURISTIC, ALL GLASS BUILDING STRETCHED OVER ONE FULL BLOCK OF the trendy, sophisticated neighborhood of Aoyama, appearing to have been dropped into Tokyo courtesy of an alien spaceship.
This sleek, intimidating place was the home of the Japan Broadcasting System, known more commonly as JBS and once I entered its wide doors glistening in the sunlight, it was impossible to escape the watchful eyes of Sakura Sasaki. A banner billowed on high, plastered with her gigantic picture, strung up on the wall behind the lobby reception desk. Her eyes were wide in surprise, her smile mischievous. With her right hand she made a V sign. Huge roman letters and Japanese writing as well proclaimed Sakura’s Gaijin Star Is Born! Along with the banner were smaller signs showing the JBS logo, an animated yellow flower with a cheerful face, a winking right eye, its mouth turned upward into a grin. It was supposed to be cute, but there was something not quite right about it, perhaps something even a little frightening. The JBS employees, scurrying about like worker ants, wore name tags with the same flower logo on their chests, next to buttons with Sakura’s face. It could only be called the Sakura Sasaki cult.
Mrs. Kubota and Takuya had seen me off in a taxi for the rehearsal, promising to be at the show, which was at seven o’clock the same evening, along with Mr. Kubota and Mariko and her husband.
I had decided to bring the slightly tight black dress, not wanting to worry about popping out of the purple double-scoop one.
I wondered if anyone else would be singing an enka song. On Hen na Gaijin people sang mostly pop hits or traditional Japanese songs that everyone in Japan learned as children. A gaijin singing enka seemed to be an unusual spectacle. I planned to use this to my advantage and sing the hell out of “Nozomi no Hoshi.” And I now had a full determination to be strong enough to withstand any barbs and humiliation from Sakura.
“First you will have interview,” the receptionist said, directing me to a small office down the hall.
The barren room contained only a simple metal desk and two matching chairs on either side, so different in atmosphere from the slick lobby. A clock set about ten minutes fast hung slightly off-kilter on the wall. A few moments later a young Japanese woman arrived. She was in her twenties. The color of her short, spiky hair resembled that of a maraschino cherry. She sat in the chair behind the desk.
“How do you do,” she said, extending her hand. “I am Umeko Imai. I am producer for Sakura’s Gaijin Star Is Born.”
I introduced myself and Umeko opened a binder, her finger trailing down the page. “Ah. Here you are. You are singing ‘Nozomi no Hoshi’? An enka song.”
“Yes,” I said. “By Maki Kanda.”
“Very nice. But enka so difficult. Good luck to you!”
“Gambarimasu.”
“Oh! Your Japanese very nice.” She turned the pages in the binder. “And are you married?”
I’d already answered several personal information questions on the application form; didn’t she know that I was single?
“No.”
“How old you are?”
I sighed. “Thirty-three.”
She made a stabbing mark with her pen, perhaps already checking the “loser” box.
“Now you understand that you will have short interview before you sing on the program, ne?”
“Yes.”
“And it good idea to have interesting story to tell. Judges like that. But it must be short. Please tell me your story now.”
I was confident about the interest level of my story. I explained about Aunt Mitch and how I was looking for Hiromi Taniguchi to return some family heirlooms and give her Aunt Mitch’s ashes. And how I hoped to ask her about information about my father. I showed Umeko the family photos, which Takuya had helped me get blown up so they would show better on television. The story seemed to please the producer.
“Very nice. So you are wishing that Taniguchi-san or someone who knows her will be watching television to night.”
“Yes. That is my hope.”
“And you are singing a song about wishing on a star. ‘Nozomi no Hoshi.’ Very good. Very good.” Umeko seemed to approve and wrote something in her notebook. “I want to take you now to preparation room where other contestants are waiting. I will explain about show there.” She stood up and bowed. “Thank you.”
In the preparation room there were about ten gaijin sitting at a large conference table, reminding me of the room at TextTrans where they held company meetings. Most of the contestants seemed to be in their twenties, which was no big surprise, but there was one woman who, to my relief, seemed to actually be older than me, perhaps Mariko’s age.
The chair on my right was empty, but on my left sat a woman with bright auburn hair and striking blue eyes, almost the color of the canal water at Venezia-Lando, a hue so unnatural that I figured she must have been wearing contact lenses. She had a round face, a flawless complexion, and looked no older than Kylie, the TextTrans receptionist. She turned to me and said, “What song are you singing?” The question sounded more like a demand, and she was not smiling.
“ ‘Nozomi no Hoshi,’ ” I said, wondering the reason for such abruptness.
The blue eyes stared. “By Maki Kanda?”
I nodded.
“But I’m doing a Maki Kanda song—‘Tabibito.’ Isn’t there a rule that two people can’t be doing the same singer’s song?”
“Not that I’m aware of.” The rules for this contest were basically gaijin plus singing-in-Japanese equaled qualified contestant, as far as I knew.
The woman folded her arms against her chest, giving off a loud sigh, then swung her right foot back and forth, turning her head toward the front of the room. Her obnoxious behavior stumped me.
As a few more gaijin trickled in, Umeko returned to the room. Miss Blue Eyes waved her arm vigorously, as if trying to show the teacher she was the student with the correct answer. Once she got Umeko’s attention she began to rattle off in flawless Japanese.
I could understand enough to know that she was voicing her concern about whether two people were allowed to perform two songs from the same singer.
Umeko translated the question into English and said, “It is no problem.” The obnoxious woman continued to sulk while Umeko smiled and addressed the entire group. “Welcome to the first annual Sakura’s Gaijin Star Is Born karaoke contest!” She clapped vigorously and with a nod urged on everyone else, resulting in tepid, hesitant applause from the group of nervous gaijin. “First, we will give you your performance numbers. Then we want you to sit in numerical order.”
As she called out the names and numbers, I did not hear mine until, “Emiko Trenton, number fourteen; Celeste Duncan, number fifteen.”
Dead last. I’d have to wait through fourteen people before I’d perform. And the red-haired freak with the too-blue eyes was still sitting next to me because she was number fourteen. She turned toward me. “To-ren-ton Emiko to moshimasu ga. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu.” For some reason she now felt that she could introduce herself but was compelled to do so in Japanese.
Her name was Emiko? She didn’t look Japanese at all, and I couldn’t fathom why she had to speak in Japanese to a fellow English-speaking gaijin. Was she trying to psych-out her competition? I also couldn’t understand why I’d been given the bad fortune to have such a weirdo scheduled right before me, and one who was to perform a Maki Kanda song as well.
“I’m Celeste Duncan,” I said, making a point to speak in English.
“Se-re-su-to-san.”
This was really too much. “Yes. And your name is Emiko?”
She nodded.
“Are you Japanese?”
She thrust out her ample chest and now deigned to speak in English. “No. Emiko is my adopted name. My real name is Emily, but I’ve become so Japanese living here that I decided to take a Japanese name.”
“Oh, I see.”
“So you’re doing enka.” She sniffed. “Everyone is always so surprised when they find out I sing enka since it’s so hard.”
“Oh, really?”
“But learning enka songs has never been difficult for me. I don’t know what the big deal is. I guess I just have a natural affinity for the music.” She tilted her chin, her face giving off a faux-sincere expression, as if she were practicing the right pose to strike for the paparazzi. “And my photographic memory helps with learning all the kanji.”
“How nice for you.”
Thankfully, Emiko was forced to shut up as Umeko continued her spiel. “Let me now explain the schedule for our program, which will be a live broadcast.”
The lights dimmed and a screen lowered from the ceiling. It was a Power Point presentation and a slide appeared for each point Umeko made. I might as well have been back at TextTrans in a human resources meeting about the new health benefits plan.
“After an introduction by Sakura-san, you will march through audience together in a line and then come on stage and sit in chairs.” The slide showed a caricature of Sakura Sasaki holding a microphone, an enormous but still cute head on top of a tiny body.
The next slide was a drawing of a Caucasian man with a tremendous nose, his finger firmly placed inside his left nostril.
“You will be onstage for the entire two-hour concert so you must always look alert and cheerful,” Umeko continued. “Remember not to pick your nose—the camera could be on you.”
There were twitters from the audience. I never expected that I would have to be onstage the entire time.
“When your name and number is called, you will stand next to Sakura-san and tell her your story of what brought you to Japan and why you have chosen your song. Chiharu-san, our translator, will be by your side if there is any language problem, as Sakura-san will speak in both English and Japanese.”
A young woman sitting next to Umeko stood up and bowed. “Good luck to all of you.”
“Sakura-san is the host of show,” Umeko said. “There will be four judges who will give a critique after your performance, and Chiharu-san can help translation for that too.”
The next slide was a drawing of the judges. Three were Japanese; two young women and an older man, but the fourth was a Caucasian man who looked familiar.
“The judges will score each person and the points will be added up at the end of the program to determine five finalists who will come back next week. If your name is called as one of the five finalists, please come and stand by Sakura-san.”
The final slide showed a curly-haired woman with big eyes clutching a bouquet of flowers, shedding tears of joy.
“First, we will run through the show. I will be standing in for Sakura-san since we want her spontaneous reaction to the stories and performances.”
I could only imagine what Sakura would say about my story and per-formance. Would she be wearing the same persona as on Hen na Gaijin, a persona completely hidden when she took tea during the great brownie catastrophe at the Kubotas’? Or were they really sincere about finding a gaijin singing star? Would she be doing me a favor by acting civil because she wanted to impress Takuya? I was clueless and uncomfortable that I wouldn’t find out Sakura’s reaction and what she had in her bag of tricks until the live show.
We were next led into a big studio for the rehearsal, which is where the live performance would take place. I was not looking forward to having to sit through fourteen contestants before I would sing, though I would be certain to know my competition well, since I’d hear everyone’s stories and songs by the time my turn arrived. I gazed at the hundreds of empty seats and imagined Takuya out there watching me.
We were all told to sit in numerical order on the stage. One by one Umeko called us to be interviewed and to sing our songs to a prerecorded track. The other entrants were required to sway and clap to the music and look otherwise engaged and smiling. It was exhausting and draining, like giving a performance for each song, especially in nervous anticipation of being the last to sing.
A couple of the contestants could sing fairly well, but most mangled the Japanese language with their atrocious pronunciation, something that would surely get a rise out of Sakura. It was then that I let myself get excited—I thought I had a good chance to take the prize. But I had yet to hear Emiko Trenton.
Emiko walked confidently to the center of the stage wearing a blue jersey dress, which matched her eyes and appeared to have been plastered on after coating her curvaceous body with a glue stick. Everyone else had worn street clothes for the rehearsal, but this dress looked stunning enough to be the one she planned to wear for the performance. She bantered in Japanese with Umeko acting as Sakura. Much of the conversation was incomprehensible to me, but I understood there was some connection to Emiko traveling the world and her selection of Maki Kanda’s song, “Tabibito,” which meant “traveler.” I was familiar with the song; it was on the Maki Kanda album Mrs. Kubota bought me.
I held my breath as Emiko opened her mouth to sing but was relieved once she was into a few bars. She could carry a tune, but she sang “Tabibito” more in the style of a pop song than enka, without careful attention to the vibrato technique used. She also didn’t seem to take care in her pronunciation—saying her r’s too strongly instead of employing that in-between d and l sound, and pronouncing the syllable fu in the word futari more like hu—points that I had spent so much time trying to get just right. How shocking—Celeste the perfectionist. I guessed I was turning into Dirk. And although it was clear that Emiko should know the meaning of the words, it was as if she was singing them by rote—almost phonetically. For some reason, while she could speak Japanese well, she did not sound so good when she sang it. And her accent was nothing to brag about, at least in my opinion. She was certainly attractive and had me beat in the age department, but I knew I was the better singer. Perhaps all these years singing in the living room had helped, along with my genes.
Now it was my turn. Despite my confidence, I still had to try hard to ignore my nerves and the growling in my stomach I hoped was audible only to me. I spoke with Umeko about my wish to find Hiromi Taniguchi so I could bring her sister’s ashes and their mother’s family heirloom comb and ask her if she knew about my father. I showed the pictures of Aunt Mitch and Uncle Melvin, the picture of Michiko and Hiromi in their youth, the photo with Barbara in it, and the one of me in the kimono. Umeko acted animated, as if she was hearing the story for the first time; I couldn’t imagine what Sakura would say. How did she plan to insult me?
When it was time to sing “Nozomi no Hoshi” I gave it my all. I concentrated on the memory of singing at the Club Mai, the enthusiastic audience reaction, and all the complimentary things Takuya had said to me. As I held the last note, I felt I’d given the best performance I was capable of and only hoped that I would be able to perform it as well on the live show in front of Sakura, a studio audience, and millions of TV viewers.
Afterward several of the other contestants came up and gave me compliments. Emiko stayed away. It was more than clear that some kind of rivalry was afoot from her end.
“You’re going to win,” Jenny, a portly woman in her forties who sang Mrs. Kubota’s favorite, “Cinderella Boogie-Woogie,” whispered to me.
“Thanks for your vote of confidence.”
Umeko explained that there would be a special guest performing after me, and then the five finalists would be announced. Now there was to be a dinner break and after that the contestants were to get into their performance clothes. The live show was set to begin in two hours.
Jenny and I sat together in the studio cafeteria where we received box dinners. She explained that she’d been living in Japan for the past two years with her American husband, a scholar doing research on tea ceremony for an Ivy League university. She found Japanese difficult and had never quite gotten the hang of it but discovered that learning songs was a good way to work on improving her ability.
Emiko was sitting on the far side of the room eating with one of the younger male contestants who seemed to be mesmerized by her face, hanging on to her every word.
“I wonder who the special guest is going to be,” I said to Jenny as I plucked an oversized piece of shrimp tempura with my chopsticks.
“I heard it’s Sunshine Poppy.”
“Sunshine Poppy?”
“You don’t know them? They do that Kirin beer commercial. And what else?” She thought for a moment. “Oh, yeah. And that lip balm ad. They’re all over the place. A group of six girls.”
“I was afraid it might be Maki Kanda. I’d be so embarrassed to sing that song in front of her.”
“Gosh, you shouldn’t be embarrassed. You’re really good! I knew the guest wouldn’t be Ayako Yamato, the singer of my song. They’d have to haul her out of retirement.” Jenny laughed. She poked around at her food with her chopsticks. “I’m so nervous I can’t eat a bite. Go ahead if you want some of my tempura.”
I was ravenous, unable to resist her offer, and grabbed the two pieces of shrimp and several morsels of carrot and sweet potato. I ate nonstop between gulps of green tea.
“What made you decide to enter this contest?” I asked Jenny.
“My husband always makes fun of me when I talk back to Sakura on the TV when I watch Hen na Gaijin. She really infuriates me. So he bet me 10,000 yen that I didn’t have the nerve to go on the singing contest and face her in person. So I won the bet!”
“Good for you,” I said, now on my fourth piece of shrimp tempura. “But I’m nervous about being up there with her. She can be pretty mean-spirited.”
“Yeah, but it’s supposed to be all in fun, I guess, though she always gets under my skin.”
“It’s like she’s out to embarrass people.” I wasn’t about to tell Jenny that I had actually met the little imp and that I knew her hopefully ex-boyfriend.
“I guess it’s good for ratings. But at least she’s not one of the judges.”
When we finished dinner, we joined the rest of the women in the dressing area, which was one big communal room with only three mirrors. Clothes and shoes and bags of makeup were strewn over chairs, spilling onto the floor. The stuffy smell of perfume mingling with hair spray and deodorant was thick in the air.
I glanced over at Emiko, surrounded by three Japanese women who seemed to be her handlers, carefully wrapping an elaborate silver kimono around her body and cinching it together with a green obi. She looked good—nothing like the pitiful Margareto-san who’d appeared to have been stuffed into a silk potato sack. It was obvious that Emiko wanted to make a big splash, and even on her voluptuous figure the kimono suited her. Maybe her Japanese name was apt.
I could have used a few assistants myself because the black dress I’d brought, which had been a bit tight to begin with back at Jill’s Couture, felt even snugger as I attempted to twist it around my hips and waist, wriggling my arms into the sleeves, praying that the seams wouldn’t rip. What had I been thinking? Had it really been necessary to eat enough tempura to feed an entire stable of sumo wrestlers? I grabbed for the zipper in the back, finding that it wouldn’t budge more than halfway up.
Jenny, primping next to me, was putting on her finishing touches of makeup, having already donned her no-nonsense, practical, and flattering gray suit, accented with an orchid corsage.
“Jenny, do you think you could help zip me up?”
“Sure.”
As she pulled on the zipper, I felt the dress binding in the back.
“Ooh, it’s a little snug,” she said, her voice as tight as the dress.
“I knew I shouldn’t have bought this,” I said. “It was really too small.”
“Wait, just a minute. I . . . think . . . I’ve . . . got . . . it . . .”
I heard a ripping noise. “What happened?”
“Celeste, I’m sorry! The zipper split!”
I was ready to sink to the floor in a puddle. “Shit!”
“Now, hold on. Hold on.” She grabbed her purse and began digging inside. “I think I have some safety pins somewhere in here.”
I didn’t know what I was going to do if I couldn’t wear that dress. Even if there were extra clothes lying around somewhere in the TV studio, the chance that something would fit was nil. Would they make me put on Margareto-san’s leftover kimono? I shuddered.
“Voilà!” Jenny said, pulling out a baggie filled with safety pins.
How grateful I was for her preparedness and quick thinking.
“Don’t worry. It’s not that bad,” she said as I felt her fingers traveling speedily along my back, as she closed up the dress with the pins. “It’s looking fine.”
“Thank you so much for doing this.”
“Almost done,” she said. She patted my back. “It’s barely noticeable.”
“Thank you. Thank you. I’d bow down and kiss your feet, but I don’t want my dress to rip further.”
Jenny laughed and looked at her watch. “Well, it’s just about time,” she said. “Are you ready to go face Sakura Sasaki?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”