Mariko

It's a chill late winter morning in Tokyo, but we sit in a perfect climate controlled office tower that looms over everything around it in a central part of the city.

Mariko, my coworker, comes over and taps my shoulder, “I have a problem I want to tell you about.” She's also offering me a chocolate from a box of chocolates. I take one and eat it greedily. 

She smiles as if she’s about to tell a fun story. Over the past two years I've noticed that the bigger the problem is, the more animated, almost ebullient, she becomes. 

“What’s the problem?” 

“The HR department,” she says, then goes into full detail on the background of the problem, opinions about each of the characters, and how unjust, malicious and downright vile her oppressor in the HR department is.

While she talks, she touches my arm flirtatiously at regular intervals.

My mind wanders to my own somewhat pressing issue. Earlier this morning, I spent a half an hour on the floor of the office toilet, having one the episodes of dizziness and cold sweats that began a few weeks ago. Putting my back on the cold floor of the toilet stall takes my mind off the feeling of imminent doom. Thankfully, in Japan, the stall walls go down to the floor.

Mariko is now getting to the important part of her story.

“And, Watanabe in human resources says someone reported me leaving the office at 3pm.” 

“What sort of terrible person would do that!?” I say, “I hope it gets sorted out, one way or the other.” I go back to reading the printed reports on my desk.

I feel Mariko still looking at me. 

“You need my help?” 

She nods.

“So, why are you been leaving the office at 3pm, and returning at 8pm to finish your work?”

“My son, he’s big.” She shows how big her son's shoulders are with her hands. “He beat up another boy at school, so I volunteered to read books for the boy that got hurt to make up for it.”

Mariko is a single mother with an 8-year-old son. I wonder if 8-year-olds can really do much damage to each other. I decide it’s better not to ask.

I verbally sum up the situation. “You are working a full time job, taking care of your son, and now you are leaving the office in the middle of the day to read books for another 8-year-old?” 

”Yes,” she says.

“Why don't you just say no?”

Mariko smiles tightly, tilting her head to one side. The Japanese gesture for when someone feels uncomfortable and doesn’t want to explain further.

I promise to talk to HR on her behalf. Solving the family problems of a mother and her son is definitely a new task for me. I’m 27 years old and have barely had a steady girlfriend.

In the office around me, lawyers and financial executives scurry back and forth, working on important documents and having meetings about these documents in glass walled conference rooms. Most are Japanese. There’s a scattering of Western expat employees to help coordinate with the headquarters of the European insurance company. 

There’s a constant whirlwind of activity around Mariko’s desk. People frequently come by to chat. And she’s hardworking. She gets all the insurance payments sent on time and chases down difficult problems. Above her desk, a baseball pendant for the Tokyo Giants is pinned up. She says she attends the games to drink beer and shout at the top of her lungs.

Mariko is three years older than me, and we haven’t talked about much outside of work, or else I would have asked to join her.

I’m still dealing with my own issue. Curling up on the floor of the toilet and disappearing for 20 minutes at a time is going to cause problems soon. A better technique is needed to deal with the day terrors. 

The next day, I hide a tiny whiskey bottle in my pocket and bring it to the office. While laying on my back on the toilet floor, I take a sip, and the terror immediately goes away.

Are my nerves shot because of the nerve gas attack? A year earlier, I rode the Tokyo subway on the morning of the Aum Shinrikyo terrorist attack. My train went through the station 20 minutes after the sarin nerve gas was released by the cult. The news said the gas dissipated in minutes, but maybe I inhaled a tiny amount somehow. A shudder goes down my spine.

Since then, I commute to the office by scooter to stay in the fresh air outdoors.

The next day, Mariko arrives to the office twenty minutes late.

“I woke up laying on the floor of my kitchen at 7am this morning.” She’s giggling again. “I don’t know why I was there.”

“On the floor?” I ask.

“On the floor. On top of the kitchen counter, I saw two empty wine bottles. I don’t remember drinking them.”

“Unless you had a party, I think you drank them.”  

Mariko gets to work, as if this was a normal thing to tell coworkers. I worry she must be under a lot of stress, and I’m now concerned about her drinking habits.

This makes me think about how I have spent three days sipping whiskey while laying on the toilet floor. A coworker that smells of whiskey at 11am could quickly become its own HR problem. A new answer is needed. I hate going to doctors, but I’m out of options. I make an appointment with the GP in the building.

I have been partying hard on the weekends. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Maybe I need to cut back on drinking. On the other hand, my annual health check comes up clean every year.

The previous year when they hand out the results a “B” sticks out. Cholesterol. My mind races, thinking of which unhealthy foods I’ve been eating that could increase my cholesterol levels.

I see a stir amongst our two salesmen. Izaki and Tanabe. They work as a team. They have a good cop bad cop sales routine. Izaki, photogenically handsome, does the talking, while Tanabe, about twenty pounds overweight, chimes in with agreement with whatever Izaki says, and then listens to the customer's issues. Tanabe also does most of the eating and drinking with the customers because Izaki likes to stay fit. Somehow, this is a perfect arrangement for both of them.

I ask them, “How are your health scores?”

“Bad,” Tanabe chuckles sadly. Izaki reassures him it’s not a big deal.

Izaki points at Tanabe and says, “He needs to eat with our customers, and when he gets back home, his wife feeds him another dinner.”

I look over Tanabe’s shoulder and see the results, all C’s, D’s and F’s.

“That looks bad, is he going to be ok?”

Izaki laughs and says, “Don’t worry, don’t worry. Life of salesmen!”

The weight of my cholesterol score feeling lighter, I pull myself together and make it to the human resources department. I stand in front of Ms Watanabe’s desk and say we need to talk. She's an attractive woman whom I’ve never seen smile or socialize with anyone in the office.

“Watanaba-san, my coworker, Mariko, needs to take care of a personal matter every day at 3pm. I cover for her while she’s away.”

Watanabe looks at me coldly. “Company policy is for employees to be physically present in the office from 8:30 am to 5:30pm.” 

“But…” I try to think of what to add.

“Should I show you the employee handbook?” She gives a hostile stare.

I should have come up with more to say.

“Ok,” I stand up. “Thanks for your time.”

When I see Mariko the next day, I mention I put in a good word for her at the HR department. 

“Thanks. Is it fixed now?”

“I think so. But try to keep a low profile when you leave the office.”

“Low profile. I will start going out the cafeteria door.” 

Mariko then changes the topic. She has been teaching me tidbits about Japanese culture. She tells me, “Next week is Valentine's Day. In Japan, the women give the men they like chocolate on that day.”

“That’s very different than America,” I say.

“In Japan it's done this way. The women give the men chocolates.” They don’t discuss the whys and what-if’s in Japan. They prefer absolutes.

“Then, I hope to receive a chocolate next week,” I say.

“But if you receive one in the office, that’s a ‘giri chocolate’”. Giri is a word for a tedious obligation or responsibility. “You might get some giri chocolate from the young women in the office. But those two,” she points at our two salesmen Izaki and Tanabe, “those two are dirty old men and won’t even get a giri chocolate here.”

“But they’re married,” I say.

“They go to hostess bars and have their fun there.” She mimes touching a woman’s body with her hands.

Izaki and Tanabe chuckle nervously then look back at their computer screens. Japanese avoid direct confrontation.

When Mariko goes to lunch, Tanabe catches my attention. “Do you know where she goes every afternoon?” he says, starting to laugh.

“Of all the children in school, her son punched a yakuza’s son”, he says, “She needs to go read books for a mafia member's son.” Tanabe is now laughing uncontrollably and slapping his thigh.

In a few days, Mariko shifts the tutoring to an hour later. Ms Watanabe from HR makes frowning glances when she walks past and sees Mariko’s seat empty, but doesn’t bring up the topic again. Later, Mariko will come into the office looking relieved, “I’ve stopped tutoring now.” Japanese passive-aggressive tutoring can even wear down a mafia family, or perhaps they’ve tired of a stranger coming into their home.

I go to see Dr Sakata and explain my recent symptoms. The dizziness. The terrors. The racing heartbeat.

I explain my theory about the nerve gas.

His eyes squint slightly. He asks, “Are you under much stress at work?”

“Not really.” This is a lie.

“Do you get much time to relax?”

“I’m always working on something. Always studying something, so, no.” My eyes dart around the room. 

“What you need to do, is you need to slow down. You are suffering the symptoms of stress.”

“I’m not sick? My heart is ok?” My heart is racing a million miles per hour.

“Relax. Spend some time not doing anything. After work, have a beer, watch TV, relax.”

The doctor gives me three days of pills that he says will stop the panic attacks. I don’t feel any different after taking one, but the next day the terrors don’t come.

I’ve been reading more in my spare time to slow down. I’m deeply engrossed in Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, about a boy leading a solitary university student life, who’s befriended by the slightly older and vivacious Midori who works at a bookshop he frequents.

When Mariko is in a good mood I ask if I can take her and her son out to lunch on the weekend.

“Meet my son?” she says, “Impossible. It’s impossible.” 

She giggles, waves her hand in the Japanese gesture for something so ridiculous it shouldn’t even be considered, and turns back to the stack of work on her desk.

I make a sad puppy face. I sense dating is more complicated here than in the West.

Without looking at me, she says, “You’ll find someone else to have lunch with.” She unwraps a chocolate, pops it into her mouth and starts typing on the keyboard.

At noon I go to eat alone at a soba noodle restaurant in a back alley behind a Buddhist temple not far from the office. School children wearing uniforms shuffle past on their way somewhere calling out to each other. Men in business suits sit tightly at the counter slurping noodles. A few groups of women fill the tables talking quietly. I hear the wind banging the shutter, and in the background, a myriad of sounds that could only be heard in this vast metropolis.

The pills from Dr Sakata run out. I follow his advice and spend more time trying to not do anything. It’s not easy but I learn to slow down, and not rush and worry about everything. The panic attacks never return.

The next time I see the doctor, I tell him, “Thank you for that, I’m fixed now.”

Dr Sakata looks at me puzzled and says, “But, I didn’t do anything.”