Chapter 21 The Mushroom Song
The Mushroom Song
The Japanese couples I’d seen from the taxi had now vanished from the alley. All it had to show now were closed shops, a couple of ryokan and the occasional, hopeful glow of a street light.
As I walked past the small houses, I glimpsed human silhouettes gracefully gliding around behind blinds and paper screens. I wondered whether one of them might have belonged to the geisha, now plying her arts in a private teahouse.
The voice and lute I’d heard only minutes earlier were silent now.
Just when I was starting to fear I’d have to return to my futon with an empty stomach I saw, inscribed on an iron plaque lit by the sallow glow from a lamppost, three roman letters that left no room for doubt: BAR.
I pushed open the black door.
On the other side was a tiny room, barely a hundred square feet, with an L-shaped bar that would have accommodated four customers at the most. Behind the bar, a wizened woman in her sixties bowed slightly and gestured at one of the empty stools.
At the other end of the L, an elderly man was enthralled by an almost-empty bottle of sake.
As if trying to snap him out of his stupor, the woman went to top up his ceramic cup with what remained in the bottle, and the man nodded.
He looked so eccentric it was difficult to guess his age.
He was wearing a pinstriped suit and a tie; his hair was tousled and his glasses scratched.
He peered at me for a moment, as if trying to work out what I was doing there.
Then he went back to contemplating his sake.
An old television set with a twenty-inch screen hung aslant from the ceiling, showing music videos of stridently rendered songs and images that looked like some kind of joke but were serious.
I was offered the list of house specialties with another bow.
To my great relief, each item—basically different kinds of sake, beer and cocktails—had an English translation written beneath its Japanese name.
There was nothing to eat on the menu, although I could see that the man at the end of the counter had a small dish of nuts.
Knowing I’d probably get drunk on an empty stomach, I asked for an astronomically priced Asahi.
As the woman filled my glass with the chilled beer, the man with the scratched spectacles suddenly stood up and burst into song.
Astounded, I saw that he had picked up a wireless microphone to sing along with the show that now appeared on the screen, consisting of a dance performed by children dressed as mushrooms. The woman turned up the volume so that the man could belt it out, backed by the syncopated beat of chords that sounded like traditional Russian music.
The vocal part was very repetitive and kitsch, especially coming from a man who looked as if he’d just escaped from a catfight.
Dokonoko no kinoko kono kinoko dokono
dokonoko no kinoko morino kinoko
morino kinoko wa rappa ni natte
onpu ga kumo made tondetta
puppuru pappa purupappa
puppuru pappa purupappa
sora niwa naisho no hanashi dayo
Some notes were too high for this oddball, who was totally unfazed by his inability to hold a tune. The bar owner listened to him with her arms crossed, apparently pleased by this little show for an audience of two.
I was dismayed to discover that I’d inadvertently wandered into a karaoke bar for the lonely.
After a ridiculous polka-beat climax, the gray-haired man sat down again with the expression of someone lost in some very murky musings.
I picked up a handful of nuts to take the edge off my hunger before having a sip of my beer. I felt like a fish out of water. Just then the man asked in fairly comprehensible English, “You do not know that song?”