The Curse of the Gold Tooth

I stumbled down to this dilapidated, grungy internet cafe this morning (well it's morning for me though the clock reads 1.20pm) feeling at odds with this strange routine of sleeping at 4am and rising at noon.

Ready to hammer out another installment of life for all the readers at home I find that Mr Ryan (or Mr Lion to kids who can't say R, or Mr Tiger to Kids who can't say either) has been adding a couple of installments of his own...what can I say but that it was tears of joy in the confines of my grubby cubicle...Something magical is happening. You put two people in love into a shoebox, shake it around a bit and add a dash of something new and different....you end up with a bloom that is equal parts delicate and sturdy...It's wonderful to look at someone and just know....not know anything you can put into words, or even shape into an image...it's just that you know.

Anyways, enough of these sweet declarations, I came here today to talk about the curse of the gold tooth. How many of you out there can admit to your age and recall afternoons spent watching 'Kimba the White Lion?' Hell, most of us can even recall the tune 'Living down in deepest darkest Africa..' Now I was convinced that Kimba was Japanese, an early 80's offering from the same Anime crews who bought us 'Astroboy' and 'Gem - truly outrageous (truly, truly, truly outrageous)' In 1996 when an old friend bought me a kimba t-shirt and the name kind of stuck, I got used to people saying 'Kimba? As In White Lion?'



Unfortuntely here in Japan, Kimba the White Lion is completely unknown...it's about as well known as say..Reiki (yes, can you believe it, here in the land where Reiki was re-discovered, the concept is met largely with blank stares or even wide eyes and murmurings of 'ghost energy..nooooo')And that would be no problem except the my name, the name I have considered adopting by deed poll, here means 'Gold tooth'.



In Japan there is no single m sound. The nearest sound is an n sound and anyhting that has an m, is changed to the n...eg - Kimba is Kinba and Kinba means a bloody big gold thing you have in your mouth in place of an enamel chomper. I wouldn't mind that so much, but here it is hysterically funny to people, they just fall about clutching their sides and guffawing. Actually how it happens is I say 'Hajimemashite, Kimba to moshi masu' (Nice to meet you, I am Kimba) and they just look at me, the corners of their mouths imperceptibly trembling. So then I say 'KiMba, not Kinba - ie (no) gold tooth' and they just lose their bundle.

I thought about reverting back to my actual name, even though it feels like ill fitting shoes, but then they say 'Ohhhhh - you Korean? Ha ha' which is even less amusing, as the Japanese practise a deep seated form of prejudice against Koreans.

I then thought I would change it to Kimi - which encompasses two hiragana sounds and is kind of cute - except that means 'you' in Nihingo. Hi there, I'm you - nice to meet you....Way too 'Fight Club' for me. Finally I settled on Kimo...'Ok kyo kara (from today) I am Kimo' I announced to all the clients at Ringo, my hostess bar. They all roared with laughter and cried into their Suntory. Wouldn't you know it, Kimu means 'liver' in Japanese.

You can't win can you?

Stay tuned as next weekend we are going to check out the Nada Fighting Festival - that is a sanctioned festival where dudes drink sake and fight each other in the street for two hours, before calling it off at the ringing of a bell...Did I mention I love this place?