飛行機1

“Godzilla versus a trojan horse hiding ten thousand sumo wrestlers. Who ya got?” Our Regional Coordinator blurted out at the team. Whether his words were lost to jetlag or just plain disinterest, his mythical matchup went unexamined as the team yawned, unclicked seatbelts, and mechanically collected belongings from our seatbacks and overhead compartments.

This was my first visit to Japan. And I was beginning to feel overcome. Drunk on jetlag, and with the effects of the 500mg THC edible wearing off, everything was seeming so surreal. I suddenly started to experience a certain sensation, a feeling ... Something like I was in a sci-fi movie. Or as if I’d traveled forward in time...

Everything around me, everything in the airport, the city, the taxi, the hotel, et cetera ... everything ... looked so futuristic. Everything was so clean and sparkly and high-tech and automated. And everything spoke. Inanimate objects burst into cute, computerized coos. Doors spoke. Escalators and elevators spoke. Even the Tokyo toilets were automated and spoke. And, incredibly, the Tokyo toilets could even wash and dry genitals at the push of a button.

But rather than grim or dystopian, as the technology of the future is often portrayed, I found the automation and its futurism warming, comical in a sense. Think Jetsons rather than 1984...

ホテル2.1

While checking in to the hotel, Our Regional Coordinator, a real road warrior, expertly gauged the mood of the team. He saw the low energy. The lack of pep. He knew that following our red-eye, trans-pacific flight, the team required rejuvenation before the gauntlet of conferences kicked off. He knew that once the bugle sounded, and the events began, we’d be off running like a pack of greyhounds chasing a rabbit.

And so Our Regional Coordinator clapped his hands, like a football coach on the sidelines, and rah-rahed, fired up the team. Then he suggested we book (fully expensed to Corporate, of course) a day-pass to our Hyatt’s Onsen Spa.

Perfunctorily we agreed. But, later, I was quite pleased that we followed his suggestion, as the spa far exceeded any of my expectations...

ホテル2.2

The spa was simply the epitome of luxury. Located on the Hyatt’s 102nd floor, the spa’s lobby featured sweeping views of the Tokyo megalopolis. Walking in, I felt at ease as I drew in a deep breath, becoming delightfully awash in a rich potpourri of sandalwood fragrances.

Flicking my gaze at a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, I saw out to infinite rows of Tokyo’s skyscrapers, superstructures. To me, even Tokyo’s buildings appeared futuristic, with skyscrapers that looked like robots. Superstructures that looked like spaceships. I really was starting to feel as if I’d stepped into a sci-fi film, or that our airplane actually was a time machine...

Our Regional Coordinator mentioned something in passing about how the spa has hot spring pools and that hot springs and the sauna are both “tremendous for the circulation.” Then he went on about how in Japan there’s a vending machine for everything, that you can buy beer from a vending machine and how much he appreciated that...

I was finding that the spa had very particular rules about shoes, slippers, and feet. Upon checking in, we had to stick our shoes inside a shoebox-sized shoe locker in the lobby. Then we were given slippers that we were to wear in most areas but were forbidden to wear in other areas. The shoe etiquette, shoe rules seemed confusing, at first, but I began to quickly appreciate the cleanliness, the ritual of it...

Our team proceeded past the shoe lockers and marched single file toward the spa’s men’s locker room. On the way, we passed a pair of spa attendants. Two CoverGirl beautiful, heavily made-up Japanese women in kimonos. The attendants robotically smiling and bowing.

Then I briefly considered that there could be robots everywhere. Those skyscrapers, buildings could truly be Transformers or UFOs ... And all the spa’s attendants could really be robots, androids, or cyborgs, or something similarly scary. And while these revelations made me uncomfortable in a way, I determined that even if the spa attendants were robots, even surreptitiously robots, I would respect that.

Our Regional Coordinator, the type to turn any steering wheel or table into a drum set, turned his big red tomato of a head, split into a smile and suggested:

“We oughta take in a baseball game while we’re here. Japanese baseball, I’m telling you, the atmosphere, you never seen anything like it...”

“The sushi, too...”

“You eat the sushi here in Japan, though, believe me, and you’ll have a tough time eating sushi anywhere else. There’s no going back.”

ホテル2.3

Throughout the spa’s various chambers were starry night ceilings, blond-wood walls, marble flooring, and a series of hot and cool pools.

Each of the pools was a rectangle about as tall as a sedan, about as long as a limo, and each pool was about four feet deep with water said to be directly sourced from thermal springs. Digital monitors carefully displayed each pool’s water temperature. The monitors’ numbers occasionally shifting up or down a few pips, like a stock ticker on a slow day.

Aluminum signs were affixed by each pool too. The signs stating, in multiple languages, the water’s mineral content, as well as explaining how the waters help detoxify, heal, and relax the body.

ホテル2.4

Entering some strange place between somnolent and invigorated, I padded forward, swinging my gaze side-to-side like a real sightseer. I made mental notes, impressed at the spa’s array of other amenities, including Himalayan hot stone-bed baths, Akasuri Body Scrubs, mud wraps, facials, massages, cool-down rooms, as well as an organic smoothie and snack bar ... I was even tempted to check out of my upscale yet closet-sized hotel room and simply stay in the spa. It was that nice...

ロボット3

The spa was well-staffed with a small army of robotic attendants berobed in traditional Japanese clothing.

To a person, the staff parted, stopped and bowed wherever, whenever we passed. They all looked young, too, the staff. Maybe early 20ish. When seeing us, the clientele, they’d bow and instantly screw their faces into ear-to-ear smiles. Lottery-winner smiles. Smiles that’d make a dentist proud.

The smiling, the bowing was a pleasant change from the normal NYC idea of customer service. Those surly shop assistants, cashiers who either have a thousand-yard stare or appear as if they might physically assault you at any given moment...

However, the spa staff’s smiles, in a way, looked abrading and painful. As if the smiles had a life and mind of their own. As if the smiles might eventually turn, attack and eat the attendants’ faces, like an enraged pet.

Otherwise, the staff generally had a certain glazed look to them, an expression between nonplussed and indifferent. Stoic yet icy. Almost as if preparing for a driver’s license photo. That sort of absently present expression. There but not there.

うんこ4

The team disrobed. Stuck our stuff in our lockers. Then we showered. Washed off the sticky grime of the 14-hour flight. I found that there was nothing to cleanse the soul like a piping hot shower after a long flight. And the moans of pleasure uttered by my teammates in adjacent shower stalls seemed to constitute a certain consensus.

Then the team toweled off, tread forward, to the pools. We rinsed ourselves off via wooden ladle, from a wooden basin, with what was purportedly pure mountain water. The water was cool to the touch and tingly, giving me goosebumps as it splashed and cascaded over my travel-weary body.

Then we sat and soaked in the “soda bath” pool. The soda bath’s waters were refreshing. And hot. 41.2C according to the digital monitor. Aptly named as well, the soda bath’s waters were blurry as vanilla cream soda, nearly the color of skim milk. The unique coloration lending me a feeling more like I was climbing into a bowl of hot plain yogurt rather than a pool...

Our Regional Coordinator, with tendrils of the soda bath’s steam framing his fat red face, suddenly pulled his piehole into a frown, and started shaking his head, recounting a recent ordeal:

“It was earlier in Q2. When we had several branches’ computers increasingly monitored by Corporate. You know, cutting back on assholes wasting worktime on social media. Jerkoffs going on Reddit or Twitter. Playing Angry Birds, that type of shit...”

“And, like, Jesus, the shit this one guy was looking at. It got flagged, instantly. And understandably. It was ... beyond gruesome ... Like, snuff films ... Bestiality, dogs ... Necrophilia...”

As he spoke, Our Regional Coordinator’s ketchup-colored helmet of hair seemed to be thinning. The skin on his neck starting to sag like a turkey’s. Heavy shadows hung under his eyes and his face reddened. His head, seemingly, started growing larger too, as he spoke, like a balloon filling with air. Like many Irish, Irish Americans, the man’s face had been appearing redder, his head getting bigger as he aged anyway. But this sudden burst of rage definitely did appear to be hastening the process.

Our Regional Coordinator paused and stared blankly as if in a brief trance. Then he mumbled something unintelligible and went on:

“Nah, there wasn’t kiddie porn or anything. But the stuff he was looking at ... I saw the screenshots. I even watched him scrolling it. Live. I was watching him on his computer, watching his monitor, like I was God above. Ah, it was insane. This freak streaming videos, looking at photos, of ... the most heinous, most traumatic shit...”

“ ... Imagine being a Facebook Content Moderator. Imagine having to do that for a living. Looking at those videos, those images all day. Seeing animal cruelty, sexual attacks ... Like that’s all you do. You look at that. 5, 6 days a week, 8 hours a day. Watching the worst of humanity ... Having to see that content, every single day. That is so brutal.”

“Bro, no one doing that job is walking away with all their marbles...”

“Bad enough sitting for 8 hours, watching the stuff that does get past the censors.”

“I can see why Reddit dumps those duties on volunteer mods.”

“Was Bestiality Bro on Reddit?”

Our Regional Coordinator didn’t reply to that. Instead, he snorted, then cupped and splashed hot soda bath water on his face. Then he lightly palm-slapped his right cheek with his right hand, then lightly palm-slapped his left cheek with his left hand. Then he went on, words falling from his lips:

“So, of course, I brought ‘Bestiality Bro’ up to Corporate...”

“Yeah, and, like, get this. They told me his office wasn’t profitable anyway, had been shitting the bed for the last five fiscal quarters.”

“Amber Alert.”

“I heard that.”

“Oh, oh no, I used to think of her when I...”

Our Regional Coordinator appeared neither amused nor annoyed at the team’s puns and idiocy. Then he continued:

“So Corporate claims they were planning to liquidate the whole division. I was to be notified in the next couple of weeks, blah blah blah. Corporate even said the sick crap this freak was looking at ... that, like, since it isn’t technically illegal, at least not in New York, it itself is not grounds for termination. Only a warning. A fucking warning...”

“I mean, like, what if a client or an investor visits the branch? And they walk by this freak’s cubicle and see him laughing and spanking it to a necrophilia video? The fuck happens then? Another ‘warning?’ The fuck outta here...”

Our Regional Coordinator squinted and unloosed a low-key belch.

“I’d be concerned about any investor who wasn’t concerned...”

悲しい5.1

A particularly grim-faced spa attendant walked by, pushing a mop that looked like a giant squeegee. His seemed like one of the lowliest duties a spa attendant might have. Only a leg up, on the spa attendant hierarchy, from scrubbing the robot toilets. And going by the attendant’s dour countenance, he appeared acutely aware of this.