An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla: Mondai ni

Megumi is 24. She dresses up like a schoolgirl. And for enough money, you get to be her teacher and tell her what to do.

She works at an imekura in Ueno, Tokyo. An “Image Club." But she’s quick to point out, “there’s no real sex involved.”

Megumi goes to a Buddhist college and has been working at the imekura for four years now. She’s also a licensed sumi-e artist. Her mother makes kimonos. What she wants to be doing in five years make me giggle: “teaching English.”

We meet at the Doutor café. Takeshita dori. A permanent shade of cold and black over the city and it’s barely late afternoon. The only time to meet is now because, “I go to sleep around 5am and wake up around 2pm everyday.”

Scrambling around Ura Harajuku like things in the spider pit. Her dress is conservative: basic jeans, black winter down coat with fur-lined hood. Black hair cut in kind of a glamour mullet (laughing later: “this is like, the worst hair style to have in America, right?”). It reminds me of a country singer somehow. She stops in a store and buys a set of silver rings. There is a laugh over some red and yellow plaid pants made out of mohair.

“You try them on.”

“No, you try them on!”

Mexican place in Shibuya. The way she orders food is impressive mystery. The staff comes up and presents options. She gives full eye contact and says nothing, nodding her head somewhere between a yes and no, but mostly just side to side, impossible to read. The waitress slides away spooked.

“I guess I’m kind of an actress, playing a role at the Image Club. That’s why I like Morning Musume and Ayaya. They kind of do the same thing. Ayaya is supposed to be, what, 19 years old? But there’s a rumor that she’s actually 25. Of course, I lie about my age at my job too.”

Qualifications? Someone once told me they nearly landed a job at one of those places. They looked young, had the right face, but simply didn’t have the chest for it. No one came out and just said it, but it was obvious.

“I’m the most popular girl there,” Megumi says with no hint of ego or pride. “At first, I wasn’t too crazy about working there, but now I’m starting to enjoy it. But still, this is high-risk, low-return stuff. I have to keep the job a secret from my friends and family.”

“Cops and politicians. They come in all the time. They don’t say that’s who they are, but you can tell by the way they look. The cops have this strange look in their eyes and are usually really sadistic.”

“One time, a German guy came in. His friend who was Japanese introduced him to the place. They looked really funny. The Japanese guy was short, and the German was huge. It was kind of strange at first, because he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do once his time started.”

Later, at a dining bar, waiting for the trains to start, we do the tarot. Celtic Cross. No reversals. The Three of Swords keeps coming up again and again: A heart pierced by thin blades. It looks pornographic to me now. Imagination eclipsing biology at hourly rates. All over the world soon.

“I have a pen pal in France,” Megumi says, between a beer, after telling me she’s reading Camus. “She’s 16 years old. But it’s kind of hard to communicate with her. All she wants to talk about is anime and manga."