Page 9 of Up All Night
Chapter 4
Surprisingly, I knew exactly what I wanted to wear. I had only brought half a suitcase of clothes with me, and the amount I had amassed since raiding Harajuku and Ikebukuro were miniscule. And when you bring so few clothes with you, the world damn well knows that you’ve brought the best of the best of your nice but comfy outfits.
Dark jeans, plain black V-neck T-shirt that showed enough cleavage to advertise my great rack, and a dark gray cardigan that waswaycuter than that description makes it sound. Trust me, once I had my hair under control, I was bangin’. Hadrian better think so too.
I’m not ashamed or embarrassed to admit that, unless it turned out I was being catfished or Hadrian gave me some serious creeper vibes, I was going to fuck him. We could go straight to a love hotel room and I’d be cool with that. I wanted sex. The guy being a decent date beforehand? Fuck it, that was a bonus. And I was down for a good date if I knew I would probably get laid later.
That said, I’m also a woman who is a die-hard realist. I know how lots of (particularly young, and Hadrian was a couple years younger than me according to his profile) men operate. I wasn’t going to assume he was packing his own condoms around. Seriously. How sad is that? I ain’t trusting no man to bring a fucking condom to a date where sex is silently understood to be on the table.
So, being the responsible adult that I was, I left a couple hours early to hit up one of the many pharmacies and convenience stores in my neighborhood to buy some fucking condoms. Just in case, you know.
Here’s a tip: Japan does not make it easy to find condoms.
I don’t know why, other than it’s some great government conspiracy to get the birth rate they’re always harping about up, but Japan has been notoriously dumb when it comes to contraception. You couldn’t even get the pill until a couple of decades ago, and of course that was for “married women.” Young people often confess to never using condoms or any other kind of barrier method. Before you ask, yes, everyone is getting pregnant left and right, although sometimes you never find out about it. All I’ll say is that certain things that are considered hugely political here in America they don’t even bat an eyelash at in Japan.
I go out of my way to explain this so you’ll understand why I call this the Great Condom Hunt 2k16.
Imagine me, some nobody foreigner, popping into no fewer than three so-called pharmacies and four convenience stores looking for a simple box of condoms. This was all within a one mile radius, mind you. Oh, I thought it would be the simplest thing in the world, even if I didn’t find them right away. How hard could theyreallybe to find? I even got on my phone and looked it up online, making sure I knew what they were called and what section you often found them in. Because, as you can probably figure out by now, many other foreigners before me had been as perplexed while on the hunt for Japanese prophylactics. Entire webpages were constructed with the intent of instructing and helping dumbasses like me get safely laid.
Problem: pharmacies are fucking bullshit.
What do you other Westerners think of when you hear the term “pharmacy?” Oh, let me guess! Walgreens. CVS. Rite-Aid. Your local mom and pop pharmacy. You know, those places that double as locations to get your prescriptions filled while picking up OTC meds, other health supplies, and maybe some snacks and evenhome goodsdepending on the size of the place. Bonus! Aisles and aisles of makeup! American pharmacies are notorious for cheap makeup gear that will help you get by in a pinch.
Japan is similar. Except not at all.
From the moment you step into mostkusuri-ya,which literally translates to “medicine store,” you’ll notice there is makeup everywhere. Hair care, skin care, everything you could possibly do to alter your body into being more beautiful is available beneath bright lights and chirping J-pop music. Walk two more aisles and you’ll find everything you need to take care of your baby while brushing your teeth. Cheap snacks? Yup. They got that.
You know what a lot of so-called pharmacies in Japan are missing? Medicine.
You cannot get prescriptions filled in Japanese pharmacies. Those are filled in other, much smaller clinics that fill prescriptions and sell you nothing else. Fine. That’s how the system is set up in a foreign country?Fine.So give me the OTC stuff, Japan! That includes your “family planning” materials!
Good luck finding vitamins. Good luck finding cold medicine. (That shit is so highly regulated you’re gonna have to suffer.) Good luck finding some fucking condoms!
I majored in Japanese. A quick vocab search in my electronic dictionary gave me the one word missing from my brain that would help me ask the closest person where the fuck they kept thegomu.(Fun fact: they’re called rubbers in Japanese too!) Except these pharmacies were so makeup centric that everyone working there was over sixty-five and female. And not the kind, grandmotherly types, either. The kind that would probably balk the moment a foreign woman asked where the hell the condoms were.
I made the executive decision that these places didn’t have what I wanted. I’d have to try the convenience stores.
God.
The convenience stores.
Japan is famous for them, isn’t it? You can’t hear a tale about Japan without hearing all about the ubiquitousconbini.I am here to confirm that yes, even out in the sticks where I have lived, you will find a convenience store on every street corner. Sometimes the same company will have stores across the street from each other. Why? Because Japan takes the wordconvenienceto extreme. When I lived in Japan as an honest-to-God resident with bills to pay, I paid them all at the convenience store. While picking up my lunches (that they so nicely cooked up for me) and snacks for the rest of eternity. Did I mention I could also pay myAmericanbills from the local Circle K, too?
As it turns out, you can buy anything at the convenience stores, even the tiny ones! Except condoms. You can’t buy condoms.
Don’t give me that look. I don’t care if you could go down to your local 7/11 and point to the small selection of Trojans while waving your arms in my direction. Didn’t we go over that thepharmacies didn’t carry them either?
By this point, I was already running late for my date. Because heaven forbid Hadrian would want to meet in my neighborhood. Nope. Dude wanted to meet six subway stops away in the Oji neighborhood, which I had been to about once in my life.
I reached peak frustration. I didn’t want to show up to a fuck date without my own condoms. If nothing else, I thought it might be nice for the poor guy to have aselectionfor his dick. Plus, it was the principle of the thing. So even though I was sick and tired of walking up and down steep, crowded hills to pop into fruitless endeavors, I decided to try one last time.
7/11, if you failed me…
The neighborhood 7/11 was the largest convenience store around. That didn’t necessarily mean anything, other than they had ample seating for those who wanted to eat the lunches they bought there. Yet I held a sliver of hope that this store right next to the train station I needed to hurry to would have at least one pack of condoms.
My friends.
Myfriends.
