This is probably the best story I've got from nine years living in Japan.
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I moved from the deep countryside to the big city, set myself up in a cozy little apartment, and set out to look for work. Sadly, there wasn't much. But I had just passed the highest level Japanese proficiency test and had been dreaming of doing freelance translation work, so what better time to break into that than now?
As I searched for clients, I posted on a local internet forum with a modest advertisement and my resume. That soon got me a gig translating several articles into English for grad students at Kyushu University. Time passed with no more responses, though, and I thought that that was all that would come of it.
Many days later, I did get one more email from that ad, which was followed quickly by a direct phone call. A man introduced himself, gave me his name, and told me he wanted me to do live interpretation for him. The matter was private. He said would like to discuss it with me at a McDonald's next to a downtown subway station, to which I said sure. I was in front of the place on time the next day.
I waited. 10 minutes past the meeting time, I saw a man across the street wave to me, then signal to come to where he was. I crossed the street and shook his hand, and he just smiled and said "follow me".
It turns out he had asked me to come to that spot just so he could look me over first. He must have approved, because now he was taking me to where he really wanted to talk - an old cafe off in an alley. The inside was dark, with fine quality stained-wood furniture and hanging green glass cone lamps over every table. Cigarette smoke hung in the air. A curvy older woman in a flower-adorned silk slip sat behind the counter changing the music. She was playing 20th century opera on vinyl records. The place was mostly empty.
I took a good look at the guy. He was about 40, with a shaved head. Around his eyes were three scars that were almost certainly cut by rings in fistfights. He wore a fitted black suit jacket, the inside of which was lined with red, and the grey shirt he wore underneath had a dragon pattern on it. His card might as well have said "Yakuza". Instead, it said "Private Investigator".
He told me that the name on the card was his real name, and the one he gave me before was an alias. The real name was Shirouzu. He smoked, we drank coffee and made polite chit-chat, and finally, he exhaled deeply and said it was time to get down to it.
Mr. Shirouzu had recently broken up with his Russian girlfriend. That was all fine - he had no hard feelings toward her. Actually, he very deeply cared about her kid (who wasn't his). But he and his girlfriend had been friends with another couple, a married couple from Belarus, and it turns out that Mr. Shirouzu's Russian girlfriend had been having an an affair with the Belarusian man. As a friend, he wanted to warn the Belarusian woman about it. She didn't speak Japanese and he didn't speak Belarusian, but she did speak English. That's where I came in. He gave me the backstory, and I took the gig.
After a few email exchanges, we set up a Skype chat with the Belarusian woman (who was, at that time, in Belarus). I went over to Mr. Shirouzu's apartment for the occasion, which unfortunately really wasn't a very remarkable place. The only interesting thing was his long-haired, floppy-eared wiener-dog that he lavished attention on. We sat in front of the computer, and it wasn't long before the woman was on the screen.
The conversation was like a doctor speaking to a patient. I solemnly interpreted to the woman as Mr. Shirouzu told her he thought her husband had cheated on her and would likely do it again. He laid out his evidence piece by piece. There wasn't any one thing that was particularly incriminating, but it all added up to a fairly obvious situation.
However, in between chokes of tears, the woman said she still didn't believe it. That's when Mr. Shirouzu had to bring out the sledgehammer. Bear in mind, he's speaking Japanese, and I'm interpreting to this woman in English, in the first person.
Mr. Shirouzu: "She knows about your husband's tiny penis."
Woman: "...Um, what?"
Mr. Shirouzu: "Look, I know your husband has a really tiny penis. I saw it when we went into a public bath together. But my girlfriend knew about it, too. Hell, she described it to me in detail when we were drunk. There's only one way she could have known about that. They had to have slept together."
Woman: "..."
I can't tell you how profoundly embarrassed all three of us were at this point. The woman never denied it. Anyway, she continued to claim that she didn't believe her husband had cheated, and that it must be a misunderstanding or a lie. Mr. Shirouzu concluded the call by saying that whether or not she believed that the affair had happened, she should be careful. That was all he could say, he said.
The woman was crying and exhausted, so we decided to cut the call. Mr. Shirouzu finished smoking what must have been his 10th cigarrette in 30 minutes, then led me out. I wish there was some wacky ending to this story, but really, he just paid me and took me to the subway station.
It was my first and last interpretation job. I never expect to find one more interesting.
Topic: The "I'm bored, tell me a story" thread. (Read 892 times)
