At Large in the Land of the Tooth Bandit

Mr. Murayama, tourist, has been in America less than two hours and already he's having a travel adventure. A swarthy lady to whom, I take it, he has not been formally introduced is trying to steal his gold teeth. This in broad daylight on the steps of the Science Academy in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, and I can supply no information about the events immediately preceding this act of piracy, for it was already in (continued on page 158) Land of the Tooth Bandit (continued from page 151) progress when I arrived at the scene. (I should say near the scene, as I've maintained a discreet distance, not wanting to intervene, in case it embarrasses the old gentleman or causes a public disturbance.)

The other members of Mr. Murayama's tour group and their guides are nowhere in sight; they're wandering around on the other side of the park, in the Japanese tea garden, perhaps, where Mr. Murayama left them a little while ago when he decided to take a solitary stroll. It was because he detached himself from his fellow travelers, thereby contradicting an abiding myth about Japanese group instincts, that I followed him to the Science Academy, where I found him in his present situation--a situation that some might construe as clear proof of that venerable maxim from Zen: The stake that sticks up is soon hammered down.

Mr. Murayama is 82. There is a notation to this effect next to his name on the passenger list distributed at the San Francisco airport this morning by Jalpak, the company that sold Mr. Murayama (and 118 of his compatriots) an eight-day package tour of the American West. They have each paid about $735 for the trip, meals and optional side trips extra. Every traveler wears a red-and-white Jalpak crest, prominently displayed, and carries a red-and-white Jalpak flight bag containing a free pair of paper slippers and a roll of Fujicolor, 20 exposures. Having joined the group in the United States, I get none of these accessories, although, as an honorary member for the ground arrangements, I'll see San Francisco, Yosemite National Park, Los Angeles, Disneyland and Las Vegas.

But back to the attempted plunder of Mr. Murayama's 14-kt. dazzlers.

I think the lady is of Hispanic origin, dark, middle-aged and not unattractive; she holds a hardcover Spanish-German dictionary tucked under her left arm. For all I know, she could be Canadian or Yugoslav. What is certain is that she's grasping Mr. Murayama's jaw with her left hand and manipulating his teeth with the fingers of her right: gently but firmly, a competent dentist on the job. None of the people passing by shows any interest in her work.

I wonder what Mr. Murayama will tell his friends when he is home, sitting on the tatami, clicking the slide-projector controls. "Oh, yes, it's customary in America to be greeted by strangers who fondle your teeth. A Mexican ritual, possibly, still observed in certain parts of California."

I can't understand why he doesn't move away. He's just standing there, no sign of alarm or even apprehension on his genial, nut-brown face. Perhaps he's suffering from terminal jet lag. Eleven hours on the plane (it was held up by strong head winds over the Pacific), arriving in a time zone 17 hours behind the one he left, and then straight onto the bus for five hours of sight-seeing. This might account for his condition of simulated rigor mortis--or have I misread the entire thing? Did he perhaps ask the woman to feel his teeth and, if so, why?

But there, the dilemmas are resolved: She reveals herself by dropping one hand to Mr. Murayama's crotch and giving it a friendly squeeze. The old gentleman steps back, an awakening grin on his face, and presents the lady with a fibertip pen from a collection of pens clipped to his breast pocket. Then he bows, warily, and walks quite rapidly to the place behind the open-air stage where the buses are waiting.

• • •

Before the group arrived this morning. Tony Yanagase, Jalpak's San Francisco representative, briefed the tour guides on their responsibilities, the first of these being to make sure that the people boarding the sight-seeing buses outside the terminal were bona fide members of the group and not unrelated passengers from the same flight. There have been occasions, Mr. Yanagase explained, when nonmembers, evidently tired and disoriented after the journey, have attached themselves to Jalpak groups, causing unnecessary confusion.

"Japanese see Japanese going one way, so they go the same way," Mr. Yanagase says. To prevent this, guides stand at the Customs exit and exhibit the company colors. They do not carry flags. "They don't like them," Mr. Yanagase says. "They think flags are stupid."

In the parking lot outside the arrival terminal, soft cries of astonishment punctuate the sunlit morning as members of the group hurry from one vantage point to another, absorbing first impressions of the republic through the viewfinders of Nikons and Canon Super 8 movie cameras. One man has captured the likeness of a concrete abutment of the ramp leading to the departure building; he photographs it from three angles. Other cultural prizes are discovered and recorded in rapid fashion:

Click: the grille of a '74 Torino!.

Whirr: 60 seconds of American male adult, walking toward terminal.

Click: long shot of a Chevrolet pickup truck.

Click: general view of the parking lot, looking west.

Whirr: traveling panoramic survey from the tails of distant airliners, across open ground, zoom and fade on large building.

A thin grinning young man wearing a necktie made of a shaggy fur material gives me his business card, the third I've received since the group arrived. On the back of this one is the handwritten inscription, "Tabo, assistant manager of Night Family Moroguchi in Kyoto."

Tabo is fascinated by the stance of a bus driver who leans against a nearby building, indolent and cowboyish, with the sole of one raised shoe pressed against the wall and fingers hooked into his belt.

"You never see old people stand like that in Japan," Tabo says, raising a camera. "Very . . . casual. But so heavy, I think. How hurting if falling down, all that heavy. Yes. Everyone too big in America. Eating too many food things."

"What's a night family?"

"I don't know how to say in English, but it come from America."

• • •

Before boarding the buses, the original group of 119 is divided into smaller groups according to length of visit and optional side trips. Some members are staying longer than eight days; others have already left to visit relatives elsewhere and a small percentage are going to Mexico. We have six honeymoon couples, one of whom, strictly speaking, is traveling in sin. This will be rectified tomorrow by marriage at a local Protestant church. "We prefer to use the Protestants," a Jalpak guide explains. "The Catholic ceremony takes too much time and the priests always want people to convert. Protestants are not so fussy." These vagaries of occidental religions seem to surprise my informant, who adds: "The real wedding is held when they return to Japan."

We travel north in a convoy of five buses, following Highway 101 to San Francisco through a suburban landscape of factories, railroad yards and indigenous art featuring works in neon and vivid plastics. My seat companion, a pleasant lady who speaks fluent English, translates the guide's commentary that is relayed over the speaker system. It is a remarkably efficient sound system, powerful enough, one would imagine, to crack a fair-sized iceberg, but the lady next to me and the rest of the group show no discomfort.

"I suppose he's describing the sights?" I ask.

"A little, but mostly other things--industry, freeways, water and power supplies, house and land prices, California history, bridge construction and agriculture. Very interesting for us Japanese."

"Why is everyone laughing?"

"Because someone ask why there are so many motel signs. In Japan, motels are places where lovers go for one or two hours. Small places, very discreet."

"We have the same system here."

"Yes, but so indiscreet. All those big motel signs everywhere--not same in Japan."

At Civic Center, our first stop for pictures, an unauthorized man is discovered among us. He looks distracted and apologetic and is led away, explaining himself. I want to know whether he's one of those errant followers who have slipped through the airport cordon or whether he has merely been assigned to the wrong bus, but our guide is vague and politely evasive when I ask for details.

Tabo, the furry-necktied young man, alights at Civic Center carrying enough photographic equipment to start a mailorder business. He draws my attention to a scruffy old Saab parked in front of the bus.

"Why this car so dirty? In Japan we keep cars clean. Always new ones, not old dirty things like this."

"What do you do with the old ones?"

"All new cars in Japan. Please stand in front of tree. Say cheese. Thank you."

• • •

In a window on Post Street, a resident displays a metal sign made to resemble a California license plate and bearing the letters FK NXN. Should I try to explain this to the nice lady in the next seat? Better not. If she was so upset by the motel signs. God knows what she'd make of the political statement.

On through Haight-Ashbury:

"The former mecca of the hippies," my seat companion translates. The words Arren Ginsbergeru and Gratefuru Deaderu boom from the speakers, stirring a cataleptic youth on the curb into semblance of movement as we pass.

We stop for more pictures at Twin Peaks. Afterward, as we drive down the hill, Tabo takes the seat behind mine and leans over the top. "Too much eating in America," he says. "Too much heavy people." He is becoming critical on the weight question. Time to take defensive measures.

I ask him, "What about that man at the back of the bus?" This is a large hulking individual whom I saw for the first time at the Twin Peaks stop. He wears an aquamarine Lee Trevino golf cap with a long peak and has one of the biggest faces I've ever seen.

"Ah, he not typical Japanese," Tabo says. "This man sumo wrestler. Name Morning Ocean--has famous restaurant in Kagoshima."

Morning Ocean looks rather fed up, I've noticed. Yawns a lot--understandable after the flight and the sight-seeing--and he hangs around the edges of the crowd when we stop, looking broody and rarely talking to anyone. Keeps the golf cap pulled low over his ears and fiddles with the peak. Once, when he removed it to fan himself, I saw that he wears his hair long, upswept and pinned at the crown in a topknot, sumo style. It's also liberally coated with a potent sweet grease, very shiny. "Necessary him eat much and plenty sleeping," Tabo says proudly. "Morning Ocean hungry all the time."

• • •

"They run this all goofy," our bus driver says. "These people need rest--they shouldn't be running around like this all day. Flying straight from japan, for crying out loud."

We're standing by the bus waiting for the group to return from lunch at a Fisherman's Wharf restaurant. The sightseeing tour is running almost two hours behind schedule, according to the driver, who, I've learned, is known to the guys at the garage as Silver Fox. I like our driver: an incredibly dapper turnout, flightdeck overtones in the uniform, with sleek gray hair dressed in a voluptuous ducktail, fronted by rancher's mustache and black wrap-around shades. His bearing is that of a man who has seen many missions in heavy flak over enemy lines. I am sure there are crow's-feet behind the dark glasses.

In the finest tradition of his kind, Silver Fox is an excellent source of intelligence, (Yesterday I met a bus driver from the same company who informed me that his model-train layout was worth $6000, that he was formerly a wealthy industrialist and that the catering franchises in the national parks of America were controlled by the Mafia.) Silver Fox has just confided that Madame Chiang Kai-shek owns more real estate in Los Angeles than any other living person and that in San Francisco, there's a Japanese travel agency that makes millions by running convoys of buses filled with horny Japanese men to the brothels in the Nevada desert. I commit these items to my notebook.

"They're the greatest people to work for, the Japs," Silver Fox says. "You could pay me double and I wouldn't carry those French and German assholes up the block, but I'll take your typical Japanese tourist anyplace. Nicest, politest people you could hope to meet. Great tippers, too."

• • •

Our first jet-lag victim: a girl who collapses after lunch and is helped to her feet, blushing.

Heavy going for the afternoon part of our tour. Jet-lagged casualties on all sides, but our guide's amplified voice, chatty and brisk, continues without pause. My seat companion is asleep and all I can do is recognize the occasional name in the deluge of information roaring from the speakers. Alcatraz, Machine Gun Kelly, Tony Bennett, Candlestick Park, the Giants.

Then Vista Point, our last stop before checking in at the Hilton. Once again we get out with our cameras.

A Japanese youth. not one of our group, sits in a dramatic pose on a low wall overlooking the cliff at Vista Point. He has hair to his shoulder blades and is dressed for the frontier, with fringed buckskin jacket and leggings over Indian moccasins. The hat is early Republic Pictures, a little out of context. Many of the younger members of the group pose with him for photographs, but one man from our bus, Hiroshi Kurita, after speaking to the youth, apparently doesn't approve. "That boy been in America three months," Mr. Kurita informs me. "Cannot go back to Japan with hair like that." Mr. Kurita has a crisp gray crewcut and the build of a karate instructor. He takes deep breaths when he gets off the bus and examines his surroundings with shrewd, measuring eyes.

• • •

We arrive at the Hilton late in the afternoon and are told to stay on the bus until all the baggage has been removed. This takes 20 minutes. Tourists from other parts of the world might in the same circumstances rise from their seats and cry for blood, but, being well behaved and exhausted, we do as we are told. I have just learned that before room keys are issued, there will be a 30-minute briefing in the Teakwood Room at which the group will be acquainted with the intricacies of American hotel procedure. Eleven hours on the plane, five on the bus and now a lecture. Fortunately, we get almost an hour of free time before leaving for this evening's four-hour night-life tour.

"These briefings are most important," Mr. Yanagase says. "Japanese tourists study hard before coming to America, they try to learn everything they can, but we must explain certain points for older people." Among these essentials are advice on using a Western-style bed, the hotel restaurants, telephones and shower controls.

In the Teakwood Room, Morning Ocean sprawls in his chair, huge fists on his knees and eyes closed. He looks like a man who would take a bath and eat his food any way he chose and the hell with it. Everyone else, miraculously revived, pays close attention, though some of the honeymooners look restless. The group is advised to deposit valuables in the hotel safe and not to leave money belts in the room. "We tell them not to walk west of the Hilton or below Market Street," Mr. Yanagase says. "The language barrier is a big problem for Japanese. People misunderstand them and take away their money, unfortunately"

• • •

The night tour has fewer than 20 members, the others having given up for the day or, alarming thought, gone down to Market Street to practice their English and learn about urban crime. If so. I hope Mr. Kurita, who is not among the night-life party, is leading the column.

Our first stop is the rooftop bar of the Fairmont Hotel, where we receive one free drink. A middle-aged journalist from Ehime gives me his card and invites me to join his table of half a dozen graysuited men. My host and his companion belong to a Japanese political organization that, as I understand it, occupies the neutral ground somewhere between Billy Graham and the Waffen SS. They are leaving the tour tomorrow to go to Miami.

"We study road paving, drainage system, construction and newspaper offices," the journalist says. "Also, we like to meet women and--ah--have big party. You work for girlie magazine. You fix, please."

He translates this for his friends, who look at me with skepticism. Questions are flung across the table.

"This man over here very interested in gambling and sewers," the newspaperman says. "He want to talk to you about these things."

"They're not my strongest subjects."

"You like journalism? We like journalism. Topless journalism, yes? We drink to journalism and Miami drains. Cheers."

• • •

By the time we've visited Finocchio's (House of the Fabulous Female Impersonators) and the Condor (The Fabulous Carol Doda), our small contingent shows signs of advanced wilt. Morning Ocean, asleep at his table, wakes abruptly at the stripper music, focuses hungrily on the siliconed contours onstage and drops his head onto his arms when the act is finished. We are led back to the bus, dragging our feet. God knows how everyone will recover for tomorrow's trip to Yosemite: another ten hours on the bus, starting right after breakfast.

When we return to the Hilton, Morning Ocean starts growling and demanding food. He wants a steak, but the hotel restaurant is closed. Standing in the lobby, rubbing his stomach and making vigorous hand gestures toward his open mouth, he reminds me of a large fledgling that somehow missed the last feed. I offer to treat him and our guide at a steak place along the street. There, Morning Ocean disposes of two sirloins and two servings each of sautéed cauliflower, home-fried potatoes, a bowl of clam chowder, cherry pie à la mode and the contents of the bread basket.

With our guide translating. I ask our bloated friend what he thinks of San Francisco.

"He says this place too slow, not so fast as Tokyo."

"Which part of the trip is he looking forward to most--Hollywood? Las Vegas?"

"Not interested in Hollywood, not going to Las Vegas."

"Why did he come?"

"Buy clothes. Cannot get clothes to fit him in Japan. He come to buy clothes and see Mickey Mouse in Disneyland."

A large smile settles on Morning Ocean's face at these familiar words.

"Disneyrand," he says. "Disneyrand Mickey Mouse."

• • •

And up soon after dawn for the fourhour ride to Yosemite. Morning Ocean hasn't joined us nor have many of the other people I've met, but Seiicho Morimura and Kikuko, his extremely pretty wife, sit across the aisle and translate our guide's running commentary. It is the same as yesterday's but adapted to suit our rural surroundings: real estate, freeways, agriculture, the dimensions of houses. "Americans live in big homes." Seiicho says. "We do not have so much space in Japan. Also, you have names for streets. Not same in Japan."

We stop in Modesto at Web's Burger Stand. Three busloads of Japanese visitors disembark, watched with slack-jawed astonishment by a dungareed youth sitting on a pickup fender drinking a milk shake. There is a fusillade of camera shutters, the boy grins uncertainly and drives off in a spectacular dusty skid.

Our route takes us south of Victor, California, where nine people were found murdered this morning. What does Seiicho think about that? He looks at his wife and murmurs something before answering. "America is much blood coming from many places and living in same place," he says, hesitant. "In Japan, we have mostly one people in same place. You have many different kinds. This not always good." He does not want to pursue the topic.

An uncomfortable moment at the Ahwahnee restaurant in Yosemite when we arrive for lunch. One of a dozen business-suited men at a table near the back, a man in his 50s, looks at us with undisguised hostility and remarks in a loud voice: "Jesus Christ, they're everywhere. You don't expect them up here, too."

Another man at the table says: "You ought to see them in Europe, they're all over the goddamn place." We take our seats in an alcove at the rear; I don't think any of the English speakers among us heard what was said, but we eat our meal in an untypical silence.

Afterward. I find the Morimuras standing at the edge of a steep, wooded canyon. A waterfall drops in a thin sunlit spray from a cliff thousands of feet above us and an unseen river crashes and grumbles among the tall pines on the canyon floor. "Americans are very fortunate to live in such beauty," Seiicho says. "It must make them very happy."

• • •

The Western Airlines flight to Los Angeles the next morning is delayed for two hours and, since none of the cabin crew speaks Japanese, a stewardess recruits a tour member to explain the situation over the P. A. The volunteer is Teitsch Matsuo, an urbane young man who teaches English and Japanese at a language school in Yokohama. Enunciating her words slowly and deliberately, the stewardess gives Mr. Matsuo his instructions: "Tell them we so sorry about delay. We go soon. We give everyone free drinks." Inexplicably, she adopts the pidgin-English inflections of a missionary's wife. Mr. Matsuo listens with an expression of baffled intelligence.

"I doubt if they feel like drinking so early in the morning," he says.

"But free! No money, see? Lit-tle bottles. Mini-a-tures."

Later, the stewardess explains to me why so many Japanese tourists visit America. It's because their government pays the air fare, enabling them to use personal savings to buy houses and land.

"The yellow peril strikes again," I suggest, having swallowed the contents of two little bottles.

"I don't know about that, but there sure are a lot of them around. But I like them, I really do--they're cute."

Mr. Matsuo, questioned afterward, confesses that he would appreciate it if his government paid his fare. He asks if the United States Government pays citizens' expenses when they go on vacation.

• • •

North on the San Diego Freeway and into Hollywood to start our L.A. sightseeing tour. A round of applause greets the announcement that California was the first state to import Japanese cars in quantity. We are given a detailed analysis of the city's water problem and, unaccountably, an outline of the history of Texas, starring Davy Crockett, the Golda Rusheru and the Aramo. On the Strip, we pass two advertising benches at a bus-stop. My shrewd friend Mr. Kurita asks what the signs mean. One, issued by the Los Angeles Police Department, says: For That Run-down Feeling Try Jaywalking; the other is an ad for Groman Mortuaries. I try to explain why the juxtaposition of the signs is slightly--infinitesimally--humorous. Mr. Kurita looks at me as though I had just begun to froth at the mouth.

"Look, Mr. Kurita, there's someone hitchhiking."

"Do not understand hitchhiking."

"The man holding up his thumb. He wants someone to stop and give him a ride."

"Why he not walk? Why he use thumb? What thumb mean?"

"Look at that girl, isn't she lovely?" Tasty young California blonde, lean and willowy; tight faded Levis, golden-brown bare midriff.

"Do not understand jaywalking and hitchhiking. Where do words come from, please? Very complicated language."

Mr. Kurita isn't bowled over by Grauman's Chinese Theater, either--or Mann's, as it is now known. He was under the impression that a mold of Marilyn Monroe's bottom was displayed in the forecourt. Instead, he finds her feet and hands. "Feet not interesting," he (continued on page 168) Land of the Tooth Bandit (continued from page 165) mutters. "More interesting if bottom. It says bottom in my book."

• • •

Morning Ocean's big moment arrives: Disneyland and Mickey Mouse. He is dressed for the occasion in a kimono of delicate blue and white, with white socks and wooden sandals. The hair, thoroughly, greased, is magnificent. As he crosses the lobby of the Beverly Hilton, nostrils twitch in the miasma of dead goats it exudes, but Morning Ocean strides to the bus without looking left or right. I have never seen such a purposeful expression on his face. We sit together on the drive to Anaheim, our conversation restricted to the repetition of the word Disneyland and a sort of competition in which we name the central characters from Uncle Walt's Magic Kingdom. I think he has a guilty secret about Snow White.

My weight-obsessed friend Tabo isn't coming today. He's lurking around the hotel pool, hoping to meet the girl he ran into on last night's sight-seeing tour of Chinatown and the Mexican market on Olveira Street. He told her he was an important figure in the Japanese record business. When I saw him in the lobby a few minutes ago, he was wearing that remarkable shaggy fur necktie again. I advised him to leave it off for the day.

Arriving at Disneyland, we file through the gate reserved for tours. Morning Ocean actually runs when we get inside, shoving his camera into my hands. I photograph him posing with a bear, a tiger, Peter Pan, Snow White (twice), Goofy and Captain Hook. Other visitors give him their children to hold and stand next to him to be photographed by their relatives; having assumed by his costume that Morning Ocean works at Disneyland, they are surprised that he speaks no English. Later, when the noon parade passes, he stands on the sidewalk, waving happily. About a dozen of us leave early in the afternoon, but Morning Ocean stays behind. The last I see of him he is buying Mickey Mouse T-shirts in a store on Main Street. Extra-large size.

• • •

Interlude at the ticket counter, Los Angeles International Airport, while we are waiting to board a flight to Las Vegas. A pink-haired lady in a psychedelic muumuu has engaged the husband of one of our honeymoon couples in conversation.

"My husband and I were in Japan a year ago. Wonderful country, charming people. We planned to return this year, but my husband died a month after we came home."

"Ah, I am so sorry."

"Thank you. We had a marvelous time. Is this your first visit to the United States?"

"Yes."

"And you're going to Las Vegas now? You must be thrilled about that."

"Yes, I think so, but Las Vegas is not--ah--our final purpose in United States. Yosemite and Grand Canyon more beautiful, I think. America beautiful country."

"Oh, that's just scenery. You'll love Vegas. Tell your wife I think she's a lovely little creature."

"Thank you."

• • •

Our hotel in Las Vegas is the Stardust--not the plushest on the Strip, but it has a neon sign the size of a small town and the group members are duly flabbergasted. On my way to make a predinner run on the tables, I pass the wide-open door of Mr. Murayama's room. The old gentleman is engaged in calisthenics of some sort, bent over with his back to the door and wearing what can only be described as a G string. It's clear that he wasn't paying attention at the briefing.

From friends in Las Vegas I hear that ambitious plans are afoot for the expected increase in the number of Japanese visitors, so instead of accompanying our group on the Vegas bus tour--our number is now reduced to about 15--I am meeting Joe O'Rayeh. Mr. O'Raych, in addition to being a former slot mechanic and, currently, hotel and casino executive at the Tropicana Hotel, is a converted Buddhist and a member of Nichiren Shoshu of America.

"You can say it's a lay organization of believers in the teachings of the true Buddha," he says when we meet in the Tropicana coffee shop. Approximately every three minutes, Mr. O'Rayeh's name is announced from the ceiling and he leaves to take a telephone call. In this respect, he appears to be orthodox Vegas.

"We spent somewhere between eighty thousand and a hundred thousand dollars on a Tropicana promotion party in Tokyo." Mr. O'Rayeh explains between absences. "We've got Japanese menus, an audio-visual presentation in Japanese--basic rules for craps, roulette and blackjack--and we're giving half-hour gaming lessons exclusively for Japanese guests."

A man wearing tinted glasses and a colorful ensemble of woven chemical fibers approaches our table and whispers urgent words into Mr. O'Rayeh's ear. He is introduced as Rick, the manager of the hotel's keno office. He, too, is a member of Nichiren Shoshu. "I was a Catholic for thirty years," Rick says. "Then I got involved in Nichiren Shoshu. I can't tell you what it's done for me--every day I look at myself in the mirror and say. 'There you are, that's you."' I would have pursued this theological line, but Rick abruptly resumes his whispered urgencies and then gets up and leaves.

Mr. O'Rayeh gives me his card. It's printed in English and Japanese. "I spend a lot of time over there," he says. "Love it--just love that country."

• &bull •

There is a rumor in town that a party of Japanese businessmen--rich big businessmen--dropped a fortune a few months ago on the tables at the Sands Hotel, somewhere between $1,000,000 (concluded on page 172) Land of the Tooth Bandit (continued from page 168) and $3,000,000, according to the rumor. I mention these figures to Al Guzman, the Sands PR director, and ask if he can verify the amount.

"No comment."

"Can you be more specific?"

"Let's just say a substantial amount of money was played."

• • •

On my last day with the tour--it's going to Honolulu, I'm flying to Chicago--we return to the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, where the group will wait for those members who left at the beginning of the week on independent travels. My journalist friend and his political cronies are back from Miami, where, he tells me, they had more luck with the drains than with the women. Morning Ocean is in the hotel coffee shop, wearing a large black-and-silver sombrero and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Tabo reports that the girl he met on the night-life tour never showed up at the pool. He has a complaint about his fellow tourists ("too many typical farmers") and about American food. "Everything taste same. Chicken like steak, steak like hamburger, hamburger like chicken. Plenty food on plate, not plenty different taste in mouth." Everyone is looking forward to Honolulu, where they'll spend a night and a day before going home.

Jalpak's general manager, Michio Endo, says Hawaii is the most relaxing part of the tour for Japanese visitors to the United States. "No language problem, you see. They can always find someone who speaks Japanese. Order meals in restaurants, argue with taxi drivers, go shopping without being swindled. They feel free in Hawaii--it's almost the same as being home."

I have a farewell drink with the Mori-muras, who, like everyone I've spoken to, say they would like to come back alone and spend more time. During his week in the United States--his first visit to this country--Seiicho Morimura has been watching and listening. "I think American people have not much nuance," he says in his usual hesitant, questioning fashion. "Not gentle. Very friendly, but too hard, not shy. Japanese people too shy, yes? We think perhaps necessary to be shy sometimes so other people not worried by actions, but maybe in America many people not always care what others think. This can be worrying. Next time we come, everyone more shy, maybe, not so hard."

• • •

Old Mr. Murayama has given away most of his fiber-tip pens, distributing them among the natives during his travels and replenishing the collection in his breast pocket from a hidden supply. Over the past few days, he has formed a friendship with two other elderly men, wiry and wizened like himself; possibly he chose them for reasons of collective security, as both are generously fitted with gold between the gums. I never did ask Mr. Murayama about his adventure that first day in Golden Gate Park. No doubt there is a proverb that justifies discretion in matters of this sort.