I took her to Bar Satoh, a tiny second-story establishment nestled in a series of alleys that extend like a spider’s web within the right angle formed by Omotesando-dori and Meiji-dori. The route we took gave me several opportunities to check behind us, and I saw that we were clean. Mr. Bland had been alone.
We took the elevator to the second floor of the building, then stepped through a door surrounded by a riot of gardenias and other flowers that Satoh-san’s wife tends with reverence. A right turn, a step up, and there was Satoh-san, presiding over the solid cherry bar in the low light, dressed immaculately as always in a bow tie and vest.
“Ah, Fujiwara-san,” he said in his soft baritone, smiling a broad smile and bowing as he caught sight of us. “Irrashaimase.” Welcome.
“Satoh-san, it’s good to see you,” I said in Japanese. I looked around, noting that his small establishment was almost full. “Is there a possibility that we could be seated?”
“Ei, mochiron,” he replied. Yes, of course. Apologizing in formal Japanese, he had the six patrons at the bar all shift to their right, freeing up an additional seat at the far end and creating room for Midori and me.
Thanking Satoh-san and apologizing to the other patrons, we made our way to our seats. Midori’s head was moving back and forth as she took in the décor: bottle after bottle of different whiskeys, many obscure and ancient, not just behind the bar but adorning shelves and furniture throughout the room, as well. Eclectic Americana like an old Schwinn bicycle suspended from the back wall, an ancient black rotary telephone that must have weighed ten pounds, a framed photograph of President Kennedy. As a complement to his whiskey-only policy, Satoh-san plays nothing but jazz, and the sounds of singer/poet Kurt Elling issued warm and wry from the Marantz vacuum-tube stereo in the back of the bar, accompanied by the low murmur of conversation and muffled laughter.
“I . . . love this place!” Midori whispered to me in English as we sat down.
“It’s great, isn’t it?” I said, pleased that she appreciated it. “Satoh-san is a former sarariman who got out of the rat race. He loves whiskey and jazz, and saved every yen he could until he was able to open this place ten years ago. I think it’s the best bar in Japan.”
Satoh-san strolled over, and I introduced Midori. “Ah, of course!” he exclaimed in Japanese. He reached under the bar, shuffling things around until he found what he was looking for: a copy of Midori’s CD. Midori had to beg him not to play it.
“What do you recommend tonight?” I asked him. Satoh-san makes four pilgrimages a year to Scotland and has introduced me to malts that are available almost nowhere else in Japan.
“How many drinks?” he asked. If the answer were several, he would conduct a tasting, starting with something light from the Lowlands and progressing to the iodine tang of the Islay malts.
“Just one, I think,” I responded. I glanced at Midori, who nodded her head.
“Subtle? Strong?”
I glanced at Midori again, who said, “Strong.”
Satoh-san smiled. “Strong” was clearly the answer that he was hoping for, and I knew he had something special in mind. He turned and took a clear glass bottle from in front of the mirror behind the bar, then held it before us. “This is a forty-year-old Ardbeg,” he explained. “From the south shore of Islay. Very rare. I keep it in a plain bottle because anyone who recognized it might try to steal it.”
He took out two immaculate tumblers and placed them before us. “Straight?” he asked, not knowing Midori’s preferences.
“Hai,” she answered, to Satoh-san’s relieved nod of approval. He carefully poured off two measures of the bronze liquid and recorked the bottle.
“What makes this malt special is the balance of flavors — flavors that would ordinarily compete with or override one another,” he told us, his voice low and slightly grave. “There is peat, smoke, perfume, sherry, and the salt smell of the sea. It took forty years for this malt to realize the potential of its own character, just like a person. Please, enjoy.” He bowed and moved to the other end of the bar.
“I’m almost afraid to drink it,” Midori said, smiling and raising the glass before her, watching the light turn the liquid to amber.
“Satoh-san always provides a brief lecture on what you’re about to experience. It’s one of the best things about this place. He’s a student of single malts.”
“Jaa, kanpai,” she said, and we touched glasses and drank. She paused for a moment afterward, then said, “Wow, that is good. Like a caress.”
“Like what your music sounds like.”
She smiled and gave me one of her shoulder checks. “I enjoyed our conversation the other day at Tsuta,” she said. “I’d like to hear more about your experiences growing up in two worlds.”
“I’m not sure how interesting a story that is.”
“Tell it to me, and I’ll tell you if it’s interesting.”
She was much more a listener than a talker, which would make my job of collecting operational intelligence more difficult. Let’s just see where this goes, I thought.
“Home for me was a little town in upstate New York. My mother took me there after my father died so she could be close to her parents,” I said.
“Did you spend any time in Japan after that?”
“Some. During my junior year in high school, my father’s parents wrote to me about a new U.S./Japan high-school exchange program that would allow me to spend a semester at a Japanese high school. I was actually pretty homesick at the time and enrolled right away. So ultimately, I got to spend a semester at Saitama Gakuen.”
“Just one semester? Your mother must have wanted you back.”
“Part of her did. I think another part of her was relieved to have some time to focus on her own career. I was pretty wild at that age.” This seemed an appropriate euphemism for constant fights and other discipline problems at school.
“How was the semester?”
I shrugged. Some of these memories were not particularly pleasant. “You know what it’s like for returnees. It’s bad enough if you’re just an ordinary Japanese kid with an accent that’s been Americanized by time abroad. If you’re half-American on top of it, you’re practically a freak.”
I saw a deep sympathy in her eyes that made me feel I was worsening a betrayal. “I know what it’s like to be a returnee child,” she said. “And you had envisioned the semester as a homecoming. You must have felt so alienated.”
I waved my hand as though it was nothing. “It’s all in the past.”
“Anyway, after high school?”
“After high school was Vietnam.”
“You were in Vietnam? You look young for that.”
I smiled. “I was a teenager when I joined the army, and when I got there the war was already well under way.” I was aware that I was sharing more personal details than I should have. I didn’t care.
“How long were you over there?”
“Three years.”
“I thought that back then getting drafted meant only one year.”
“It did. I wasn’t drafted.”
Her eyes widened. “You volunteered?”
It had been ages since I had talked about any of this, or even thought about it. “I know it sounds a little strange from this distance. But yes, I volunteered. I wanted to prove that I was American to the people who doubted it because of my eyes, my skin. And then, when I was over there, in a war against Asians, I had to prove it even more, so I stayed. I took dangerous assignments. I did some crazy things.”
We were quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Can I ask, are those the things that you said ‘haunt’ you?”
“Some of them,” I said evenly. But this would go no further. She may have had guidelines about inviting strangers to performances, but my rules regarding these matters are stricter still. We were getting close to places that even I can look at only obliquely.