1 Meting Lana

Dreams died too young in Beaumont. I left town before the last piece of me gave up. The adventure I was craving began the moment I set eyes on Lana, in a Kyoto cafe for loners, cursing her dwindling followers. 

Nishiki’s narrow streets had cafe’s on every block. Each one had an underweight white girl in the window, hammering away on a laptop or angling for the perfect selfie. ‘Kyoto’s Kitchen’ was where friends at home in Dublin told me to go to give being a digital nomad a lash. Less of a neon-fueled dance-fest than Tokyo, more cultured than a stag do in Prague, and apparently, a goldmine for content—if I could master chopsticks and fix my self-conscious, ‘weird face’. 

I’d gone to the market to make a reaction video—the food, the culture, the pink blooms of sakura trees. But I couldn’t make it more than ten feet without stopping to peer into smoky woks frying up great thumbnail material. Doing the whole walking and talking thing to camera still didn’t come naturally, even months after my first vlog in The Dam. I was sure I’d never improve past my angst-riddled, monotone commentary. I needed a way to start making money. And soon.

Kyoto was a bit more reserved than other cities I’d wandered through in Europe and Asia. I’d already decided I wouldn’t hang around and planned to break away from the yoga retreats and kombucha fetishes and hopefully find myself a bit of lowkey danger. A different angle on the whole content creator thing. Something that might push me out of my discomfort zone and get my social media monetized.

I had parked myself on a bench beneath a sakura tree raining pink petals like confetti and checked my balance. This was an almost religious, nervous tic after getting robbed in Stuttgart, when my credit card was swiped by a fake scanner. Thankfully I’d planned ahead and spread money across several banks and only lost a few hundred, which my bank was tracking down. Travel income came from shares as part of a package working for an American pharmaceutical company in Dublin, which I sold—in exchange for my soul—before getting let go. A week after my boss told me I might want to try something that required less self-motivation than sales, I decided to go travelling. The channel had so far only made me poorer, but I was cautiously optimistic of a change in Japan. 

As I mentally stretched ten grand across the next year, a diatribe of American swear words drifted over the sound of the spluttering mopeds and rickshaws. I shook my head as everyone else respected Kyoto’s calm but not this American bullhorn.

“Mothafuking NPCs. What a bunch of gremlins. Another 50 fucking unsubbed.”

The girl she was ranting at muttered back—in an Americanised Japanese accent, “Yeah, dat sucks.”

I slid along the bench to get a better look, expecting to see some undisciplined weapon of mass destruction who nukes everyone for her social media shortcomings. From a cafe window, her blue eyes looked up from a laptop, peering at me from beneath a straight brown fringe. 

Jesus Christ, she’s gorgeous. 

And she knew it. 

Kyoto was full of isolated loners hanging around cafes. They stared at you like you might be the one to fly in and make their lives better, as if life is a Marvel comic. Not quite hikikomori, yet, but terrified they were on the way to barring their bedroom doors with a mattress and wasting their days jerking off to hentai—Japanese cartoon porn, that was way too close to paedophilia for anyone’s liking. 

This girl, with her insane confidence and swaying hips, moved amongst them like their American queen, and she had me in her gamer crosshairs. 

I glanced up a few times as she spoke to the loners, making them feel special with little touches and smiles. Then she eyeballed me, hard. The restaurant behind me had Wagashi—I’d heard Koyto’s version of the traditional Japanese sweets were unreal. When I picked up my small haversack, she ran to the door across the road and waved me over. 

“Bro, bro, come.” 

I stared at my phone and glanced up a couple of times. Her long legs stepped down—bare feet plunged into a puddle on the road. Scooters sped past. The young Japanese riders slowed and honked their puny horns at her short denim skirt. Only one honk each, in fairness—Japanese guys are respectable perverts. They laughed in that high-pitched girly Japanese way, like unruly school kids. She stepped onto the path in front of me.

I gazed at her feet—old henna tattoos and gold rings on her toes; tribal ink on one ankle and a dreamcatcher tat on the other, halfway up her shin. She loomed over me, waiting. Expectant. I gave a half glance up, smiled and looked back at my phone.

“Dude, I saw you earlier in the market,” she said, with a rising inflection like she couldn’t fathom my coolness; couldn’t compute that I kinda already disliked her overconfidence and entitled attitude—signifiers for me of malignant narcissism. 

“Irish yeah?”

With the grace of a million Irish mammy influencers, I gave a little chin nod, even though she seemed, as many an Irish mammy would privately have called her, a cocky little so-and-so. My chin nod was supposed to shoo her off, supposed to say, look you’re hot and all, but I’m not interested in lonely solo females who miss their boyfriends after dumping them to become strong independent female travellers, who aren’t actually coping alone. Clearly, she was looking for someone.

We stared back, a silent ping-pong match of assumptions and counter assumptions. I had to admit, she looked like someone who’d lived alone in Japan a long time and was immersed in the life, comfortable and maybe even happier on her own. What does she want from me?

I dunno why I put on this broken Welsh-Pakistani-Japanese accent for some reason. “No spek Engleesh, saw—wee.” 

She grabbed my hand and turned my phone to see what I was looking at. “And we have an English translation app.”

“No speek Englesh tooday,” I muttered. “Only Japaneese.”

“Go on then.”

“Ehm, konnichiwa… watashi… no namae wa Killian desu.”

She put her hand on her hip and cocked her head. “Dono kurai Nihongo o hanashite imasu ka?” Perfect pronunciation.

I hadn’t the first clue what she said and grinned. “Alright, fair enough.”

“From Dublin, right?” Her eyes were all business, her smile something from a fairytale—even with the two slight fang incisors.

“Yeah, Killian.”

“Lana.” As we shook hands, she broke eye contact. “You’re cute, Killian.”

I wasn’t—I mean I had a look if you were into skinny, slightly bookish, pale skin and shite hair. She hit me with an expression she was confident about. When I played it cool, she smirked.  

“The miso soup in that place is best in town.”

Then she acted pensive as if to show me she had a brain, wasn’t all mouth. I shoved my hands in my pockets and casually looked back. “Miso soup, yeah? I’ll give it a try.” 

“I’ll order for you if you want.”

I shrugged. “Why?”

She tutted. “Jeez man.” And went inside. 

She casually looked through the glass at me, and I wondered how much effort I’d need to keep in the conversation. Not much with her; she seemed to love the sound of her own voice. Despite my reservations, I followed her in. Why? Honestly, she was the kind of traveller I needed to be—ballsy, open and free.

In the first ten minutes of talking to her, I learned she was twenty nine, a graphic designer, a painter, a tattooist, a website builder, a digital marketer, a public speaker and a former junior public relations executive. “Like seriously, dude, it was soul sucking. And my bosses were on me all the time like their landlords were banging down the door, threatening to evict them from their Central Park penthouses.” 

Before I could tell her I had a similar experience with corporate America in Ireland and how Dublin was now the unofficial 51st State, she told me she was also a survivalist in her spare time. Then a tiny woman with a nosey attitude came over with a notepad. 

She looked at Lana for a while without speaking and then asked me, “Wha you wan?”

“Miso soup and two Amachas,” said Lana.

“You wan tofu?” she asked me, insistently, like a mother ashamed of her son.

“Carnivore, right?” Lana said and shook her head at the woman. 

“Yep.”

“You wan chicken, yeah?” said the waitress to me through her grimaced smile.

“Yeah, go on.”

“You wan wata or cock?”

I bit my lips together to stop a burst of laughter. “Big cock or small cock?” I said, as if that’d impress Lana.

“Only one size.”

“One cock so.”

Lana raised her eyebrows and grinned. 

“You wan sake?” asked the waitress and gave me this simmering glance while she wrote.

“No thanks, he’ll just have the coke and the soup,” said Lana.

She tutted. “Okay, be bak one mina.”

She returned a few moments later, flung down a tea pot and glass mugs and came back with a steaming bowl of miso soup. “Enjoy.”

I spooned the salty broth into me and watched Lana sip tea. “So, live off the land kind of survivalist or what?” I said. “Miso’s next level by the way.”

“I know, right.” She held the cup to her lips. “My dad taught me. He’s ex-Air Force. We’re a military family.” Proud then slumped, she shifted in her chair. “He says one day the government will turn rogue and I’ll need to know how to kill.” 

I wasn’t sure if she was joking. “So, you came to Kyoto for… ?”

“Work. I was in Tokyo and Osaka but it’s too much there. Partying every night. And. I can’t do hangovers anymore, apparently.” She swirled her cup and gazed at tea leaves then back at me, repeatedly like she was pretending to read my fortune and not covering something up. 

“I know what you mean. I overstayed my welcome in Bangkok. Stopped off in Tokyo on the way here. Not long. Too many silly giggling girls for my liking.”

Right?” She nodded and a cute little crease formed at the corner of her smile—offsetting the fangs.

“I was hoping to do some vlogging here,” I said.

She nodded, assured, but there was a little taint of doubt in her eyes. “I am, actually.”

“Losing followers?”

“Bro!” She glanced away and then eyeballed me. “You overheard, I take it.”

“I’m stuck on a few hundred myself.” Lies. Lies. Lies. Less than a hundred. 173 and falling.

“You’ll get there.” She gave a supportive half-smile.

“I dunno. I was thinking of heading into the jungle. See if I can get in trouble. Everybody vlogs about food and temples. I need a bit of adventure.”

“Cool.” She looked impressed, lifted her head and stared into my eyes—the same way she had when she first saw me, weighing something up. “Actually, you could be exactly what I’m looking for. Fancy travelling for free?”

I was immediately interested and sat forward. “Free? Yeah.”

“I’ve a van. It’s got a kitchen, wifi and a double bed.” Her expression said she’d be cool about sharing, if I was. 

I was. I spooned the soup into my gob and dribbled it down my chin. “Eh, so you’re not planning on staying in Kyoto long?”

“I’m shakajin here. Japanese are”—she furrowed her brow and glanced sideways, eyes narrow—“Selfless. They see people like me as unwanted foreigners, not helping society.”

“Not traveller friendly here so, no?”

“They can be quite unfriendly to travellers and clicky. I’m looking for a new videographer and someone to share the cost of fuel, if you’re interested.”

As she had just said in the previous breath that the ride would be free, I thought she was sketchy. “Eh… not sure.” I put down the spoon and looked at the stressed faces of other western shakajins burning through money. “You said if I fancy travelling for free.”

“Mmmhmm.” She held her hand out flat on the table and looked at something over my shoulder. “If you can help out with fuel for now, that’d be great. Once we get my following back up, it’ll be free.”

I realised I’d been staring hard at her lips for way too long. “I’ve got no solid plan…”

“So you’re into it?” She bit her lip.

“Yeah, why not.”

“Bro, it’s gonna be lit.”

I should have taken more time to weigh up a few pros and cons—maybe think about why she had picked me out of a crowd of other loners. But things just flowed. Back home, it wasn’t easy for me to talk to strangers, particularly females, and never one so attractive. I felt like I could be myself with her, say whatever I wanted. And she had this sexuality in her body when she moved—the way she looked at me over the steaming tea, her eyes sizing me up. I didn’t stand a chance when an hour later we were in her van, fucking.

I told myself it was because she saw an easy going Irish guy and not some asshole honking his horn at her. 

Afterwards, she lay on the bed gazing at me like she’d uncovered some forlorn, undiscovered creative genius who needed saving from an0ther corporate job. I bought it all, maybe I was. Maybe when she cupped my balls and kissed me, she wasn’t some nympho and the fact is, away from pokey old Ireland, I was irresistible to women. 

I tried to process how an hour ago I was muttering curses about this loud American attention seeker, and here I was, inspecting her van in nothing but a T-shirt with my balls swinging around like something out of a Bernardo Bertolucci movie. What happened to integrity, bro? 

I distracted myself by inspecting the van—it was a mess of USB cables and clothes. As she lit a joint, she told me she had modded it herself after cleaning out her bank account to buy it in Osaka. Fairly decent craftsmanship, I thought, admiring a little worktop with a sink, a two-ring cooker and blue LED USB ports everywhere. 

The raised bed was draped in a white crocheted throw that spanned the width of the van—that I’d half kicked onto the floor earlier trying to turn her gasps into screams of pleasure. Next time bro. Next time! 

She was still laying on the bed, naked, arm draped behind her head, leg bent up in a sexy, ‘I’m ready for more when you are’ pose. Beneath the bed, varnished drawers were arranged like steps. I felt intimidated because the whole design was very well thought out. Deceivingly clever. Far better than I could ever achieve. 

“Where’s the bathroom?”

She nodded at a long tinted window above the sink. “If you’re coming with, you’re gonna need to become one with nature.”

“Ah.” As I considered my next move, rain pelted the roof. The low drum on the van was relaxing; comforting. Japan had major rainstorms in autumn. I ran my hand over the natural curves of a piece of varnished wood behind the driver’s seat and noticed how cramped the space was. 

“It must get claustrophobic.” 

She gave a sigh and pulled the throw over her lower body. “No it’s bliss dude. You learn to love the road—it’s so free.” 

I could tell she’d been living in the thing a while. I leaned on a tall thin cabinet that contained a small fridge and shelves filled with jars of rice, pasta and condiments. “Don’t you get scared alone?”

“I wasn’t alone until recently.” Her words trailed off.

“Ah, your last videographer.” 

She nodded.

“Boyfriend?”

She shrugged and pouted.

“So… do you sleep with all your videographers?” I pulled on my boxers and flipped out a chair fixed to the sliding door.

“You were into it. You can go fuck yourself.”

“I’m cool.” Just trying to gauge if you’re a raging nympho or not. 

I think my grin said everything. Here was a beautiful, independent female—who could probably change a flat tire, in the rain, hungover—offering me a way to see Japan, make great content and there was no-strings sex included. “When you get an offer like that, you start wondering what the catch is.”

She sat up with a big smile and smashed her palms into the bed. “The catch is I’m crazy, bro.” Her laugh was a little too cackle-y for my liking. “Chill. This is gonna be the best decision of your life.”

I laughed it off. She was the kind of person I needed to be, had stupid levels of confidence, and if even a tenth rubbed off on me, I’d do a lot better on camera. “I think I’m down. No, I’m down.”

“Well then, Killian, you couldn’t have run into me at a more perfect time. I’m about to hit the road. What are you waiting for? Go get your shit.”

I dropped my head. “Ah,…I’ve paid for a week at my hotel.”

She sighed. “I suppose I can find myself another videogra—”

I had already started pulling on my shorts and slid open the side door. A moment after I left, I came back soaked and popped my head in. “I’ll be back in half an hour.” I ran off and sprinted back. “Twenty minutes. Don’t go without me.”