Free Generation X by Douglas Coupland

roadside cafe in Idaho."
    please-don't-murder-me smile Japanese tourists in North America started adopting a few years ago. The exp ressions immediately p u t m e o n t h e STATUS
    defensive, make me feel angry at t h e i r presumption of my violence.
    SUBSTITUTION: Using an
    And God only knows what they make of our motley quintet and our Okie object with intellectual or
    fashionable cachet to substitute
    transport sprawled with meal remains of mismatched dishes. A blue
    for an object that is merely
    jeans ad come to life.
    pricey: "Brian, you left your copy
    I speak English (why ruin their desert USA fantasy?) and in the
    of Camus in your brother's
    BMW."
    ensuing convulsed pidgin of hand signals and they-went-(that-aways, I discover that the Japanse do want to go visit the dinosaurs. And shortly, after garnering directions, they are off in a puff of dust and roadside debris, from which we see a camera emerge, out of the rear window.
    The camera is held backward by one hand and a finger on top of it snaps our photo, at which point Dag shouts, "Look! A camera! Bite the insides of your cheeks, q uick. Get those cheekbones happening!" Then, once the car is out of view, Dag then jumps in on me: "And what, may I ask, was with your Arnold the Yokel act?"
    " A n d r e w . You speak lovely Japanese," adds Claire. "You could have given them such a thrill."
    "It wasn't called for," I reply, remembering how much of a letdown it was for me when I was living in Japan and people tried to speak to
    me in English. "But it d i d remind me of a bedtime story for today."
    "Pray tell."
    And so, as my friends, gleaming of cocoa butter, lean back and
    a b s o r b t h e s u n ' s h e a t , I t e l l m y t a l e :
    "A few years ago I was working at this teenybopper magazine office in Japan—part of a half-year job exchange program with the u n i v e r s i t y —w h e n a s t r a n g e t h i n g h a p p e n e d t o m e o n e d a y." "Wait,"
    i n t e r r u p t s D a g , " T h i s i s a t r u e s t o r y ? " " Y e s . " " O k a y . "
    "It was a Friday morning and I, being a dutiful foreign photo
    researcher, was on the phone to London. I was on deadline to get some p h o t o s f r o m D e p e c h e M o d e ' s p e o p l e w h o w e r e a t s o m e h o u s e party there —an awful Eurosquawk was on the other end. My ear was glued
    to the receiver and my hand was over the other ear trying to block out the buzz of the office, a frantic casino of Ziggy Stardust coworkers with everyone hyper from ten-dollar Tokyo coffees from the shop across the street.
    "I remember what was going through my mind, and it wasn't my
    job—it was the way that cities have their own signature odor to them.
    Tokyo's street smell put this into my mind— udon noodle broth and faint sewage; chocola te and car fumes. And I thought of Milan's smell—of cinnamon and diesel belch and roses —and Vancouver with its Chinese roast pork and salt water and cedar. I was feeling homesick for Portland, trying to remember its smell of trees and rust and moss when the ruckus of the office began to dim perceptibly.
    "A tiny old man in a black Balmain suit came into the room. His skin was all folded like a shrunken apple-head person's, but it was dark, peat-colored, and shiny like an old baseball mitt or the Bog Man of Denmark. And he was wearing a baseball cap and chatting with my
    working superiors.
    " M i s s U e n o , t h e d r o p -d e a d c o o l f a s h i o n c o o r d i n a t o r i n t h e d e s k next to mine (Olive Oyl hair; Venetian gondolier's shirt; harem pants I and Viva Las Vegas booties) became flustered the way a small child
    d o e s w h e n p r e s e n t e d w i t h a b e a r-sized boozed-u p d r u n k u n c l e a t t h e front door on a snowy winter night. I asked Miss Ueno who this guy was and she said it was Mr. Takamichi, the k a c h o , the Grand Poobah of the company, an Americaphile renowned for bragging about his golf
    scores in Parisian brothels and for jogging