 So as I said, I'm talking about turning Japanese. It's a comic's memoir about growing up in a multiracial family, about being an outsider in your, I mean, my motherland, and trying to maintain a strong feminist identity while working demeaning customer service jobs. So about me, I grew up in Mel Valley, which is across the Golden Gate Bridge. And it's filled with a lot of Caucasian people. And I'm half Japanese, but I never felt very Japanese. My mom, who moved to America to marry my father, never talked to me or my sister about race or culture. And she didn't teach us the language at all. And so if you add to the fact that I rarely met any Asian people who could speak the same language as me, it's no wonder that I felt disconnected to the culture. My book starts after a breakup when I was 22 years old. And I was jumping into a new relationship, because that's what I did when I was 22. And I moved from San Francisco to San Jose, where he lived. I noticed a big Japanese community there, most of which were expats who were in the silicon industry. And that was pretty exciting to me, mostly because of all the great food that I was suddenly eating. But also because there were hostess bars there, which was something I'd only ever encountered in Japan. My aunt owned one. And soon I managed to get a job at one. If you're not familiar with the concept of a hostess bar, a hostess bar is where women keep you company at your table while you drink. Hostesses are kind of like bartenders. Only they make more of an effort to be social with the patrons. And they're generally a lot friendlier than probably the bartenders you're used to. Their primary role is to encourage you to drink. At a typical hostess bar, in addition to paying for your drinks, you also pay a table fee for your hostess's time. There are host bars, too, filled with dudes who sit with you. But I've never really been to one, not really. But they're not really as common. They're more of a novelty thing. Although I've since heard that from other people who used to be hostesses who would go blow off steam at host spars after work. And I totally missed out on that one, so bummer. But anyway, so this job seemed like a really good opportunity, not only for me to make some money because I was out of a job, but also to finally learn Japanese with the addition of textbooks and maybe connect to the culture that had eluded me for so long. So I devised a plan. I was going to work there and study long enough to get a grasp of the Japanese language. I would get fluent enough to travel to Japan without my mom, who always seemed to translate. When she was translating for me for her parents, she'd kind of edit and censor, I think. It was very, hm. So for the first time in my life, I would talk to my grandparents and aunt and uncle in their language. And we'd get to know each other and love each other and accept each other for who we were. And that was the plan. Didn't go exactly how I thought it would, but I don't want to spoil anything. So the book is about that journey. And this reading, the first reading, which I'm only going to read part of, is going to focus on the first bar I worked at. So the book is kind of a, it's about hostess bars, but it's also about weird cultural divides and generation gaps. So, but the bar. So the Yamamoto was actually a restaurant and a bar. The bar was connected to the restaurant, but you could only get there if you knew to pass through the mysterious velvet curtains on the way to the restroom. It was a totally illegal operation. On a typical day, six or so hostesses came in at 8 o'clock. We sat together in the waiting room, which is also used as a karaoke booth for large parties. We gossipped, we put our makeup on, we watched karaoke videos, and mountled along to the words until customers started filtering in. That would be Whitney Houston playing on the TV. Usually there would be one or two regulars at first, but the bulk of our clients came in after dinnertime. Our manager, Nakasan, assigned hostesses to the tables. If a Japanese only speaking client came in, he would place a Japanese girl with them. If the client spoke English, he'd get them an American. Many of the hostesses had regular clients that they developed relationships with over time, so the regulars would be seated with their favorite hostesses. But at times, a hostess would have multiple regulars show up at the same time. When that happened, Nakasan would seat the girl with the most generous or well-to-do client, and the other men would have to wait their turn, often in the presence of a hostess whom they found less desirable. This was no fun for anybody. If a table started looking awkward, Nakasan would move the hostesses around, trying to get a better fit. Here's me in my 90s garb, not able to speak enough Japanese to entertain this guy, and he doesn't speak any English, so we're very awkward. Head turn. I don't know why I wore that shirt. It was a staple, though. There's Naka saying, go to table three. Excuse me, so when you see the brackets like that, that's me speaking in Japanese. I did no excuse me. May I join you? Says a fellow hostess. Clients would order sushi from the restaurant next door. Sometimes they would even share. One time I came in hungry and I was relieved when the men at my table ordered a giant platter and didn't seem to be touching it. I asked them, do you mind if I have a piece? No problem, they said. I kept an eye on my boss, worried that eating on the job would be frowned upon. I popped a nigiri into my mouth, but when I looked down at the platter, I noticed something odd. Where did that big lump of wasabi go? Oh my God, it must be in my mouth. Spitterswallow, spitterswallow. This is not an analogy or metaphor or anything, this actually happened. Within moments, I had what can only be described as an adrenaline rush. I did my best not to burp anything up. I didn't even get to taste it, it went down that fast. And after that incident, I never had any problems eating wasabi again. It's like I developed antibodies against the wasabi's spiciness. Don't try this at home, kids. So that's the first part. Oh wait, no. Okay, no, this keeps going on, sorry. So as a hostess, I was expected to drink with the customers. Please drink more, he says. Well, if I must, thanks. I just turned 22. I mean, this was the perfect job for a 22 year old. I was expected to keep the glasses full. Light cigarettes, I was a smoker back then and here's one of my fellow hostesses saying, I hate cigarettes, it's the worst part of the job, all the smoke, it was not awkward at all when she said that. Politely make conversation, flirting was greatly encouraged. Your job sounds very important. Oh no, he says. Sing karaoke, albeit badly, there's me singing Blondie. It was a great tactic for getting out of a dull conversation and slow dance with the customers. This was optional, but it was still part of the job. So where this woman Joan is asking for $20 for the dance, if that's okay, it really wasn't okay because that's part of the job. But anyway, we made nine bucks an hour, which was a lot back then, plus tips. We weren't supposed to take the tips directly from the customers. The money was handed, if they handed us the money, directly we're supposed to give it to Nakasun, who would divvy up the tips equally at the end of the night. No doubt taking a cut for himself as well, which is totally illegal. Still, some of the gals kept their tips for themselves and every once in a while I did too, if I felt like I really earned it. Like this one time, when this dude sat with me in Sally, who was a Chinese hostess, and he and his friend made racist comments all night about her in Japanese, which she thankfully couldn't understand. Afterwards, he said to me, here, this is just for you. Don't share it with the Chinese, okay? Thanks, I said, utterly hating him. Then he went away. Sally, I said, that table just gave us a tip. Do you think we should give it to Nakasun? Really? That's surprising, they didn't seem very happy. Let's keep it for ourselves, we deserve it. Those men were so boring, they only wanted to talk in Japanese, but I think they knew how to speak English. Okay, take it before Nakasun sees, hee hee hee. Many of the hostesses like to play gambling games with the customers, which was forbidden by Nakasun, probably because he meant that none of the money would go to him. This didn't stop a lot of the gals, especially for some reason the Americans, I don't know why. I usually didn't play the games. I needed the money very much, but what I really wanted was to learn Japanese and not risk losing my, oh, there are cookies down here, sorry. Not risk losing my job. But every so often, a customer would insist, I mean, they love these games, and the customer's always right. So here he says, if you win, I'll give you $20, but if I win, I get a kiss on the cheek. Which cheek? Huh? I loved telling this joke because he would always make the men blush, and as long as I was the one making them blush, I mean, detained the power in the transaction. That's the end of the first one. I'm gonna read a very short one from, so that's from part one. Part one of Turning Japanese, which I have for sale here, and I accept credit cards. Part one takes place in America. The second part takes place in Japan. It's a slight spoiler here, because you can see that I did learn some Japanese, and so this is excerpt from book two. So I'm in front of the family shrine at my grandparents' house, and my grandmother says to me, this is where we prayed, something, something. Family, let's pray together now. So if I don't understand something that's being said, I just have squiggles, and for the sake of this reading, I'm just gonna say something, something, because I don't know what else to say. So let's pray, she says. And I say, oh, well, actually, I guess. Okay, devout atheist, awkward. Little voice in my head says, since when are you such a conformist? You can't really get it from my reading so far, but my first book, Kiss and Tell, was like about all the crazy drugs and sex I had when I was like 14. So I was a little bit of a rebel, and that's probably why my mom didn't really translate my personality to my grandparents, but anyway. So the next day, my aunt Yoko and her husband took me and my fiancee to a temple in the hills, which was two hours away by car. Here's all us in the car. I'm the one on the top, right? I bleached my hair blonde so I could get more tips at the Japanese Hostess Bar. So Yoko said in Japanese, not many tourists come here. You can only get here by car. The temple was built in year 178. I asked in my broken Japanese, how did people get here in year 178? And she said, it couldn't have been easy. My fiancee who did not speak Japanese said, what are you guys talking about? My brain tried to make the language switch. I said, they're taking us to a really old temple. When we entered a room full of incense and praying people, a peculiar feeling overwhelmed me. What was that place? I asked her in Japanese. She said, that is the temple of the goddess of mercy. If someone, something, something to pray. Sorry, could you English speak? I asked her. She knew a little. Okay, if loved one is dying like sick baby, a mother come here to pray. Wow. I imagine the journey to get here in a time before trains or cars, year 178. It could take days or weeks to get here. Your loved one might be gone before you even got to the temple to pray. How many prayers have there been? I felt so many of them all at once. Although I've never been convinced of the existence of gods, I began to reconsider the power of prayer. I'm made up of energy. Everything I do expels energy. And the more effort I put into something, the more energy I would then expel. A desperate prayer would expel energy. So where would the energy go? Into space, into the walls? When people feel ghosts, are they really feeling energy? Can energy get trapped in enclosed spaces? When I walked into that room, was it energy I was feeling? Where will my energy go when my body dies? Back at my grandparents' house, my abatchan said, welcome back. Shall we pray together? Okay, that's it. Thank you guys. Thank you.