In Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and now India Hozumi has been getting effusive praise from women for her smooth, fair skin and youthful looks. From people serving us lunch, passing by, sitting nearby in trains, out of the blue and from the most unexpected people. Gaggles of young women asking to have their pictures taken next to her. Less welcome is the stares and attention from guys, which has really peaked in India.
One night, as we were walking down the designated 'foreigner street' in Kolkata (Sudder Street) a guy greeted us in Japanese and quickly struck up a conversation about his life and wife in Japan. He was really friendly, good-looking and had a smile that practically split his face in half. Over cups of chai he told us all about how he'd met his wife on a train by sharing a Walkman, how she called him five times a day after returning to Japan and how they'd married soon after. He was in Kolkata for his sister's wedding and couldn't talk long because he was heading off to use Skype again. We did arrange to meet the next morning and to take the subway together to a nearby temple Hozumi and I had planned to visit.
That night and the next morning I was, yet again, pissing out of my arse and in no state to go sightseeing. Hozumi went off to meet him and explain we couldn't go, and came back an hour or so later quietly distressed. It took quite a while to get the full story, but they had gone to breakfast, his treat, and he had taken Hozumi's hand as they walked "In India, friends hold hands, it's quite normal". This wasn't a problem - Hozumi had seen similar behaviour many times throughout SE Asia and India, with men unabashedly holding hands. When he later started exclaiming how much she looked like his wife, hugged her "This is what lovers do", and then tried to kiss her... well, that really shocked Hozumi. Guilt, confusion, cultural disorientation and an unhealthy dose of inwardly-directed blame because she had genuinely trusted and liked the guy.
Anyway, there are more than a few guys hanging around Sudder Street speaking fairly fluent Japanese complete with idioms, a strong localised dialect and astonishingly detailed cover stories. The real question is what are they after? That one guy looking for a cheap thrill had bought us chai, bought Hozumi breakfast and stolen a reluctant hug in exchange. The other guy we met might have got some tiny commission from a hotel, in exchange for an hour or so of conversation and more chai, but more about him later. Starting from the beginning:
We met Chika and a friendly American writer in Bangkok airport. Chika was a typically wonderfully ditzy Japanese girl, totally naive, excited about India and utterly unprepared for it. Since she had no idea how to get anywhere from the airport, how much currency she'd need, where to stay or even which city the airport was connected to(!) we offered to help her out.
Kolkata's international terminal is really tiny, grimy and mostly deserted. The local buses run from the much busier domestic terminal, so evading the taxi touts we trudged over there and got on a bus heading to the general area we wanted.
First chai.
We got turned away from the only two guesthouses we found, "no foreigners", and with no map or guidebook had little idea where we were. The first taxi we tried, tried haggling for an unmetered price so we gave him the finger and waved down someone honest. He took us to a beautiful faux-marble hotel that was totally out of our price range, so we went traipsing around looking for somewhere cheaper. Hours later Hozumi and I had checked into a dirt-cheap place run by a really kindly conservative old muslim but Chika was still unable to find the balance between price and cleanliness she was looking for.
As it got dark we were still wandering around, me shouldering her over-sized backpack, when a Japanese-speaking guy 'from Osaka' dragged us into his shop promising to get her a cheap room at one the five hotels he 'owned'. An hour, a couple of photo albums of his Japanese wife and son, a long tale of his adventures in corporate Japan and a few cups of chai later he hadn't got any replies to his phone calls and messages. He took us to a 'friend's' hotel nearby and had Chika temporarily put up in a fancy clean triple room, with a promise that a single room just as nice would be made available by 10pm for a very reasonable price... by which time of course it would be much too late to look elsewhere.
Turns out Hozumi wasn't happy with the spartan muslim lodging house, so the next day we moved to the same hotel as Chika and found it to be a good deal, regardless of the suspicious nature of the tout who had led us there in the first place.
One night, as we were walking down the designated 'foreigner street' in Kolkata (Sudder Street) a guy greeted us in Japanese and quickly struck up a conversation about his life and wife in Japan. He was really friendly, good-looking and had a smile that practically split his face in half. Over cups of chai he told us all about how he'd met his wife on a train by sharing a Walkman, how she called him five times a day after returning to Japan and how they'd married soon after. He was in Kolkata for his sister's wedding and couldn't talk long because he was heading off to use Skype again. We did arrange to meet the next morning and to take the subway together to a nearby temple Hozumi and I had planned to visit.
That night and the next morning I was, yet again, pissing out of my arse and in no state to go sightseeing. Hozumi went off to meet him and explain we couldn't go, and came back an hour or so later quietly distressed. It took quite a while to get the full story, but they had gone to breakfast, his treat, and he had taken Hozumi's hand as they walked "In India, friends hold hands, it's quite normal". This wasn't a problem - Hozumi had seen similar behaviour many times throughout SE Asia and India, with men unabashedly holding hands. When he later started exclaiming how much she looked like his wife, hugged her "This is what lovers do", and then tried to kiss her... well, that really shocked Hozumi. Guilt, confusion, cultural disorientation and an unhealthy dose of inwardly-directed blame because she had genuinely trusted and liked the guy.
Anyway, there are more than a few guys hanging around Sudder Street speaking fairly fluent Japanese complete with idioms, a strong localised dialect and astonishingly detailed cover stories. The real question is what are they after? That one guy looking for a cheap thrill had bought us chai, bought Hozumi breakfast and stolen a reluctant hug in exchange. The other guy we met might have got some tiny commission from a hotel, in exchange for an hour or so of conversation and more chai, but more about him later. Starting from the beginning:
We met Chika and a friendly American writer in Bangkok airport. Chika was a typically wonderfully ditzy Japanese girl, totally naive, excited about India and utterly unprepared for it. Since she had no idea how to get anywhere from the airport, how much currency she'd need, where to stay or even which city the airport was connected to(!) we offered to help her out.
Kolkata's international terminal is really tiny, grimy and mostly deserted. The local buses run from the much busier domestic terminal, so evading the taxi touts we trudged over there and got on a bus heading to the general area we wanted.
We got turned away from the only two guesthouses we found, "no foreigners", and with no map or guidebook had little idea where we were. The first taxi we tried, tried haggling for an unmetered price so we gave him the finger and waved down someone honest. He took us to a beautiful faux-marble hotel that was totally out of our price range, so we went traipsing around looking for somewhere cheaper. Hours later Hozumi and I had checked into a dirt-cheap place run by a really kindly conservative old muslim but Chika was still unable to find the balance between price and cleanliness she was looking for.
As it got dark we were still wandering around, me shouldering her over-sized backpack, when a Japanese-speaking guy 'from Osaka' dragged us into his shop promising to get her a cheap room at one the five hotels he 'owned'. An hour, a couple of photo albums of his Japanese wife and son, a long tale of his adventures in corporate Japan and a few cups of chai later he hadn't got any replies to his phone calls and messages. He took us to a 'friend's' hotel nearby and had Chika temporarily put up in a fancy clean triple room, with a promise that a single room just as nice would be made available by 10pm for a very reasonable price... by which time of course it would be much too late to look elsewhere.
Turns out Hozumi wasn't happy with the spartan muslim lodging house, so the next day we moved to the same hotel as Chika and found it to be a good deal, regardless of the suspicious nature of the tout who had led us there in the first place.
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