By Tony Concannon

“Eduardo and Carmen are moving,” I said in Japanese, the language we always used, to my wife Satomi.
“Really. I don’t think anyone will be disappointed.”
“Maybe not. But they’re being discriminated against. It’s not right.”
Satomi didn’t say anything. I drank some beer. Satomi was Japanese and I was American. We’d met at International Christian University in Tokyo, where I’d been doing graduate studies in Japanese and she’d worked in the library.
“Who’s discriminating?” she asked.
“Fuji. He’s raising their rent to 170 thousand.”
“What was it before?”
“125. The same as ours.”
“How do you know?”
“Eduardo told me. He got a letter from the real estate agent. Then when he tried to speak to Fuji about it, Fuji told him the agent handled everything.”
“Eduardo doesn’t speak Japanese that well.”
“He shouldn’t be discriminated against just because he can’t speak Japanese.”
“I didn’t mean that. He might have misunderstood something.”
We were sitting on the floor around the big wooden table in our living room, having dinner. I filled my glass with beer. Satomi had stopped drinking alcohol when she’d become pregnant. It was late June now and the baby was due in September. We’d moved out to the apartment in the western suburbs of Tokyo the year before in order to have more room for a family.
“I don’t think you can raise the rent in Japan more than a few thousand yen,” she said.
“I said that and Eduardo said Fuji could get away with it because they were gaijin.”
“It’s the parties.”
I could sympathize about the parties with Mr. Fuji, our landlord, who lived in a house on the other side of the parking lot. I’d never seen two people entertain so much as Eduardo and Carmen, who were both Spanish. Every Saturday and Sunday there’d be people of all nationalities coming and going. The birth of their first child hadn’t slowed them at all. Carmen had even danced the flamenco in the parking lot one evening.
“If they were Japanese, they wouldn’t party so much,” Satomi went on. “The girl on the second floor is studying for her high school entrance exams.”
“I mean I know the real reason is because they party so much. But they wouldn’t be able to get away with it if they were Japanese. And if they’re doing it because they are not Japanese, I feel as if I should say something.”
“You can’t say anything,” she said. “It’s not our problem.”
But it was. There’s that old saying about not speaking up when they came for the Jews etc. and then there being no one left to speak up when they came for you. I didn’t have the energy to try to explain that to Satomi in Japanese.
“Don’t say anything,” Satomi said. “We have to live here.”
“If he raises our rent that much, we’re going to have trouble paying.”
Satomi was quitting her job at the end of July and we’d be living on my salary from teaching English at the university. Our lease was up for renewal at the end of January.
“He won’t raise it that much,” Satomi said. “Don’t say anything. We have to live here.”
I didn’t think too much about the whole thing except when I’d run into Eduardo or Carmen. Eduardo would always be in a hurry and he would only say he was looking. Carmen and I never mentioned the apartment. Instead, we talked about her son and my wife’s pregnancy. It was July now and she would be wearing a skirt or shorts revealing her long legs. She never wore a bra and the nipples of her full breasts pressed against her t-shirt or tank top.
The weekend parties continued through July. Eduardo was still having trouble finding a new place to live. I’d sometimes find myself fantasizing about Carmen. Then, one day near the end of the month, Eduardo pulled into the driveway just as I was going out for a run. He always drove as though he was in the Indy 500.
“Tommy, I found a house in Saitama,” he shouted to me as he got out of his car. “Less than what I’m paying here. A back yard. A driveway.”
Like Carmen, Eduardo was tall. He had the look of someone who’d once been a good athlete. He’d studied Japanese at Waseda University for six months and was the representative for a Spanish clothing company.
“How far out is it?”
“Thirty minutes to downtown Tokyo on the Hibiya Line. The same as here.”
“Congratulations. It’ll be nice to have a yard for your son when he gets bigger.”
“When I told him,” Eduardo said, pointing at our landlord’s house, “all he said was when are you leaving.”
“Did you talk to the agent?”
“I’m not going to bother. We’re getting out of here. They want to get rid of us. We have too many parties. We make too much noise. They can’t kick us out, so they raise the rent so high we leave. But nobody will complain to our face. Everybody is all smiles and bows when we meet.”
“It’s not right,” I said. “There must be some place you can complain to. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal.”
“If I complain, the Spanish Embassy will help me. But it’s not worth it.”
“We’re up for renewal in January.”
“You don’t have to worry. You’re Japanese because of your wife. It’s that uchi-soto thing they always talk about. It’s really because we party too much.”
“We’ll miss you.”
“Thank you. We’ll miss you, too. You and your wife are our only friends here. We’ll have a little party before we leave.”
A few days later I saw Mr. Fuji trimming the bushes in front of his house.
“A beautiful day,” I called out in Japanese. Neither he nor his wife spoke any English as far as I knew. He stopped pruning and turned to me. He was a short, stout man.
“Finally.”
“It’s been a little cool this summer.”
“They say it’s going to get hot next month.”
“It’s hard work,” I said, nodding toward the bushes.
“I like it. I don’t know if I’m getting it right.”
“Looks pretty good.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I hear the Sauras are leaving,” I said.
“They’re moving to Saitama. They wanted a bigger place.”
“I hope it works out for them.”
I wanted to say something about the rent increase but I didn’t know how to broach the subject.
Eduardo and Carmen moved out the following Saturday. A big truck driven by one of their many friends pulled into the parking lot, completely blocking the entrance. I went over to help. Eduardo ran around, directing everyone. Mrs. Fuji watched from the gate to her house. Her husband was nowhere to be seen. When the truck was loaded, I walked over to her.
“They’re leaving,” I said.
“It’s sad, isn’t it?”
“You must be used to people always moving in and out.”
“It’s still sad, though. You get to know somebody. The baby’s cute.”
“They’re moving to Saitama.”
“They wanted a bigger place.”
Eduardo and Carmen were ready to go.
“Come visit us in our new house,” Eduardo said. “We’ll have a party. If your baby is a girl, she can marry my son.”
I smiled.
“You watch, too,” he said. “Your wife is Japanese but you never know. He’s funny, that one.”
We all said goodbye. Carmen gave me a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. Then they were gone.
It was too late to do anything now. Every once in a while I’d think about it and feel guilty for not having said anything.
Megumi was born in September and my life changed forever. My job teaching gave me plenty of time to spend with her and the fall and early winter raced by. From time to time I worried about our lease.
In the middle of December a letter from the real estate agent arrived. Our rent was going up five thousand yen, exactly what you’d expect. There was an extra ten thousand to cover the increase in the security deposit, a fee for the agent and one month’s rent for renewing the lease, what the Japanese called reikin or “key money.” The whole thing came to exactly 170 thousand yen. But it was a one-time fee. I was the one who noticed.
“I bet he mistook this for an increase in the rent,” I told Satomi.
“Who?”
“Eduardo. Remember how he said they were raising the rent to 170 thousand yen. I bet he thought this figure was the rent, not what he had to pay for renewing the lease. It would be too much of a coincidence, otherwise.”
“It’s written very clearly.”
“We don’t know how well he can read Japanese.”
Satomi shrugged.
“At least we don’t have to worry,” she said.
And that was that. I felt bad I’d assumed the Fujis were discriminating, but I was busy being a father and I put the whole thing out of my mind. I’d even stopped fantasizing about Carmen. Satomi had lost the weight from her pregnancy and things between us were back to normal.
I’d pretty much forgotten the whole thing when I ran into Eduardo in Roppongi the following summer. One of my teaching buddies was leaving Japan and I’d taken him out for drinks. We were walking into Henry Africa’s as Eduardo was coming out with a young Japanese woman.
“Tommy, how are you?” Eduardo called out.
“Good.”
“Are you still living there?”
“We are.”
“Too expensive. You should move out where we are.”
“How are Carmen and your son?” I asked.
“They’re back in Spain for the summer. Carmen’s pregnant again. She’s going to have the baby there. And your baby?”
“We had a girl. Megumi.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you. You know, he didn’t raise the rent that much. Only five thousand yen. We had to pay a fee to the agent and a month’s rent for renewing. The whole thing came to 170 thousand yen but it was a one-time thing. The rent is only 130 a month.”
“That’s because they consider you Japanese. We’re gaijin. He can get away with it with us.”
He was wrong but I didn’t bother to argue. I introduced my friend and Eduardo introduced the Japanese woman, who couldn’t have been more than nineteen. She was wearing a short, tight dress and three-inch heels. She had an impatient look on her face, as if she wanted to be somewhere else. Eduardo and I shook hands. He promised to invite us to one of their parties when Carmen got back from Spain.
“There’s somebody who’s going to get laid,” my friend said when they’d left.
“I guess so. His wife’s beautiful, too.”
We sat down at the bar and ordered a pitcher of beer. I wondered if I should tell Carmen about her husband.