The Toyotomi Blades Read Online Free PDF

were clustered on the mountainsides. Spoiling the beauty, I also saw that great gouges had been taken out of some of the hills, exposing raw, red earth. The mountains were also crisscrossed with ugly electrical lines and high-tension towers. The woods, towers, and gouges formed a crazy quilt that didn’t match my notions of how ordered Japan would be.
    Once I arrived at the airport, my idea of Japanese efficiency was reaffirmed. The airport was crowded, but clean and well run to the point of coldness. At the immigration desk, the clerk looked at my American passport and silently looked up to confirm that the owner matched the picture.
    I took one of the metal carts provided and gathered up my luggage as it appeared on the endless belt. I then joined the mass of Japanese and tourists lining up for customs inspection. I moved the cart to one of the customs stations with the green nonresident sign. When it was my turn to have my baggage inspected, the Japanese customs agent in the gray-blue uniform glared at me. In L.A. gang terms, he gave me a hard look. In Hawaii, we’d call it the stink eye. Whatever you call it, it was plain he wasn’t happy. He said something in Japanese. I gave the agent a puzzled look. The agent repeated himself, this time much more harshly.
    “Excuse me, but do you speak English? I’m afraid I don’t speak Japanese,” I said.
    The agent looked at me in surprise. “Are you an American?” he asked in very good English.
    It never occurred to me that I would be taken for a Japanese national, although obviously, with two Japanese-American parents, I look Japanese. “Yes, I am,” I said.
    His whole demeanor changed. A smile spread across his face and he pulled my bags through the customs table without checking a single one. “Welcome to Japan,” the agent said cheerily.
    I walked out of the baggage area into a milling mass of people. Most appeared to be families looking for loved ones, but a great number were limousine drivers or businessmen holding signs with names in English or Japanese. When I’d called Sugimoto to set up the trip, he’d said he’d meet me at the airport, so I scanned the businessmen to see if I could spot one holding a sign with my name on it. As I was searching for Sugimoto, a man came up to me. He was dressed in a plain white T-shirt, Levi’s jeans, black motorcycle boots, and a black leather belt with a large, silver Harley-Davidson belt buckle. His hair looked permed into curls and he wore it with an authentic 1950s jelly-roll lock of hair cascading down his forehead.
    In the Thomas book about Japan I had read about the youngsters who gather at Yoyogi Park every Sunday all decked out in 1950s American regalia, complete with black leather jackets and poodle skirts. The young people go there to dance, play music, and meet other kids. Those kids were teenagers, but this man was at least in his midthirties, and he seemed long-of-tooth for dressing up like James Dean. To my surprise, he stuck out his hand and said, “Mr. Tanaka, I’m Buzz Sugimoto.”
    He must have been used to people doing double takes, because he showed no reaction when I did mine. This kind of appearance could be expected in Los Angeles, but here in Tokyo it was totally incongruous to me. I had enough wit to shake his hand.
    “I recognize you from the picture,” Sugimoto added in slightly accented English, “or else I’d be holding up one of the little cardboard signs with your name on it. Is that all your luggage? I have a car waiting outside.”
    Sugimoto took over my luggage cart and wheeled it out of the terminal with me in tow. Outside, there was a black limousine waiting at the curb. The driver was in a blue uniform, wearing white cotton gloves. He had a feather duster in his hand and he seemed busy dusting off the car. The car was a Nissan President, a model they don’t sell in the States. Sugimoto spoke to the driver in Japanese and opened the door of the limo for me. “The driver will