It's a big night out. Mr. Nozawa's treat (the Director of the company I used to work for). As always, our party is large and we file into a restaurant that seems to have been reserved for us. Though we are jocular, there's a special tension in the air—it's not because we've never been to this restaurant before, it's because tonight we'll see underground martial arts fighting.
There are many Yakuza about, and we're careful not to antagonize them. Following the rules carefully. The fighters parade in. As they do, the high-strung tension releases into some kind of excited expectation, people begin to lighten up and look forward to the show ahead.
The fights are underway and we are eating as we watch. Mr. Nozawa and the rest are behind me, and being the outermost member of the group I'm still careful to watch my manners around the dangerous criminal types who populate the restaurant.
A headlining fighter's fight has come up; but it's announced that he isn't available and won't fight. There's a sense that someone from the audience has to fill in for him. I shrink in my seat hoping it won't be me that gets picked. I get picked, and find myself suited up for fighting, waiting in the line, and trying to put a capable face on it. Ahead of me two Japanese men, enforcer types with short legs and powerful 'upside down triangle' upper bodies, are grappling away in their bout. They are actually quite mild with each other, and the win isn't secured by crunching violence, dead meat slaps of foot bones into faces, ashen white shock and crimson blood; no, they are both on their feet, and the whole thing was more like a judo match. It was won quite non-violently. I'm heartened.
It's the next bout, not mine, and I sense the most important, or awaited. I've been awaiting it too, to see one of the fighters—an enigma.
He's carried in on a wooden board, doubled up and unconscious. It's made known that he was suffering a terrible cold or virus, and was in no shape to fight, but has come out anyway. I sense it wasn't entirely his decision to come out (he's unconscious). But he is still impressive, awesome. There's an aura about him. It could be that he's still only a high-school student but fights in these bloody martial arts matches; or the corollary that he must be crazy. At any rate, I'm, we' re all, filled with awe. A collective gasp runs through the audience as he is stretchered in.
I marvel at his body, curled up into a fetal ball, and the huge tattoo on his back. It's a yakuza style tattoo - some kind of Japanese folk character drawn in traditional style - but what grabs my attention is that eyes of the demon or man depicted are shut or empty. No colouring in the eyes—they are just flesh colour (the colour of the fighter's yellow skin, I suppose he's Japanese). Like looking at an unfinished tattoo, where outlines are not yet filled in. Anyway, I sense that his unconscious condition and the empty/closed eyes on his back are connected—that the eyes in the tattoo are the source of his power. When they are on, he is on. Unbeatable.
I never see his face, but his hair is dyed bright white/blonde. All in all, a very wild character.
The fighting tournament is finished and I'm outside in the night, with an old co-worker Hirose (a real co-worker from my old work, and not only that, a once good friend, we no longer keep in touch. He was fired by my old Boss). I'm glad to see him again.
I sense we are in Japan, perhaps Tokyo, and though I'd lived there for a decade, I feel like a visitor or inductee (in waking life I've moved back to the U.K., and intend to stay). We're outside the restaurant, and the rest of the group know where to go next (the next clandestine activity of the night), but I don't. I'm not included. It's either because of my rank; or I have just not understood, but either way, I have no idea, and am left behind. As is Hirose.
We dance about the subject for a while, but eventually I offer him a lift in my car. I have the car and can drive, he knows the roads and can guide me. He's been waiting for this offer, and accepts.
We make our way to the car park where my car is. I notice it parked up, and it is exactly the same car that I own in waking life, hence I recognized it perhaps. This being Japan, I'm not exactly sure what to do, and follow Hirose's lead for getting the car. As we're approaching I look to my right, trying to pick out which of the tracks leading out of the car park is the exit. I go past one track, is that?, no, there's another track with an arrow pointing out along it—that's the exit. I plot the simple line I'm going to cruise around to it and out as my eyes track back to the car.
Now I know where the exit is and what I'm doing, all that remains is to get into the car. But we can't just walk up and get in. I follow Hirose, and it seems we're separated from the car in some way and need to get through a door to get to the car's side.
We're outside a door lit in the blue/green tungsten light I remember well from older Japanese apartment complexes. The door is dirty and dusty, like a fire-escape or utility entrance. We're cramped up close to the door and behind us/over us is a concrete incline—just like a flight of stairs were above us, and we were stood underneath it. I'm behind Hirose; Hirose is in front of the door. It needs a key, and Hirose has to turn around and reach past me to pick up some kind of communal key that was attached to the incline behind/over us. I feel like I'm in the way. Hirose pulls the key out, but it does not detach; rather it stays connected to its holder, but telescopes out on flat metal panes. Hirose gets the key in the door and opens it.
I wake.
