Pre-olympic Swing Through The Soy Sauce And Coca-cola Signs

They came to our room together, shuffling along with tiny steps, giggling lightly and bowing frequently. The first was middle-aged, and she smiled winningly at The Graduate right away, displaying an impressive array of steel teeth. The Graduate bowed and muttered, "Love her dentist." The second geisha was young and quite pretty, with fewer steel teeth. The third was the leader of the trio, a stocky, lighthearted lady with a small Band-Aid on her forehead. She was heavily powdered and dressed in the traditional geisha kimonos and carried a tiny bottle opener in her obi (the sash around her waist). Her name, we learned, was Komomo-san. That means, she said, Small Peaches. It turned out that she had been close friends with a number of American GIs 20 years ago or so, and she still retained a smattering of English. "Hubba-hubba," said Komomo-san. "I rost my heart at the Stage-Door Canteen. Hubba-hubba." We laughed—The Graduate's laugh actually sounded more like a strangle—and the party got under way.

Now, before I move on to the monumental drama of the evening—in which The Graduate challenged Komomo-san to the janken-pon championship of all Hokkaido—let me briefly explain about dinner parties in hotel rooms with geisha, whatever their class. There is about as much likelihood of sin or sex at such an affair as there would be at the birthday party of an 8-year-old boy. Indeed, there is a great similarity between a really smashing geisha blast and a child's birthday party. On this night in north Japan, amid gales of giggles and much flashing of steel teeth, we played games such as passing matchboxes and chopsticks from nose to nose, we did various balancing feats and, of course, we played a lot of janken-pon. It turns out that this is simply the ancient and honorable game of paper, rock and scissors in which one tries to outguess his opponent by displaying the symbol which defeats the other. (Paper covers rock, scissors cuts paper, rock breaks scissors, remember?)

We dined, seated on the straw matting in our kimonos. We drank pints and pints of sake. We laughed heartily when Komomo-san crossed her eyes and pretended to be drunk. We giggled merrily when the geisha with the steel teeth hiccupped. Oh, such fun. And then the All- Hokkaido janken-pon championship Super Bowl occurred.

No one expected it. But before we knew what was happening, The Graduate and Komomo-san were both on their feet, standing nose to nose, shouting a Japanese chant about baseball that includes such rousers as "out-u, safe-u, yoyoi no yoi!"

The rules of janken-pon with geisha dictate that every time a player loses a round he must discard an article of clothing. The Graduate seemed at an obvious disadvantage, since all he had worn to dinner was his kimono, a sash, a pair of Jockey shorts and his famous brown sweat socks, now dried out. Komomo-san was dressed as a traditional geisha should be—with four separate layers of kimonos and shifts, plus countless sashes and bands and a pair of socks with those split toes.

The Graduate grinned at us cockily and said, "She don't know it, but she's dead. Lissen, I used to beat every damned Italian kid on the whole Lower East Side of New York at this game. This is my game, you guys! In fact, I am probably the best rock-paper-scissors player in all of America!"

Komomo-san then announced that she was the best janken-pon-playing geisha on Hokkaido, perhaps in all Japan, even the entire Far East. The two champions bowed formally to each other. The stage was set.

For more than half an hour the contest went on. The Graduate was magnificent, as promised. Early in the going he lost his sash. Then his kimono. Even his brown socks. But with only his shorts remaining, he settled down and, incredibly, Komomo-san went into a losing streak (at one point her paper was cut by The Graduate's scissors seven times in a row). One by one she removed kimonos and sashes until a sizable pile of clothing lay in one corner of the room. The other two geisha ceased giggling and began to look rather pained. We shouted again, "Out-u, safe-u, yoyoi no yoi!" Komomo-san shrieked. The Graduate's rock had broken her scissors. She removed the last sock and now stood in her shift, her absolute final article of clothing. She blushed and bowed to The Graduate, indicating she wanted to quit. He refused. She pleaded. He was adamant. With bowed head and lowered eyes, she agreed to the final round—but only if they could play it in the entryway of the room, where the rest of us could not watch. The Graduate agreed.

We could only hear the chant of the two of them—"Out-u, safe-u, yoyoi no yoi!" Then a great bellow went up from The Graduate. Komomo-san shrieked again, giggled, then shouted a single word before she shuffled back into the room, still in her shift: "maerimashita!" The Interlocutor nodded. "It means 'I surrender,' " he said. The Graduate stalked arrogantly into the room, made a deep and serious bow in his Jockey shorts. "Hubba-hubba," he said. He was the janken-pon champion of Hokkaido. It is a title he still holds and will carry into the 1972 Winter Games.

When one is in Noboribetsu and the baths have been taken and the pachinko and janken-pon have palled, there is one other thing to do. Visit the Kuma Bokujo. That is a bear ranch. Which is almost exactly what it sounds like—a place given over exclusively to bears. On Hokkaido the bear is rather a sacred beast. The first Japanese—the aboriginal Ainus—held religious ceremonies based on the personality of the bear because he offered them both meat and clothing. On the streets of Noboribetsu one can see six-foot wooden statues, not unlike the cigar-store Indians of America, of a woman with a bear cub feeding at her breast. As The Interlocutor explained, "This means that the Ainus so loved the bear that his women would suckle the babies. Without the bear, the Ainus could not live. Without the bear, maybe Japan would not be."