March 1994
"Aces!" I shouted. With the wealth of Ieyasu Tokugawa I can build a castle taller than any Pharoah's wildest dream." You see, Dear Reader, I was about to go where no mere mortal had gone before: Tokugawa's Vault.
It all started with an innocent visit to Madame Tussaud's House of Accordion Greats (Tokyo, Shibuya-ku 1-11-1 Henoarashi [for taxi: èaíJãÊõõÉmóí1-11-1]) with the Japanese cast of "Cats". I don't know why those guys call me every time they're in the mood to tear off a three-day drunk. I entered ready to party but you can imagine my horror and surprise when I saw greats like Freddy "Pole" Polanski and Itzy "Bitzy" Moltz's bodies preserved in a thin Veneer of wax. So lifelike yet so dead.
I guess it was the gin fizzes that made me think that these were not just statues, but actually some dastardly plot to rid the world of its greatest accordion players, geniuses I'd worshiped and emulated since early puberty. But whatever the reason, I decided to melt them back to freedom with my Zippo.
It was only after I'd burned off most of Bitzy's arm that the police sirens told me it was time to haul butt. I ran around the corner to Blarneys Video Arcade, hoping the cops would never think to look for me in there. I don't know if they ever came looking for me or not because I got too distracted by the "Luck of the Illish" sign I saw hanging in the corner over one of those UFO catcher machines.
I went over and bought \1,000 worth of the machine's 'Pot o' Gold' tokens and decided that I was either going to win one of those Betty Boop dolls or go broke trying. Then I saw it: ìøêÏÇÃï÷èä. The first two characters were a cinch for a history buff like me to figure out: 'Tokugawa'. Eight hours later, with the help of my Anton Wikki's Kanji Krusher Dictionary, I came up with a cryptic definition, 'Convenience Place' for the other two. Using the same investigative sense and intuition that allowed me to figure out the brain twister 'What's black and white and red all over' (ans. A skunk that was gummed by a lipsticked, toothless crocodile.) I was on the trail of a four-century-old Shogunesque riddle. What riches lay within the sealed vault? And more importantly, how would it benefit me? I was bespeckled with goosebumps in antici... pation.
What I had won, you see, was a treasure map. When Tokugawa came through Yamanashi, He managed to escape with some booty from old Takeda Shingen himself. None other than the fabled Golden Pomeranian, a small statue of a lap dog. Weighing in at a whopping eight kilograms, it would be the most valuable piece of art this side of Alpha Centauri. Centuries before it had been a Saint Bernard, but Takeda needed to fund a war, so he melted it down into a cuter, but slightly less impressive canine. This was but one of the treasures rumoured to be hidden under the Å@ on my map.
After deciphering the map, I learned two things. Å@The vault was located at Kamiyoshida 5469, Suwanomori 1-3, in the hidden basement. That address seemed familiar but I didn't figure out why until it was too late. Å@That McDonald's over on Route 139 has apparently been there since the late 14th century. The search was on. I took a bus from Kofu to Fujiyoshida station. I showed the address to a taxi driver and he said, "Oh, Debu-chan's place!"
"Who?" I quizzled.
"Debu-chan!" he answered. "Dave Hagen. He's that crazy foreigner who pulled his pants down and went running after a..."
"I know the story," I interrupted. "Can you take me to his house?" He drove me straight there, raving on and on about every Dave story he'd ever heard the whole way there. On the bright side, I did learn what Dave used instead of a brush to paint his wall.
I must say Mr. Hagen was a less-than-gracious host. He offered the obligatory beer and got ready for a chat, but he didn't put out any honey roasted peanuts or dried squid. What are you gonna do? We talked about this and that for a while. We even started talking about the other but decided it made us both uncomfortable.
Then I decided to stop beating around the bush and saw it down. "Dave," I said, "I think I left something under your house the last time I was here. Do you mind if I chop a hole in your floor and look for it?" Before I really had time to blink, I had been bounced out on my caboose and told not to come back unless I bring some beer or something with me.
I felt about as downtrodden as my Aunt Opal May Ramsley, the first woman in the Ramsley family to stop voluntarily binding her feet, did back in that tumultuous year of 1968 - the year that was the turning point in the Vietnam War, the American Civil Rights movement, Russian involvement in Eastern Europe, and my personal feelings about increasing the amount of fiber in my diet. That was the year Aunt Opal May went in to interview for the secretarial position at the round-top, push-pin thumbtack factory in town. (By "town" I mean the bustling metropolis of Yellowknife, which back in those days had a population of just 8,003. Of course, that was before Old Man Weiscarver discovered a vein of plastic in his back yard, leading to the now-famous "Plastic Rush of '77". But that, as the people of Yellowknife are so fond of saying, is "A whole nother story") When the plant manager finished his interview and asked Aunt Opal May if she had any questions, she said, "Just one. How did you get that scar on the end of your nose?" He told her that he had had a mole removed last year, and she just burst out laughing and said, "Oh, don't be silly. Moles don't bite people." She didn't get the job, and after that story finished making the rounds through all the beauty parlors and church socials in Yellowknife, my poor Aunt Opal May was blackballed by the whole town. She went on to spend the rest of her life bouncing in and out of asylums, alcohol rehab centers and the Ice Capades, but I digress.
Anyway, I came up with a plan. I would appeal to the sailor in Dave and leave a fifth of rum on his doorstep. Then I would appeal to the literary connoisseur by leaving a Tom Clancy novel next to the hooch. Then I would knock on the door and hide in his neighbor's car.
Worked like a charm. Dave accepted the proffered gifts and disappeared into his abode to partake of both, it seems. By 22:30 I heard the empty bottle crash against the wall and then I could hear him mumbling. At first I thought he was praying or casting a spell. I dumped out the snifter of brandy that I normally take with me on jobs like this and pressed it up against the wall of Dave's house to try and hear what he was saying. A brandy snifter doesn't conduct sound nearly as well as a regular glass, so what I heard was, "But if you take the spark plugs out of that rhinoceros, how's he going to get any fishing done?" Figuring that there was very little chance that that was what Dave had actually said, I decided to sneak back into his house to get a better listen. But I'll confess to you now, Dear Reader, that the investigative reporter inside of me was halfway hoping that I'd find someone trying to remove the spark plugs from some rare breed of fishing rhinoceros. That kind of a story would win me a Pulitzer for sure. Then I realized that he was one of those rare folks, like myself, who enjoys reading more if he pronounces all the words as he goes along. I had successfully distracted the occupant.
Now, the map said I should go to the well, face north by northeast and walk sixteen paces. There was no well. Seeing that the map had fulfilled it's usefulness, I blew my nose in it to discourage would-be claim jumpers, tossed it in the lawn, and climbed in the kitchen window; confident that Dave's attention was too enthralled to take notice of yours truly. But without directions, I would just have to rely on investigative reporter's intuition. "Now, if I were a Golden Pomeranian," I thought, "where would I hide?" Dave was in the bedroom. So I chose a spot right behind the couch and started cutting a hole in the floor with a buzz saw. Nothing but dirt. So I tried again by the TV, again beside the refrigerator, under the kotatsu, beside the kitchen door, etc. This is going to sound like golf jargon, but on the eighteenth hole, I finally got a birdie. Seikai wa (the correct answer) under the shower.
After using my trusty Gordy Howe auger on the shower floor I realized I had found a chamber underneath. It reeked of centuries past down there. I peered down my fair-sized-large-mouth-bass width hole, but couldn't see a damned thing. Before doing something stupid like stickinganyappendage in, I remembered what Indy Jones always forgot to check for: boobytraps. I'm no booby. I took about a cubic foot of hair out of the shower drain and threw it down the hole. It set off a booby trap all right. Three rolls of paper rocketed down from somewhere. However people during Tokugawa's time must have been real ankle biters since those three cylinders could dislocate a roach's shoulder at best. My road-flare quickly illuminated the reason for such an insidious yet harmless trap: I had found Ieyasu's throneroom. To describe it as regal would be a lie. However, in its simplicity it looked like the kind of place a man could ponder over the issues of his day and dream great things. Without further a-doo I widened my window to the past and leaped in. I felt like one of those Land of the Lost losers (of Hanna-Barbera fame) running from some asparagus-like monsters. That's when I remembered that I too had a sleestak in the shape of a bombed Dave snoozing one floor above.
My sense of adventure dwindled to mild nausea and major revolt from the smell wafting from the fifteen centimeters of muck on the floor. There was one oddly shaped chair, some illegible manuscripts, and nineteen empty sak bottles. However it seemed that over the past few months Dave must have tried to flush something with the force of a Molatov Cocktail causing a gaping hole in the pipe right over the hole in Toke's throne. The throne itself was unharmed. However even if The Bay Watch gang gave 150%, the Pomeranian was irretrievably lost. Forgive the pun but Geraldo Rivera didn't have to go through this much shit to find Capone's stash. Once again, my dreams of wealth and prosperity slipped through my fingers like so much helium through wicker.
However I do feel like I found the wealth of Ieyasu Tokugawa after all. Not in the form of gold, jewels, even whiskey. I found what a great, powerful man treasured more than riches: a place of solitude, pondering, peace. Mr. Tokugawa fought a hundred battles to find what each of us holds in our hearts. He found peace. He found a place of convenience. You too can find your place of convenience. And I don't think you have to go as far as Tokugawa, or I did. I think if you close your eyes and think happy thoughts, and remember to click those heels together, you can find it in you. I'm Spim Ramsley, and these are my thoughts.