I smell it too.

That’s too bad.

That curious practice was the basis for a new piece, one that I’ve been thinking about making for at least a couple of decades. My plan was to bring innocuous photographs depicting the odd bit of pubic hair into Japan, where the dutiful customs inspector would blot out the offending bits. The altered images would then become the finished pieces.

Today was my first chance to realize my idea, so I flew to Japan ready for aesthetic fun. I copied a generic photograph of someone’s groin, then crudely altered it in my computer. I came up with a grotesque image of an androgynous being with a large, black hole where the genitals used to be. I printed twenty copies; I figured my customs collaborator and I would make a twenty-piece edition after I landed.

After my plane touched down in Osaka, I told the immigration control inspector that I had some photographs she should see. She ignored me, stamped my passport, and said, “Everything A-OK. Have nice day. Next!”

And now I’m stuck with twenty mediocre photographs of a distorted groin.

The Japanese culture police are nothing if not inscrutable.

I recalled my first dip in the Atlantic after my most recent trip across the Pacific. Although I’ve crossed the Pacific Ocean many times, this is my first time in Japan. (Going from plane to plane outside Tokyo doesn’t count.)

This is the revelation I had after my lamentably uneventful walk through customs: everyone here is Japanese!

The clerks and cops? All Japanese. The waitresses and waiters? They’re Japanese. Taxi drivers, school girls, and bums? Japanese too. That flood of dreary salarymen in cheap suits pouring onto my train? Yep, Japanese.

Virtually everyone on this grim, industrious island is Japanese!

Hai!

Hai!

I’ve seen a thousand ships in a hundred ports, but I never saw a large ship with an anchor in the stern until I arrived in Shimonoseki.

Perfect!

Perfectly inscrutable!

Hai!

Whacka whacka whacka whacka whacka yow!

The opaque toilet technology frightens me. And that’s why I was delighted to come across an honest, straightforward, porcelain hole in the floor at the library in Asa. Of all places.

In spite of my appearance, an old, balding bureaucrat insisted that I sample some dish with an indecipherable Japanese name.

“I’m sorry,” I said with a bow, “but I do not understand Japanese.”

“Actually, I was speaking in French,” the bureaucrat explained.

“Ah so,” I replied with another bow. “I am afraid I don’t speak French either. What is the name of this concoction in English?”

He pointed to a sign on the corner of table.

I needed to wash the thought of chewing on cold, greasy bacon out of my mouth, so I headed to a nearby beer table.

The beer tables were my favorite part of the reception: I counted dozens of them! Each table had three half-liter bottles of beer, one from each of the major Japanese breweries. I poured a small glass (we’re in Japan, no?) of beer, and by the time I’d had a few sips, I found myself at another beer table for another refill. And so on.

The small bottles of beer were always full. Every time someone poured a glass of beer, one of the omnipresent Japanese servants appears with a fresh, new bottle. Legendary Japanese efficiency at my service!

Infinite beer! Made in Japan! Hai!