Sister – change
I went to visit her in Tokyo during my spring break. I was looking forward to going to Shibuya and Harajuku with her and buy cute clothes and stationaries.
I was surprised to find another woman living in my sister’s capsule apartment. She was a petite, pixie-cut hair girl, pretty but the dark circle below her large eyes and her skin that lacked in the glow of a young woman made her look haggard. Her voice was husky, like that of people who drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes excessively.
I was then informed that my sister had started working as a hostess at a hostess bar. She met the girl at the bar and arranged a schedule to use the bed alternately by spending some nights at their boyfriends’ houses.
I didn’t know how to react to the news. I had known the existence of a hostess job but had only seen them on TV. They sat with male customers and served drinks and had conversations. Their job description sounded innocuous, but I had also known that the job carried a stigma in society. I was repulsed by the idea of my sister, who was then 19 or 20, flirting with men of my father’s age. But at the same time, I really wanted to trust her that job was nobler than society had deemed it.