And back beyond that, I remembered the moth-battered paper lanterns outside Watanabe's on a Newpest Friday night. My teenage skin slick with sweat from the jungle wind blowing out of the south and my eyes glittering with tetrameth in one of the big windchime mirrors. Talk, cheaper than the big bowls of ramen, about big scores and yakuza connections, tickets north and beyond, new sleeves and new worlds. Old Watanabe had sat out on the deck with us, listening to it all but never commenting, just smoking his pipes and glancing from time to time in the mirror at his own Caucasian features — always with mild surprise, it seemed to me.