The Great Mystery of the Disappearing Derrière

The mystery is finally solved.

“Which mystery?” you’re probably asking yourself, completely oblivious to this quandary suspendended in the minds of many. Well, in my mind anyway:

It is the mystery of the yellow woman’s shrinking posterior in America.

Here in the US, whenever I tell my black friends of my exclusive preference for yellow women, they immediately respond with, “but they aint got no ass.” After which I am forced to school them about the state of Japanese women’s posteriors in Japan. In Japan, observing women well endowed in the buttocks is more common than men in the West can imagine. For those of you who’ve read Black Passenger Yellow Cabs, you can recall that the first thing which attracted me to my wife “Shoko” (not her real name, but her name in the book.) was her round cakes, as she traveled up the escalator at Sannomiya station.

But since her arrival in the States in 06 and especially since my return in 08, something has gone amiss with Shoko’s derrière. She had been maintaing a standard, albeit a diminished one, by doing her squats at the gym, where at her peak she was able to squat her own weight: 125 pounds. Then came Thanksgiving, followed by her final exams and Christmas. We haven’t had our regular regiment at the gym since November and now my beloved posterior, Shoko’s posterior that is, is all but gone.

When I met Shoko in April of 2003, she was 23 years old and had never ever set foot in a gym, but owned an onion that would bring pools of tears to your eyes. So what was she and other Japanese women doing in Japan, that they aren’t doing in the US? Recently I had an epiphany;

It’s the lifestyle.

In Japan, women walk and ride their bicycles everywhere. On any given day, they’re climbing hundreds of stairs. Because, if one is young and able bodied in Japan, but chooses to use the elevator instead of the stairs at the train station, one will be greeted with overt looks of contempt. Of course, you are exempt if you’re hauling luggage. It’s that vigorously active lifestyle: climbing those hundreds of steps at JR, Hankyu, Hanshin, Kintetsu train stations, which gives Japanese women, IN JAPAN, their Africa-esque glutes, of which many, if not most, are ashamed. The last thing Japanese men want is a woman with a big round ass.

Moreover, Japanese women – fashionistas that they are -are almost always wearing 15 foot heels, even if they’re going hiking. Seriously, I’ve gone on dates with women who wore heels to the beach, AND WOULD NOT REMOVE THEM IN THE SAND. But I digress. Daily walking (in heels) and stair climbing ensures rump maintenance.

Here in America, Shoko no longer has to climbed those stairs on a daily basis, and neither does she have to walk anywhere. Remeber that 80’s song by Missing Persons? “Only a nobody walks in LA.” Her modes of transportation do not require the exertion of any of her own energy: the elevator, the escalator and the car, which has an automatic transmission. As if that wasn’t bad enough, sitting in class and the library for hours, was the death knell to my Shoko’s butt. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for her empowerment, education and otherwise. But not only is her tuition at USC exorbitant, it’s literally costing her her ass.

However, we’ve endeavoured to change all that. We are back in the gym for rigorous training and our apartment building consists of 12 floors and 12 flight of stairs. We will now be pretending that they are the stairs at a Japan Rail station.

And just like it was on the very first day we met some 8 years ago, it will be great fun peeking up her skirt as she climbs the stairs.