There’s nothing like cracked ribs to humble your spirit.
Just tying your shoes is painful. Coughing — you try not to. Sneezing? Ditto.
Laughter is the worst. Like being knifed with a shiv in a prison yard. Staccato. Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab.
I guess I was lucky it wasn’t a knife. Just a few well-placed kicks to the ribs. The standard M.O. Knock ’em down. Kick ’em up.
We’d gone through a bottle of White Horse together, me and my sometimes employer buddy, in the bowels of Osaka — Minami — meaning South. One of those compass bearings that takes on whole new meanings. A rat’s-nest warren of alleyways and ten-stool bars.
Bars were just the beginning. Anything a depraved individual such as myself might want could be had in Minami, Osaka’s soft underbelly. Women, drugs, unlicensed casinos. All under the thumb of the Yaks. Capitalized, because they form the unholy trinity of untouchables, alongside the Japanese Medical Association, and until recently Dentsu, Japan’s largest ad agency. The taboo monoliths you never, ever print a bad word about.
Positive reporting was okay. Photos of the Yamaguchi Gumi, Japan’s über-gang, practicing parading and bowing in a public park in Osaka, their native turf. “Okay” meaning nobody was going to bust into the Mainichi Newspaper’s offices and shoot a reporter or two.
So we were right sloshed, as the Brits say, half a bottle of cheap scotch each, burning through our livers and grey matter, as the mama-san closed the door after us and we began weaving back to my friend’s car … down alleyways just wide enough for three.
They had that walk — what the locals call kata de kaze wo kiru — shoulders swaggering so hard they cut the wind, just looking for a reason to take someone apart.
I forget who got the shoulder bump, probably him since we were both walking on the left, me to his left.
I don’t remember the language that came out of them, but we tried like fools to box them.
Pharmacologically speaking, the fight was rigged — ethanol vs. crystal meth, shabu, in their argot. Japan’s drug of choice smuggled in by the ton from North Korea.
They separated us, one on one. Likely a sweep — and then the pavement.
I remember regaining consciousness just enough to notice a polished leather toe and realize my head might be next. Apologizing works wonders in Japan. OK, I begged.
They left us there sprawled on the asphalt. I guess they had other business to attend to.
Somehow we stumbled back to his car, accompanied by the dull hum of neon and the slosh of someone throwing up nearby.
Two bloodied drunks climbing into a Mercedes, leaking onto the leather, trying to handle a luxury vehicle with blurred vision and fractured dignity.
He pulled a flask from the glove box and took a long hit.
“White Horse?”
“Hibiki,” he muttered. “Special occasion.”
“We celebrating?”
“We’re breathing.”
Japan’s National Health Insurance is comprehensive, but it doesn’t cover damages from brawls. So when the doctor looked at my messed-up face and shattered torso, asking what happened, I gave him the standard line.
”I fell.”
Which was part true. The pointy Italian shoes did the rest.
*All images are copyright 2026 by the author, created via prompts to Gemini & Nano Banana