my change, but I quite frequently forgot to take home the things I had purchased. It was quite impossible for me to make my way around Tokyo by myself. I had no choice but to spend whole days at a time lolling about the house. So I turned my money over to Horiki and the two of us went out together. He was a great bargainer and—this perhaps earned him the ranking of expert in pleasure-seeking—he displayed unusual proficiency in spending minimal sums of money with maximum effect. His talents extended to getting wherever he wanted in the shortest possible time without ever having recourse to taxis: he used by turns, as seemed appropriate, the streetcar, the bus and even steam launches in the river. He gave me a practical education: thus, if we stopped in the morning at a certain restaurant on our way home from a prostitute's and had a bath with our meal, it was a cheap way of experiencing the sensation of living luxuriously. He also explained that beef with rice or skewered chicken —the sort of dishes you can get at a roadside stand—
are cheap but nourishing. He guaranteed that nothing got you drunker quicker than brandy. At any rate, as far as the bill was concerned he never caused me to feel the least anxiety or fear. Another thing which saved me when with Horiki was that he was completely uninterested in what his listener might be thinking, and could pour forth a continuous stream of nonsensical chatter twenty- four hours a day, in whichever direction the eruption of his "passions" led him. (It may have been that his passions consisted in ignoring the feelings of his listener.) His loquacity ensured that there would be
