Naomi Hirahara

It’s past midnight and someone’s turning the key to my double-lock on my front door. I know who it is and even Shippo doesn’t bother to get out of his doggy bed.

Some women wouldn’t like it if their boyfriends smelled better than them. I’ve never worn perfume and sometimes even the scented pages of fashion magazines cause me to dissolve into a spasm of sneezes. Cortez Williams lays it on thick with ample splashes of cologne on his freshly shaven jaw. By midnight, his afternoon shadow is back and the cologne lingers, but it ...

My cheeks are still a bit flushed from the beer from the Far Bar, but I make sure that I’m fully sober before getting on my bicycle. I’m Hapa and have inherited the Asian flush from my mother’s side. California Vehicle Code Section 21200.5 pretty much says that you can get a citation for riding a bike under the influence. And since a bike is essentially my work wheels, I have to make sure that I don’t end up like my arch enemy Officer Mac Lambert, who had one too many drinks in a Frogtown ...

“You’ll have to leave the premises,” I tell my best friend Nay Pram as I direct people away from the dead body covered in a furry blue costume. My voice goes into law enforcement mode, and she’s not having it.

She flashes her press pass at me.

I squint. “You’re not 120 pounds.” And she has never been, as long as I have known her.

“This is what I get for bringing your stuff over from Osaka’s?” She hands me my backpack. I grunt my thanks while taking out my now slightly wrinkled LAPD shirt and ...

“I just don’t get it,” I say to my partner, Johnny Mayhew, in front of the Los Angeles Convention Center. We are both on our LAPD-issued bikes, watching a line of the most ridiculous cosplayers enter the hall. It’s like my childhood has come to haunt me. An Asian girl is dressed up as Lakitu, the bespectacled turtle who sits on clouds from the videogame Super Mario World. I see Ariel from the animated movie, The Little Mermaid, Star Wars stormtroopers, and at least five Sailor Moons. There’s even a Rilakkuma giant bear who has to be ...

Six months later

In Japan, it was all about family and your family name. That’s why men were adopted into families that had no sons. So the family name could continue.

For the past six months, I’ve been thinking a lot about family—in general and about my specific one. But the Time Out New York reporter’s question still throws me off.

“So, Kaori, tell me about your family restaurant back in Hiroshima. It’s called Aka Okonomiyaki, right?”

The reporter has done his homework, in spite of him not knowing the Japanese language besides maguro and ...