Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Dina—the author does not explicitly state whether she is the protagonist from the title story— decides to leave Baltimore and move to Tokyo, certain that she can earn enough money there to then live “somewhere cheap and tropical for a year” (210). Dina’s neighbor, Miss Gloria, encourages Dina to go. Dina has been fascinated by Japan for years based on depictions in movies and the Japanese food she had eaten, but when she gets to Tokyo, Dina finds it difficult to get a job. There is an economic downturn, which means that businesses feel obligated to hire Japanese people first. Dina is finally hired to work in an amusement park that hires a lot of foreigners. Dina spends the summer working with a young man named Ari. After the summer ends, Ari and Dina are both unemployed. Dina sells her return plane ticket and searches for another job.

There are very few other black people in Tokyo, and Dina is constantly exotified by Japanese men who call her “sexy.” Ari finds a new job, but Dina still searches, and her temporary visa expires. Ari suggests that she take a job sweeping a pachinko parlor, but Dina doesn’t want to fulfill the