Gabriel had just returned from work. He and four other Filipinos, his co-workers, were still in their work clothes: tabi shoes, baggy trousers and loose jackets. They earn their living putting up scaffolding (ashiba). "We are ninjas," they said jokingly when they saw me staring.

Gabriel was surprised to see me. I met them while they were on their way out for a Friday-night drink. Gabriel invited me to join them. We went to an izakaya (small bar) nearby. We had beer, gin tonic, oolong tea, sashimi and grilled chicken wings. It was my first drink with Gabriel after I left Kotobuki in 1989.

He greeted me with: "How's your family?" He knew I married a Japanese and have a daughter. They're fine, I said, and that my daughter, now in Grade 1, speaks better Nihonggo than I do.

He laughed. "It's always the case," he said. "Children do better than adults."

"How about you?" I asked. "Are you married yet?"

He drew his wallet, pulled out a folded section in it, and spread it out before me. The right fold showed the Virgin Mary's image, and on its lower margin a phrase, "Mother of Perpetual Help." The left fold was a faded picture of a woman who looks like a shy mother of three in the country, with all her children around her.

"My wife and children," Gabriel said referring to the kids. "They're all made in Japan." They were all born in Yokohama. But he sent them home to the Philippines when the eldest turned three years old.

"I cannot raise three children in Japan," he said. "The cost of living here is too much."

Gabriel was a seaman who ended up in Koto when a Filipino whom he met at a disco incited him to jump ship. Immediately, he abandoned life at sea and never boarded a ship again. He fell in love with Koto and with a woman who once worked as a maid for expatriates living in the affluent district of Yamate.

I asked his mates if they too have pictures of their loved ones in their wallets. Sure enough, all four of them had one, even have two photos of their loves and images either of Christ or The Virgin tucked into their wallets.

Gabriel ordered more beer and gin. He ordered some more tuna slices and pork stew.

"These," Gabriel said referring to the faded pictures, "are my lucky charms."
As a father of three, everything has been, he said, "all work and no play."

Each day, he said, he 'talks' to the picture and prays to Mother Mary. "I am lucky," he said. "I'm still healthy and can still work." Indeed, he is; he can. How could he have survived in Japan with just sheer cleverness and industry? There must be some good spirit within him.

"Mabait siya, (He's kind)," one of his mates whispered to me. He has been in Japan since 1987. Although he looks much older now with his dentures and diminishing hair, he's still lucky, in the Kotobuki standard. He has a good job and could send remittances regularly to his family.

In 1988 I worked as a day laborer for a year. One afternoon, I was on my way back to Koto with Pungay, a fellow day laborer. Pungay and I had just emerged from our gemba (building site) near Sakuragicho. We had not reached Koto yet when a police officer on a motorbike stopped us. We could have engaged him in a race in the hills surrounding Koto but we chose to walk cooperatively with him to a koban (police box). The parak had barely started with our interrogation when Pungay immediately pulled out a picture from his wallet. It was a photo of his young wife with three little girls of various ages.

"Sumisen!" Pungay apologized to the police officer. "Gomennasai! Okusan kawaiso! Kodomo kawaiso. Sumimasen! Gomennasai!" He begged profusely to the officer to have pity on him, his wife, and their children. After about two hours of interrogation where we feigned complete ignorance about visa, work permits and Nihonggo, we were released. We had a good laugh afterwards.

The little girls in the picture, I found out, were not his children; they are his nieces. He had specifically directed his wife to "make" that kind of picture. He had rightly anticipated its usefulness. He also has a rosary, its cross and beads luminous in his wallet. He claims it saved us from doing time in jail. I didn't disagree.

The tandem of family picture and religious image, kept in one's wallet, is something peculiar, but uniquely Filipino to a day laborer cum migrant worker in Japan. One: the photo of a loved one gives him a link to the Philippines, his home; it gives him continuity, emotionally speaking, and some kind of spiritual connection. It opens a window for his heart pining for home. Two: the religious image gives him some assurance, some kind of psychological stability, aside from it being a visual symbol of his faith.

I find myself having my own "tandem" every time I get an assignment abroad. In my camera bag, you will find a picture of my daughter and my wife. I would always come home with this safely, with loads of new stories and images of people and places I've gathered on the road. Call this anything you want I call them lucky charms in my wallet.

(Rey Ventura is a freelance journalist based in Tokyo. He is doing research on Filipinos in Japan for a book. You can e-mail him at maharlik@arion.ocn.ne.jp)