東京旅 - Travel to Tokyo

At Doshisha, there is a four-day weekend break towards the end of November. Early on I decided to use this time to go to Tokyo and visit some friends: my fellow Japanese majors Ariel and Lucian at Aoyama Gakuin and Rikkyo University, and maybe—hopefully—my old roommate Yuika and friends who studied abroad at Linfield last year from Yokohama’s Kanto Gakuin University.

For a long time it seemed I might as well go to the moon as soon as go to Tokyo! I, who had no understanding of my own city’s public transportation and who had not even ventured to nearby Osaka yet, go to Tokyo alone! But booking an overnight bus and a cheap Asakusa hostel turned out to be surprisingly easy. The one problem was I’d planned to be in Tokyo from Friday to Sunday, and my friends all had classes on Friday until late. I would be alone that first day. I made a list of three places I’d always wanted to visit to keep myself occupied: Tsukiji fish market, Yasukuni Shrine, and Meiji Shrine/Harajuku.

The day I left my dorm and said “Ittekimasu!” (I’m going) to my friends there I was almost in tears with a sudden nervousness. As I closed the door behind me I stood on the doorstep for a moment and made a resolution, General MacArthur style: “I shall return!” Then I set off into the crisp autumn night.

The overnight bus was a miserable 7-hour blur of drowsy wakefulness, an aching rear end, and the driver’s frequent announcements about how glad he was we’d chosen Willer Express and oh he was so very sorry to have woken us while we were sleeping. Japanese people seem to enjoy polite announcements in public places.

I arrived at Shinjuku station and saw Tokyo for the first time, tall grey buildings under a grey sky lit with a pale sun. At 6:30 in the morning the streets were quiet. I made myself presentable in a bathroom and set off for Tsukiji, feeling rather sick and bleary-eyed, but I perked up when I got off the train at Tsukiji-shijo station and immediately recognized the smell of fish. Most of the people in the station were either gruff-looking men in shiny muckboots or tourists like me. I followed a European couple into the outer market and, craving sashimi for breakfast, wandered towards the food stalls and tiny restaurants. A man in a stall addressed me in broken English, “Miss, I recommend you go to place with most people. It is best food.” I thanked him and, contrary to my original instinct to go to one of the emptier restaurants, waited for a seat at one where the line went out the door and down the street. It was well-worth the wait! I chose salmon and tuna sashimi that came with a dollop of mustard-colored uni, sea urchin. It was all delicious! The raw fish melted in my mouth like butter. After breakfast I wandered some more and took pictures. I take more photos when I am alone than when I am with someone—alone, I can share interesting things I see only with my camera. At one stall I was suddenly scolded in English, “Hey, you should ask first!” Ashamed, I apologized and asked permission as prettily as I knew how in Japanese. Sins gruffly forgiven, I took a few more miserable photos and then escaped, a weak feeling near my eyes that meant I might cry. I always feel so terrible when I realize I’ve been rude to a Japanese person. Quite finished now with Tsukiji, which was getting busier by the moment anyway, I left for my next destination, Yasukuni Shrine.

When I was younger I had a great interest in the Pacific theater of WWII. My grandpa had experienced it as a flight technician on an aircraft carrier, which was narrowly missed by kamikaze, though that is the extent of my knowledge of his experience—every time he tried to talk about the War, he’d break down in tears. His stories died with him, and I was left to wonder what could have been so terrible that a man could not talk about it even 50 years after the fact. I read a lot of books, and it was in one of them I first heard about Yasukuni Shrine, as the place where the Japanese war dead are enshrined as deities. Today the shrine is associated with the radical right wing in Japan and is a bit of a scandal that it still exists. I had an inclination to see it for myself, and talked about it with some friends. My friend Carina said she could never go, being German. A Korean friend said she had gone once and immediately felt sick to her stomach just seeing the shrine’s entrance. The dead don’t bother me, I thought. Good or bad, hero or war criminal, they all came to the same end. So I decided to live dangerously and just go.

The sky wept a drizzling grey rain when I arrived and stood gaping up at the largest and ugliest torii gate I’d ever seen. The shrine was laid out very symmetrically and had a definite masculine, militaristic air to it. I approached the main hall and watched the people—all of them older men, not old enough to have been in the War, but old enough to have grown up in its lingering shadow—coming up to pray. I had to wonder what their thoughts were. Judging by the stares I was getting, they wondered the same about me. I usually feel very calm in shrines, but here the air was heavy and charged. I sat under a shelter for a bit, thinking, while the suited men around me flicked their cigarettes and talked business and didn’t notice how pretty the rain was dripping like tears down a chain from the roof. I went into the Yushukan, Yasukuni’s military history museum, when I learned there was a discount for college students. It was eye-opening to say the least. Beginning from the Meiji era, Japan is presented as a nation struggling to liberate its Asian neighbors, provoked economically by the Imperialistic West until it had no choice but to do things like invade its neighbors and attack Pearl Harbor (according to the museum, that was no surprise attack either, but something Roosevelt had carefully orchestrated). I had never seen Japanese military history from such a nationalistic viewpoint! No wonder so many are angry over the shrine’s existence. But some things touched me without judgments. The beautiful bride dolls given to the shrine by mothers whose young sons never had a chance to marry, the inner sanctum of the photographs of those enshrined there—young face after fresh young face. What a cruel waste, I thought.

“When Time shall have softened passion and prejudice, when Reason shall have stripped the mask from misrepresentation, then Justice, holding evenly her scales, will require much of past censure and praise to change places.” I found this quote on a memorial in the shrine. It fits the mood of Yasukuni to a T, but I didn’t like it, because it can be used to support any opinion, really.

I left Yasukuni at last for Meiji-jingu in Yoyogi Park near Harajuku. It was about 1:00pm and I was hungry by now. On the way to find some food an old lady tripped and fell near me, hitting my knee with her head very hard. She apologized profusely over and over. I was sure she was the more hurt, being so elderly and having hit her head. I was worried but could only keep asking if she was really ok. My knee actually hurt quite a bit, but when I at last walked it off I found the twisted, sore feeling it had gotten from the overnight bus was completely gone. I saw an udon shop advertising a bowl of noodles for 180 yen. Thinking I wouldn’t find anything cheaper I popped in. The thing about such places is they’re really only frequented by salarymen with short lunch breaks, and so I felt self-conscious being alone, female, and unable to slurp my noodles properly. It was a very filling and yummy lunch though!

After Yasukuni, Meiji Shrine was a breath of fresh air. I’ve always rather liked the Meiji Emperor in the history classes I’ve taken and books I’ve read, and I relaxed immediately on seeing the beautiful tori gate entrance and the long forested path to the shrine which gradually makes one forget bustling Harajuku outside. Happy to be somewhere nice again I washed my hands and mouth at the entrance to the shrine and tossed a coin into the offering box, clapping my hands the way the Japanese do to get the deity’s attention, though I prayed to my own God who doesn’t need money or clapping to hear prayers. I wandered around and took a few pictures, and then, being very tired out by now, sat on a bench and simply watched people. Ariel and I had plans to meet up for dinner after 6, but I had some time to kill.
The best thing I saw was a young family dressed in kimono for 7-5-3 day, their little 3-year-old girl in a bright red kimono. She pattered about in her kimono sandals, hiding behind her daddy’s hakama skirts and dashing away giggling uproariously whenever he, with the most delighted smile on his face, tried to turn around and tickle her, their play made graceful by the traditional Japanese clothes. It was so pretty! I went up to the couple and asked for photos, and the little girl said, “konnichi wa!” to me, and “sayonara!” when I left. Ohh! I wanted to take the little princess home with me. I went back to my bench, which had been empty, but presently someone whom I sensed was a young man came and sat down on its opposite end. I couldn’t really rest with someone sitting there stealing glances at me, so I got up to leave after a few minutes. As I stepped away, I distinctly heard, “Sorry!” from the bench, the Japanese way of saying “excuse me” in English. Following some unconscious instinct I ignored it, and heard “Sorry!” once more before I ducked through the gate and out of the shrine. I was a bit sorry I’d ignored someone and thought maybe he had had a perfectly innocent motive, and searched my bag and pockets to make sure I hadn’t left my camera or maps at the bench or something, but when I realized he couldn’t have been addressing me about a wasuremono –forgotten item—I decided it had been best to trust that instinct. I suddenly felt a bit vulnerable, being alone, and as I walked down Ometesando towards Aoyama I felt men’s eyes on me everywhere. At Aoyama some kind of Christmas concert was taking place outdoors—I sat down to listen to the carols sung in Japanese by the beautiful choir and wait for Ariel. A boy sat down next to me, and addressed me in Japanese (which always makes me think well of whoever is talking to me), “Excuse me, do you know when this concert is supposed to start?” This time I did not feel so reserved, so I said, “Sorry, I don’t know,” –normally I would have ended the conversation there, but I added, “I’m actually not a student here.” “Oh? Where do you study?” “At Doshisha in Kyoto, I’m an exchange student.” “Oh really! Doshisha. That must be hard work. What are you studying?” Our conversation went on, but he soon began to ask me about my plans for that evening and weekend, whether the friend I was waiting for at Aoyama was a boy or a girl, and returning again and again to Roppongi as a place he knew well and one people new to Tokyo should see—hinting he wanted to suggest taking me there. All of this said in his smoker’s voice started to give me a bad feeling, but I was friendly until he introduced himself, and when I told him my name he connected it immediately with Leah Dizon, a well, Playboy model of sorts, and that comment did him in. I let the conversation die and ignored his fidgeting in the lingering awkwardness, and last he got up and said, “See you around,” and left.

I went back to listening to Silent Night in Japanese, and at the end of the concert I at last met Ariel. Ariel is shy and quiet, and it was strange to meet her there in Japan! She took me to an Indian curry restaurant, which was run by real Indian people and each bowl of delicious curry came with a piece of steaming naan bread bigger than my head. We lingered at the restaurant and chatted until quite late, and I realized I would have to hurry to make it to my hostel in Asakusa before the check-in time ended.

I messed up the trains and ran late. With ten minutes to spare I made it the right station, staring at the boxes the homeless people were living in and thinking jokingly to myself if the hostel closed I could always beg a box from one of them.

The next day I got up early and went to Yokohama to meet the KGU friends I hadn’t seen for a year. I got on yet another train and settled in for an hour and a half ride. I’d come successfully to Tokyo, but I felt like what I’d seen so far of the city was the insides of innumerable trains and stations. Suddenly bright sunlight hit my closed eyelids. The train had shot out of under the ground into the blinding morning. I gazed happily out the window for the whole ride, as the city became urban and filled with apartment buildings. How could there be so many people in one city? The buildings continued until I wanted to scream, but then bits of green began to appear, growing from the gardens of larger houses to parks and finally a forest or two. I stepped off the train, and a cold, fresh wind hit me as it blew through narrow, busy streets. Yokohama! Suddenly a familiar face appeared, and Yuka was running toward me, “LEAH!! HISASHIBURI!! (long time no see)” We collided in a happy hug. Misato my conversation partner followed. Together we walked from the station to the KGU campus. Today they were busy; their class was participating in an English communication contest that I’d said I’d help out with. Hearing Misato and Yuka’s voice again swept me back to last year, when they were all at Linfield…the happiest semester I’d spent at Linfield thus far. But more happy reunions were in store. Misato and I entered the room where her class was preparing for the contest, and there was Yuika, my old roommate from last year! Happy tears glistened in her eyes. Oh, it was strange to meet again in Japan! Our friend Shin wasn’t able to come, being busy and grown-up as a new kaisha-in (company worker), but Misato called him and handed the phone to me. His voice brought back memories of the one time I had been invited along to Yuika’s friendship family’s house in McMinnville and we’d all made cookies and played in their hot-tub.

Golden sunlight spilled into the empty classroom, and we spent the hours sitting on the floor preparing the speeches for the contest. It was as natsukashii (nostalgic) as a Japanese drama—working on a project with the four of them was like being back at Linfield again.

During the contest Mitsuyoshi came. I saw him sitting in the back hunched under a hoodie, looking the same as I’d remembered from last year. After the contest (our team explained the study abroad system at Linfield, and we won a trophy for Best Effort!) Mitsuyoshi came down to the stage to say hello. I hugged him without thinking, and was duly laughed at by the Japanese people around. “Ooooh!!” Hugs in Japan are so rare, they usually only mean one thing. Mitsuyoshi laughed it off and hugged me back, saying he was ureshii (glad) to hug a pretty girl. Yes, he was the same Mitsuyoshi as ever. After the contest I went with Yuika, Yuka, Miku, Misato, and Cassie, Brenna, and Nicole—Japanese minors from Linfield who are studying at KGU and who had also helped with the contest—with Yuika’s class and their sensei to an izakaya (traditional-style bar/pub). I sat next to Yuika. I couldn’t believe I was together again with the best roommate I ever had, and that the day was already coming to a close. The boy next to me, Yuika’s classmate Yuta-san, flushed red after only a few mouthfuls of beer and began to talk merrily to me in English. He’d studied abroad in Arkansas for nine months and his English was very good. I asked if he’d had a good experienced. He smiled a little sadly. “I wish I’d been less shy and made more friends, actually.” His words sunk into my heart. They would be echoed later by my classmate Lucian.
After the izakaya Cassie, Nicole, and Brenna went home and the four girls and I went to get my train, stopping to take puri-kura (Japanese photobooth pictures). On the train Yuika and Yuka sat opposite me. I noticed them staring and smiling strangely. “What?” “It’s just a like dream…meeting you here in Yokohama!” “Exactly,” said Yuika, “But if it’s a dream I don’t want to wake up.” When at last the time came to say goodbye we paused in front of the automatic ticket scanners, the late-night commuters swirling around us. Yuika took hold of my hand wouldn’t let go, tears filling her eyes. “There will be other times,” said Misato calmly, “This is only the first time we’ll meet Leah in Japan.” “Of course, of course!” we said. But somehow we both seemed to know with my schoolwork and Yuika’s rigorous job-hunting, meeting again would be difficult. It had been the best day in Japan so far, and I had a feeling one like it might not come again.

On the train home I thought of the friendships I’ve made at Linfield. Most of them are with international students and those who now live or work in Europe, Asia, South America — would I ever see those people again? Even now my dorm-mates, whom I already love so much, come from places like Germany, France, England, Korea…after the year is up, I will have to say goodbye to them as well. As fun and rewarding as international friendships are, they are heart-breaking. I had worked and planned hard to meet Yuika and the other KGU friends, but could I do the same for my other friends in other countries? Oh well, I thought, more excuses to travel! My heart did not belong to one country only, I realized.

The next day I met Lucian at Asakusa-eki, and together we wandered around the crowded environs of Senso-ji Temple. We spotted a lovely Shinto bride and groom in a glittering rickshaw, a performing monkey that made me quite depressed, and were accosted by a group of Waseda students who were offering free English tours of the temple in order to practice their English. They were a fun group of kids and we ended up talking mostly in Japanese and about many more things than just the temple! We found out they were freshmen, and their excited faces made me think, “Ahh, how young they are.” And I also thought how different they were from Kyoto young people, who are terribly shy! After we said goodbye to our new friends at last Lucian and I bought chocolate-dipped bananas and sat down in a little park area. The ginko tree above whirled down yellow leaves while the famous five-storied pagoda rose into the blue sky before us. We talked for a few hours about our experiences so far. We both discovered our classes are frustratingly easy, but Lucian seems to have had better luck about making Japanese friends. “Don’t think of yourself as so foreign,” he said, “And don’t focus so much on academics. You’ll regret not meeting more people at the end of the year.”
That is easy for you to say, I thought, you who are more Japanese than the Japanese themselves—even his way of walking wasn’t American—and who thinks of academics the way Ron Weasley does from Harry Potter. Oh well. I resolved to take his advice to heart.

Shadows began to lengthen, and we headed to Harajuku to meet up with Ariel again. On the way we were met by an older woman who began chatting pleasantly and asked for donations for tsunami victims in some prefecture. In America I never give money to strangers, but somehow that day I couldn’t say no. Just after I’d given her a thousand yen a man on a bike came by, “Don’t give her anything!” he shouted, “She’s scamming you!” “No I’m not!” she shouted back, and Lucian and I thought we’d best leave. Embarrassed we’d been swindled, we decided we’d learned a good lesson the hard way.

At Harajuku we met Ariel and the three of us went to Ikebukuro to get a glimpse of Rikkyo University and find some dinner. In the restaurant with them I felt dreamy again. The three ’12 Japanese majors, together in Tokyo…it somehow seemed so grown-up, like the first time I’d gone to a restaurant with friends and without my parents at age 14. We were all growing up. Who knew how we’d change in the coming year. Lucian had admitted to not knowing Ariel well. “Oh, who cares,” I’d said, “We need to look out for each other. Next year we’ll take classes and graduate together, after all.”

After dinner we wandered around Sunshine City, a mall in Ikebukuro. Ikebukuro was pulsating with crowds and flashing billboards, a big glittering city but not at all high class. In the mall Lucian took us to the Ghibli store and we sighed over expensive Totoro plushies and I purchased a few little omiyage (souvenirs) for siblings and friends. I spend more money if it’s not for myself.

At 9:00, I said goodbye to Lucian and Ariel, with promises to meet again in Kyoto, I was left to kill time in Shinjuku station while I waited for the overnight bus at 11:00. As it happened I got horribly lost in the endless station for a few hours. I asked directions a few times, but could never quite understand the directions given to me in Japanese. Frustrated, exhausted, alone, sagging under my heavy back-pack, I began to cry as I wandered through the streets surrounding the station, looking for the bus stop. I had mistaken trains and gotten a little lost a few times on my trip, but it was never enough to phase me. Now I just wanted to curl in a ball and have a good cry. I snuffled miserably as I walked, wishing a nice old ojii-san, or a cute onii-san, would take pity on me and ask what was the matter and show me the way to the bus stop. Instead as I walked down a narrow dark passage I noticed a middle-aged man loitering there in the shadows smoking. He clicked his tongue as I walked by as one might to call a cat. Filled with disgust and fear I got out of there as fast as I could to a lit and crowded shop front. Angry now, my tears disappeared and I felt renewed energy; my brain cleared and after a few minutes found the bus stop easily. I got a call from French classmates Jeremy and Valentine, who were taking the same bus back to Kyoto, and who were lost too. Having the mission of finding them and bringing them to the bus stop cheered me up considerably, but there was trouble again when we boarded the bus. My seat number said “8”, so I thought that meant seat 8, but it turns out it meant row 8. Seat 8 was next to Jeremy, so he said it would be nice if I could just stay there and we could sit together. The Japanese man who would have sat next to Jeremy said that was quite alright, he’d trade—the lady I was supposed to sit with said she didn’t mind the swap either. But the bus driver disagreed. They couldn’t let a boy and girl who hadn’t booked together sit next to each other. I think the problem wasn’t Jeremy and I (everyone on the bus seemed to think we were a couple) but the Japanese man and the woman who would now have to sit next to each other. The kind Japanese man, who had a sweet babyface with big eyes, argued with the bus driver for us until people sitting around us started whispering and I got really embarrassed. I said very shortly to the bus coordinator, interrupting her excuses, “I got it. If it’s such a big problem, I’ll sit in my own seat. The problem was I just didn’t know where it was.” And Jeremy and the Japanese man had been too gentlemanly. Grumpy that I was being talked about in my hearing by the other Japanese passengers, that I’d embarrassed Jeremy and that nice Japanese man, that I’d snapped and been rude when I was the one who’d caused the problem, I slumped in my seat and pouted. We also happened to be the only foreigners on that bus. Stupid gaijin, I thought, not doing things chanto (properly) and being so rude. The shame was too much. More tears came out of under my forcibly closed eyelids as I tried to sleep.

The morning came slowly. It was very cold in Kyoto. I felt sick and could barely walk. As I walked by the man who’d argued on my behalf last night I wanted to apologize to him, but he looked half-dead now too and the Japanese words wouldn’t come anyway. But the cold air refreshed me, and at last I was fitting my key into the lock of dorm’s front door. “Tadaima!” (I’m home)