If given only three words to live by, mine would be “najimi no nai” which means alien or unfamiliar and indicates a strange feeling of change felt when you meet a friend after a long time, and they are no more the same. While the word “alien” in English seems too harsh, najimi no nai retains the sweetness in Japanese and implies that perhaps it is us who is lacking and not our dear friend.
When Mizu returns to Tokyo again after being gone for so long, something seems to have changed and because she is a little different too, her arrival feels like an unsettling compromise between her and the city.
Mizu has been reading through the plastic pages of a magazine she picked up while at Haneda airport, and it isn’t too long until she is met with a weird realization followed by a numbness that comes after breathing herself to normality. A colossal range of skyscrapers are spread across the magazine’s sheets and amidst them is a new ward with wooden stores in Shibuya. The ward’s advertisement is more subtle than the Japanese in-your-face ones she is used to, and it is also unrecognizable compared to the Tokyo she had left behind. So-long, she thinks.
Memories resurface and she remembers a friend she knows to derive some sense of affection which the city vehemently denies. He is soon to pick her up from the Terminal 3 arrival.
From where she is seated at the airport, she looks up to see a blur fixture of structures marching in an endless direction towards the main city, further supervised by Mount Fuji that rises and nestles in quiet meditation. She wonders if this city would erect a skyscraper as tall as the peak of Fuji and if it was even possible to build a structure that tall!
Fuji-san is over three thousand meters, her mother had told her while looking at the mountain from a window in their old apartment. One could see the mountain from anywhere in Tokyo. “Mountains like Fuji, they rise and erode so that life goes on”. Her mother explained that the erosion of mountains deposited minerals into the ocean, creating energy and then life – giving Japan one of its biggest industries.
Mizu looks up the height of the tallest tower in Tokyo. It’s 634m. She lets out a sigh. Hopefully she won’t be around to see it happen. Also, would it be architecturally possible to build a tower as tall as Fuji? They would have to leave many airways in between for the strong wind to pass. It’s impossible, certainly.
In a few moments, her pick-up ride arrives and driving it is a friend she has known all her life. He lowers the window to smile at her. “Izu, here”, he calls out, signaling to get in.
The car pulls out of the airport and heads towards Shibuya.
“Shibuya is just like Inero’s shop now, always bobbling with too many faces”, he fills Mizu in. She recalls how he has always left out the first consonant of everyone’s name because of a habit he picked up during his childhood. Mizu and Zeco speak casually about his family trips to Kyoto and the one time he accidently entered Shinero’s store with his slippers on.
“You are still the same”, says Mizu.
He grins. “Heyyy! These Masunagas Tami got me gives me some edge.” He tilts his head and smirks to show his glasses off. Kitami is somebody he says he loves now.
He drops Mizu off at the apartment building.
“Tuning in from Denbouin”, he says and heads off for his night shift.
Mizu’s old apartment’s lease is ending tomorrow and she must clear out her things tonight. The apartment is being given to someone willing to pay a higher rent and if this wasn’t the apartment that Mizu had always rented in Shibuya, she wouldn’t be feeling so displaced.
After checking into the room on the fifth floor, she instantly packs her things. How weird was it, that it was usually unpacking one had to do after coming home from abroad, but here Mizu is seen packing another bag. She is also taking things that might seem really insignificant to an onlooker, such as an old hairbrush and a convenience store nail filler, things of little luxury that she had purchased after earning her first proper note. A lot of thoughts hold her ransom, the main one being that this was the last time she would be in Tokyo.
After packing her bag with what little was left, she heads to the district in Shibuya that was plastered over the magazine pages and decides to have a Yakitori dinner for a change.
When her cab stops at the ward, she notices a large building with a yellow sign showcasing the name of a restaurant, “Torikizoku” in the midst of buildings that retain the essence of the old Tokyo she knew. It is a mixed feeling of renewed oldness which she cannot come to terms with. Could one progress backwards? In the elevator heading towards the restaurant, many Japanese women dressed in office attire speak about the economic crisis that has struck the city and the consequent closure of businesses, and whilst all this talk was concerning, Mizu felt like it was no more her place to be concerned.
On the fifth floor, Mizu enters the restaurant and notices that most of the tables are taken, a sweet cigarette smoke hangs low in the air along with the moving and clinking of things, and the smell of BBQ occupies the room densely and makes one specially crave for skewered chicken.
When the waiter hands over the electronic tablet to place an order, Mizu is immediately relieved. Ordering food through the tablet saved her from the thought-cartwheels her brain would summon to forget the names of the dishes she wanted. This happened only in Tokyo for some reason. Then she would look at the waiter quizzically, stutter, and fumble all over the menu and its many pages. Alas, no more of that. The tablet bears a Japanese and English menu with large pictures of dishes, perhaps for the foreigners. Every two or three-stick yakitori is priced at 298 yen and even the alcohol is the same price.
Her order arrives and she looks at the cube-cut pieces of meat that are pierced through with a BBQ stick and glazed lightly with a sauce. On taking the first bite, immediately she lulls into a dazed feeling since the sauce is a blend of mirin, sake, and soy, a very potent trinity, and just enough of it coats the skewered meat. We Japanese always have a way of championing the ingredients, she thinks, taking another bite – we hold on to what makes us feel good and mingle only with things and people that compliment us. She holds us the skewers triumphantly. Tokyo, she thinks, have we changed at all?
After her meal, she decides to walk instead of taking a cab to really look at Tokyo. The new ward around her scattered with pachinko parlors, cafes, drug stores, and small shopping marts with clothes on sale were good to keep her company. Most of these shops catered to the Japanese, she thought as she walked through the street. One had to really love the culture of Japan to have an enjoyable time at Tokyo, she thought again. Mizu did sense that something was different, and she guessed that perhaps it was her own self that had changed.
She began walking towards her old apartment which was further beyond Yoyogi Park when suddenly her phone rang.
“This is Zeco from Denbouin, your cabbie from a little while ago.”
“Well, hello”, replied Mizu, expectantly.
“Don’t mind that I absolutely stole your number whist you were busy talking about your trip to some god-forsaken place. And since it is in the way to apologize, I shall play a song for you this evening. What would you like?”
“Care to surprise me”, said Mizu, in little anticipation.
“Dry Flower by Uri, then!”, he said, playing it for the umpteenth time now. Oh, how she hated to predict things! She detested the song and its unreasonable emotions!
As she walks along the mud path in Yoyogi park, she remembers the first time Zeco played Yuri’s song for her – they were walking the streets at Omoide Yokocho (Memory Lane) where the old forgotten alleyways were beating with life as young salarymen feasted on beers and yakitori. Think of an old phoenix, hysterical, witty, and drunk, that smeared the ashes it rose from on its face, that’s Memory Lane. It was a rosy time and made her recall how Zeco revered Tokyo and swore to never leave the city because it sustained him. He fixed telephones booths at night and worked as a technician at radio stations by day, which made Mizu think that he did know Tokyo better than her.
Now, looking at the Zelkova trees in the park, she thinks about the spaces between branches and how no two branches that began their journey together were similar because of the space between them.
Little carts with books and souvenirs accent the road at the park, but Mizu isn’t going to purchase a book this time. After the song fades out into a silence, she tells Zeco that she would be leaving Tokyo tomorrow before daybreak and surprisingly, he doesn’t ask her anything, not even if she will be back, but he still wonders about his dear friend.
Mizu City 