pieces of mind
The Starbucks on the eleventh floor of Shibuya station has floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the famous crossing, the nearby ultra-modern office buildings, and a multitude of immense screens advertising anti-COVID measures, cosmetics, and Coca-Cola. Unfortunately, the proprietors of this establishment noticed the opportunity, and renting a window seat for thirty minutes costs around a thousand yen. So I’m sitting on a slightly uncomfortable raised chair that faces a wall and using my imagination instead.
Walking around Tokyo, I hear patterns in the names. 橋 (hashi, bridge) and 田 (ta, rice field) appear frequently—often referring to districts that contain no bridges or rice fields whatsoever. Each misnomer reminds the modern world: under the superstructures and faded asphalt, beneath B7F of the Tokyo Metropolitan sub-sub-subway, beneath even the ultra-deep steel piles that enable the city to encroach ever further upon the sky, the roots of an older town linger.
A man talks about the city where he grew up, where he fell in love and married, where he works as a waiter in a ramen shop, where he practices singing late into the night with a powerful, deep voice that kicks and screams with life. His frequent breaks from standard Tokyo Japanese into a warmer, buttery dialect told me the same thing he did: I’ve always lived in Nagasaki.
The English-language voice in the museum, disembodied, passive, metal on metal: On August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki…
But I heard two different names of two different places.
Afternoon in Ginza. It’s raining. I’m carrying too many things. A vending machine draws my eyes (tea!) for slightly too long and I step confidently into two inches of puddle. The cold damp skips my socks and skin and heads straight for bone. My umbrella inverts. I stuff my free hand into a pocket for my phone, poke the map, wipe the screen off and try again—went the wrong direction from the train station. The next logical thought (is there a coffee shop nearby?) fails to arrive, derailed by the vague confusion that has followed me around for the last few years. What am I doing here?