by S. J. Parks
She was disappointed. She had imagined she would have a guide – at least to the centre of town.
‘But we should hang … definitely,’ he added.
It was such a little offer – she wouldn’t press him on it.
The plane dipped sharply sending her body temperature up until she felt a little sick. Below were the rice paddy fields which from this height it seemed there was little change in what she had left behind.
‘You okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
He was, she thought, genuinely concerned. She slumped forwards, fighting what might have been too embarrassing.
When they disembarked she was met in the terminal by a bank of chilled air laced with the smell of fast food. In the café, large, red, paper lanterns radiated a warm light. It was the red of the morning sun that rose early in the east. Her mother had talked about Amaterasu, the Goddess of the morning sun who created night and day and painted the Japanese landscape. It was part of their personal folklore and her mother had said she was her goddess: strong, creative and forgiving. And now on arrival, though she wasn’t a tourist as such she didn’t feel any immediate sense of belonging; this was a new world to her.
In the queue they said a simple goodbye. She opened her British passport at the photograph where her own almond eyes were lost to the stamps and seals that ward off counterfeiters. Her name, with its distinct spelling, somehow promised she would finally learn the truth about her own identity.
As he left beyond the Visa line, she waved, touching the pocket where she had put his meishi business card. And so he left her between the no man’s land of duty-free and the threshold of Japan to find her way into the centre.
She marched blindly, past the bilingual signs of welcome and the helpful English guidance into town, to find the taxi ranks. It was too much for her to work out even in her own language. Luggage in tow she ignored the helpfully positioned tourist information desk and, in an ill-judged move, got into a yellow cab.
As the cab drove off, Ed’s card lay behind in the plane, forgotten amongst the collected crumbs beneath the armrest that had divided them.
Chapter 2
‘Entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee; For whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; your people shall be my people’
−Ruth, to Naomi (Ruth 1:16-18, King James Bible)
Hana’s cab hurtled to join the writhing snake of traffic on the elevated section of the Tokyo expressway. It followed the contours of the Sumida River into downtown Tokyo where it split into so many tributaries, running off to Ginza, Chiyoda Ku and Tsukiji.
It hurt as she watched the taxi-meter move faster than the city as they drove across it. Beneath the highway they ventured into back streets, where the air was already thick with the smell of yakitori, so strong it might be an impediment to the karaoke drifting through alleys, eventually getting lost and petering out. Once they reached Shimokitazawa the noise of the traffic gave way to the random calls from the pachinko parlour as the car slowed to the pace of the footfall.
The end of the afternoon was still hot when she clambered out on the unfinished road at the top of a inauspicious residential cul de sac. As she counted the yen notes into the driver’s stark white gloves he must have read her surprise at the fare because he dropped his head in an apologetic bow. The empty street was pockmarked with the shadows of air-con units and laced with scrambled utility wires that looked as if they had been restrung in haste.
She stuffed the change into her pocket. Her jeans had crusted from the spilt tea and felt as pleasant as if someone else had worn them before her. Her mind went back to Tom, alone in her flat. Would Sadie keep him company? Sadie had borrowed her jacket and had only just returned it in time before she left and she could never quite be relied on. What was she doing here in Tokyo and here the hell was she? It was it was a long way from home.
The taxi left and as the dust settled at her feet, a regret that she should have come at all gently settled. Shimokitazawa: a quiet residential suburb that the guidebook promised as a ‘suburb of film café’s, low-key nightlife’ with ‘hundreds of reasonable restaurant choices’. Not that she had any money left after her cab ride. She consoled herself that at least the budget homestay rates had been agreed in advance; she had chosen the homestay program to save on costs but also for a chance to live with a Japanese family.
As she wheeled her case past the misaligned wall at the entrance of number 65, she realized that she had got what she paid for. It was nearing 6 p.m. as she rang the bell.
Chapter 3
‘Clear-voiced cuckoo,
Even you will need
The silvered wings of a crane
To span the islands of Matsushima’
−Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
The front door opened before her hand left the chanting, electronic bell. Perhaps the woman always watched for visitors. She was slight, a good head shorter than her and as agitated as a bird that does not own the pavement. Her greeting seemed lost in the effort of removing her housecoat.
Hana ignored the temptation to step back and call after the taxi but steeled herself to walk into this stranger’s house. It smelt savoury but was not unpleasant. The hall was spacious with a large central staircase of thin matchstick bannisters, empty but for a stainless-steel clock in a plastic mahogany case and from the curling rug at the doorstep, it was shabby. But she managed to hide her disappointment; find a smile and make appreciative noises as she surveyed the gallery landing, the empty walls and tired decor. Her own home was such a contrast to this with of indigo and woodblock prints, brush-stroked scrolls, thumb-printed pottery and hand-painted china; a densely rich homage to Japan.
There was an unease behind the woman’s welcome. Maybe her appearance or the stain across her jeans was to blame? Her middle-aged Japanese host was tiny, and had pulled her thin hair across her scalp into a bun.
With forklift arms the woman communicated Hana should leave her case in the hall.
She was concerned that the lined and tired older woman should not lift it for her and it troubled her that she did not know how to say as much.
‘Noru desu.’ I am Noru. The aged woman slapped her bony breastbone and traced a legible greeting across the warm evening air. The enormity of the language barrier added to her jet lag. She would have so many questions – and she felt so ill-equipped to ask.
The house was silent but for a TV down the corridor as Noru took off on a tour of the lodgings. Hana trailed behind like a dependent child rather than a paying guest.
As they peered into the bathroom, Noru jabbed at the wood-lined bath, then at the shower head, positioned a foot from the floor, and she paused, lending some significance to a pair of plastic sandals by the door.
Hana had no idea. Should she wear slippers in the shower? From the back of the house came a short dry cough. As if attached by an invisible line, Hana followed on to the foot of the stairs where it was made clear that she should remove her shoes before she took to the first step. Was she was just another clueless foreign guest?
Her hot feet left damp prints on the first step and she was covered in embarrassment. As they reached the utilitarian beige of the upper floor, the smell of sour grass became overpowering. What was to be her room was off the open landing. Behind a thin door, with a quick yank of a grimy light cord, Noru showed her two single beds that were suddenly illuminated in all their plainness and just as quickly returned to gloom. It seemed clean enough.
A twin room. Assuming no one else arrived to use the other single, it would suit her fine. She thanked Noru, knowing she could not ask about the twin beds and the distance between them grew larger than just the language barrier.
Outside on the galleried landing, Hana took a seat on the tan leatherette sofa. She watched Noru drawing green tea from a giant floral flask on an old linen chest and accepted it though she had drunk plenty on the flight. It was easier to acquiesce.<
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‘Gohan.’ We eat. Noru tapped at her watch and then turned for the private section of the house, heading in the direction of the coughing below.
Alone, contemplating a pair of prints on the opposite wall, Hana was too tired of sitting and too weary to stand. Mount Fuji and a giant wave. She had finally arrived and all expectation was turned on its head. The volcanic cone of Fuji sloped smoothly towards a deep dusk-blue where a small fishing boat charted the choppy waters of the lake below.
Well, she rallied, she had brought her walking boots with her and could hike the Fuji trail to the top if she chose. If Tom could have come too she’d have felt more adventurous, but maybe scaring herself a little was a good thing.
The bitter tea, just the colour of the matting, felt acidic on her empty stomach and she regretted giving away her airline meal. And as a hollow emptiness descended on her, she tried to dismiss it as jet lag.
She could phone home. No, she should not phone home. Not now, not yet. All those years before, her mother, at pretty much the same age, had arrived in Tokyo, knowing no one either. And if she was honest she did know one person – the guy from the plane and with Noru that made two.
Her head fell back on the sofa and she bit into the rough side of her cheek. Her mother must once have loved Japan but it had obviously been a complicated affair as there were such huge blanks in the story. They had never come when her mother was alive: they had never had the resources; it had never been practical.
Now that her mother had gone, questions had begun to appear. Long-buried questions. Now she felt a fool for not asking, but then again she had been forced into accepting this and it had only now begun to irritate her.
Chapter 4
‘The events of human life, whether public or private, are so intimately linked to architecture that most observers can reconstruct nations or individuals in all the truth of their habits from the remains of their monuments or from their domestic relics’
−Honoré de Balzac
Hana sipped at the bitter tea. You really had to know how to ask the right questions. Her mother had hidden behind a memory that she would never share. She had cradled it like a burn to the hand and Hana had learned early on not to bring it up. Consequently it had proved a very successful way of avoiding the truth – which left Hana up against it now, up against that generational amnesia that protected the past and, at worst, buried it.
She really must find the teahouse. As her mother had described it, it lay etched on her mind, sitting in temple gardens, over an ornamental lake in one of the most tranquil places on earth. Working on that building and helping with the construction design, had been for her mother an exquisite project. On the rare occasions she had mentioned it she looked wistful, lost, and, when pressed, she would clam up, or ramble on about the way it was built.
This Zen teahouse had become a kind of monument to her and so Hana had brought from home the dog-eared Japanese map, folded into inconvenient ribbons and covered in nothing but kanji characters. The task of finding a major tourist site would be an achievement let alone an insignificant retreat in the middle of nowhere but the guy from the flight, Ed, might help.
With thoughts of freshening up she reached the hall, where Noru materialized, flapping her apron and motioning towards the bathroom at the back of the house. Once the door bolt was secured, she finally stepped out of her jeans. Peeling away the clothes she had first put on in London began the transition. You hadn’t arrived, she thought, until that moment when you remove the flight-worn souvenirs from the start of the journey. The deep wooden bath was already full of water and, ignoring the short shower hose, the slippers and the ashtray, she got in and sank into the hottest water she had ever braved. Soaping away the collected hours of arm’s-length intimacy and the Tokyo dust, she suspected she was breaking another house rule but who knew what it was.
Replacing the medicinal soap, she sank back for a blissful moment and remembered the London Fields Lido where she had first learnt to swim. She must have been about ten. This place prompted memories she hadn’t raised for years, as if, as Ed had said, she was travelling back in time. Her mother, with careful consideration, amid the shouts of pleasure or was it terror around them, had removed the floats from her skinny arms and let her go. Shoulder deep she had felt herself sinking, but her mother, beside her then, had watched her struggle to the edge, to safety. It was never going to be easy, but she had clung to that mantra, and as they walked home hers was strawberry-ice success and they shared the sweet melt line running all the way to her elbow.
The steaming bath threatened to overwhelm her and, having added more from the cold tap, she sank below the water line. She held her breath until it was not quite comfortable, then, expelling bubbles in punishing, controlled bursts, she finally let it all go, turning the water into a rolling boil above her head. It was the first time, she realized, that she was angry. She missed her mother and she was angry with herself for losing her. Now she was actually here she knew she should have asked more questions, demanded answers. She had so little go on.
Radiating more heat than a power plant, she stepped out, and realized her fresh clothes were in her bag. She tried to pull on her jeans but her clammy skin made it impossible and so she threw on a cotton robe she found on the back of the door. It smelt distinctly male and, ignoring a slight revulsion, she threw it on in favour of running to her room in a tiny towel.
As discreetly as she could she lugged her bag across the floor, battling to keep the loose yukata robe closed, intent on getting past unseen. She wasn’t sure but it was as if she had displaced someone from beyond the bathroom window vent.
She lay on the bed gazing beyond the weight of her exhausted eyelids, until suddenly energized she searched though her hand luggage for Ed’s card. And she searched again, only to find it missing, and, with vigorous frustration she realized she had probably already lost it.
On her way down she could hear more coughing. As if on cue Noru appeared as Hana descended the stairs. She ushered her into the dining room, waved a tea towel in the direction of a chair and hit the play button on some plinkety-plonkety Japanese folk music, then left.
There were five places laid at the table. It was difficult to judge the size of the house. As she waited for the other guests, her eyes ranged over the few effects in the room. A small CD collection included ten copies of the same album from a cute girl band and beside the potted cactus was a range of English football mugs. She supposed they belonged to a teenage boy, but this impression was quickly dispelled when an approaching shuffle announced the laboured arrival of a really old man. Could it be Noru’s father? Anticipating the difficulty he would have seating himself, she got up to help him to his chair and, with the arrogance both accrued in old age and naturally excused by it, he sat down at the head of the table and ignored her. Saucepans clattered in the kitchen.
‘It is my first trip to Tokyo.’ He ignored her, and she chose to turn up the volume. It didn’t matter that he wouldn’t speak English ‘My mother lived in Shimoktazawa in the eighties. For over a year.’ He could be deaf. ‘My mother, Naomi,’ she said again, for her own benefit.
He turned his head slowly as if to do otherwise would startle him and snorted down his nose, shaking his head his up and down in what could have been recognition.
‘Ukai,’ he said, introducing himself by tapping a bony finger to his chest. He had the tanned, desiccated face of a smoker. His wheezy laugh was lost in a fit of coughing that immediately brought Noru back into the room.
Hana recognized the look on her face, that look of spent patience, which must remain unvented and often accorded to the very old, the infirm, or the long-term ill.
Noru fell on him, rubbing and thumping the base of his back and drawing vigorous circles over his chest.
‘So da ne.’ She comforted him as you would a young child. No wonder she looked exhausted, this nurse and housekeeper.
‘Can I help?’ Hana was unsure at first whether she had made herself
understood. But her offer was turned down graciously and she turned to look at the becalmed old man as Noru left him as she attended to the cooking. His rheumy eyes shone with his exertions and he looked at Hana directly.
‘Na-o-mi,’ he said. She could swear he said it, under thin breath. Just a copycat word? She could not ask another question for fear of bringing on another bout of asthma and so they sat in an uncomfortable silence animated only by his laboured breathing and the ticking of a cuckoo clock. The displaced German clock, like her, seemed to have lost its cultural way and migrated east. Did she have any better reason for being here? Contemplating the wizened figure at the head of the table, age itself looking like a wrong turn, she dropped her head with the thought that at least her mother had been spared this.
Chapter 5
Waiting for the evening meal took her back to the goodbye supper with friends. Tom had given a Japanese Kanpai toast and they had shared a bottle of sake Sadie had brought. They had found some shakuhachi flute music and talked of geishas, She had promised them all armfuls of manga comics.
Now she was here it was a sour joke. Moist amethyst and livid yellow pickles sat curling beside some dried fish. Noru fussed about serving them but eventually joined them at the table. At least the dinner was offered in small portions and she would manage the rice out of politeness.
Slipping the paper chopsticks from their sheath she broke them apart, whittling at the loose splinters before she began to eat. This prompted an exaggerated reaction from Noru, who exhaled in voiced panic.
‘No. No,’ Noru burst out shaking her head like an old turkey bird. Looking to the old man for his reaction to her carelessness. Noru could not begin to tell her what custom she had offended. Self-consciously Hana picked at the sticky rice and the air-conditioning unit cooling the back of her neck joined forces with her jet lag to bring her close to tears. They didn’t intend to make her feel so unwelcome, she knew that, and she forced a smile.
