Composite Flashbacks

THE FOLLOWING NARRATIVE IS NOTHING MORE THAN A COMPOSITE OF RECOLLECTIONS ABOUT PROSAIC WANDERINGS AROUND THE PLACE I LIVED FOR MANY YEARS. A COMBINATION OF DIFFERENT MEETINGS OR OCCURRENCES ARE HERE SPLICED TOGETHER INTO ONE AFTERNOON. BEST NOT TO IMAGINE IT IS THE STORY OF ONE SINGLE DAY.

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Going out, I meet Hattori-san on the stairs, a bird-like woman of 94 years who lives in the neighborhood and climbs three flights of stairs each day to eat dinner with her son and daughter-in-law living in the apartment next to mine. She doesn’t see well and is unaware of me until we are face to face, and in a loud voice I remind her again of who I am. We have been meeting on either stairs or street for years now, but her eyes and memory aren’t what they used to be. I worry she may get lost one day between home and our building, wandering Kugayama until meeting someone who can show her home. She makes me think at times of an unbreakable oversized sparrow.

My train pass is all but used up, no more than a few yen on it and I go to the ticket machines and buy a regular ¥170 ticket for Shibuya. I make my way to the platform to wait for an express.

Luck is not going my way, and I squeeze into a crowded car made worse by the endless paraphernalia of my fellow riders. Oversized bags, guitars, a baby stroller and one high schooler with enough equipment for World Cup soccer stacked around him. Nothing ever changes, I think, as I adjust my body to the available space and try to ignore the tennis racquet handle boring love-nothing into my back. Not a long discomfort to bear, but it’s made no better by the pungent smell of hair tonic, and the thick coating of dandruff on the shoulders just under my chin. The possibility of fan-blown flakes swirling upward makes me edge backwards, pushing harder into the racquet handle. At Shimokitazawa I’m tumbled out of the car by the crowd getting off, then bulldozed back inside. This time I am face to face with a young woman of movie star looks who seems afraid I’m going to grope her beneath the crush of bodies.

Shibuya Station has the usual five million commuters, shoppers and fun-seekers, and I dodge through runners, dawdlers, chatting pairs and cell phone text zombies, finally reaching the long escalator down to street level. I push past the dozen or so people handing out tissue packs and head for Tower Records. Just as I reach Shibuya Crossing—arguably the busiest intersection in the world—I look down to see a homeless man free of his cardboard shelter, seated on a railing picking at the life forms in his exposed crotch. Not an occasion for staring.

Tower is a short walk, and I quickly skip around the entrance crowd and the noise of promotional music videos to the elevator, and zoom upward to the seventh floor in a graffiti-scared glass cubicle. Whatever can be said about the Shibuya Tower store, complaints about their inventory of books isn’t in it. Someone there has a good eye for books, and keeps their shelves filled with titles that are never dull or pedestrian. This time I’m caught by a large book called, The Secret Language of Symbols by David Fontana, which I carry to the front desk and buy. The guy who checks me out has a four inch, stiff red Mohawk haircut, half a dozen rings or studs in his ears, a sliver ring through his bottom lip, and a sample book of tattoos down both arms. He is very friendly and efficient and has an attitude that blurs the physical presentation. I can't help wondering if his mother is crying.

I have an easier ride home on the Inokashira Line, and back in Kugayama take myself and new book up to the third floor of Doutor Café. Iced coffee in hand, I discover my favorite table is occupied by the Chinese sensei (everyone’s a teacher in Japan), a Japanese housewife who teaches Chinese to other housewives. A table in Doutor is her regular classroom. I take a table in the corner and for a minute sip my coffee and sink into the familiar atmosphere of a favorite place. The light is good, the snatches of Chinese unobtrusive, and the piped in Yusen this time is a Bill Evans album. All seems right with the world.

A glance at the street clock visible though a window rouses me from my book of symbols and tells me time is up. Outside on the street I dodge a bicycle, nod a greeting to someone and point myself for home. Early evening in August and the Kugayama sky is full of nacreous light.