Coffee & Samba

Someone tells me that a man over by the post office can repair a broken clock. Twice, other repairmen have said that the Seikosha station wall clock is too old and cranky to restore. Made sometime in the early 1950s by the company now called Seiko, it is one of many that once hung on train station walls all over Japan. In 1892, an industrious thirty-one year-old set up the Seikosha factory in Japan, choosing the name, Seiko meaning “success” or “exquisite” in Japanese. I found the wall clock hanging in the cobwebbed corner of a small shop overlooking Inokashira Park, its hands stopped at some ten-twenty-three of the past. After cleaning and a few small adjustments the old clock ticked and worked in a manner of sorts, but without much accuracy. Recently it has begun chiming on a schedule little to do with hours and minutes. I am taking it to the man over by the post office.

“Look here,” the man says, shining a small light inside the clock case. “That gear needs to be replaced, but with a clock this old the problem is finding a replacement…an expensive proposition. Around two-hundred, maybe.”

“That high? I can’t spend so much.”

“Leave the clock with me for a week or so, let me take it apart and play with it. Doubt I can do anything about the worn out gear, but I can get it running a little better.

“How much?”

“About $20, okay?”

Doutor Café is on the way home and with a glass of iced coffee I climb the stairs to the third floor, my usual spot for a stretch of time gazing idly out the windows, reading, writing a few lines in a notebook, or oftentimes discreetly observing others at nearby tables. Never sure what the mix is going to be on any given day, it may be quiet and peaceful one day, rowdy the next. Today the shades on all three windows are up and a flood of sunlight brightens the room. The sight of six middle-aged housewives spread over two tables in the far corner is nothing new, but for me a disappointment because it promises a tidal wave of loud simultaneous talk. I have seen these six before.

They have just returned from a trip somewhere, probably a two-night stay at a hot spring resort, or a reunion of sorts. Travel bags are stacked chest high in a corner. At the moment of my arrival voices are raised in fond remembrance of the ballroom dance teacher who hosted their getaway. In a voice toned by cigarettes and Suntory whiskey, one describes the drape of an arm, illustrating the movement with an outflung arm that threatens cups and saucers. Another moans about the difficulty of a chassé while two others try to remember the teacher’s rule about the Cuban hip motion.

Done with her explanation of arm gestures, the woman suddenly pulls another of the ladies to her feet, leading off in a rehash of the samba bounce. With little or no room between tables for two husky women to practice the samba, a college girl at the adjacent table cringes, clamping hands over her jittering coffee cup. And just as suddenly, both dancers execute a spot turn and return to their coffee.

The dance demonstration all done, another familiar face arrives and takes a table across from me. This is a college student with whom I’ve spoken on several occasions, a man whose Japanese is always a challenge. Everything is slang or vernacular mostly mumbled, a jargon that leaves me unsure of any details. He enjoys reading books in English and the last time he was in the coffee shop I gave him a couple of paperbacks. His name is Hideto and today he has a cold.

We talk across the space between tables, but after a little of that Hideto picks up and moves over to my table. A typically modern student, sloppily dressed, fond of punk rock fashion, he has an email address that begins with ‘fabricatedviolence@.’ He sits opposite me with a trail of snot dripping from one nostril. The sight makes me look away, look down, talk to my lap. Then finally he snatches up a napkin and blows his nose.

Almost dark when I leave Doutor and turn for home. Halfway, I stop in Little Mermaid and buy croissants for Sunday morning.

Can’t Shake it Loose

Despite great strides made over the past six months toward acclimating to a different, and in part less familiar culture, there are things I miss almost daily about Tokyo, my city of twenty-eight years. A look at the calendar tells me that 184 days have passed since arriving in this little Florida town on the beach. Half a year, quite a lump of days, but even still, few days pass when I don’t say to myself, ‘Wish I could run out to Tower and pick up a Monkey Majik CD.’ Or maybe, ‘Sure would like to have some ebi tendon at Futaba.’ ‘Maybe I’ll go to Maruzen tomorrow and check out the new Sailor ink.’

I wrote to a friend in Tokyo yesterday asking if she would mind sending something I badly need and can’t find here. Leaving Tokyo in late April, I packed six of the notebooks long used for both journal and first drafts of writing projects. Guess it’s because of more free time here, but now all but the last pages of the last Life Noble Note notebook are filled.

Been unable to find in my area here, a café or coffee shop where I can pass an hour or so doing a John Lennon—watching the wheels go round, scribbling in my journal and occasionally blotting errant drops of iced coffee from the pages. I miss the sunbright third floor of Doutor Café in Kugayama…miss that late afternoon coffee hour.

Think too about the numbers of young Japanese boys and girls I so often passed among, those of the green hair and pierced lips, the boys in skirts, the girls in hot pink hightop Keds. The hooked-up youth nose down in cell phones, plugged into iPods, draped in chains and dragging bushel-sized tote bags. The college kids on trains locked into comic books, wearing boots big and heavy enough to cross the Amazon jungle. I miss them all.

Shimizu-san was for years my regular supermarket checkout cashier at Peacock near the Kugayama apartment. She sent a New Year’s card each January first, and never a Valentine’s Day passed that she didn’t give me a box of chocolates. Now I think of her as I stroll the aisles of my beachtown Publix, remembering a faithful friend and wondering about the cost of soy milk at Peacock these days.

I had my hair cut last Friday, and not a bad job either, but it will take a lot to erase from my wants a few more haircuts from Hikaru at Minato 3710. Hardly a time that I look at my hair in the mirror and don’t miss the skill and caring service given by my Japanese barber. I wonder often enough what color Hikaru’s hair is this month. He pretty much switched colors once a month, from black to yellow, and then to orange and maybe the next month the ever popular favorite tea-brown chapatsu.

These Florida days continue to be crowded with thoughts of the daily, weekly sights and sounds that soothed and jangled my long passage through Tokyo and the whole Japan experience.

Missing Doutor

Forgot where I was today, and for a moment was on my way to a coffee shop no longer within reach. A month ago it had been my habit for a long time to spend an hour or so each day in a cozy shop not far from home in Kugayama, Tokyo. A favorite table up and away from the tobacco smoke, an almost attic, full of sunlight, green plants and quiet space, where I sipped coffee, read or worked on first or later drafts, where I felt sort of cloistered and at peace. I forgot for just a second this afternoon and told myself I was going for coffee and to look over a new book at Doutor in front of Kugayama Station.

I don’t mind Starbucks, and was even in one today, but it isn’t really a first choice. A different kind of place attracts me, one with a little less decor and less inflated prices. My regular for a long time was Doutor Coffee. There are probably more Doutor shops in Tokyo than Starbucks, and that’s saying something, because Starbucks has a huge presence in most sizable cities of Japan. Tea is the traditional drink, but Japanese also like their coffee, and there’s no shortage of places to get it.

The absence of a local coffee shop is something I’m now learning to live with. Oh, sure, I could drive up the street and have coffee in a diner, or chain bakery, but merely a place that serves coffee is not the point. I want a place that offers a quiet corner with good light and the invitation to sit for awhile over coffee, book or conversation. I want a place where I know before going in that coffee and sandwiches are good, and the staff friendly, but unobtrusive. Basically, I want a regular place not far from home that offers the all-around comfort I enjoyed at Doutor.

Times are, when working away from home, away from the iMac and the books at hand, that the work gets a boost and the pages come fast. Nothing in, or at hand but pen and paper and the flow unencumbered. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to achieve that in Starbucks. What I have to do now is hunt down that un-Starbucks type of small coffee shop, hidden somewhere along a sandy backstreet, or maybe over the five and dime.

••••••••

A curious news flash from London…

A British woman has suddenly started speaking with a Chinese accent after suffering a severe migraine. Sarah Colwill believes she has FOREIGN ACCENT SYNDROME, which has caused her distinctive West Country drawl to be replaced with a Chinese twang, even though she has never set foot in China. The 35 year-old from Plymouth, southwest England is now undergoing speech therapy following an acute form of migraine last month that left her with a form of brain damage. There are thought to be only a couple of dozen sufferers of foreign accent syndrome around the world.