Something in the Air

Today brought the hastily arranged delivery of those things I shipped from Japan last April 20. A late email dinged my attention yesterday, informing me the freight had arrived in Atlanta, and was ready for delivery. Both the Atlanta office of Yamato Transport and the Tokyo office impress me as quick, efficient and friendly. I told them any time would suit me for meeting the truck, and the next email alerted me that the boxes would arrive at my address at twelve noon today. Hey, no problemo. Up early as usual, sipping coffee, reading a book, ring goes the phone. The driver for Yamato tells me he is waiting out front in the parking lot. 7:30 a.m.

Some will recall my stories of packing all the boxes for shipment to Florida. The Yamato truck left my Tokyo apartment at 11:00 a.m. on April 20 with all the boxes, a stack of paintings and the old country table from Yamanashi.

The driver and I unloaded the truck (my choice to help) and got it all stashed inside the condo with relative ease. Good workout. The driver was barely gone before I had started cutting tape and pulling out all my at-home things from life in Kugayama. What a joy that was (and will be) to see the old and favorite pieces of this and that. Some old bowls from pre-war Japan, half a shopping cart of ink, paper, blank Noble Note Life notebook-journals, fountain pens, pocket knives, a stack of LPs—Japanese popular music of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and much more.

I can’t fully describe the feeling all these things have brought to these rooms by the ocean far from Japan. The change was gradual at the time I was unpacking and putting away. First there was a stack of dry, dusty and lifeless boxes. Little by little, as more things found their way to shelf, table or bookcase, the atmosphere, the air inside seemed regenerated. Soon, I heard the toaster whispering to the skillet, “All this Japanese wabi-sabi stuff…Feels a little like the teahouse of the August moon, doesn’t it?” But I will hear no complaints. To me it feels like the touch of a security blanket. The technicolor got re-charged. Twelve bottles of Iroshizuku elixir for the Sailors and Pelikans, the Montblanc, Lamys and Pilot Custom 823 to wiggle their nibs over. (The happiness is not just mine, you see.)

This has been a fun day, and with plenty left to unpack tomorrow. Hope all the excitement doesn’t fizzle the light bulbs.

Tokyo Elegy

20 Days…

Thoughts a little low, not so bright today, and maybe a good match for the cloudiness of Kugayama’s sky. It’s one of those times in the days leading up to ‘Sayônara, Japan’ when I dwell on the things I will miss about my 10,000 days in this country. On the other side of the fence are the things I will not miss and likely be happy to leave behind, but that isn’t on my mind this day.

In the past ten or twelve years Tokyo has finally become the cosmopolitan capital it always aimed to be, and is now fast moving beyond the urban ugliness that was once unmistakable. I will miss watching, witnessing the growth of a city I love. In moving to a small town in Florida, I will miss the fire and energy of Tokyo, city of 13,000,000.

I will miss walking the streets of this endless city. In the first years of my stay here, I walked everywhere, willingly losing myself among unnamed streets hardly wide enough for the smallest car. This was my way of discovering the flavor of different areas and neighborhoods and of stumbling upon the unexpected. I learned too, that trains and subways would lead me to more surprises and eventually teach me something about the city from a another perspective. No, there is no doubt I will miss the trains and subways which many call the finest system of urban transportation in the world; certainly it boasts the most efficient and dependable timetables anywhere. Twenty days will find me dependent upon a car to get about.

My very slight worries over living on the shaky edge of a big earthquake will be replaced by greater and more tactile fears of a hurricane roaring out of the Atlantic and smashing down my home one more time.

Sure, I will miss chatting with Aoki-san next door, will wonder how Mr Hata’s garden below is shaping up for its summer glory. And I will wonder too, how half a dozen friends are faring in the city I left behind.