I woke up in an odd twilight. My room was mostly dark except for the bright lines of light that shone around the edges of the curtains I had pulled the night before. Though I don’t like waking up in darkness, I have to pull the curtains here or the never-ending, robotic lights at night from outside will continue to light up the inside of my room like a jackolantern.
I put my hand down over the side of my bed and felt around until it hit my wristwatch and then my cellphone. I grabbed the cellphone and opened it to check the time. The bright light shone forth and I had to squint my eyes as I leaned forward to read the time since I didn’t have my contacts in. 13:30. I translated that back to real time, 1:30pm. I tried to remember what time I had gone to sleep the night before. 12 or 1am perhaps. A lot of my friends don’t understand how I’m able to sleep so long. Maybe it’s because sleeping is one of my favorite activities. Or maybe it’s because I didn’t get the chance to sleep more than five hours a night for most of the last week.
Even though it was Monday, I knew I didn’t have to go to class because the new schedule our teacher handed out during Saturday classes announced that it was “Health and Sports Day”, some sort of national holiday. I didn’t really know what “Health and Sports Day” meant or why it existed. Nobody explained it but the fact that I didn’t have classes was good enough for me.
I got ready and walked down the stairs in my socks. As I entered the main area located right inside the doors, I saw a new sign posted on the message board. Seeing as it was written in perfect engrish, I knew that it could only be from our dear residence manager. “Public space not fire not use cooking”, “please send in it the control room. when you have a party”. Then I remembered from early Saturday morning as I rode the subway to school that two of my fellow dormmates, an Egyptian kid who grew up in Germany and a Singaporan girl who was going to college in London, were talking about some sort of “pot party” where they were going to throw a bunch of food they had into a pot and make it. They had invited me to come but I declined since that night I was to meet with my fellow Middlebury friends. In addition, there were two Middlebury students who were studying in Kyoto this year who had come up from Kyoto for the weekend to meet with us so I surely had to decline this new invitation.
I looked at the sign again and laughed to myself. The sign must have been put up as a result of their “pot party”. I walked into the small sideroom and located the box that said “209″, opened the plastic door and took my all white, adidas shoes out. I carried them over to the edge of where the shoe room met the area directly next to the outside doors. I put the shoes down on this area where it was okay for the outside world to be put. I then stepped directly into my shoes making sure my socks only touched the floor of the shoe room and the inside of my shoes. I could not let the bottom of my socks touch the area outside the doors or let the bottom of my shoes touch the floor of the shoe room since this would surely cause contamination.
Safely in my shoes, I walked to the doors, turned the lock and opened them. I walked five feet and opened the second set of doors and heard the first doors close and then the lock electronically locking again behind me. I stepped outside and was greeted with a sunny day. The bright light hurt my eyes and felt unusual to me after several days of rain.
While it was sunny, it was also cool and a bit windy. I zipped up my light jacket halfway and thought of how the weather reminded me of dead leaves scuttling across pavement and soccer games. I suppose some things don’t change much even when you’re half way around the world. I turned right out the doors and walked to the end of the street before turning right again, trying to see despite the bright light and the fact that my pupils hadn’t fully contracted yet in response.
I walked down the long street I have to walk down everytime I want to get to the subway station which is nearly everyday since if I want to get anywhere like school or Shibuya, I have to take the subway. Although I’ve already walked through this long street many, many times, there are always new stores or restaurants that suddenly make themselves aware to me. Sometimes a restaurant I saw my first time walking down the street but failed to notice again from that day on will appear to me again and remind me of its existence. I suppose this occurs because I’m not used to these Japanese stores and restaurants, I don’t have categories set up in my head to place them under, so they slip away or never get recognized by my darting eyes.
Today though, I am looking for a particular restaurant to eat lunch at. It is a chain and my friends and I had eaten at one in Shibuya. In fact, when I became aware of its existence in Shibuya, I began to notice that there were actually three or four different ones in Shibuya and one right by my dorm.
I finally locate it at the end of the street and walk in where the guy screams “irrashaimase!” at me, “welcome”, as he does to every customer who walks in. I walk to the back of this narrow restaurant to where the counter is located and sit down. Immediately after sitting down, a woman puts down a glass of water in front of me and I take the menu out of its holder in front of me. I already know what I’m going to get. Soba and gyoza with meat in them. I can read the characters for gyoza with meat in them but I can’t read all of the characters for the particular soba dish I want. The two characters seem familiar but allude me like an apparition.
Perhaps 10 seconds after looking at the menu, the waitress comes over and asks me in Japanese if I’m ready to order. I point to the soba dish I want and ask her in Japanese how to read the two characters. She responds, saying something that sounds similar to the sight of a car rushing past you at 80 miles per hour. Oh, I say, I’ll have that and the ninniku gyoza then. She walks away and I put the menu back in its holder. I’ll look up the characters when I get home.
As I wait, I put my hand into my pocket and pull out my notecards. I made flashcards with all the Japanese words I come across that I do not know in class or in life. I begin to go through them. Six words per card. After years of doing this for Spanish, French and other languages, I’ve learned that more than six per card is too maddening to look at or study and one soon gives up. Japanese on one side, English on the other. Write it upside down on the other side so you can flip the card more easily in crowded places. Although I’ve done it that way for years, perhaps I never made full use of this particular feature of my cards until I came to Japan and rode their subways.
First they bring me the gyoza. Dumpling like things. My friend called them “pot stickers” that other day and when talking about them in Japanese or ordering them, he mistakenly and repeatedly called them “ginza”, the name of the famous shopping district in Tokyo, rather than their real name “gyoza”. As far as I can tell, there are two kinds here, the meat ones and the non-meat ones. I’m not a vegetarian so I opt for the meat ones.
They then bring me the soba I asked for. Noodles in broth with a piece of nori (seaweed), some other vegetation and thin slices of meat. I put my notecards away and eat my meal. It is delicious and I fill my glass with water from the pitcher set in front of me.
After a while, it is finished. I get up, grab the receipt that the waitress had put down next to me and walk to the front of the restaurant to where the cash register is located. I look down at the receipt and see that it is 580 yen. There is no tipping custom in Japan so 580 yen is the true total. Exactly $5. I pay and leave the store, walking back into the bright light and turning left.
I walk back down the street the opposite way I had come. I dodge bicycles and pass people on the right, trying to remember what homework I have to do that is due tomorrow. In a few hours, it will probably be dark again.
I like the way you write, a slice of life in Japan.
Makes one wish to be there.
In case you couldn’t find info, Health and Sports Day celebrates Tokyo hosting the 1964 Olympics.