The evening in Tokyo

shifting her bag onto her shoulder I want to spend the evening with you. There is a lot I still want to say and tomorrow you are on a plane.

walking, watching the buses along the kerb What I said in front of Satomi. For about a month I have been reading everything I can find about your country, and somewhere in it I started putting myself inside it. Arriving at Lindoma, sitting by the water near the docks at night, looking at the black water. Short work, light work, and not poor any more. Photograph after photograph in the evenings, trying to see what the place actually looks like. Then I lift my head and I am on the Chuo line with my bag on my knees.

I know it is few. Whatever I read said the intake is small and the waiting is long, and I am not imagining a queue at the border. That is part of why it stays a dream and not a plan. If half of Tokyo wanted it the thing I am picturing would stop existing the same week.

The monorail to Hamamatsucho, the Yamanote around to Shinjuku while the hour is still at its worst, and you stand in it with your bag. Then the Chuo out west to my station and we eat near there.

starting toward the monorail signs Then that is what you get. Fifty minutes of it in each direction, twice a day, five days a week, and on the days I go to my mother it is longer.

This is the airport at six. Wait until Shinjuku.

tapping through the gate and holding at the far side until he is through too Three and a half million people go through it in a day. You do not walk where you want to walk, you go where the line of people is already going, and if you stop on the concourse someone walks into your back.

You get used to it the way you get used to weather.

There is a big one at Koganei, ten minutes from my station on the bus, and Inokashira at Kichijoji if you want water and people playing guitars badly. Gyoen is near Shinjuku and you pay to go in. the monorail pulling in We can do Inokashira after we eat, it stays open.

Five hundred yen. It is a national garden, so the environment ministry runs it and there is a gate and a ticket window. It shuts at half past five this time of year anyway, so it is already closed.

the doors opening, taking a seat by the window with her bag on her knees Shorter than the roads, meaning you actually cross them to get somewhere. Here a park is a place you make a trip to. Inokashira is open all night, and it is still a place you go to on purpose.

the monorail lifting away from the terminal There are. And if my mother were not where she is, I would have gone already. The flight and the money I could put together in a year of shifts.

Because my sister has her own house and has never once offered, and there is no one after her. The day I board a plane my mother has no one taking care of her.

looking out at the water and the cranes going past below the track You have already done something, just listening to me.

The last time anyone let me finish a sentence about my own life, I do not know when it was. Terada listened, and even then he was already deciding what he would fix.

Yours was not that. You were sitting across from me while I said it and you had nowhere else to be. Whatever a country is going through, no one in it can feel you thinking about them.

I have liked talking to you more than I have liked anything in a long time.

You are the first person from outside this country I have ever talked to properly, not a tourist asking me for a platform. Sitting down, over days, in a language neither of us grew up in.

In the photographs it's wide empty roads, water at the end and panel blocks that look better than they should. turning from the window Koganei came up second when I searched. A village in Vetruna State, in Iosmein, a few hundred people. I read the etymology page. Kogan is perfume there, and Koganei is the feminine of it, so the name means flowery perfume. Mine means nothing like that.

Water. There is a ridge running east to west through the city that people call the hake, a step in the old riverbank, and springs come out along it. The story is that the water was worth gold, so it was called the golden well, kogane-i, and that wore down into Koganei. There is another version where a field south of the ridge was already called Kanaihara and the small was put in front.

How close it is?

Three and a half kilometres is nothing. Do you smell it, or see it from the window?

the monorail slowing into Hamamatsucho Then it is in front of you every day. Kawasaki is like that from the river side, chimneys and tanks all along the water.

standing, bag on her shoulder as the doors open Here that would be a ministry, or a company the ministry keeps alive.

out through the gates and onto the Yamanote stairs Forty percent is a great deal of food to have left over. Where does the money from it go, if nothing inside costs anything?

So the crops pay for the things you cannot make. stopping at the top of the platform stairs, where the wall of people begins This is the part I told you about. Stay on my left and do not stop walking.

moving into the line of people and keeping her voice level over it Where does the other eighty come from, if that twenty percent takes everything there is to build on?

saying under her breath as the train comes in Fuhen kihon juyou kyoudou kumiai. Dur Hur Nougyou Kabushiki Gaisha. They come out sounding like something with a building in Kasumigaseki and a man in a grey suit at the front of the room.

the doors closing, the two of them standing pressed near the end of the car It is where the ministries are, like finance, agriculture, all of them, along one street of grey buildings. Everything that decides anything about your life is written in there.

We got on at the quiet end of it. Shinagawa is four stops from here and it fills there, then Shibuya empties and fills again.

Because there is no L in Japanese. The row is ra ri ru re ro, and it lands between your L and your R, so every foreign L comes out as one of those. Rindoma, Reridouson, Vurado. Written in katakana there is nothing else to write it with.

The first evening I read them I was saying them the katakana way in my head, and they came out wrong every time. By the second evening I had stopped reading them as kana and started reading them as letters, and after that they were fine.

You had the alphabet already. I had to put a second one over the first and keep it there. bracing against the rail as the train pulls in Shinagawa. Watch the doors.

turning side on as the platform empties into the car Keep your bag in front of you and hold it.

The guides write that for tourists, because a tourist arrives loud. Two people talking at this volume is fine. What you keep off is a phone call and anything coming out of a speaker. In the morning at eight no one says a word, and that is because they are half asleep and packed in, so there is nothing to say.

Was it taken down, or did it stay there long enough for people to start reading it as a real notice?

taking the phone off him and reading it with the screen turned away from the man beside her Read it to me.

the corner of her mouth moving They put a joke on the wall and then explained it underneath in the same neutral voice.

scrolling with her thumb There is more under it.

They wrote a correction because people asked whether a joke could be broken.

handing the phone back as the train slows Here the walls are advertising and the ceiling is advertising. No poster on a train is going to argue with you about a country that stopped existing.

With nothing after it, no ministry name, no explanation of why anyone on a tram needs to know that? the doors opening Shibuya.

bracing while the car empties and refills around them Then it is a state telling people not to be afraid of the thing it is building.

What happened at Fukushima was the sea coming in over the wall and taking the cooling out, and everything after that followed from it. Where do yours take the water from?

So the water still comes from the sea, the plant just stands back from it. What happens at Linsed if the pipeline fails?

the train pulling out toward Harajuku Trains and a small river. That works if there is warning and if the line is standing.

What happens when the line reports nothing because the reporting itself is down?

Then it costs you nothing when it is wrong. steadying against the rail Yoyogi next, and Shinjuku after it. Get your bag onto your shoulder before the doors open.

quieter, over the noise of the car I want to ask something else while we are still sitting in this. When you are there and nothing is happening, no forms, no cooperative meeting, just something ordinary, what does the day actually feel like? Because the photographs and the articles are only the interesting parts.

That is the same as mine, then. Different work, same shape. You send something and wait for a person to look at it, I put things through a machine and wait for the next one. What do you do with the waiting?

I have never had enough of a gap to start anything of my own. Between the shifts and the three days there is the commute and sleep, and what is left goes on reading things on a screen because it needs nothing from me.

the platform lights coming up along the window Then somebody with a dull week wrote four rules about Yugoslavia and put them in a tram. And it works on the other end too, because you read it and it went into your head and here you are saying it to me on the Yamanote.

You said the food factory has paintings on it in the old agricultural propaganda style. A factory here would be grey panel and a company name in blue, and the only thing painted on the wall would be the safety record. Whoever put those there was doing the same thing as the person who wrote the four rules.

standing clear of the seat with her bag up on her shoulder Shinjuku. Straight out and to the left, and keep moving until I stop.

out through the doors and into the current of people on the platform Then it is a museum with a factory behind it.

keeping to the left of the stairs, half turned so he can hear her So it was on the ballot last and most of them picked it anyway. Was that a real preference, or the whole shift voting for the funniest one because the vote was free?

stopping at the top of the stairs where the crowd splits Why did copying them make captions necessary?

So the caption is there to say what the thing on the wall is, and the footnote to keep the two meanings of the word apart. starting down toward the west side We eat first. It is fifteen minutes on the Chuo after that.

What did the replies say?

going down into the west concourse That is a hard thing to be told in public. And they were half right, the joke has to be about something people already care about. The other half of it is that a person who is tired of a joke is allowed to say so without being told he is not really from there.

stopping at a stair leading to a narrow row of lit fronts Down here. Nothing on the menus is in English.

pushing the door open into the noise and the steam, ducking under the short curtain and holding it for him Six seats and a counter. Take your bag off and put it under the stool, and mind your head coming in.

sitting beside him, holding two fingers up to the man at the pass and saying something short in Japanese, then turning back Katsudon for both. Pork, egg and onion over rice. You have had nothing since the airport bus.

taking the water glass the man puts down I do not know what that is.

the bowls arriving in front of them Three films of two people walking around a city and talking, and the thing the whole of it hangs on is that they agree to lose each other on purpose. breaking her chopsticks apart I understand why you brought it up. We already have each other's numbers, so if we lose nine years it will be for some other reason.

eating, taking a moment over it What would you tell yours? Akima will ask you the first evening you are back, and she will want more than that Nozaki was pleasant.

a short laugh into the back of her hand Say that to her and she will look at you until you say the rest. setting the bowl down a little Say the true version to me first.

very still for a moment, then picking the bowl back up You are right that it went outward. I did most of that steering and I know why. It is easier to hand you a country than to sit here and be asked about myself.

You brought the subjects and I kept taking them. Every time one of them touched me I answered with the Japanese version of it. The parts about me came out earlier, in the mountains, and today I have hardly said anything about myself at all.

stopping with the bowl half up I would not have said that a year ago. We sat two desks apart and I thought of her as the quiet one who did not want company. Then the building came down and I wrote to her, and it turned out we had been carrying the same thing in the same room without either of us saying a word.

Because you come from somewhere else, and the only way I have to understand a thing you say is to hold it against the thing I already know. Akima does it in the other direction now, she has your country in front of her and puts this one beside it. turning on the stool It also keeps the conversation on countries. Two people who compare things all evening never have to say anything plain to each other.

quiet for a moment, both hands around the water glass I did not want to. Every time it came near me I felt the same friction and I went around it, and Akima is the same. What came out in the mountains came out because I could not hold it any longer, and not because I decided to tell you.

setting the glass down She is seventy-one and she has never left the country. Taking her out of her house to a place with no Japanese in it and no doctor she can talk to would be worse than staying. That is the honest answer and I have already turned it over more than once.

The other thing, do not build it up. I read a great deal because the commute is long and there is nothing else in it.

I know that shape. You give it because the situation asks for it and then you check afterwards whether anything came back. What did you expect from me that you did not get?

That is a way of never being disappointed.

Critiqued by whom?

turning on the stool to look at him Which people? The ones at Marginal, the ones at the cooperative, or the ones you grew up with?

Then there is nowhere in your life where you are not braced for it. pushing the bowl forward slightly Mizuho did it to me at a table with five other people and I answered nothing, and the reason I answered nothing is that some of what she said was true and it stuck.

The permission part I would drop, because asking first turns a compliment into a procedure. The rest of it, you are right that a no can take the friendship with it, that happens. But it seems you have set the price of finding out so high that you have decided in advance never to pay it. I did the same thing with Terada from the other side.

I like you. picking her chopsticks back up If someone does ask, you say the reason and they can do what they want with it.

It is read that way here too. finishing what is in her bowl I want the same thing you are describing. Closer, and not that.

Then stop. You said the thing and I said the same thing back, and it took two sentences.

counting out notes onto the small tray at the counter and picking her bag up Chuo line west, fifteen minutes to my station. We walk from there and I show you the road I do twice a day, and then Inokashira if you still have legs, since it does not close.

coming down the last of the steps and stopping on the pavement This is it. The shopping street runs that way and my building is eight minutes along the road behind it.

starting along the road Watch the bicycles, they come from behind and they do not ring.

keeping her eyes on the road ahead It is my street and you are on it. I did not think that would happen.

I changed the flights before we got to sleep. We were meant to stay another day at Satomi's. I moved it because a day there is a day with him in the room, and I wanted the evening with only you in it.

Because tomorrow you are on a plane and after that there is a screen between us for however long. I did not want the last day of it spent translating for an old man.

It is, and sitting between two people means neither of them is talking to me. turning in at a narrower road Along here. My building is the low one past the parking.

Six if I walk like this. Eight in the morning, because everyone comes out of these roads at once and the crossing by the shops stops you.

walking with him without filling it, then slowing at the corner where the parking opens out That is the one. Second floor, the window on the end.

That is the one. There is nothing to see from down here and there is nothing to see up there either.

turning back the way they came Then we go now. Back to the station and two stops to Kichijoji, and the park is five minutes from the south exit.

stopping where the path meets the water This is it. It runs around the whole pond and there is a shrine on the island in the middle. In April the trees along here are full of people sitting on sheets and it is unbearable.

Ask it.

looking out at the water for a moment From my mother, none since I was a child. My sister, no. Terada, over seven months, perhaps ten times.

Under twenty since I was twenty. turning to face him And you.

On the plane you put your hand on my arm and left it there while I cried. It is the closest thing I have had to being held in years, and it was a hand on a sleeve. You would not read a hug as anything other than what it is, so I can do the whole thing instead of half of it, if you want it.

walking a little further along the path, past the lamp and the benches, to where the trees close over and the bank goes down to the water Here.

setting her bag down on the ground and straightening up in front of him Then come here.

putting both arms around him and holding on, her face turned into his shoulder, staying without saying anything for a long moment You can hold tighter than that. I am not going to break.

breathing out against his shoulder, holding on a while longer before she speaks This is what I have been going without. Not a man, not a wedding, this.

still holding on I could have had it from Terada any Sunday I asked. There was always the rest of it attached, what we were, where it was going, whether I was going to give him the week he wanted. With you there is nothing attached to it.

Wednesday I am back on shift and none of that changes. But I feel taken care of standing here, and I have not felt that in years.

I have Akima and I still cannot put this into a message. She would understand every word of it and I would delete it before sending. Saying it while somebody is holding onto me is the only way it comes out of me.

a short laugh into his shoulder That is what the men from the office do instead. Six of them at a table until eleven, not any of them saying something true until the fourth glass.

finally letting go and stepping back, keeping one hand on his arm By morning none of it is there. They come in at eight and it is as if the table never happened.

It goes anyway. sitting down on the low wall by the water and pulling her bag over beside her Sit. We have until the last Chuo.

looking out at the black water Meaning what, that two people can read the same books and want completely different lives out of them?

Terada was the cleverest man I have been with. He read three papers a day and he could take any argument apart, and he still put eight hundred thousand yen on a card to buy dinners for a woman who was giving him one afternoon a week.

quiet for a while, watching the water He would have said it was his decision and that I was worrying over nothing. Then he would have kept doing it, more carefully, so I would not see the next statement. The one thing that would have stopped him is if I had said I did not want the coat and the hire car.

That is your money going on your own evenings. turning her head toward him You have not tried to impress me once since the arrivals hall.

A man sitting next to a woman for three days usually wants something out of it by the second afternoon.

To be thought well of. To be the one who explains things. To find out whether I am available before the week is over.

a short laugh, then quieter That as well.

I booked a business hotel by the station when I moved the flights. Two single rooms, ten minutes from here, and it is paid already.

Because I moved the flights without asking you, so the night is mine to cover.

standing and picking her bag up It is. The hotel is on the north side of the station.

There are four. You are staying with me and not finding anything on your own tonight.

starting back along the path toward the lamps Come on. I would rather not be running for the last Chuo.

holding out the key to him Tomorrow. The flight is in the afternoon, so we have the morning, and I am coming with you to Haneda.

pressing the button for the lift No. I put you on the plane and then I go back to Koganei.

the doors opening, holding them with her hand Fourth floor, mine is at the end and yours is two doors before it. Sleep, and knock when you are up.

stopping at her own door with the key in the lock Good night, Vlad.

going in and letting the door close behind her