I submitted this to
Kyoto Journal a couple of months ago. I got a rejection in the email today.
Laid over in Tokyo
Seeing the city in passing
I.
My girlfriend and I had been flying into the sun from yesterday afternoon when the plane finally thudded and skipped to a halt at Narita. Suffering from the cramped legs and recycled air of a twelve hour flight, we made our way through the loading tunnel toward the baggage conveyor. A hundred or so jet-lagged bodies were lined up behind the red tape, waiting patiently for their bags. Elbows up, a petite woman in hot green pumps shoved past and hefted hers from the belt. The scene repeated itself as women balanced on fluorescent heels battled gravity and mini-skirts to be the first in line at customs, the first out the door, the first seated on the next express to Tokyo.
Massive and sprawling as the Canadian prairie I'd left behind, Narita offers the visitor to Japan a taste of the futurescape awaiting them at Ueno. Moving walkways that disappear on the horizon, self-flushing toilets as glimmering and reflective as newly minted robotic dogs, pink-suited courtesy helpers at every turn, vending machines on every floor, pay phones and restaurants and book shops and signs, signs, signs. Overworked salarymen asleep in line, never-ending announcements that begin and end with a song, false smiles and too-bright fluorescent lights, swarming crowds, souvenir shops and duty free lines to infinity. Inhumane in scale and mind-numbingly dull, Narita is nearly identical to its overseas counterparts. Yet it is efficient and clean and not quite as intimidating. It is, as far as airports go, pleasant.
The Keisei line would have been silent had it not been for three animated foreigners seated across from us. Two of them had gone hiking in Hokkaido their last time in the country, quickly found themselves waste-high in wet snow. They were past the point of no return when it happened and plowed on to the top in spite of the danger. The other couldn’t believe how cheap cigarettes were, smoked three before stepping on two hour train ride to downtown. Meanwhile, the Japanese bleep-bleep-bleeping into the void, happily not existing on the Keisei line to Ueno, the dull brown sun setting into the smog, clouds thick with mercury and nuclear rain, neon marshmallows adrift in a glass of burgundy.
We passed through old Japan. Dilapidated farm houses punctuated a sea of autumn rice paddies, plump and ready for harvest. Unlit stone lanterns marked footpaths older than countries, the paths to mountaintop Shinto shrines barely visible in the fading light of day while Buddha smiled down from a cliff side perch.
Rural splendor gave way to urban sprawl. Rusted tin shacks clung to the edge of pachinko parlours blinking in the still summer air. Apartment blocks, cavernous department stores, deserted parking lots, fields of concrete. Life stacked four stories, now twelve, now twenty, futons and clothes out to dry on one-bedroom balcony views, potted plants well-fed on ozone and spray paint, the faceless and nameless piled high into their eight-by-ten life.
At Ueno we burrowed underground, two flashes on the Hibiya line to Minowa. We arrived in the dark, disoriented. I have no sense of city direction and my girlfriend is even worse, so we hailed a taxi for the Economy Hotel New Koyo, recommended as the cheapest in Tokyo. Our taxi driver had never heard of it and proceeded to get lost. Back and forth on crooked streets lined with the drunk and homeless until finally a sign in an alley marked the spot.
I asked at the front counter if it was common to get lost in a Tokyo taxi. "Happens all the time," said the ruffled man at the front desk. "The street that this hotel is on doesn’t even have a name. People work off landmarks like stations and shrines." We told him we only had a few hours in the city the next day, but wanted to see something of Tokyo. He mentioned that Asakusa was near, that the temple was old and that a lot of people like that sort of thing. "Definitely check it out. It's a twenty minute walk, the station is there and you can get to Haneda in about forty minutes."
II.
We woke early and arrived via the relative calm of Nitenmon Gate, a magnificent and derelict vermillion and gold painted Buddhist entrance dating from 1618. Spared the ravages of fire and war, Nitenmon is the only recognized national treasure at the Sensoji temple complex, peeling paint and weathered tiles a dignified reminder of Tokyo's storied past. Heads bowed, we passed through under the timeless gaze of Jikokuten and Zochoten, guardians of east and west.
Crow cackle and sparrow song mingled with the sounds and smells of the emergent city as we walked the few hundred meters north to Asukusa shrine. Salarymen and working women scooting to work stopped briefly at the entrance to the shrine, offered a prayer to the goddess Kannon, a moment for reflection prior to the unfurling of mad Tokyo. An orange tomcat lazed on the steps; prayers written on wooden tablets were attached with multi-coloured rope to an unvarnished bulletin board. An English speaker wrote, "Please bring peace to all of planet earth. Implore people to love one another and care for the environment."
The main hall of Sensoji hovers in the middle of the complex, its roof sweeping upward to the city at Roppongi Hills, to the blue grey heavens above, vermillion walls in stark contrast to the dull, squat city. A harried Korean tour group scattered when given the single, had pictures of themselves snapped in front of the giant hanging lantern, the brilliant gold and lacquered interior. Stoic monks jostled with the crowd for elbow room, an opening through which to pass. Shaggy backpackers lingered in silent awe. Tour guides stood guard, one eye on the Koreans and one on the clock. It was a carnival, a three-ringed circus. No cats lazed on the steps and no locals stopped inside to offer a prayer. But the details jumped. The painstakingly crafted golden lotus flowers, the intricately carved barriers, the flaked and peeling Buddha’s looking down from above, calm in spite of the chaos below, the high drama and the religious glory and the living history. This, too, was a place to linger, to bear witness to mass pilgrimage and mass tourism, the excitement of an arriving package tour.
We headed east toward Hamayashiki Street. The crowds dissipated. A small, quick flowing stream flooded into a carp pond, wizened old fish gliding toward the bridge as we crossed over, hoping against hope for a morsel. Ambiguous wooden shrines and statues dedicated to a multitude of figureheads and gods dotted the area. Ebisu and Daikokuten, the gods of wealth, Shusse, the god of promotion, Shotoku, the god of commerce; all were in attendance. Weathered and withered cedars stated their age. Victims of belligerent work crews, limbs hacked off in reckless abandon, the trees boasted 26 decades of life, trunks bigger than the average Japanese bathroom.
South toward modern reconstructions of the five-story pagoda and the famed Hozomon gate, the atmosphere reverted back to mass pilgrimage. Here the Koreans were joined by Chinese and Japanese tour groups. Each megaphone competed with the official announcements booming down from the loudspeakers.
The pagoda dates back to 942, was erected by Taira no Kinmasa at great expense. Destroyed by war, the pagoda standing today is a ferroconcrete deal, able to withstand tidal waves and earthquakes and smog and crowds. The same fate befell the Hozonmon gate, a brilliant two story Buddhist entranceway. Each impresses by its size but, like Tokyo’s here-today, gone-tomorrow skyscrapers, neither impresses an aura.
It was getting late in the morning. Our flight would be leaving soon. The crowds swept us up and deposited us in the red and white cavern of Nakamise Street, a 300 meter strip of Hello Kitty key chains, Made in China Japanese ink paintings dolls, fish flavoured popsicles and people, hoards of reverential Buddhists and shoppers.
We stopped for ice cream at a convenience store across from Asakusa Station. A box woman, a fortune teller perhaps, was setting up for the morning, methodically duct-taping boxes and unfurling table clothes. Weathered and hunch-backed she went about her business, oblivious to the tourists, without regard for the hustle and bustle of the city streets. She didn’t need Tokyo, Tokyo needed her. Without the millions like her, selling fruit and newspapers and fish and milk and music and cigarettes and poetry, the city would cease to have a soul. Tokyo needs its faceless millions, needs its winding, nameless streets, short-lived and leading to nowhere.
We finished our ice cream and headed again underground, 40 minutes on the Keikyu line. The city flashed past in fits and starts. We struggled to stay awake but were intrigued by the grave yards we passed on our way to Haneda. The overgrown city seemed to swallow them whole. Swept along by the train, we watched the juxtaposition whiz past: the old and the new, the serene and the insane, the beautiful and the ugly, the spacious and the jumbled, each co-existing and oblivious.
There was time for a Starbucks at the bottom of the escalators leading to the airport. Young women sipped green tea frappuccinos, watched as silent commuters glided past en route to the four corners of Japan, the jumbled cityscapes of Osaka and Fukuoka and Sapporo. Meanwhile, an unceasing line of people descended into the station, bound for the temples and the shrines and the roar of the mad, mad metropolis.
