Silent labyrinth heralds rebirth

The bewildering whirr of the cicadas assaulted my senses. A Japanese symbol of rebirth, their dentist chair noises made me feel as if I were undergoing some kind of reincarnation operation.

It was my first night and we were hunting in vain and in the darkness for my bike I'd never seen, left in some place on the kibbutz-like university campus by an undefined friend. A guard approached with his torch: were we thieves? We weren't. We trudged away on foot to the apartment we were to stay in for a month. Or tried to.



Much of the area of Mitaka city is a suburban labyrinth of tiny houses with a veiny network of small alleyways bearing a constant stream of bikers and the occasional boxy car. We asked for directions in a faux 7-11 with a chicken logo and after intently studying a map found our destination.

Tokyo addresses are a code of numbers referring to sequentially dwindling areas of importance. Head backwards through this one:

1-29-17 Koganei, Higashicho, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo-to, Japan, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way, The Universe, Infinity

I drew a complex series of lines to represent the route. A tragically-mutilated spider. As we trotted past allotments, the occasional Coca-Cola vending machine, and strange dwellings boxed up and stacked against each other, the SILENCE was oppressive. Where were the people? I imagined scores of locals silently pressed up against screens behind closed walls. The heat and humidity were stifling. It was nothing like anything.

The charmingly noisy streets of Buenos Aires, with a fat man in any direction you look shouting affectionate insults at another fat man. The saturated and bubbling people mash of Thailand. These were all far away now. I slapped at my legs. Small, compact mosquitos feasted on fresh blood.

The apartment was a tiny, stifling cardboard box on stilts. The ceiling and the floor had little to keep them apart. A miniscule toy fan pretended to be doing something in the corner. The bathroom was a machine room with a hose. We lay on a futon gasping in despair. Is this life, I wondered?

The next morning we fled to the university to a splendid campus pad. Reborn in Cicada Land.

Grunt for the Instant Birdie

Sibley House, the location of our modest but fairly (in Tokyo standards) spacious campus apartment, replete with "Japanese style" sliding doors, kitchenette, bathroomcito and large windows, was built in 1957, according to the proud boast of a sign on the façade. The sign makes no mention of when it was renovated. That's because it wasn't. We're not far from the tennis courts, where thousands of rippling youths scream rhythmically in unison. Concealed by dense greenery, it is unclear what they are doing in there. But whatever it is, I'm sure it is less entertaining than the mental images produced by their synchonised grunting.

Much aggressive grunting comes from restaurant staff too. The other day I had my first experience in a rāmen bar, down a Kichijōji side street. Three white-uniformed rāmen ninjas bellowed and stood to attention as I entered. It was lunch hour peak and once I'd sat down at the long bar, every stool was taken. This was not a place for lunchtime socialising. Solo diners sit, bodies contorted and faces parallel to the counter, 2mm from the soup, whereupon they slurp and snort their way through the giant portions at a frankly incredible rate. I tried to order the bountiful chicken my neighbour was ploughing into. They gave me the pork, possibly sniffing my Jewish ancestry. The soup had the kind of moreish comfort quality of pulverised chicken fat. I scarfed down about 3/4 of my portion in the time it took for a complete turnover of the entire restaurant clientele. While I ate I observed the staff dynamic. One hung near the door for no apparent reason. The giant middle one took orders and barked them to the final one, who had a more skivvy-like aspect but a cooler way of carrying himself. He stood above a huge boiling vat with suspended noodle containers. It was about 35º and yet he was cool as wasabi lipgloss. The soothing sound of gushing water was punctuated by spurts as the giant middle ninja sprayed the floor with a gigantic hose. As I stood up I braced myself for the deafening scream.

Speaking of rāmen, I'm addicted to the instant variety. Similar in concept to the Pot Noodle, yet thousands of miles away in distance, you can buy a bewildering variety in the supermarket. I have no idea what any of them are but make my selections based on shape and colour, animal instinct and other arbitrary factors. As a budding physicist delights in his discovery of the boundless possibilities of matter, so am I constantly amazed by the sheer range of things that can be made to appear with the addition of boiling water. Today I opened a bowl-shaped packet to find a yellow polystyrene cube lying seductively atop the dried noodle blocks. Stirfried egg. After the requisite four minutes I peeled back the foil to discover three rice paper discs with a yellow bird cheerily waving hello. Obvious concerns about the nutritionary value of such food barely managed to temper my childlike glee.

The Land of the Rising Barometer

The unbearable stifling humidity of Tokyo is taking me by surprise. Actually it's taken everyone by surprise. A rednosed besuited wag on Saturday afternoon alleged that it has been the hottest summer for 133 years. Other more trusty news sources have backed that up, partly.

Apparently the autumn is shrinking to nothing. Sub-Saharan heat will dissolve rapidly into Antartic cold. The word 'temperate' keeps bobbing up in my memory like a table-tennis ball in a green pond.

I have walked the deserts of the Holy Land. I have moisted the depths of the Thai rainforests. And nothing has come close. Even the gasping exhaust-fuelled February peak of Buenos Aires is like a temperate day in an English garden in comparison to this.

Japanese men dab at their sweaty faces with small, charmingly-designed towels. I have one, blue and white, bought for me by a certain someone.

Women JOG in the NOONDAY SUN in long tracksuit trousers, long sleeves, visors and GLOVES. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

I'm confused. I feel as if I've entered a parallel universe where I'm a 19-year-old Japanese boy from the provinces just starting out at the International Christian University in Mitaka. Living on the campus might have something to do with it. The thick forest hangs outside my window, the cicadas keep their cement mixers and pneumatic drills in motion, their little hard hats occasionally falling to the soft earth and rotting there in the warm soil. The ICU campus is an isolated world in an obscure suburb of Tokyo, a petri dish of wildlife, wild intellectual stimulation and wild times, baby.

Adolescent students arm themselves into brittle factions. Sporty jocks laugh heartily and scream deafeningly, while jumping up and down repeatedly. Girls caked in make up and wearing charmingly-designed shoes (of varying models), charmingly-designed socks (of varying sizes), hair spraying forth in fountains and marvellous hilly eruptions, group together and totter awkwardly around, giggling nervously. American students wait for their moment to amaze other 'gaijin' (foreigners) around them by nonchalantly babbling away in perfect Japanese...

In short, it's a campus. And one quite different from the awkward labyrinth where I spent my own freshman year back in 1999. Now I'm older, larger, less cynical and more... secure? This feels more like the setting of an American college movie, transposed slightly. In any case I can look upon the herd with distance, and enjoy it. Identity crisis aside.

+ 4 YRS

Falling away like a grainy cord binding dangling blurry photos, grains of time grow to immense planet size proportions and I hop through anti-gravity up the ROPE OF SAND...