2020/08/12 - Another story from my camera-less period. As I've explained elsewhere, I left my Nikon FM2 on the upper rack on the Yamanote Line and it wasn't turned in... I couldn't afford to replace it, so switched over to recording things with words only until 2000, when I bought my first digital camera and resumed recording scenes with a camera.
As is my style, the story starts with mundane details and leads into more interesting things. I realize that this loses impatient readers, but I think proper chronology is important and also I've always hated books that start off with a lead-in to the most exciting part of the book (to get people hooked) and then don't get back to it until towards the end. Back when you had to physically look at books in a bookstore to see what they were, I would open a book to random places in the middle and purposely avoid that irritating "exciting first part, so now you want to buy it, right?" section on the first page.
All of that said, I do feel there is very important content in this, so I'll mention it at the top - kind of contradicting what I just said, but, hey, "rules are made to be broken", as in rules are for reasons, and in this case there is a compelling reason to preview the story a little. OK! Here it is: I met an older woman on that night under the tracks at a yakitori izakaya who lived through the bombing of Tokyo. All of her friends were killed... only she survived and considering more people died in one night in the fire-bombing of Tokyo than died in the bombing of Hiroshima, there were not many eye-witnesses left.
Well, enough preamble, let's go back to Friday, November 28th, 1997. I wrote the text back then on a laptop computer while on trains going from one place to another that day (for work), which is why (before some paragraphs) it says "on the train" and "on the train again", etc. Some parts were hand-written (like my observations at the restaurant or while standing) and typed up later on a computer, either on a train with the laptop or (more often) at home on a desktop machine.
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"Under the Tracks..."
97/11/28 Friday 5:15 p.m. Keihin-Tohoku Line
After a work-related meeting in Nezu, I took the Chiyoda Line to Hibiya, where I walked over to Ginza to buy a new schedule book. On the way over, in Yurakucho, I saw the employees of an under-track drinking place cutting up meat, probably for yakitori (grilled chicken on a stick)... I thought of stopping by later on when I saw it. Now I’m on the train from Omori and I’m wondering if I should just go home... or if I should have a beer in Yurakucho first... maybe I’ll try having just one....
7:10 p.m. - Well, I made it to the place I wanted to come to. I almost gave it up mid-way. What is the purpose to being shy anyway? Is it some kind of self-protective instinct to keep oneself out of trouble? Or just a barrier to overcome to become a stronger person? Whatever. I was on my way to Ito-ya in Ginza to look at possible Christmas presents, when it occurred to me that I hadn’t yet called the factory I work at on Mondays to double check that there would be a meeting on Monday, and to ask if it was alright to wait until then to give them my bill for the calendar month of November. So I stopped on a side street, pulled out the new cell phone, and called. The meeting is on for Monday, and they wanted me to fax them the bill today if I could. Figuring MD would be the best bet for connecting to the power grid, I went to a nearby MD, ordered a set to keep the counter person happy, and went to the second floor. Unlike most MD restaurants however, grid connectors were very scarce, but I managed to locate one in a corner. Only problem being that people were already sitting there. I sat down at a table next to a small lamp, thinking that there might be a grid connector nearby for it, so I asked the women sitting at the next table if, by chance, their coats might be covering one. They moved their stuff to look, but alas!, no grid connector. One of them suggested asking an employee about it(!). I said the employees might not be helpful with that, and they concurred. The table next to the power table opened up, so I grabbed it, and saying “Sorry for the trouble...” (in Japanese), to the two smokers there, strung an extension cord over their heads and then down along the base of the window to my table. Powering up the computer, I typed in the details for November’s bill, and as I was sending it off (more trouble with the MSN software trying to hook me up to the Internet), the woman I had asked to move her coat walked by on her way to the restroom... and... when she came back, she had changed out of the dress she was wearing into very tight, and very short shorts.... More beautiful legs have my eyes not seen.
Anyway, I got the bill faxed to Tokorozawa, confirmed that they received it, and walked over to the place under the tracks where the employees had been cutting up the meat for yakitori (some of which is in front of me now) earlier in the day. This is obviously a popular spot. All the seats are taken and the staff keep turning people away. The atmosphere is one from the past... the trains rumble overhead... the air is thick with the smoke from the grills on both sides of the open tunnel-like underpass beneath the tracks... a very informal atmosphere... friends together drinking and eating yakitori, the voices bounce off the arch of the concrete roof that is supporting the Yamanote Line, the Keihin-Tohoku Line, and the Tokaido Line. Another train goes by, shaking the ground and making a rumble in the tunnel... a tourist is earnestly videotaping the scene. The man on my left and the one on my right keep bumping into me with their knees and elbows (tight seating)... no florescent light glare, only the warm yellow light from incandescent bulbs.
It may just be my imagination, but I imagine places like this were frequented by the older members of the crowd even thirty years ago with almost no change. As I sit here I seem to feel the spirit of “Work hard by day, and unwind with friends in the evening smoke under the tracks with the industrial music of the steel trains rumbling overhead...” Does that make sense? I feel it as I write this, but I’m not sure how to convey it. It’s a ninety percent male crowd, and I’m the only foreigner. Maybe that was the source of my weak knees when coming here. It feels very Japanese... I’m physically here... and I can feel the atmosphere... I can empathize with those around me... but I am not “of” the crowd with my different face. No matter. I want to just be an observer right now. Community spirit.... This atmosphere is one of the things I like about Tokyo. Every year I’ve walked through this tunnel soaking up the atmosphere, wanting to stop for a drink, yet in thirteen years, this is the first time. I did try two times before, but it was full, and I ended up going to another place off to the side. I can see from the faces of the stream of pedestrians walking through the tunnel that many like the atmosphere, and want to join in. Why do, or how do Japanese work so hard? This is one answer perhaps. The joy of industrialization... I spend most of my time in Tokyo hating the steel and concrete, but here, under the tracks... it seems like a great thing....
Two women just sat next to me as soon as the two men formerly occupying those seats stood up... I can tell you the odds against that happening are huge!! Phew! Finally I’ll get a break from the guy who kept banging his right knee and elbow into me. Women are great! They’re not nearly as obnoxious as too many men are... Ah... but now the old atmosphere has seemingly drifted away! Indeed I can’t quite imagine these two next to me being here thirty years ago... (one of them probably wasn’t born yet then...).
Enough for now! I’m putting away my new notebook and old pen! Talk to you later!
20:20... 20:45. Just as I was about to start writing something..... Ah! Yes! I was going to say that “No, I’m not signing off so I can try to pick up the women next to me, but rather I just want to.....
21:46 - I was going to say that I just wanted to soak up the atmosphere... Ah... there’s so much to say... so much to say now.... I just paid my bill, and am standing under the sky next to the tunnel. I talked with an older man, an older woman, and the two women who sat next to me. I have A LOT to say... or rather I have a lot to convey from the conversations I had.... I said I wasn’t a part of the scene? I take it back. I was definitely a part of the scene tonight. But then again, I’ve got alcohol in the system, and I want to think... I want to feel.... I’ll write about my conversations later.
22:23 - In the Yamanote Line.... Feeling so much.... I wish I could convey to you all I have heard and felt tonight.... I’ll try later.
97/11/29 Saturday 16:06 (on the train) - I’m on my way to a job in Ebisu now. I hadn’t thought I’d drunk so much, but judging by how I felt this morning, those few drinks I ordered must have been stronger than I thought. The conversations at the time seemed to take a long time, but I think I can sum them up fairly quickly.
First, the older guy. I got started talking to him because he started talking to the two women who sat by me. He said something like “I know a good place near here... let’s go...”, and as he was being persistent, and they obviously didn’t want to talk to him, I said “I can understand your wanting to approach them, but they don’t want to hear it.”... Just one sentence, but I had determined to do whatever was necessary to stop him, so the one sentence had a great effect on him. Before I knew it, we were talking about Japan. He said “Japan’s a real mess right now”, and I said “Naw.., the trouble with the banks is just a temporary thing... whatever is happening with the economy, Japan has the best factories in the world. Not only that, but due in large measure to Japan’s influence, factories in the US and in Europe are vastly improved over what they were just a couple of decades ago. Whatever else is happening, this is truly something Japan should be proud of.” After that, he asked how long I’d been in Japan. Hearing thirteen years he said “You must have had a difficult time”...... I allowed that there had indeed been difficult times, but that it’s the same for anyone going off alone to live in a foreign country....
After we’d talked for about fifteen minutes, I started to beam out “OK. That’s about enough I think”, and coincidentally or not, he wrapped it up, extended his hand, and as we shook hands, he said “We’re friends”... I concurred, and he went back to his table. I looked over at the two women and said “He’s a talker!”. We laughed, and they went back to their conversation and I to my thoughts....
After a little, I looked over to my right and saw that an older woman was now sitting next to me.., I thought “How about that! In this sea of men, I’ve got women sitting on both sides of me!” After looking around at the people working... I imagined what it must be like for them. I watched the woman I had seen earlier in the day cutting up meat working in the back... the counter guy filling beer mugs... then I heard English to the right, and looking over, I noticed a foreigner sitting on the other side of the older woman. Being the only two foreigners in the crowd, I thought it was funny how she had ended up being sandwiched between us, so I leaned over and said “You’re sandwiched between foreigners, aren’t you!?” She offered to move, and I explained that I didn’t want to sit next to the other guy, I just thought that her position was funny. She apologized for not realizing that I was a foreigner, since I had been speaking Japanese to the older guy, and I told her I considered that an honor, as it’s proof that my Japanese isn’t too horrible. And then... an amazing story:
It all started when she told me that the underpass under the tracks hadn’t changed in over fifty years. I said that, as a matter of fact, I’d just been imagining the place in the fifties.... The next thing I knew, she was telling me about 1945, when Tokyo was bombed almost on a daily basis.... Now I’ve met a lot of people who lived in Tokyo up until the bombing began, but she’s the first person I’ve talked to who lived right through the thick of the bombing. The other people I’ve talked to, either lived on the outskirts of the city, escaping the bombing, or went off into the country somewhere to get away from it. The father of a woman I used to work with was sent, as a baby, to stay with relatives in the country, and then his entire family died in Tokyo. He was the only one left....
Anyway, the woman started by explaining that the underpass drinking places began at the end of the war, when most of the city was burned flat, so the underpass was a handy spot with the arch under the tracks forming a roof. During the occupation, American servicemen and Japanese drank there side by side. She said that the atmosphere hadn’t changed at all, but the clothes of the customers were different. Now, most of the customers wear suits, but back then, people weren’t dressed so nicely. She asked me about my Japanese ability, and I said that while I can speak reasonably well, my reading ability isn’t so great. “Don’t you think ‘Kanji’ are difficult to learn?” I asked her.
19:25 (on the train again) - She told me that when she was eight, her school was burned down in the firebombing.... I think she probably meant to go on to saying that because of that, there’s a gap in her education, but we ended up just talking about what it was like to be in Tokyo at that time. As she described how her father had his family soak the futons with water to be used a protective cover from the fire, and even as covers for their feet, since the very ground was aflame in the attacks. How people jumped into rivers for protection, only to be boiled alive because the water was so hot. (I’m reluctant to get onto this topic, because any talk about war inflames passions... so I hasten to say that I’m writing this just to describe her reality when she was eight...) She said that when planes were shot down, the people who parachuted were machine gunned before reaching the ground. Seeing men falling from the sky, many citizens, knowing the men would die, prayed for them.., that people felt more sorry for them than angry. Having been through all that, no wonder the woman talked of Americans and Japanese drinking side by side under the tracks with a tone suggesting that it was a wonderful thing.....
Shortly before she took her leave of the place, she told me that all her friends died in the bombing... that only she was left, and that she periodically goes to the place under the tracks alone for a drink just for nostalgic reasons.... I nodded goodbye to her as she disappeared through the smoke of the grills.....
What next? But of course, talk to the two women still on my left. I told them about the older woman’s tale, and then we had a conversation not unlike hundreds I’ve had before. They were both 21, and students at an Interior Design School. One from Niigata, and the other from south of Osaka (I forget the name). The woman from Osaka looked over thirty, so I was quite surprised to hear she was only 21. Being students, they nursed their one drink apiece for too long, and eventually, the guy working the counter, while apologizing to be saying so, asked them to either order something, or to please make way for waiting customers. He apologized again, saying “Sorry, but it’s Friday night after all...” I gave them my e-mail addresses, and they disappeared into the night....
It’s been happening to me for thirteen years now... I meet people once, and that’s the end... I never see or hear from them again....
And that’s the story really. I ended up having a long and forgettable conversation with a guy on the Yamanote Line on the way home..... Thinking back on it now, I can’t believe how much talking I did last night. Yow........
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon - Nishi-Shinjuku, Tokyo - November 29th, 1997
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From August 2020:
Note-1: Regarding: "Figuring MD would be the best bet for connecting to the power grid..." This looks mysterious in the year 2020 (when people are never away from their fondle slabs which are on-line 24 hours a day) for at least two reasons. One is that I needed somewhere where I could not only pull out my (rather bulky by today's standards) laptop computer, and the other that I often needed to plug it into AC power as the nickel-metal-hydride battery, while much better than the nickel-cadmium batteries that preceded it, still didn't have nearly the lifespan that modern lithium-ion batteries do. I was using (as usual) a cheap used computer, and the battery would only power the machine for 30 minutes or so. I was happy that I could use the battery at all, as the used machines I'd bought before then had useless worn-out batteries, but in any case, back on that day in 1997, I needed to connect to an AC outlet (not supplied for people as they often are now) in order to get an invoice filled out and faxed.
Note-2: Faxing things from the laptop computer. As I remember it, this wasn't a standard feature of W-95, but I had (I think) installed an application that enabled faxing documents through my cell phone, which is also how I connected to the Internet when outside.
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon - www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/ - youtube.com/lylehsaxon - lylehsaxon.blogspot.jp/ - lookback1997.blogspot.jp/
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