It was a waste to buy a small travel alarm clock to make sure that I got up on Saturday morning to catch the Shinkansen to Tokyo. I forgot to turn the damn thing on. However, my internal alarm clock has always been reliable in waking me up when I need to wake up, and it didn’t let me down this time. Although I wish it had.
I had no problems getting to Shin-Osaka on time and I caught my train. Only three hours to Tokyo by Shinkansen. Talk about urban sprawl, Tokyo is enormous. It was city as far as the eye can see. The train got to Tokyo Station and Shiho was going to meet me on the platform. On Shinkansen platforms, it’s possible to know exactly where a particular car is going to stop, so not only was Shiho going to meet me on the platform, she was supposed to meet me right at the train door, right?
I was eager to see Shiho again, even though we had talked after I returned from Taiwan and cleared the air between us. I felt like I needed to be open and honest with Shiho and so I wanted to discuss “us”. Right before I brought it up, she dropped the bombshell that she had broken up with her boyfriend. So much for that safety. I brought it up anyway and we talked about it and had similar thoughts, but we brushed it all aside and decided that anything between us would be impossible because the timing was all wrong and her parents could never accept me. I was proud of myself, though, no games played with Shiho, everything out in the open.
So I got a little anxious when I got off the Shinkansen and couldn’t find her. There were only two doors for each car and I could see that she wasn’t by the other door, either. Since we thought it was virtually impossible to miss each other, we hadn’t decided on an alternative meeting place. It would have been virtually impossible to miss each other if she was there, why wasn’t she there?
I figured we’d find each other eventually. I should have stayed on the platform but I wasn’t thinking, and went down into the station keeping a sharp eye out for her. Ten minutes passed, twenty minutes, thirty minutes, I was starting to get concerned. I found the Central Gate and decided to stay there, hoping she would remember my thing about Central Gates from our meetings at Shin-Osaka. I don’t remember exactly how long it took for me to realize something went terribly wrong, but time passed and I couldn’t find her. I don’t remember exactly how long it was before I started wandering. My eyes were wide open and I walked slowly through all the main thoroughfares of Tokyo Station. I don’t remember exactly how long it was before doubt started growing that I wouldn’t find Shiho at all.
I knew she was there, I had no doubt that Shiho was in Tokyo Station. It would have been unrealistically out of character for her to not have shown under any circumstances. No matter what could have happened on her way there, she would eventually have gotten there. I was at a total loss to understand why I couldn’t find her. For hours I wandered and waited. I listened to the intercom for my name because if she couldn’t find me, I was sure she would have me paged. I sang softly to myself. I tried calling her house and I talked to Naomi, her sister. She said that Shiho had gone to meet me.
The hours passed and the value of staying in Tokyo sharply declined. At one point, I felt I had given up hope in being found and I was sitting in the sun just outside one of the entrances to the station. I could still hear the intercom from where I was. I sat disheartened, incredulous, frustrated, when a pigeon feather, pretty much arbitrarily, floated down from the rafters and landed a few feet away from me. I stared at it for a long time and thought about the cover of Richard Bach’s book, Illusions. When no one was looking, I reached over and picked it up.
Late in the afternoon, I made the decision to cash in my bus ticket and take a Shinkansen back to Osaka. That was supposed to be the day for Shiho and me. Without it, Sunday wasn’t much and I had no idea where to go in Tokyo until I could get a hold of Shiho. Dejected, I had to go back to Osaka.
Shiho called me that night after I had returned to Osaka. She had been on the train platform, she was waiting right at the door and she could see both doors from where she stood. I still had my ticket and we confirmed which car I was on and there was no mistake. I hadn’t been on a different car and she hadn’t been waiting by a different car. We were both there at the same time, within one Shinkansen car’s distance away from each other and we didn’t see each other. She too searched for me and wandered Tokyo Station looking for me. She did try paging me. She searched for me until it was time for her to go to Shinjuku station to meet Mark Holdaway. So she left for a while to meet him, and then she came back to Tokyo Station again to look for me.
IS IT AT ALL POSSIBLE that we could have totally missed each other the entire day? Take Grand Central Station in New York. Take two close friends and place them in two different places in Grand Central Station and tell them to find each other. They have all day to find each other. I don’t think it’s possible for them to not be able to find each other. Eventually they would find each other. How could they not? Shiho and I were not only in the same station, but we were both milling around the Shinkansen gates, we knew where to be. All we had to do was see each other, the attraction was certainly there.
After I got off the phone with Shiho, I watched TV and an episode of “Moonlighting” came on. I was never a big fan of “Moonlighting”, but this episode was a “Christmas Carol”-esque episode, complete with guardian angel appearing at a main character’s worst moment, getting smashed in a bar. The angel grants her one wish that would set what had led her to the bar right, but then leads her to the tragic result of having that wish granted. She pleads with the angel to set things back to the way they were at the bar and the character wakes up in the bar, convinced it had been real and not a dream. She then re-approaches the problems that had brought her to the bar and works at them and makes responsible, non-easy-way-out decisions and the ending is a happy one. Guardian angel. What would have happened if I had met Shiho in Tokyo? What was I protected from?
On Sunday the ‘rents called and we got into a huge fight. That was it. All tensions peaked, the world came crashing down, and I decided I had to return to the States and get a job and get away from them at any cost. I refuse to live my life under their monetary rule. Sunday. If I were in Tokyo, I would never have received that call.
But even if I had received that call and if we had gotten into the same fight, I wouldn’t be able to go back to the States if I had paid for the Japanese course at the YMCA. Paying for the course would have been a monetary commitment and the fight would just have been another fight. But I hadn’t paid for the course, even though the first class was held on the Friday before I left.
I was supposed to pay on Thursday, the day of orientation, so I had stopped off at the bank on my way to Umeda, but the foreign exchange didn’t open until 10:00. I had to get to orientation so I couldn’t wait for the foreign exchange to open. But nothing was mentioned about tuition, so I breathed a sigh of relief and I went to the bank in the afternoon. There I found out that I could not exchange more than $1000 per day, not enough to cover tuition. Classes on Friday started at 10:00, so I had the same problem getting the money before class on Friday. So I was able to avoid paying on Friday as well. The plan was to pay tuition on Monday, but there was a fight on Sunday.
Then the final nail in the coffin. I still had to break it to Sakura that I was going back to the States. For most of this time, Sakura had feared my going back to the States and leaving her. She found comfort in me and she valued it. She didn’t want to go solo again and that’s why she stuck her neck out for me so often. But when I told her, she was unfazed. Basically, “Sad to see you go, good luck in all your future endeavors.” I have a feeling that in the week and a half that I hadn’t talked to her, I was replaced on guitar and I had just spared her telling me that I was out.
It’s settled then, I leave Japan on October 22nd. I leave Japan on October 22nd. It ends just like that. What of these four months will last? I felt so weak and disadvantaged here. I got stronger throughout college, I don’t doubt that. My problems made me stronger. But I still have a very weak side that was brought out here. Now I live with the realization that I feel very weak and very strong at the same time most of the time. The extremity motif beginning to define my reality.
