Healthcare and India

"Grishma?"

I usually don't wake up in the middle of the night when someone tries, but I'm glad I did this time, because I could hear pained groans coming from her side of the bed.

"Yeah?" I ask, eyes still closed.

"I have vertigo."

She's trembling. I check her forehead--no fever.

"What should I do?" I ask, still not completely awake.

"I need to go to a hospital in the morning."

She begins sobbing, and I can't think of what else do to, so I roll over and hold her.

"We'll go to a hospital in the morning," I reassure her.

I had gone to a hospital in Hyderabad two weeks ago when my foot started misbehaving. It's a fun new travel game I get to play every summer called Spin the Wheel of Foot Injuries (this time, it was a blister that kept doubling in size each day). I was a little worried about cost since I don't have Indian health insurance, but I was surprised to find that, even without insurance, my exam and medicine cost about 600 rupees (which is around $12). And it's not like the hospital was shabby. It had marble floors and a giant chandelier in the waiting lobby, and their system was fairly organized for walk-in appointments.

My friend's blood test, IV, medicines and checkup cost around 1300 rupees, or a little over $23. The doctor told her that she might have a combination of dehydration and spondylitis. She herniated a disk in her neck years ago, which seems to have become agitated from traveling (specifically, I think, from sleeping in a sitting position in cars, buses, planes, etc.) and it started causing vertigo and nausea. To check, she needed an MRI, which would have cost her $1,500 in the United States after insurance coverage, but cost her less than $200 in India. The facilities were just as good as any American hospital I've ever been to.

While she was vomiting every trace of matter in her stomach and saying things incoherently ("I really wish I had two lizards with me right now" or "Kendon, your leg-hair is really fun to pet"), I kept wondnering why healthcare is so cheap in this country. The facilities are good, at least in the two hospitals I've been to. Does it cost less to maintain these hospitals? Does the government fund healthcare really well? Is it because they use reusable materials where possible--bedpans instead of vomit-bags, for example? Is it because there are no insurance middle-men to pay?

I realized that I can't answer that question until I know what my American insurance does pay. Who is getting all this money, anyway? And why?

These questions remained unanswered today, but her health improved tremendously by the end of the night. And while I watched people move in and out of the hospital, I felt comfort when I thought about all the people who wouldn't have to worry about having access to healthcare because of cost as much as they do in the United States.

This isn't saying that the system here is perfect, I've heard stories of corrupt Indian doctors who recommend tests patients don't really need to make more money, and I have no idea how efficient the emergency rooms are here, but I do find it remarkable that the same procedures and tests are so much cheaper.

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Floating Towards the Sea (Or Maybe Away from it, I'm not Entirely Sure)

The water looks like mercury from where I'm sitting. The currents of the Arabian Sea don't make it far enough into the Keralan backwaters to jolt anything, so this silver water moves slowly. Our houseboat glides across the water, passing rice paddies and farms and goats and the occasional couple on their honeymoon. 

"What a polite afternoon," I say, having just read that word about four times on my current page of Bill Bryson's adventures in England, entitled Notes From a Small Island. He had just talked about polite ticket collectors who thanked you on trains, and how there wasn't any pushing or shoving while people boarded or exited the platform on his way to Wiltshire.

"What polite air," I say, still savoring the word. The air is just dewy enough to let you feel like you're near water, but it's nowhere as imposing as ocean-air.

Our next hours become instinctive, not a calculated move on what's the best use of our time while we're here. Kendon chooses to fish--first with dough, then with live bait. Bianca chooses to take photos and admire the local fauna. And I choose to find out how Bryson felt returning to his old town in England years after he had moved away.

Hyderabad Traffic: A Lesson for Beginners

Hyderabad traffic, like most other things in this city, appears chaotic when you're first introduced to it. But it has an organic flow, and once you see that, it becomes easy to maneuver through it. At this point, it seems silly that I was ever startled by the traffic here.

And that's because with Hyderabad traffic, like most other things in this city, you have to carry yourself purposefully. Here's a fundamental truth about Indian drivers--they are all defensive drivers, just not courteous ones. And once you figure that out, nothing they can do on the road will seem intimidating anymore.

Don't jump. Don't be startled. Don't wince. Stare at the driver and walk across. What are they going to do? Run you over? Oh, they're in a car? Carry yourself like you're driving a tank. They will stop.

And they'll honk, sure. They're in a rush, but so are you. They can wait, because you certainly aren't going to stand here all day. You just have to remember that they're not honking because they're angry at you, like in the United States. No one is going to pull out a shotgun and shoot you if you honk at them, like in the United States (it's kind of delightfully ironic that Indian traffic seems much less likely to injure you than American traffic). An Indian driver honks to let you know he's there, as if he's in an existential crisis and needs to remind himself that he exists. He honks, therefore he is.

Existential crises breed emotional vulnerability, and there's no room for pansies on your schedule. 

Mr. Grishma Singh

The sign on the placard waiting for us when we arrived at the Hyderabad airport read "Mr. Grishma Singh". Then, when we were driving to the hotel from the airport, I sat in the front seat and was the only one speaking to the driver. The driver didn't speak English, so I spoke to him in Hindi. When my mother's friend called the driver to check in on us, the driver handed the phone to the white male in the back seat who has been speaking in an American accent the entire time and hasn't spoken a word of Hindi.

My mother's name is technically a male name, which she attributes to the commonly used "Mr." with her name in India whenever a driver comes to pick her up from the airport or the company makes a hotel reservation for her (similarly to "Kyle". I assume it's a male from the name each time, but I have met a couple of females with that name). But that's not true with my name. Can you even think of a male name that ends in an 'a'?

I've been staying at this hotel for about 2 weeks, but the room is still booked under a "Mr. Grishma Singh".

And this shows up at our doorstep every morning with the newspaper:

(I thought it was a poorly written 's', but compare it to the 'r' in my first name)

Mumbai Train Station

I was told that it's impossible to get train tickets last minute in India, and that they fill up a few weeks in advance. But I've been to enough train stations in enough countries to know that there are always open seats. It was difficult to imagine why India would be any different.

We started with Counter 1.

"We need tickets to Hyderabad for tomorrow."

Some clicking on a computer made in the early 80s ensued, and the elderly woman told us there are no seats available. She was plump, but not in a cute or hearty way--her age made her look like a melting candle.

"I can put you on a wait list," she offered.

"No, we'll keep trying."

We try Counter 7.

No seats.

We try counter 3.

"Just be really angry. If we're difficult, they'll have to cave," I whisper to Bianca, who was already in battle mode.

I saw two Japanese tourists who were being pushed further and further back in line by Indian men who kept cutting in front of them. The two women asked them to stop going in front of them, but the men just said something about how they needed tickets. The Japanese are truly one of the kindest people I've been around, and I thought it unfortunate that no one would ever think that of Indians.

Then again, I don't think Indians care. Much like the Greeks, Indians have a strong sense of patriotism completely independent from international perception. They don't care how you feel about them, because they already know they're the best.

Still, I wanted to help those women. I wanted to at least tell them that these men aren't worldly travelers like them, and by the looks of their attire and demeanor, they look more like the type to sit with the luggage and drink whiskey all night. They weren't exactly marked with signs of success or well being.

But we had our own battle to fight, this time with Counter 14. Counter 7 had told us about a tourist quota trains have. I don't know if that's a real thing or something the attendant made up to shut us up without feeling like she caved, but either way, we used that reasoning to get two tickets to Hyderabad in 2nd class. We got one on waitlist, expecting to have to bribe the conductor, but none of that was necessary. The three of us just sat together until the conductor came to check our ticket, and he just told us he'll let us know if a seat opens up. Kendon found a seat within the hour.

There are two pieces of advice I'd like to give anyone traveling by train in any country:

1. There are always seats available, just keep asking.

2. Attendants get flustered if you yell at them in a foreign accent, use it if you need to--they will be much less likely to argue with you if they don't perceive you as their peer/have difficulty understanding you.

Keralan Typography

If you ever want to simulate being on an alien planet, the closest thing you can do is go to a place with a language you don't understand, as long as the language doesn't use the roman alphabet. Those languages make you feel tremendously more foreign, no matter how similar you actually are to the local culture. Take Poland--I couldn't read or understand any of the writing, but it felt less foreign to me than Kerala. At least I could read Polish (while butchering words with my "You speak Polish like a Russian" accent), even if I didn't understand what it meant. But everytime I look at Malayalam, I don't even know where to begin.

While driving around Cochin, a lively city in this otherwise relaxed state, we stopped inches away from a bus at a red light. When I looked over at the bus, I noticed something peculiar. Brushstrokes. The labels and numbers on this bus were hand painted.

I can see the brushstrokes when I'm inches away from them. Stop signs, speed limit signs, license plate numbers on autos and buses... they're all painted by hand! I hadn't been this excited about finding out that something is actually painted since I was in Rome. They were painted precisely and neatly, and I only noticed the subtle differences between identical signs when I was looking for them.

Look at the impeccable Arial on this bus:

And this, the seal of the state of Kerala. Is that Impact? I can't tell:

The tricky thing about painting things, I imagine, comes when you're advertising. Logos and brands must stay precise and identical, but I don't think Vodafone will be disappointed at these:

Because the actual logo of Vodafone looks like this: 

It's All in Your Head

It was when I wished I had taken up my mother's offer that I became anxious. She wanted to call one of her friends in India to take us to a grocery store that was just down the street. I refused, in part because it felt patronizing ("you've traveled without us so many times, but let me send someone to hold your hand and walk you to the end of the street") and because it felt ridiculous to ask someone to come all the way to our hotel to, you know, walk us down the street.

We walked around for thirty minutes, but still couldn't find it. So we just went back to the hotel and went to bed.

And now I'm lying on a hard mattress under numbingly cold air, wrapping a blanket around my body as many times as I can.

Sometime in March, I had warned Kendon and Bianca to take what I say with a grain of salt, because my experience growing up in Hyderabad was atypical. And I didn't mean it in a "we all have unique perspectives so you may have different opinions than me" kind of way. My experiences fostered an ignorance which is now making itself increasingly apparent. Hyderabad is intimidating me. It's nothing like London or Rome or other big cities where I still felt like I had a lot of control over my environment. I feel like I'm caught in an ocean current.

I roll onto my right, facing Bianca's sleeping silhouette. A lock of hair falls forward, resting on my nose. I leave it there, refusing to take my hands out of the blanket burrito.

There's a certain kind of sadness that materializes when you realize that, out of all the places you've been to in the world, the one that takes you most out of your comfort zone is the city in which you were born.

And it's not that I'm helpless here. People are calling in to check up on me every day and I have a list of phone numbers of people who want to help me while I'm here. I know I can call them at any moment. But it's not about that.

I want to be able to sustain myself here. I want to be able to visit without having to know people or having them arrange things for me. This is just a city. Just a conglomerate of earth and people. It can't be that difficult.

Everything is matter. It's just atoms. No big deal.

Exhaustion overpowers the chill, and I finally close my eyes.

Kyoto Train Station; Unrequited Affections

“I missed you, Grishma.”

“I didn’t miss you! You’re unbearable!”

“I just want to hang out with you.”

“Shut up! I hate you!”

So began a familiar conversation with the Kyoto train station. In Pokemon, Nurse Joy is essentially identical, even though there are multiple manifestations of her in different cities. Train stations work the same way. I learned today that Florence and Kyoto are sisters. Or second cousins, or whatever all those Nurse Joys were.

Florence Train Station had this nasty habit of kidnapping me for hours. She loved to see my friends and me so much that she’d never be open when she claimed on signs, so we’d have to come back multiple times a day. She’s one of those need-to-be-needed types. She’d make sure that the employee servicing us would somehow botch the job, too. Just to keep us around for a few extra hours before we left for our destinations.

In the same way, Kyoto Train Station keeps me. She keeps me for hours. She makes sure that employees give me different routes, different answers. She cancels just the right trains so that I have to come trudging back to her time and again, disheartened.

But saying it with such brevity is putting it lightly. Let me take you through my day. Through our day, this train station and I.

12:00pm

I decide that local trains would be a better experience than taking the bullet train back to Tokyo. The windows are bigger, plus I like going at a slower pace so I can enjoy the scenery. We buy our tickets, and the employee points us to Platform 2.

We get on the train, it stops at Tsuruga, then comes back to Kyoto. We’re confused, but I loved seeing the small towns outside my window as we passed. Not a big deal.

2:30pm

“WE HAVE TO TRANSFER?! WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TELL US THIS?!”

Okay, breathe.

We get directed around the train station twice before someone circles two stations on a map. A Japanese map. We need to transfer at Maibara. I study the Japanese characters for the next thirty minutes—the first character looks like Japan’s fault lines, the second like a lantern hanging outside a shop. Maibara. Maibara. 米原.

We board the train the attendant points out, and after an hour or so, it abruptly stops at a station that isn’t Maibara. We are told to leave, that this was the end of the line. Stepping outside, I saw that this station—this mound of soil slightly more raised than the acres around it—is in a town with fewer residents than my dorm. Why is the train stopping? Where are we? We’re at Omi-Imazu? What is happening? This is so stressful! I hate everything!

I talk to an attendant. Okay, we don’t have to go all the way back to Kyoto... Just take a transfer to Omi-Shiotzu, then transfer to Maibara.

“This is so stressful!” I yell, stomping around like a child during a tantrum around the train station, trying to figure out where to go and what to do. The floor is wet from the constant drizzle, and the chill is slowly crushing me.

After waiting for forty minutes, I realize that the train which would take us to transfer to another train which would take us to Maibara stops every three hours in this town. We decide it would be faster to just take a train back to Kyoto and get on a different line.

6:50pm

“I mi—”

“Shut up.”

“—ssed you.”

“SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!!!”

I have a Kyoto TS employee draw out what transfers I need to make—all the transfers. Maibara is the first of eight transfers. What. WHAT. He recommends sleeping in some town for the night, because trains won’t run as long as I’ll need for the journey to Tokyo… IF everything goes smoothly from now on!

“Can I just exchange these for the bullet train? I need to be in Tokyo by tonight.”

“Sorry, last bullet train already left.”

Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Kyoto Train Station finally relents.

“Nozomi line, that will take you there tonight.”

“Nozomi,” I say, recognizing the Japanese characters. Looks like an “n”, a twisted “z”, and a hindi “m”. Nozomi. のぞみ

The bullet train it was. I arrived back to the Kyoto station three times today, over a span of almost nine hours. An old man tells me that no one, not even the Japanese, would take the JR Line from Kyoto to Tokyo because it takes almost 8 hours. Where were you at noon, old man?

I bid goodbye to the Kyoto Train Station, certain that I’ll be seeing some manifestation of her spirit again.

Nonfiction, Maybe (Or, Running Errands in Kyoto)

“Shiseido Majolica Majorca Lash Expander, Shiseido Majolica Majorca Lash Expander…” I mutter, thinking that perhaps saying it over and over again in English would help me read it in Japanese.

I squint and stare at labels inside this Kyoto drugstore. I have no idea what I’m doing.

Should’ve Googled it before coming here. I don’t even know what it looks like…

Thanks, Captain Hindsight.

I sigh in anguish.

A recent NYTimes article states that we read fiction as though it was virtual reality—a compelling out-of-body experience which feels real to our brains. As a primarily creative-nonfiction writer, I find it problematic to exclude nonfiction from that line of thinking. So I pose a challenge to you, dear reader. What I’m writing may or may not have actually happened. Think about whether you find it compelling or mundane and, if you want, let me know. The rest of this blog is assuredly nonfiction.

“Can I help you?” a male employee asks. He looks like he’s in his early twenties, and has a less heavy Japanese accent than most people I’ve encountered so far. Generally, the trend I’ve noticed is that the younger a person is, the likelier he or she is to speak English. His bright, white shirt makes his red and off-white apron look dirty. His brown sneakers are actually dirty.

“I’m looking for Shiseido Majolica—”

“—Lash Expander. Yes, I heard you. It is this way.”

We walk further down the aisle and he leans down towards the shelves, his jaw hanging freely and his eyes moving back and forth like he's a typewriter. After searching for a few moments, he points. There it was.

“Thanks,” I say, reaching out and grabbing two cases.

“Where are you from?” he asks. I’m the only one here except the middle-aged woman at the cash register. I wonder if he’s her son.

“United States,” I answer politely.

“You did not learn Japanese before coming? Must be unpleasant.”

“I mean… I’m fine. I use gestures and stuff.” I speak slowly and clearly so that he can understand me easily.

“It does not bother you that you cannot read signs?” and, after a pause, “or find makeup?”

“It’s actually kind of cool that I can’t read anything. I look at something just… just to enjoy it, not to get any information. It shows me how people design. Like… here—” I point, “—why are you using like seven different fonts? Does anyone find this easy to read?”

He laughs.

“And it’s so cluttered! Why are these words all squeezed together? And why is this bigger than this?” I continue speaking and pointing, critiquing a drugstore banner as if I’m in a museum.

“This…” he points to the large font, “means ‘discount’, and these words are smaller because it shows you what items are discounted.”

“And this,” he points to the blue text, “is a completely different section. This is when discount ends, next Saturday.”

“Oh.”

His maybe-mother-but-definitely-boss yells something from the cash register. He says something in Japanese, bows goodbye to me and rushes over to the snack aisle.

“Your English is really good!” I yell, walking towards the cash register to pay.

“Thank you! I watch lots of South Park!” 

Kyoto: to See? to Feel?

While walking around Nijo Castle in Kyoto, three things caught my eye:

1.      I noticed wall art from the 1700s that looked like cubist paintings. Surprised, I decided to take a picture, when I noticed—

2.      A sign that said “No Photography Allowed”. I understand, photography can sometimes damage delicate art. I decided to draw a picture of it, but then I noticed—

3.      A sign that said “No Drawing or Scribbling”

Excuse me?

I couldn’t stop thinking about why “drawing or scribbling” was against the rules. Why don’t you want people to see what’s inside the castle, Japan? But my question should have instead been directed to UNESCO—the UN’s committee of preserving historical locations. Nijo Castle is on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, a list of 900 or so places compiled “to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity”.

Outstanding value to humanity, you say? This is why I’m not allowed to share what I see with people through doodles and “scribbles”? You don’t fool me, UNESCO. I’m onto you. If this castle is secretive, it becomes elusive. If it’s elusive, people will come to see for themselves, which means more tickets being sold, which means more money. Unless, of course, people use Google. 

Is this castle really something people should experience? Is looking not enough?

A few hours later, I walk through an ornate, wooden arch that makes Nijo Castle look quaint. Nishi-Honganji is a Buddhist temple and significantly larger and more ornate than Nijo Castle. They allow photographs inside, too.

 

Nijo Castle: mrrrrr

Nishi Honganji: MRRRRR!!

As I step inside the prayer room, I pull in the smell of aged wood and incense into my lungs, and they sit there, slowly absorbing into me. The room is at least a hundred feet wide and fifty feet long. The walls are made of the darkest wood, and bamboo mats seamlessly line the floor. The wall which holds the shrine is gold-plated, with elegant engravings all over. Silence dissolves when a crowd of priests begin praying.

I start exploring the setting for opportunities for good pictures. The gilded wall? The tapestries and statues inside the shrine? The muted, traditional sliding doors that let in just the right amount of light? The iron lamps with dragons engraved into them? The ceiling, a beautiful composition of dark wood and white-painted designs? The calligraphy which lines the trim around the doors? 

No.  

What picture will capture the way the wood planks rock subtly as you walk over them? How will it show that, when over one-hundred priests pray, you feel the vibrations of their words in your bones? How can it reveal that when your forehead rests on the cold, bamboo mat, you can feel your breath touch your knees? How will it convey that the ceiling pulls your spine towards it when you close your eyes?

As the priests finish chanting, horns blare, their shrieks echoing uncomfortably into every corner of the room. A single drum-beat stills them, it calms them into submission. They topple onto the bodies in the room, bodies that are humbly kneeling, actively connecting.

"Do you want to take a picture? It's allowed," my mother suggests after spotting others taking pictures.

"Nah," I say. This temple is something people should experience. Looking won't be enough.

"Hanatoro"

Kyoto has a yearly festival called “Hanatoro”—a week-long festival of lights. The last day of the festival was on the same night we arrived, and I was really looking forward to the lantern-lit streets I had seen so many pictures of. But after walking for almost an hour in 34-degree weather, I found no such streets, and no such lights.

So I made some of my own. 

"Hanatoro"

Una Mattina in Giappone

“Buongiorno!” a man approaching me says excitedly. Being mistaken for an Italian person was the last thing I expected while walking to Tsukiji this morning.

“B-buongiorno!” I respond, jovially.

There was a pause as we both tried to think of something else to say, he in his excitement of spotting another Italian in Tokyo, and me in my surprise of being mistaken for an Italian person in Tokyo.

We stutter and smile, both finally speaking as we walk past each other.

“Ciao!” in unison.

Surprise! It's Probably Fish, Though.

Okay… okay… rice, okay… hmm… salmon!

“It’s good!” I say, genuinely surprised to find salmon in my mouth.

Just the right amount of salt, wow, this is really good!

When choosing to eat this rice-salmon-seaweed-ball, much like any other item I’ve eaten so far in Japan, only one factor came into play—does it say anything in English? If I answered “no”, into my mouth it went.

Meals are enormously exciting when you have no idea what you’re putting in your mouth. Every facet of flavor is a surprise, and I find myself sincerely enjoying things I might have otherwise overlooked because they were “obvious” (i.e. when what I thought were two pieces of bread with jam in the middle turns out to be a piece of cake, the mere fact that it’s sweet is as much of a delight as the, say, strawberry frosting inside.) Is this what it’s like to eat when you’re a baby?

I sincerely encourage you to blindfold yourself and get someone to feed you something. Only if you trust them though, I would never wish Fear Factor on you.

Some finds:

The aforementioned rice-salmon-seaweed-ball

Street vendor food: Deep fried octopus and egg yolk with a sweet sauce and fish-flavored shavings on top

Green Tea, but with a strong taste of toasted lentils

A block of sweet red bean paste, with a consistency halfway between butter and jelly

Carbonated drink, no idea what flavor. Tastes like a combination of ginger ale and lime soda

An Afternoon of Douchebaggery

One of the inevitable consequences of being an only child, I’m told, is that I’ll throw a tantrum if I don’t get my way. I don’t like feeding generalities, but I don’t fight my feelings, either.

Cranky (adj): ill-tempered; grouchy; cross.

I hate bus tours. My mom wanted to go on a bus tour. I told her I looked at the itinerary of several bus tours and planned our day around what they thought visitors want to see. But she wanted to go on a bus tour. I told her the day pass for the subway is $7, while the bus tour is $50, and that the subway is much faster. But she wanted to go on a bus tour. I told her I’ve already read about the general history of these places and that she could reference those printouts of information I gave her on the plane. But she wanted to go on a bus tour. I told her I’ve been on bus tours before and it’s much more fun to experience the streets than glide past them on a bus. But she wanted to go on a bus tour. I told her we wouldn’t have control over our time and that we’d have to leave early even if we really like a place and want to spend more time there. But she wanted to go on a bus tour. So we went on a bus tour.

The thing is, I always seem to have really good luck. Even though I’m stuck on this bus listening to information I already know, I’ve got spectacles happening all around me.

“Tah-Kah-Tih,” an elderly woman says loudly, over-pronouncing Japanese syllables and giggling as she spoke. Her portly husband leans his head out of the bus window and screams, “ANDIAMO!” 

I perk up. So they’re Italian… Who is he yelling at? His kids? No, he’s yelling—in Italian—at our tour guide who has a basic grasp on English. She looks at him from outside, asks him in English if he’s okay, and he grunts and returns to his seat.

Francesco and Paolo step into the bus with obnoxious stride. Yes, guys, these elderly women are going to be all over you if you keep swaying your hips just so. Your glimmering gold chains and tight shirts are impeccable fashion choices, bravo. 

Francesco and Paolo are super best friends. They do everything together. They take pictures of each other in identical locations in nearly identical poses—both like to lean on one knee and thrust their hips into the air, but Paolo furrows one eyebrow a little more than Francesco. I think it’s because he’s trying to woo Francesco while he’s in front of the camera. They’re wearing identical leather satchels. Both have the same haircut, too. I wonder how many STDs they share.

Jess and Ryan are conjoined twins. Not literally though. I recall this myth from ancient Greece about how people used to have doubles of everything—two heads, 4 arms, 4 legs, et cetera—and that the other person was your soul mate (your “other half”) but then something happened, I think Zeus got angry, and people were split in half and ended up trying to find their “other half” (I think the myth was supposed to explain gender preferences and sexuality—the gender of the other head you were supposed to be attached to revealed whether you were into men or women). Jess and Ryan are the embodiment of pre-split humans. They’re sharing a sweatshirt, and often coddling each other’s frail sense of security about their relationship. She shivers from the cold, and he envelops her like an amoeba feeding on plankton. He leans away from her to get a better view of something, and she twines her arms around his torso, just in case he forgets she's there.

We go here and there on the bus, taking 5 hours for a process that involved 3 hours of commute. My mom looks like she’s having fun though, so it’s okay.

Besides, I’m having fun, too:

Does this make us best friends too, Francesco and Paolo?

The Incident on Heisei Dori

Last week, I was trying to draw a map of the route from the train station to my hotel, but I became frustrated because Google had few English names for streets and areas. So I stopped.

Bad idea in retrospect. I realize this as I'm staring at a street sign that reads "平成通り".

“Uh… let’s try this one, it looks familiar…” I guess. I lead my mother down this street, having the vaguest “feeling” that my “intuitive sense of direction” would lead me to our destination. The address was fairly straightforward: 2-13-5 Nihonbashi Kayabacho. We’re near the right street; I remember that from the map I attempted to draw last week. Plus, I have a pretty good sense of converting birds-eye-to-first-person point of view. But I'm having trouble making sense of the way building numbers progress through the blocks.

“2-1... 2-2…” I say, walking in what I thought was the right direction, “4-1?! Wait why does it just jump like this?”

There is no one around to witness my outrage. It’s 8:30 am on a Sunday in the business district… I shouldn’t be surprised. Sometimes people pass by, but they’re usually running, so I don’t stop them to ask for directions.

I approach the first stationary person I see. He’s a construction worker, standing firmly with a raised chin, his elderly face watching over other men lifting pipes and carrying them off.

“Excuse me?” I ask, “uh… I… uh…” I point at the address written down on a piece of paper. He speaks to me in Japanese, and I try my best to make sense of what he’s saying. I understand nothing.

I never realized how beautiful Japanese sounds. Their cadence and syllables are just… they’re like birds—short and distinct, things aren’t drawn out, things aren’t boorish. I really enjoyed listening to him. He points in a direction, so we begin walking. After wandering for fifteen minutes, we run into another construction site. I approach the nearest man, younger than the last one, and speak of my uncertainty, pointing at the address on my piece of paper. He examines the address and looks confused. All seven of his coworkers come and look, debating amongst each other about where the “hoteru” was. One of them took out his clipboard and pulled off a map of the area. He drew arrows on it, and gave it to me. I didn’t see another map in his clipboard; I hoped he didn’t need it today.

“Thank you! Arigato!” I say, bowing, and venture onward. They cheerfully wave goodbye, a sendoff fit for any explorer.

Soon, we end up back to the construction site we first walked past. The old man looks confused to see us. He exclaims in Japanese and points in the same direction, and I stand silently and give him the same blank stare. He then starts leading me across the street, and I realize he was never pointing at where he thought my hotel was. He was pointing at a police station. He leads us inside and speaks to a few officers, who bring out large maps and start searching.

They speak in Japanese, I shrug apologetically.

“Parlez-vous français?” one of them asks.

“Uh… no. English?”

They shrug. They surround a large book and start flipping through the pages furiously. I try peeking in between their shoulders, looking back at my mother for a moment to make sure she’s okay.

“Hai!” one of them emphatically yells, pulling me into the circle of people. After more pointing and nodding, I finally figure out where I’m going. We’re only a block away. As I walk past the construction site, I give the old man a thumbs up excitedly. He laughs and gives me one, too. 

Tokyo, First Impressions and Scattered Thoughts

Everything is gray. The water is ash. The sky is concrete. The buildings are slate. Some are warm grays, but most are not. Even the foggy air is gray. I feel like I'm drifting past a panoramic Rothko painting.

These buildings in Tokyo usually don’t last very long. In an article, the Tokyo Federation of Housing Production Organizations (don’t give me that look) said that residential buildings last an average of 26 years before getting torn down and rebuilt. There seem to be no opportunities to walk with your grandson and point to the building in which you raised your family. No prospect of living in a charming, vintage locale. No room for nostalgia.

But... everything is gray. Are these buildings ones you’d want to preserve over time?

Maybe I come from egocentric cultures. Maybe the Japanese value communal identity more than personal histories. Who cares if your house is being rebuilt? It’s getting upgraded, that’s a good thing. And Japanese cultural identity, the kind rooted in its past, is preserved in historical buildings.

Earlier this year, I ran into the work of Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese artist and writer, and rolled my eyes. I now wonder if she grew up in one of these buildings. Maybe her art is protest (it would explain her use of colors and circles). Or maybe putting polka dots on things is overrated. 

Maybe spending money on painting a building that statistically won't see three decades from now is overrated.