Day 2: Part V

We had dinner in the basement floor of a shopping mall nearby the hotel. It was a oyakodon restaurant which Sean was fond of because their kaarage reminded him of Popeyes. It was similar to the beef bowl except it was chicken and wasn’t raw, save for the egg. It was wonderful.

We thought we would explore the mall but after seeing a forty-year-old woman wearing a kimono argue with a shop clerk, we thought the mall may be too hifalutin for our humble selves, so we left.

We were a ten minutes walk from the hotel. We would have snacked while watching TV like we had the night before, but strolling through these new streets, I saw in the not-too-far distance, lit like a candle in a cell, Tokyo Tower.

“Look,” I pointed to a gap between some buildings. “I’m gonna get a picture. Not like I’d ever go. It’s a huge tourist trap.” If I was self-conscious of the term weeb, then tourist was an admission of bloody murder.

“I’ve heard that,” Sean said, continuing to walk.

“Definitely not the real Japan by any means.” I followed. Instead of turning in the direction of the hotel, I continued forward. There was always a turn of the corner, a pedestrian bridge, or an alley that showed more of the base that compelled me to push a little further until we could see its exposed legs.

The Jefferson Memorial was on the edge of an island as though a temple in ancient Greece. The Lincoln Memorial felt as though ascending into an Emperor's court. The Washington Monument was an obelisk at the center of the Capital. Tokyo Tower was a monument to itself, to its city that we stumbled upon through a back alley enclosed by trees. Neither the streetlights, buildings nor the tower had cast through the shadows of the compressed woods.

“I thought it would be more crowded,” Sean said, walking through the parking lot.

“You think it’s closed?”

“Hold on, let me check.” Sean pulled out his phone.

“Dude, it’s right there. We can walk over.”

It closed at midnight. The last ride was at eleven-thirty. We bought tickets and took the elevator to the first observation deck. It was unlit and nearly empty. There was a small café, a gift shop, and windows. “It’s kind of crazy being up here,” I said, studying the horizon. From the airplane, Tokyo had looked like a toy, a miniature made of reclaimed wood and painted by some army retiree as a hobby. Yet, from the tower, we were close. So close.

“It’s so pretty,” Sean smiled, standing beside me.

Our reflections in the glass floated over the city as though rising and descending with the wind.

We meandered to the gift shop. There were plushies, bobbleheads, and water bottles in the shape of the tower, but I had been satisfied by the view. Sean was in line for the checkout counter. There were two others before him. I walked over after he paid. “Dude, could you put these in your backpack?” He lifted a book of city photography with the tower on the cover. I swung my backpack towards my chest, unzipped it, and shoved it inside. “Thanks, man.”

“That’s why I carry it.” I zipped and swung it back around. “Why the picture book?”

“I figured I’d give it to my grandma. She loves photography. Her inn actually has a lot of photographers come through. She has a wall full of their photos.”

“Dang, that’s cool. Is there a castle there or something?”

“Nah, nothing that interesting. Just Thomas the Tank Engine.”

“What?”

Sean didn't hear me. His eyes had wandered to the timer above the elevator. “There’s a minute left.”

A group of men entered before us hovering by the door, chatting. They were slightly taller than Sean. Sean managed to squeeze by after some of them moved out of his way without looking, but when it came to my turn they had realigned. “Sumimasen,” I said and was greeted with the blank faces of the three Americans. “Oh, well, excuse me.”

They laughed with a uniform understanding. One nodded. Another pointed with his thumb agreeably toward me. The third leaned back to make room. “Douzo, douzo,” the one who had pointed said.

Although a little insulted I was too short to be noticed, I played along with a bow and said, “Arigato.” They were all smiles.

At the top, the employees gave us audio guides in English. There were portraits of the founders that ‘talked’ to each other, as our narrator translated, occasionally interjecting with things like, “Do you know what V.I.P. stands for? Well, here at Tokyo Tower, V.I.P. stands for Very Interesting Parnoramics!” Sean and I shared a mutual cringe.

The wall opened to stairs that led to the top room. Inside, a stainless-steel crystalline structure occupied the center of the room, imposing on us visitors a corkscrew path along the panoramic. The steel glimmered like the city lights. Rain dripped along the windows and down to the roads. There were no signs of orange, only the grandeur of a horizon. I distance myself from Sean, just for that moment. Something about the room and the cityscape invoked a melancholy desire to be alone. Or rather, that up there one could forget where they were, who had accompanied them, and why. There was simply oneself and the faint, powerful lights: lamposts with passersby, trains with passengers, offices of workers and the apartments where they slept.

“Oh, you’re here,” Sean said after some time. I had let him pass me earlier by hiding behind a branch of the steel crystal. “I was worried that maybe you’d gone back down.”

“Of course not,” I said. “I like it up here.” The words had slipped out. It was such an embarrassing thing to say. There were thousands of observation decks all over the world and every one was a tourist trap. I could only imagine what Julian or Austin would say had I let that slip out around them. They would have called me a sellout or a sheeple, baa-ing at me. Or maybe they would have silently removed themselves from my company. Sean did neither of these things. He smiled and nodded his head in agreement. “Actually,” I said, again the words slipping out from a sense of atonement and want of something I myself did not know and was frightening.

“Yeah?”

What had I thought? What had I felt? Why can’t I say it? “I like…” I said but stopped. Sean watched me as I counted on my fingers. “Never had I seen / how vast descendants could dream. / So, arigato.”

The curl in Sean’s smile fell flat. I could see water start to glean about his eyes and a rush of color to his cheeks. “Alex,” Sean said. “That’s…” his voice drifted off as he looked out. I could see his breath on the glass. I took a step forward and he started to laugh. It was louder than any he had before. Others noticed and some were getting irritated that the quiet atmosphere had been shattered. I was shh-ing him. “Sorry, sorry,” he said. “It’s just you have an extra syllable at the end.”

“What?” I said, losing all attachment to the feeling I had tried to express. Sean continued laughing after seeing my disappointed face. “What the hell are you talking about? A-ri-ga-to, one-two-three-four. That’s not enough so I added ‘so’ to balance it out. That’s five syllables.”

Sean shook his head, “Arigatou has a long ō, so it counts for two.”

“Then get rid of the ‘so’ and, boom, there you go. Perfect haikyuu.”

“But the whole point of the haiku is that it’s the spur of the moment. Like hitting a serve or freestyle rap. There’s only one shot, one opportunity.”

“Whatever. It was my first time.”

“It was. It was,” he said without a trace of laughter. “And it was really good. Very shizen.”

“Shizen?”

“Yeah, it means nature, or like, naturally. Like, I could tell that it came from here.” He said, then poked my torso, right on my heart. It hurt. Not physically. It was my heart that hurt. A heartache. Aching for what? “Oh,” Sean took his finger away. It burned. Neither of us could speak or move.

He left.

If I couldn’t name the feeling that had inspired my haiku, but watching him go, I knew he had understood. I could never ask as that would have ruined something else important. Yet, what that important thing was, I also didn’t know.

The ride down the elevator was hotter than before. The AC must’ve broken. Not until we had strolled through cool night air had either of us calmed to speak to the other. Even then, we hardly had anything to say other than goodnight.