Drowned in Translation

Originally, I was fantasizing about writing a piece titled 'Seven Lessons of Tokyo' where as a writer I would be able to penetrate into the dark soul of the city and bring light to its hidden secrets.  Unfortunately,  the only 'secret lesson' I was able to learn from my orchestra's recent trip to the Japanese capital was that you will look like a true idiot if you walk through this city in the pouring rain without an umbrella.   

Honestly, I didn't notice how immediately the Japanese had their umbrellas up when the rain started to fall.  It was so minimal at first that I enjoyed roaming through the cypress-lined paths the Meji shrine in the spring rain, taking in deep breaths of the moist air while the illusion of silence in the heart of a city with over 12 million people wrapped itself around me.  The beauty of a traditional Japanese wedding ceremony unfolding in front of my eyes had me spellbound, and the steady drizzle only added to the poignancy of the moment. 

However by the afternoon, as I made it over to the Tokyo International Forum our concert, there was no sign of the shower letting up.  The temperature had fallen too, and I made a note to myself that I might want to find an umbrella afterwards in Ginza, Tokyo's main shopping district, located just next to the Forum on the other side of the Yurachuko train station.  I wanted to buy some presents anyways and several others in my orchestra had spoken of a 'great little paper shop' hidden between the hallowed temples of the Mitsukoshi and Matsuya Department Stores.  "You will find the most wonderful things at Ito-ya!" said a colleague to me.   

After coming out of the concert relatively unscathed (apart from having to sign several autographs and pose in two pictures), I headed back out into the rain and into a floating sea of umbrellas in every shape and form. "I can handle this," I thought to myself.   "Just go to Muji next door (Japan's 'no frills' store) and buy yourself an umbrella before heading over to Ginza."  However as it turned out, almost all of the umbrellas, except for one or two in pink, were gone.  "Christ!" I thought to myself.  I wasn't ready to confront Tokyo's fashion mile with a pink umbrella, but still, I was in no mood to give up for the day.  My time was limited and if anything, the rain at least gave a Blade Runner-like poetry to the gaudiness of the neon lights around me.  I decided to dodge the rain drops as best as possible, try to find the paper store, and along the way hope that a suitable umbrella would turn up.   

It was a very bad decision.   

Getting soaking wet from head to toe, I soon realized that 'dodging raindrops' was futile.  I was getting strange looks too, as if  my lack of carrying an umbrella was an unspoken crime.  A second Muji on Ginza Street also turned equally fruitless, so I hurried into Mitsukoshi next door, Japan's oldest department store.  Shaking myself off as best as possible in the entrance it was then that I noticed how others were carefully packing their wet umbrellas into a machine that dispenses long condom-like plastic bags provided for the customers in such weather.  "Fascinating," I thought, but a rack with dry towels would have been better.  That's when things suddenly turned bizarre, because no sooner did I step into the store than a salesperson came up to me and greeted me with a towel to dry myself off.  Somehow she must have seen me beforehand, and handing it to me she bowed vigorously and said something in Japanese, her hands directing me over to the store's assortment of umbrellas.  I quickly got the point, and muttered "Arigato gozaimas!" ('thank you', which in Japan is useful for pretty much everything) before heading over to select my obligatory umbrella.  Unfortunately the cheapest model Mitsukoshi offered cost 3,500 Yen, approximately 35 dollars.  Hoping that the saleswoman wouldn't spot me again, I slipped back out of the store, feeling like a thief for not having bought anything .  

Back in the driving rain, all of Ginza was an inkwash of umbrellas bobbing madly up and down about under the darkened sky and the blaze of neon signs.    The traffic loudly sped by as I pulled the collar of my suit up tightly around my neck and on through the crowds, cursing myself for my own stubbornness.  Not only was I soaked, I was getting hungry too, and my feet were starting to hurt.  Moreover, the hyper-audio-visual experience of Ginza at night was starting to annoy the living hell out of me.   

At the next corner I spotted an AM/PM Convenience store on a side street and decided once again to get out of the rain to  buy some rice balls wrapped in seaweed.  As I went up to the cashier I happened to notice that to my right there was a tiny collapsable umbrella on sale for 500 Yen.  I grabbed it- the thing barely covered my head, but it was at any rate better than the water torture I had been submitting myself to for the past hour.  Relieved, I headed back out into the rain, armed with a grenade-sized rice ball in one hand and the umbrella in the other.  "Now let's just get to the paper store," I said to myself, "and then I can head back to the hotel."  Relaxing back into stride, the only thing that kept on shocking me was seeing the reflection myself in the store windows and realizing just how much I must have stuck out among the Japanese.  Fortunately I was somewhat hidden under the umbrella. 

I soon found Ito-ya, with its nine floors of paper and writing utensils, which for me was like arriving at the gates of heaven.  The smell of paper and ink seemed to just greet me at the entrance, raw materials just begging to be touched and felt and looked at.   

Another umbrella bag dispenser was set up too.  But as I stood there, sticking my tiny umbrella into it, part of the umbrella's frame, which wasn't fully collapsed, got caught in the bag.  I tried  pull it back out.  It snapped, leaving me with only the telescoping tube in my hand.  'F***!' I cursed to myself  loudly.  The rest of the umbrella was stuck in the dispenser and my despite my frenzied attempts to pull it out, I only seemed to make matters worse by jamming it in even harder.    

Meanwhile, the rest of Tokyo had gathered around me in embarrassed silence, obviously wondering why an American had just uttered the most caustic words in the English language in front of an ordinary umbrella machine.  It was too much for me, and when one of the store employees finally rushed out and extricated my ruined umbrella my face was burning with embarrassment.  He handed it to me in stone faced silence. I stammered 'Arigato gozaimas!' and quickly fled, feeling how the gates to heaven had suddenly closed on me.  But it was as if in that snap of the handle, all of the noise- the cars, the rain, the whining banter of the sales people, and the pop-like jingles of the elevated train line combined with the overabundance of neon had suddenly reached critical mass in my head and exploded. "Effing umbrella!" I kept on muttering to myself as I made my way in the rain to the train station.  Of course I hadn't taken the receipt with me, but with my Japanese, it wouldn't have helped anyways. 

By the time I had made it back to my station I had calmed down enough to decide that a beer and some ramen noodles were necessary to fully rein myself in before making the last sprint in the rain to my hotel.  There was an internet cafe across the street from the station, and as I entered I was greeted by a waiter who again quickly ran off to get me a towel.  Returning, he asked,   "You like hot tea?"  "Yes, please and a Beer," I replied. "A big... beer, please" "Hai!" he replied smiling, pointing me to a free computer and handing me a menu.  I sat down, relieved to be finally somewhere where it was warm and dry and had Miles Davis playing in the background.  I ordered my bowl of noodles and set myself to the task of checking my e-mails.  Even if the keyboard was constantly trying to flip my text into Kanji, the world finally seemed to be back in order again.  The ramen arrived piping hot, the beer was ice cold, and the smiling faces on Facebook reminded me that 6000 miles away from here I would soon be able to laugh at tonight's tragedy.