Strolling to the back of the store, I paused now and then to look at CDs on shelves that faced the door, glancing up to see who might be coming in behind me.
I browsed for a bit in the classical section, then moved on to jazz. On impulse I checked to see whether Midori had a CD. She did: Another Time. The cover showed her standing under a streetlamp in what looked like one of the seedier parts of Shinjuku, her arms folded in front of her, her profile in shadows. I didn’t recognize the label—something still small-time. She wasn’t there yet, but I believed Mama was right, that she would be.
I started to return it to its place on the shelf, then thought, Christ, it’s just music. If you like it, buy it. Still, a clerk might remember. So I also picked up a collection of someone else’s jazz instrumentals and some Bach concertos on the way to the registers. Chose a long line, harassed-looking clerk. Paid cash. All the guy would remember was that someone bought a few CDs, maybe classical, maybe jazz. Not that anyone was going to ask him.
I finished the SDR and took the CDs back to my apartment in Sengoku. Sengoku is in the northeast of the city, near the remnants of old Tokyo, what the natives call Shitamachi, the downtown. The area is antique, much of it having survived both the Great Kanto quake of 1923 and the firebombing that came during the war. The neighborhood has no nightlife beyond the local nomiya, or watering holes, and no commercial district, so there aren’t many transients. Most of its people are Edoko, the real Tokyoites, who live and work in its mom-and-pop shops and its tiny restaurants and bars. “Sengoku” means “the thousand stones.” I don’t know the origin of the name, but I’ve always liked it.
It’s not home, but it’s as close as anything I’ve ever had. After my father died, my mother took me back to the States. In the face of her loss and the accompanying upheavals in her life, I think my mother wanted to be close to her parents, who seemed equally eager for a reconciliation. We settled in a town called Dryden in upstate New York, where she took a job as a Japanese instructor at nearby Cornell University and I enrolled in public school.
Dryden was a predominantly white, working-class town, and my Asian features and nonnative English made me a favorite with the local bullies. I received my first practical lessons in guerilla warfare from the Dryden indigenous population: they hunted me in packs, and I struck back at them on my own terms when they were alone and vulnerable. I understood the guerrilla mentality years before I landed at Da Nang.
My mother was distraught over my constant bruises and scraped knuckles, but was too distracted with her new position at the university and with trying to mend fences with her parents to intervene. I spent most of those years homesick for Japan.
So I grew up sticking out, only afterwards learning the art of anonymity. In this sense, Sengoku is an anomaly for me. I chose the area before anonymity was an issue, and I stayed by rationalizing that the damage was already done. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows your name, thinks they know your business. At first it made me uncomfortable, everyone recognizing me, pinpointing me. I thought about moving to the west of the city. The west feels exactly like Tokyo and nothing like Japan. It’s brash and fast and new, swirling with caffeineated crowds, alienating and anonymous. I could go there, blend in, disappear.
But the old downtown has a magic to it, and it’s hard for me to imagine leaving. I like the walk from the subway to my apartment in the evening, up the little merchant’s street painted green and red so that it always feels festive, even in the early darkness of winter. There’s the middle-aged couple that owns the cornerfive-and-dime, who greet me “Okaeri nasai!” —Welcome home!—when they see me at night, rather than the usual “Kon ban wa,” or good evening.
I browsed for a bit in the classical section, then moved on to jazz. On impulse I checked to see whether Midori had a CD. She did: Another Time. The cover showed her standing under a streetlamp in what looked like one of the seedier parts of Shinjuku, her arms folded in front of her, her profile in shadows. I didn’t recognize the label—something still small-time. She wasn’t there yet, but I believed Mama was right, that she would be.
I started to return it to its place on the shelf, then thought, Christ, it’s just music. If you like it, buy it. Still, a clerk might remember. So I also picked up a collection of someone else’s jazz instrumentals and some Bach concertos on the way to the registers. Chose a long line, harassed-looking clerk. Paid cash. All the guy would remember was that someone bought a few CDs, maybe classical, maybe jazz. Not that anyone was going to ask him.
I finished the SDR and took the CDs back to my apartment in Sengoku. Sengoku is in the northeast of the city, near the remnants of old Tokyo, what the natives call Shitamachi, the downtown. The area is antique, much of it having survived both the Great Kanto quake of 1923 and the firebombing that came during the war. The neighborhood has no nightlife beyond the local nomiya, or watering holes, and no commercial district, so there aren’t many transients. Most of its people are Edoko, the real Tokyoites, who live and work in its mom-and-pop shops and its tiny restaurants and bars. “Sengoku” means “the thousand stones.” I don’t know the origin of the name, but I’ve always liked it.
It’s not home, but it’s as close as anything I’ve ever had. After my father died, my mother took me back to the States. In the face of her loss and the accompanying upheavals in her life, I think my mother wanted to be close to her parents, who seemed equally eager for a reconciliation. We settled in a town called Dryden in upstate New York, where she took a job as a Japanese instructor at nearby Cornell University and I enrolled in public school.
Dryden was a predominantly white, working-class town, and my Asian features and nonnative English made me a favorite with the local bullies. I received my first practical lessons in guerilla warfare from the Dryden indigenous population: they hunted me in packs, and I struck back at them on my own terms when they were alone and vulnerable. I understood the guerrilla mentality years before I landed at Da Nang.
My mother was distraught over my constant bruises and scraped knuckles, but was too distracted with her new position at the university and with trying to mend fences with her parents to intervene. I spent most of those years homesick for Japan.
So I grew up sticking out, only afterwards learning the art of anonymity. In this sense, Sengoku is an anomaly for me. I chose the area before anonymity was an issue, and I stayed by rationalizing that the damage was already done. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows your name, thinks they know your business. At first it made me uncomfortable, everyone recognizing me, pinpointing me. I thought about moving to the west of the city. The west feels exactly like Tokyo and nothing like Japan. It’s brash and fast and new, swirling with caffeineated crowds, alienating and anonymous. I could go there, blend in, disappear.
But the old downtown has a magic to it, and it’s hard for me to imagine leaving. I like the walk from the subway to my apartment in the evening, up the little merchant’s street painted green and red so that it always feels festive, even in the early darkness of winter. There’s the middle-aged couple that owns the cornerfive-and-dime, who greet me “Okaeri nasai!” —Welcome home!—when they see me at night, rather than the usual “Kon ban wa,” or good evening.
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