It’s a giant circus of a city and I can’t understand it, now matter how hard I try. The people, the women, the lights, the fashion— they are all designed to create confusion. Or infuse it. Can you infuse confusion? Something like “cinfusion” maybe? Sure. I read somewhere that if you stood Tokyo on its head and shook it, that thousands of exotic animals would come pouring out, like taking the cushions off of the couch and finding coins. I think herds of exotic people would come tumbling out, too. Who knows what kinds of hermits and recluses dwell within the apartments and houses of Tokyo. How many people there must be cooped up inside themselves, nocturnal and nervous. Tokyo has a dense fog above it, a giant cloud of suppression whose thickness is made up of the words the Japanese do not express and the eyes that do not meet in passing. Perhaps that is why I feel so tired after spending a day walking its streets; it’s a day spent trying to get a grasp of air that has come to represent human connection.
I had a magic show one afternoon at a university reunion party. I had dressed up in a suit and I had my vintage suitcase in which I carried all my materials for my show. Cards, coins, cups, balls, and scarves, among other things, had accumulated to the point that they were nearly spilling out of the small opening between the suitcase and its lid. The suitcase itself dated back to my childhood, and I used it for sentimental purposes, though I’m not sure I can tell you what they were. It had two small buckles on the outside, and a handle that had started to tear off at the leather seams. The buckles themselves had lost a lot of their integrity, and were fastened with the conviction of noodle hanging limply over the side of a pot.
In junior high school, we used to worry about things like dropping our binders in the hall between classes, and the subsequent embarrassment that came when everyone clapped and whooped at you. Dropping a tray full of food in the cafeteria had the same nerving effect, and complete concentration was required during the period of receiving your food and finding a seat. But, like acne and note-passing, we grew out of it and the act of dropping things lost its nerving qualities to things like asking girls out, then jobs and money, and, eventually, the future. I remember once, though, when I dropped my messy binder of assignments and an upper classmen stopped to help me gather the fallen items. I could have married her, whoever she was.
But, moving around the maze of Tokyo's swirling stations brings flashbacks to those days of the painful self-consciousness in dropping something, anything, in a crowded area. Numerous times, due to my horrible habit of keeping change in the bill-fold section of my wallet, I have sent a slew of coins showering to the station floor, and have had to crawl through the legs of rush-hour patrons to retrieve my lost fortune. I have dropped drinks and food, portable CD players and cell-phones; I once dropped a bag full of groceries and broke a bottle of wine inside the plastic bag. Dropping: the act is an inherently humiliating one, especially if what you drop is easily visible to those around you. The more people that are around and the louder the bang, the more embarrassing it is.
Within the concrete wards of Tokyo, there lives a certain species of Japanese girl called a
gyaru. Gyarus are fiendish looking young women, ranging anywhere from 13 to maybe 30 years old. It’s difficult to know, though, exactly how old they are mainly because at any given time they are wearing roughly five pounds of make-up, hair-spray, mousse, and gigantic ear-rings. Usually tanned to the tinge of nearly burnt toast, they are skilled in the art of revealing skin—their skirts reach down to their upper-thighs at their lowest points, the more liberal ones barely below their crotch. They usually have a very gaudy top that displays their cleavage in an innovative and creative way. Their hair, crystallized with the aforementioned hairspray, can reach hues of silver, gray, bright blonde, even urine yellow. They have husky voices and are usually talking on their cell phones, often erupting into frightening shrieks and utterances of disbelief at their gyaru friend cackling on the other line. Often, I think that they must be thinking of an animal when applying their make-up. Blue and silver raccoon circles are sloppily, yet deliberately painted around their eyes. Their go-go boots shoot up to just below the knee-cap, and the heel extends roughly 6 inches off the ground. All gyarus typically have a male counter-part, maintaining all the qualities listen above (including make-up sometimes), save the mini-skirts. Instead, they can be found wearing a leisure suit, not completely unlike the white one John Travolta wears in
Saturday Night Fever during the dance contest. These creatures habituate some of Tokyo’s racier districts like Shibuya and Harajuku, and come out in swarms on Friday and Saturday nights. Who are these people inside? Were they born looking like this? When did they make the conscious decision to live the life of
gyaruness and what will they do when they out-grow this stage of their lives (assuming that’s what it is)?
So, I’m on the platform in Ikebukuro, one of the busiest stations in Tokyo. The late afternoon mugginess of June has created a literal sauna between my dress shirt and skin, and I’m sweating thoroughly and efficiently through its thin cotton layer. I’m waiting to get on the Yamanote Train, perhaps the most crowded of city lines, and I’m dying to get into the air-conditioned car. Unbeknownst to me, the suitcase containing all my magic materials is slowly reaching the end of its life, how unhappy it must feel to know it will pass away not in its sleep, but, there, on the platform in front of everyone. Oh, and I’m so oblivious. So oblivious that when it breaks open and everything crashes to the ground while the train simultaneously arrives, I think the crash is coming from somewhere else, from some poor sucker who has dropped all his stuff in the middle of a crowd. Then, I look at the remains of my suitcase, and the cards, coins, balls, ropes, silver rings, scarves, and cups that have flown from it and my first thought is: god, I must look like the world’s biggest dipshit. A rubber balls rolls off the edge of the platform and falls to the tracks below, never to be used in a magic routine again.
I frantically scower, grab, lunge, and retrieve my lost arsenal-of-slight-of-hand, but there’s so much. One pack of cards has slid out of its box, decidedly engaging me in a cruel game of 52-card-pick-up right there on the platform. But, lo! Next to me there is a ridiculous high-heel holding the foot and leg of a body that is now crouched down to my left. I see small, tan, heavily decorated hands prettily gathering my scattered items. And another set to my other side with 6-inch colored finger-nails, holding a handful of fifty-cent pieces that are being place back into the corpse of my suitcase. This body’s waist is covered by a mini-skirt, of which the little integrity it has is being compromised by its host’s crouched position. But, I am thankful for their rescue. These angels who have swooped down from heaven to alleviate my shame in having my hobby’s innards spewed onto the platform of a train station in the world’s biggest city, in which I am not only a foreigner, but one with a weird pastime. Oh, these samaritans, these wonderful human beings who have breached the chasm of human interaction in a city notoriously known for its busy-bodiness, bending their flashy bodies down to assist me in my dire straights. These wonderful women, these compassionate adonis’, these
gyarus: they are the ones that keep the spark of connection alive.
