135

Walking the back route down narrow streets to Ōji Station, I pass the house with the orange tree where I once heard somebody playing guitar. I stop and listen for the sounds of any strumming or the sounds of someone thinking about strumming, but there is nothing except silence and the smell of January cold. Then, a vending machine next to me suddenly glows and whirs to life, providing me with a ghostly consolation prize in the possibility of hot beverages. A quick nod of acknowledgment to the machine for its attempt to communicate across the gulf that separates inanimate and animate matter, and I am off towards the park with the miniature fence with a touch keypad lock.

Waiting for me at the entrance to the park, just past the tangle of telephone wires, is a small convention of people with compact dogs wearing winter clothing. One of the dogs—appearing like four uneasy sticks attached to a small sweater—looks about 18% gray and beautifully matches the sky. If I picked up the dog and hurled it into the air, it would abruptly vanish, only to remind us of its presence by the snapping sound of its landing. Across the park heading east, I consider leaping over the fence as I near it, but I speculate about what I will feel once I am on the other side. I might not want to return to where I jumped from or be unable to. It seems that it would be reasonably easy to hop over, but this might be an illusion, some diabolical method of falsely inflating intruder confidence, then snaring them mid-vault. The fact of its impossible smallness only serves to heighten the unknown threat of how it operates. What this fence lacks in height, it more than makes up through fiendishly confusing psychology. I pause for a moment and consider that the rate at which my body ages and shrinks is not so fast to keep me from a potential crossing on my way home from the café. I acknowledge the holding pattern, and I am off.

First, I run over to see that the golfers are busy golfing—and they are—but I am disappointed that the skateboarders are not skateboarding. Wouldn't it be nice if I could hear the bark of their skateboard trucks across concrete curbs and pedestrian handrails in the parking lot? Nevertheless, it is empty, and even if they had only recently departed, it is now impossible to see even the faintest trace of their breath in the air. I hear the sharp claps of clubs hitting balls and the dull thuds of balls hitting nets, but no wheels intermittently crackling and gliding across the tarmac. I circle the parking lot in a holding pattern of my exhalation until an unexpected squawk from a crow atop a garbage can, followed by a quick ding-ding from the nearby Toden Arakawa Line, punctuates the late afternoon and signals that it is time for a warm coffee.

Once inside the nearby café, I am struck, as usual, by the complete lack of separation between the smoking and non-smoking sections. The curls of smoke drift above the masked customers and the waning plants in the center of the circular smoking table, forming sheets of gray cloud cover. I slowly lift my 18% gray card into the haze above our heads, and it promptly vanishes. However, when I lower my arm again, it materializes, and I make a snapping sound accompanied by a whine that catches the attention of the schoolgirl 72% napping at the table next to mine

108

On Sunday, November 29, 2009 at 12:40 JST, a discarded VHS tape case tires of communicating with a playful cellular phone's video camera, painfully aware that the phone is ignorant of the fact that it is fast approaching the sad days of obsolescence. Nearby, the dead fish indicates that it understands all of this perfectly by not winking the glazed over eye that is no longer in its socket.

107

Three days ago there was a glowing, fat mikan orange tucked in a candlelit niche in a cave at Hasedera temple in Kamakura. Last week in Onomichi there were orange peels scattered elegantly down the embankment leading from the path in front of Jodoji Temple – where Setsuko Hara and Chishū Ryū stood after the funeral in Yasujirō Ozu's Tokyo Story – down to the train tracks. Last March in Nihonzutsumi in Taitō-ku there were orange peels that had been carefully Scotch taped back together into a husk with the form of an orange. Two days ago running west along the Shakuji gawa I heard classical piano again, another koto lesson, and as usual I saw a cat, but I did not see a single orange, or even notice anything that was orange colored. I did notice that the narrator reading of Heart of Darkness in my headphones delivered the lines “The horror, the horror” in a breathy voice just as I ran past the nurse’s dormitory across from Teikyō University Hospital (another zombie hospital perhaps?). Last night in Moriya I was given a plump orange for desert at an izakaya. I am curious if growing up in a room painted orange has predisposed me to seeing orange wherever it is available to see and desiring it where it does not exist.

102

The cats in Takinogawa always stop what they are doing and watch me as I run past them. On the densely packed 00:32 JST Yamanote train from Shinjuku heading north towards Tabata, two girls only inches away have hair so sculpted that it looks as if they have poodles attached to the tops of their heads. The poodles are looking at me and I half expect to hear a snarl, or perhaps get licked. Two kids to my right in-between the train cars are singing loudly, encouraging each other to increasingly higher levels of raucousness and physically pushing each other in a playful way. They momentarily stop, turn, look at me, tentatively smile, then continue on with a heightened ardor. Somebody gently sobbing amongst the sleeping passengers, or throwing up would round out the scenario nicely with the full range of emotions. Once while sitting on a late night Yamanote train from Shinjuku I saw the terrified woman in front of me suddenly cover her drunk boyfriend’s mouth with her hand, forcing him to swallow the vomit that he was trying to evacuate from his system. The last train from Shinjuku often feels like a space suddenly shifting back and forth between comedy and horror, and it would seem equally as plausible if the train was rolling down the tracks upside down. The last Yamanote train from Shinjuku is one of my favorite places to spend time.

96

Last Tuesday somewhere around 12:50 JST someone outside close to the laundry balcony was whistling something along with the hourly chime – skillfully, like pastel colored birds warbling in an animated Disney film. Either it was a "ten minutes before the hour" chime, or my watch was off. At least I am not saying, as Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx) said in A Day at the Races, “Either he’s dead, or my watch has stopped” – not that I really have ever understood what that means. That said, last week while running by Teikyō University Hospital I believe that I saw a body with a sheet covering its face being wheeled out from the back of an ambulance. Perhaps there is a chime, or a song that I have yet to hear.

92

I try my best to send out a quick email each day as soon as I hear the Yūyake Koyake – the song that plays at 17:00 JST signaling the end of the school day. I type as quickly as possible, click the send button, then after a short delay the whooshing sound of Apple's Mail program floats briefly over the top of the song echoing from the speakers outside in the street. The arrival of the Yūyake Koyake always takes me by surprise and the volume on my computer is consistently lower than I expect it to be, which I always note as I film this process. Currently, the day ends with a whoosh, which seems perfectly matched to the fleeting nature of life. Yet, were I to change the mail program's alert sound from a whoosh to a duck's quack, then the entire affair would take on a different tone and probably conclude with a slip on a banana peel, or two men in a horse costume.

The sunset is the end of the day,
the bell from the mountain temple rings,
hand by hand let’s go back home together with the crows.
After the children are back at home a big and round moon shines,
when the birds dream, the brightness from the stars fills the sky.

88

Heading west on the north side of the Shakujii gawa I leave behind the sounds of the neighbor's koto lesson, then somewhere around Itabashi I hear a parallel koto lesson. With enough height the right vantage point would emerge and the individual lessons would compress into an unknowing duet; however, at this point I am no longer growing into the height that I would need to witness this, nor would I ever grow to the five hundred feet needed to see this occurrence, but am compressing into a smaller unit with greater density. As a result, the duo will remain forever separate. On the south of the Shakujii gawa walking towards Ōji Station it is not the third point of this koto triangle that I encounter, but hesitantly played classical guitar drifting out from a window and through the branches of a mikan orange tree. The mikan oranges are small, squat and look tender. The round plucking of the nylon strings compliments the mellow dark-orange color in a pleasant manner. As well, the delicacy of the notes and the way that they hang in the air seems abstractly similar to the increasingly tenuous hold that the mikan oranges have on their branches as they become riper, more luscious, and heavier. I sense a parallel in the tenuous nature of the situation so I abruptly leave towards the station in solidarity – detached and horizontally dropping.

86

Long golden fingertips on the Yamanote line are precisely tap-tap-tapping black jack cards on my left and delirious PlayStation playing is positioned to my right. Somewhere in-between these two descriptions is a precocious child in Monte Carlo playing Baccarat.

79

Earlier this evening I was heading east along the Shakujii gawa towards a little girl riding in the basket on the front of her mother’s bike. Both of her hands were tightly pressed covering here eyes. Her mom was laughing as we passed. Again, I experience the Doppler effect.

76

I can hear the song It’s a Small World being played by a marching band somewhere out in the darkness of Takinogawa.

63

Yesterday, running into the close of the day on the south side of the Shakujii gawa, the 17:00 JST song played (Yuyake Koyake) mixing with the sounds of crows and crickets. I passed the Disneyesque playground, empty except for a single cat perched on the top of Cinderella’s castle.

49

Each week I quietly slide open the east door and secretly record a neighbor’s koto lesson. Auditory voyeurism, if such a thing is possible.

32

Earlier while heading west I saw a man wearing a backpack and technical vest photographing a willing cat on the north side of the Shakujii gawa with an expensive digital single-lens reflex camera. Shortly afterward on the south side of the river I saw a different man (I think) in knee length shorts holding a small plastic grocery bag in his left hand while leaning precariously over a bush to photograph an awkwardly located flower stem with the mobile phone in his right hand. Now I hear the sharp sounds careening off the river embankments of someone clipping their fingernails indicating that unfortunately, personal grooming is publicly taking place somewhere off in the distance beyond the river bend. Perhaps later in the day I will come across a small pile of waning crescent moons further west.

22

In the mornings I make my espresso with the iconic Italian stove top Bialetti Industrie Moka Express. At 4:55 JST I open the carefully constructed individual serving package and make my afternoon “Blendy” drip coffee. I drink. At 4:59 JST I set my cup down in a particular spot on the kitchen counter. I wait. At 5:00 JST the afternoon light comes through the cup perfectly and the "poignant 5 PM song" plays outside from nearby speakers. たいふうはどこですか？(taifu wa doko desuka – where is the typhoon?).

17

Regarding the upcoming typhoon: there was a sudden, impromptu meeting on the terrace with the superintendent of the apartment complex who climbed over the railing to the terrace while I was taking a shower. He wanted to secure the plants and make sure the drains were unclogged and OK. I heard a voice, so I went down the hallway to the front door, then outside, but nobody was there. Then I heard a voice from the terrace, so I went inside – nobody there, but a voice from the front door, so I went back out – nobody there yet again. This repeated not unlike your average cartoon skit until I looked over onto the terrace from near the front door, saw him, and we finally spoke (we slightly spoke would be a more accurate description). I rushed out in shorts, in the rain, without contact lenses and started "hai, hai, hai-ing" to everything he said, scooping leaves and mud from the drains as I interpreted, and moving things to where he pointed. It was quite comical – my arigatous, my blindness, his arigatous, much mutual bowing and confusion, etc. I moved all the small plants towards the building and surrounded them with a ring of larger, protective plants according to my deduction of what might potentially have been his suggestions. Now watch, there probably won't even be rain later in the day. Regardless, we are ready for whatever is coming.

16

A northern station of the Toden Arakawa line – one of the last of the chin-chin (ding-ding) streetcars – is Ōji-eki-mae Station right next to where I am presently staying. In 2005 I lived in Higashi-Nippori next to the Minowabashi Station, the southern terminus of the line. A trolley that goes “ding-ding” connects my worlds of past and present not entirely dissimilar to the American television children's show host Mr. Rogers’ trolley; however, the Toden Arakawa line doesn't connect the world of Mr. Roger's living room through a mysterious tunnel with an imaginary land notable for its puppets and actual puppet monarchy, but connects two physical locations that are coincidental with my past and present. Also, the Toden Arakawa doesn't operate with the accompaniment of Mr. Rogers’ trolley's somewhat maniacal theme song. When I was a child the cycling "chugging along" relentlessness of Mr. Roger's trolley's song's rhythm always triggered a vague awareness of the inevitable forward movement of time. The Toden Arakawa doesn't have this precise effect on me, rather when I am on the Toden Arakawa I always think about Mr. Roger's trolley, how much I liked the soothing nature of the program, what a long time ago that was, and so in an elliptical manner it has the same effect, but minus the musical accompaniment. Aside from that and the evident absence of puppets on the Toden Arakawa the two trolleys seem to be more or less the same.

11

Sitting on the balcony at night listening to a field recording I made earlier in the day from the very same balcony I experience the superimposition of daytime sounds on top of evening sounds forming the following unintentional composition comprised of: a Japanese heavy metal band in Asakuyama park, clicking of a bicycle wheel sprocket, small shrill birds, female voice from a loudspeaker atop a moving truck selling dumplings, scooter engine sharply clacking, guitar solo echo, muffled screams and cheers from the park, scooter pulling up, kickstand going down, screams, cheers, airplane overhead, car brake whine, bird commotion, bicycle bell ring, child in distance chatting, crow, horn, child closer talking to their mother, someone is whistling, scooter, rustling grocery bags, footsteps, bird tweets, bicycle brake screech, one bird squeak, scooter, kickstand difficulties, muted rumble of a truck, distant express train, clacking sound of wheels on rails, clacking sound of high heels, bike, birds, scooter, and walking sounds getting closer to the microphone.

5

If the singer and songwriter Jacques Brel wrote the theme for Carol Reed's 1949 film The Third Man it would be the hatsumelo (train departure warning song) for Ebisu Station on the Yamanote line, but I have the feeling that I have said this somewhere before and that this thought will pervade everything I write from here on, like the anti-hero Harry Lime's presence before he actually appears on screen in The Third Man, or like Joseph Conrad's mysterious Kurtz lurking upriver in the Belgian Congo. Jacques Brel was a Belgian, Orson Welles played Harry Lime, and Orson Welles was going to make Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness as his first film before he made Citizen Kane in 1941, but I am uncertain of how this will all play out in regards to the looping Yamanote train.

4

Sitting on the balcony in the night I hear crows, coughing, and a cat.

2

The Narita Airport to Nippori Station Keisei Limited Express Train’s English announcements have changed again. Not only does it sound as if the announcer has a thoroughly stuffed-up nose, but she also has the distinct inflections of someone speaking who just had braces put on their teeth and is still working out how to accommodate the new additions in their mouth. A touch of uncertainty lingers in her voice. I wonder how such a matter could slip past the producers of the announcement. Perhaps it was intentional, a strategy to subconsciously generate endearment. Regardless, I should wear a face mask so as not to catch her cold.