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.

69

I decided to put my watch back on. Then while running through the park I looked at my watch, admiring the legibility of its magnified proportions and noticed that it was the same style as the giant clock atop a pole that I was running past at that moment. Now I know why MUJI named it the “Park Watch.” I place a high value on knowing the correct time here, although I am uncertain why, as I have no particular daily routine. Watch = precise time for no reason. No watch = imprecise operation of ambiguous schedule with the possibility of intermittent human contact to ask for the correct time. Watch on, off, off, or on – different choices, each with their own particular clutter.

51

I realize that the typical Western plating of starch at ten o'clock, meat at two o'clock, and vegetables at six o'clock doesn’t work with a bento box because there are “o’clocks” in the middle, as well as around the perimeter. Rice is often consumed at every meal – 09:00, 12:00, 18:00 (plus potential onigiri rice snacks at 16:00 and 22:00?) – so I have stopped looking at my watch while dining, or even wearing my watch.