image: J. Webber
“Her voice, even across languages, betraying her worry.”
A little girl was sitting next to me on the train home from work. She couldn’t have been more than 8 years old. She was wearing very strong prescription sunglasses with a bright blue tint that made her eyes look huge, and a protective hat, the type worn by American football players in World War II era newsreels. [1] The hat had circular holes in it, including a few that someone had lovingly modified to make them look like Mickey Mouse’s silhouette. Her mother spoke to her constantly, her voice, even across languages, betraying her worry, and her hands clutching a large yellow folder – the type that they give you at hospitals to hold X-rays.
In my foreigner-in-Tokyo-self-obsessiveness, I thought that the little girl was staring at me, until her mother asked her to try to sit up straight, and she simply replied, “It hurts.” Her mother told her she would buy her a nice parfait when it had finished. The little girl, looked even sadder and said, like it was an apology, that she couldn’t eat after.
They got off the train at Takadanobaba Station. Stopping a little way up the platform in the sea of commuters pushing past, the little girl asked her mother something. She agreed and they stood and waited, facing the train. As the train pulled out of the station, the businessmen and shoppers, engrossed in their comics and mobile phones were too busy to notice a little girl waving at them. No one waved back.
location information
- Name: Takadanobaba Station
- Time of story: afternoon
- Latitude: 35.712343
- Longitude: 139.703744
- Map: Google Maps
033 “Dewy eyes closed, her porcelain arms and legs splayed attractively”
032 “The ika had made too many turns.”
031 “A tongue was moving around my big toe, like a warm slug crawling. ”
030 “Ichor will gush out of this carefully constructed image”
029 “I wince, more than her.”
028 “Their schoolbags were puddled around their socks, forgotten”
027 “Amongst the bottles and the obscure records and the crimson velvet walls”
026 “Nostalgia isn’t an easy indulgence for amateurs”
025 “... but anyway please take one of these little cheese cakes ...”
024 “The inhabitants of the blue, makeshift tents in the bushes.”
023 “Yeah … I’m sorry too. Merry Christmas.”
022 “I was dead broke. It was winter.”
021 “The district's energy had faded to rest on my last night there.”
020 “The slightly bald salaryman didn't correspond to any memory I could conjure up.”
019 “She laughed at my effort and responded in English, ‘Long time, no seduction.’ ”
018 “In my dreamy state, oblivious to signs and announcements I often boarded the wrong train.”
017 “I was fifteen years old and it was one of those nights.”
016 “That ear of corn just wanted to go home”
015 “With his painstakingly coiffured mane blowing in the wind”
014 “Her voice, even across languages, betraying her worry.”
013 “I saw them drawing bamboo sticks from a silver rectangular box.”
012 “A simulacrum of someone else's home, equal parts comfort and loss.”
011 “Jumbled Escheresque insanity where geography in any traditional sense ceases to exist.”
010 “I could hardly make out anything apart from his glowing eyes...”
009 “Shibuya was like a stroke.”
008 “I cried for a while and wiped the dead bracken off my karate pants.”
007 “Both my tie and my disposition hang limp as I calculate the remaining distance to the station.”
006 “I once read about a Chinese maiden whose feet were unbound by a cruel man …”
005 “The Bad Girl strutted off and I was left with a ham egg pie.”
004 “I arrived expecting an irritated Japanese person to step out of the crowd and identify himself as Hideki.”
003 “The woman at the ticket window seemed surprised to see another human being. I was the only visitor.”
002 “Flanked on either side by adult manga shops and the like, the smell of yakitori in the air.”
001 “For two weeks the day began with this morning walk, our shared routine.”
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