image: shop boy
“The slightly bald salaryman didn't correspond to any memory I could conjure up.”
A friend once likened the semi-automatic “irasshaimase”s by staff in Japanese shops to a sprinkler system. He was right.
I was trying to read a magazine in a secondhand bookshop just outside Otsuka station as part of a prolonged, desperate effort to not think about anything, which had already included a six hour session at an underground manga-kissa. Trying to, because, reading was made impossible by the constant splashes of “irasshaimase”s[1] on my face, uttered by the entire floor staff of the bookstore as each new customer stepped in. As if that wasn’t enough, the long-awaited and rare silences were punctuated by epidemic murmurs of “do-zo”s[2] and “goriyo-kudasai”[3], the meanings of which I didn’t really understand.
I looked up in exasperation and noticed that the people around me were well equipped against this overdose of mechanic welcoming: many were wearing earphones and one looked particularly comfortable in a colourful wool hat, sunglasses and headphones the size of CDs. He looked as if he was in his own portable manga-kissa.
It was past eleven in the evening but the well-lit shop was still full enough with people to feel like being in a crowd. Many were visibly back from work with their tired black nylon briefcases and grey handkerchiefs making round-trips from pocket to forehead to wipe off the sweat that kept oozing out despite the air-conditioner gushing out frigid air. Japanese summers are asphyxiating.
Somehow, my eyes were drawn to one of them who looked remarkably familiar from the back.
The slightly bald middle-aged salary-man didn’t correspond to anyone who I could conjure up in my memory, so I moved to a position where I could see his face. I was stunned. It was me. Not someone who looks like me, but myself, just a few decades older. Fatigued and moist.
I left the bookshop.
As I hurried back to my friend’s flat I kept staring at the ground to ignore the invitations by smiley men wearing bow ties ushering me into kyabakuras or I don’t know what. All I could think of was I need to go home, to Milan, soon, very soon.
Suddenly someone patted on my back. I turned with a consciously irritated look thinking it was another one of those touts but instead I immediately recognised the apron that the staff at the bookshop wear. “Is this yours?”, the man asked, showing me my mobile phone. I burst into a wide smile trying to compensate for the aggressive initial glance and thanking him I put the phone back into my pocket. He replied with a smile. It was a familiar smile.
He was a childhood friend who I hadn’t seen for more than ten years.
Needless to say I stayed in Japan for another couple of months. 
referenced works
- A phrase commonly used by shopkeepers as customers enter which roughly means "welcome, come in". ↩
- "Go ahead" or "Do as you please" ↩
- Literally "Please use it", another common phrase shopkeepers use to encourage browsing customers at a store. ↩
location information
- Name: the secondhand bookshop near JR Otsuka's south exit
- Time of story: early morning
- Latitude: 35.732668
- Longitude: 139.729212
- 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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