Sconyers.com

Lost in Contentment

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

After spending the day being lost in Tokyo and loving it, I returned to my hotel after finally finding MUJI. After resting for awhile, I left for another adventure, this time to Yokohama. I set out with low expectations, but high hopes.

I stopped the first person I saw. It was an unsuspecting 16-year-old girl, who walked about half a mile out of her way to help me buy my train tickets. She was slightly plump, with a round, kind face, and told me she was still in high school. When I asked her what she planned to study in college, she struggled to find words in English. “Lawyer!” she said triumphantly a few long seconds later. I inquired what kind of lawyer, and she replied simply, “Children,” and nodded sharply to punctuate her statement.

Once I had tickets in hand, the girl walked me to the electronic turnstiles, and turned about-face to me, signifying her work here was done. I thanked her several times, bowing my upper-body ever so slightly towards her with each repetition of gratitude. I fumbled with my unwieldy bag to pull out a business card before I walked through. I said sincerely, “If you ever come to America, please let me know,” and her eyes lit up in surprise and delight as she slowly ran her fingers over the thick card stock, carefully examining the fine print.

A train was waiting at the platform, so I stopped a young, well-dressed guy to find out if it was the correct train. Showing him my ticket and pointing at the train, I asked, “This one?” He replied affirmatively in fluent, only-ever-so-slightly accented English, and for a passing moment, I felt very small and silly.

I was relieved to find a seat on the train, and I sat with my head resting to the side against one of the poles. A few minutes later the doors closed and the train started moving. I was staring intently down at my ticket, memorizing the characters, and waiting for them to show up on the screen, when a guy sat down next to me. He sees me studying the ticket, and tells me Yokohama is 13 stops away.

The right characters flashed up on the screen, and I jump up and out. Following instructions, I find some a big escalator and go up them. At the top, I know immediately that I’m not in the right place. There are some shady looking guys standing in the shadows of the corner, hawking brochures of some sort. I innocently ask them where I might find the Disney store where I’m supposed to be meeting my friends.They point me in a direction, but as I start walking away, the familiar feeling of anxiety starts to well up in my chest. I realize I
am lost. Again.

Then I stopped in my tracks. I wasn’t lost. I simply had nowhere to go except exactly where ever I wanted to go. And I was enjoying the journey immensely.

Coming out on the other end of an alleyway, there is an enormous lot, inexplicably filled with rows and rows of taxis parked ten deep, all with their lights on, ready and waiting. The picture is just too good to miss, and I jump up onto a nearby ledge, and start playing with the shot through my viewfinder.

The outside world ceases to exist as I fiddle with focus points, adjust the exposure, and determine depth-of-field. A shallow man walks by and says, “Excuse me?” followed by something sarcastic in Japanese.
His colleagues bellow with laughter. I turn around, and he delivers the punchline in English: “Nice view.” But he’s not talking about the scene I’m capturing. I turn back around without further acknowledging
him, and go back to the task at hand. Deciding that I need a wide-angle lens instead, I am in the middle of balancing on this ledge and juggling two heavy lenses and an even heavier camera, when another
man stops near me.

I ignore him. But he doesn’t move on. After a long moment, he sings out in fast, broken English to get my attention: “Excuse me, ex-coo-sahh me, are you lost?” I open my mouth to reply, but I don’t have an answer. I know I’m lost, but this fact doesn’t concern me in the least. I know I’ll get where I’m going. Eventually.

The persistent man asks again, “Are you loss-taaa? Do you need heeelp-a?” I pause before hesitantly agreeing, that yes, technically, I am indeed lost.

“Where are you going?” When I answer, he just stands there, scratching at the thinning hair on his head in confusion. He starts asking me about Queens, Queens Square, Queens Mall, and I shrug, nonplussed. He
indicates my destination is at a different station, and he tells me the name, which is long, multi-syllabic, and starts with an M.

I nod in polite acknowledgment, pretending that I knew what he was talking about, and I tell him I will take the train there. I thank him, before turning away to start fumbling with my camera again, still
determined to get my picture.

But the man isn’t reassured. He stays rooted to the ground behind the ledge, deeply concerned that I am completely unconcerned about being lost. I can tell he is getting nervous, because although his English
was originally passable, he beings to interject bursts of incomprehensible Japanese into the middle of sentences and sometimes in the middle of words.

He sharply insists that I must go back to the train station where I came from, and explain to them that I got off at the wrong stop. He is now very emphatic about the fact I’m at the wrong stop, and continues trying very hard to convey the fact I am wrong and this stop is wrong.

I assume he’s trying to tell me how to get back into the train station without buying another ticket, so in an exasperated moment of sensibility, I reluctantly lower my camera from its poised position and ask him nicely if he could help me with this, since he speaks Japanese and I, obviously, do not.

His reaction is strange, and he startles me by waving his hands and quickly backing a few steps away from me. “Oh, no, no, noooo, I cannot, cannot do that, cannot accompany you.”

I thank him, again, more firmly this time, and turn around, again, to finish taking the damn picture. He stands there for a little while, watching me, unsure of what to do with this strange, lost girl who is completely, inconceivably unconcerned with being lost.

As he is awkwardly standing back, unsure of what to do next, I finally get my shot, and then jump off the ledge to start walking towards the station. He walks off in the other direction, seemingly satisfied that I am finally going to do something about this being lost business.

I think he’s gone his way, but a few seconds later, I hear the sharp sound of dress shoes pounding on pavement. He runs back up to me, holding out a magazine in front of him, as an offering of, well, I’m not sure what. I look at it blankly, and my arms stay by my side.

“It’s in English language. For you.” I hesitantly take it him, thank him for the very last time, and walk towards the station again. This time, he doesn’t move until he ensures that I’ve gone back inside to find my way, like any normal, sane person would do when they’re lost.

When I finally do arrive where I am supposed to be, it’s quite in the evening, and I’m sure I’ve missed dinner. I see the “big escalator” my friends told me about. This escalator is so large and so long, that the children of the mother who is standing behind me actually sit down on the moving steps, making themselves comfortable as they wait patiently, tiredly to reach the top.

Though I’ve arrived at my destination, I can’t seem to find the friends I’m meeting for dinner. I shrug to myself, and then step outside into warm, balmy air. The balcony overlooks the waterfront and a collection of small, old fashioned, neon-lit carnival rides. I find another ledge, nimbly hop onto it, and begin taking more pictures. Completely content to be exactly where I am at that exact moment in time.

###

Lost in Transit

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

In the past, I’ve spent a lot of time wandering around in foreign countries. Sometimes I know where I’m going, sometimes I don’t. When I arrived in Shibuya, Tokyo and didn’t know where I was going, I did what I oftentimes do in these cases. Which is get in a taxi and let them figure it out for me.

I waved down an empty cab, and the friendly middle-aged man smiled widely. He impressed me by he pressing a button that automatically opened the rear passenger door. After laboriously pulling my baggage and myself into the car, I showed him the English name of the hotel. He repeated the name out loud a few times, transliterating it into Japanese. “Met-sa ho-tel-a.” He repeated it again, elongating each syllables as he sat deep in thought, quietly questioning if he knew the location. “Met-saaa ho-telll-aaaa?”

He pulled forward, asking a traffic controller a few questions in rapid-fire Japanese. After a few minutes, he merged into traffic and we were on our way. Turns out, the hotel was very close, but hard to find. We drove around the block a few times until we found it. I gave him 1250 yen, or about thirteen dollars, and thanked him profusely.

The following day, I set out to find a MUJI store that was fairly close to where I was staying, or so I had gathered from my online research. In the lobby of the hotel, I asked the receptionist to write down the address, so that I could take a taxi there. She seemed surprised that I wanted to take a taxi, and then seemed sorry for her surprise, shyly saying that it was “only maybe 15 minutes by walking.” She gave me a bad map with worse directions, and off I went.

I was lost practically before I even begun, and stopped somebody on the street right outside the hotel. He pointed me in the right direction.

After walking for awhile, I cornered a couple for further help. At this point, I realized I had forgotten to get the receptionist to write MUJI down in Japanese. I tried various pronunciations of the word. “Moooojii? Mewwwjiii,” I mused out loud. Finally, a spark of recognition crossed the couple’s faces, and they said, “Oh! MUJI!” I smiled at my success and nodded emphatically. The man put his hand on his chin, and then asked, “You mean, no name quality goods.” Yes. Exactly what I was looking for.

A few minutes of directional hand-waving later, I was on my way again.

I was told to cross a few intersections, and then turn right at the big intersection. The second or third intersection was fairly large, so I started to wonder if I would know which intersection was the “big intersection.” Then I happened upon what I later learned was called Hachiko Crossing, and realized there was no way I could have missed it.

It was quite possibly the biggest, busiest intersection I ever seen. And unlike China, these people were all waiting patiently. Nobody jaywalked, not even a single person. There wasn’t even jostling at the front lines, but I found a place out of trampling distance anyway, standing rooted to the ground in awe. When the walk light lit up, people poured onto the street.

With a lamp pole at my back, I contemplated what “turn right” even meant. There were no less than five different corners at this intersection. I watched several the lights change several times, before I spotted a gaijin, a foreigner, on my left. I turned to him and asked if he knew where I could find the nearby MUJI. I pulled out my map, and he furrowed his brow as he read some of the Japanese aloud. At this exact moment, the light turned again, and we were swept up and across along with the massive masses who were moving. He chatted idly with me as he led me, and I found out he was from Philly. We parted ways, and he left me in front of LoFT, which I explored before continuing in my quest to find MUJI.

By this point, I had taken no less than 27 wrong turns. The temperature was rising, I was getting overheated from wearing too much clothing as the temperature of the day continued to rise, and feeling tired from carrying my ten-pound camera and wearing four-inch high heeled boots. I had been lost for hours, and the familiar feeling of anxiety was starting to well up in my chest.

Then I stopped in my tracks. I wasn’t lost. I simply had nowhere to go except exactly where ever I wanted to go. And I was enjoying the journey immensely.

###