Continuing Saga of Wonderful, Strange Japan

Taking a break from Aura Reading, I continue to roam the streets of Tokyo. Today, I did it at lunch hour. A tall, handsome young man approached me and asked if I was Canadian.

“No,” I said. “I’m American.”

 He was, obviously, American, too.

“That’s a shame,” he told me. “I’m looking for a Canadian woman to marry me and bring me home to live with her.”

We’ll avoid obvious facts, like I’m happily married. And not Canadian. And I’m 61 years old while he’s maybe 20. Sure, I’m in the habit of collecting those almost-marriage-proposals, you know. What else would I do on my lunch hour, study the easiest Japanese alphabet, Hiragana?

SHINJUKU SHOPPING

Last weekend, an exceptionally well-dressed Japanese friend, Akiko, told me she bought her clothes at a very reasonable, fun shop called “Rope Picnic.”

By Tokyo standards, this name makes perfect sense. This is, after all, the land where vending machines carry drinks like “Pocari Sweat.” Pocari is a brand name. I’m not quite sure about why sweat-flavor would be popular.

Akiko-san told me that Rope Picnic is  a chain store in Shinjuku, as well as Okinawa, which is where she bought that gorgeous dress. So I found the chain on the Internet with the help of an interpreter who can read those strange squiggles I’m still studying, Japanese Hiragana. I took a shopping trip after work, taking my beloved metro.

Shinjuku is a happening place. Unfortunately. Even for me, a New York native, it’s a bit more happening than I can handle. Different subway lines converge. There are a zillion department stores with neon lights. One proclaims “Times Square of Tokyo.” If you’ve ever been to NY, even briefly, you know that “Times Square” is another name for “Zoo.”

Then, lest things at Shinjuku seem boring, they throw in the major train station terminal in all of Tokyo. (I think. There might be another dozen for all I know.) So Shinjuku is also like “Grand Central” or “Union Station” or “Heck on Many, Many Wheels.”

But I don’t get lost there, at least until trying to go home again. The main part of my trip is the brave foray into shopping, taking an escalator to a building named “Lumina #2.”

Sure I can find Rope Picnic. It is part of a 4-story mall with shops everywhere. There even is a “Mary Quant,” a British makeup line I remember from the 60’s. And that is actually very appropriate, turns out.

TRUE DAINTINESS

This summer, many women in Tokyo have been wearing adorable skirts, dresses, blouses made of the very finest fabrics. These exquisite garments look like fancy handkerchiefs, only larger. These garments make lace look crude by comparison. Here it is, summer in a busy city, and the women who wear these magical garments remind me of Aphrodite arising from the sea in Boticelli’s famous painting — so fresh and pristine and goddesslike and ….

I want to be that.

In some fantasy portion of my mind, I’ll admit, I want to look like one of these incredibly refined women. A woman who would never buy, nor drink, a beverage called “Sweat.” (Not that I have, either. Yet.)

Embarrassing but true, as a shopper, I think, “If I can actually buy one of these garments and if I bring it back to my condo and if I take, say, 17 consecutive showers and then a really deep breath…

“If I am very, very careful, I might be able to wear one of these outfits. I might try walking down the street for perhaps five seconds before I wind up looking like a soggy, sweaty, lump.”

Credit the power of human imagination. Deep down, I know that I am the kind of person who was raised, not in Tokyo, but in the place aptly called ‘Flushing, Queens.’”

So I let myself indulge in this shopping trance of wish fulfillment. I walk around, shopping myself silly. And, despite being a true English major, it is hard for me to describe just how very weird this shopping trip then becomes.

TIME WARP

The enchanting quality of all the clothing just captivates me. Still, I never try on a single garment. I just wander, dazed, from one boutique to the next.

Because after I admire some beautiful gossamer bit of fabric, I keep having the crazy experience that this is a mini-mini-mini piece of clothing. Not just that I weigh way maxi-more than a normal Japanese woman in her worst noodle nightmare.

It’s not just the common-sense fact that I would require a great deal more fabric than normal to cover my non-Nihon body. No, disbelievingly, fighting reality, it eventually dawns on me over these few hours of shopping that the problem is not just my size. Mini-skirts are back in.

 All those dresses from the 60’s, those short things that barely cover up underwear. They’re b-a-a-a-a-c-k.

With all the sumptuous fabrics, I just hadn’t noticed.

How can this be? I lived through this fashion era back in the 1960’s. For crying out loud, I already paid my social dues and wore mini-skirts once upon a sad time. They looked bad enough then.

Mini-skirts, 40 years ago. How can this be happening to me now?

I’ve had recurring nightmares in my life, sure. Like I still haven’t graduated from college and must go back. Like I’m teaching a class somewhere and my students aren’t interested.

Dreams like these I can cope with. Frankly, I’m used to them. But fashion nightmares, like having to wear mini-skirts all over again? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

DON’T DO IT HERE

Eventually I cut the denial and realize it’s going to be mini-skirts or nothing. Never will I own the gossamer fabric of womanly daintiness. Nooooooooooooooooooo

 I get lost in the subway for a while, but it isn’t like my usual getting lost in Tokyo. It’s more like crying, only sublimated. 

After doing this very artistic, peripatetic form of sobbing for 15 minutes or so, I get back on my train to go home.

But I do wind up seeing a sign.

This isn’t a cosmic sign, like the kind of sign some new clients insist on requesting. (Yes, despite every bit of publicity I do in every medium, on every trip, in every country, some new clients still come to me, pleading: “Tell me the purpose of my life.”)

The sign for me is merely a subway sign, yet it’s something new. Tonight is my first round-trip subway ride in Japan for six months, and on my way to Shinjuku I haven’t noticed a thing except fantasies of my glam new life in handkerchief fabric. Now I am grounded again, so I finally see the new signs. They read:

 ”Don’t do it here.”

Considerately, these signs are in English.

Turns out, these signs are explaining the proper use of an umbrella. Apparently some of us commuters have been naughty with our umbrellas recently and we have been closing them while inside the subway station, causing puddles. Gross!

The illustrated signs explain how we are to close our umbrellas outdoors, so as not to annoy the other communters. Walking out of my subway train, I notice that every inch of the station is spotless. This isn’t Flushing, folks. No chewing gum nor candy wrappers nor cigarette butts nor bags with lovely old liquor bottles only slightly used nor garbage of any kind. Just a perfect stretch of immaculately clean walkway.

On my trip, I have no umbrella. I also have no gossmer-lovely mini-skirt. But at least I have caused no unsightly puddles.

Walking out of my subway stop, at Hiroo, I do feel rather proud of myself.