Gigantic.48
Good Morning Tokyo
It was a long, dark flight. My screen was tuned to the plane’s belly cam. I stared in a half-dream state as a thousand miles of vacant Russian landscape passed below us in real time.
No sleep. We were met at the airport by Ken and Kato from the label. I exchanged £200 British for ¥40,000 Japanese then we climbed into a van. The drive into the center of Tokyo was a long one.
Jeff and my room was on the 18th floor looking out over the Shinjuku district, an endless Times Square radiating out into infinity. On the table, two baskets of gorgeous fresh fruit, more than we could possibly eat, compliments of the Japanese label. It was 6pm local, I was dead tired. I slept till 1am, managed to fall asleep again, then woke at 5:30 am, eager to explore the city.
I got various maps and vague directions from the concierge how to find a nearby Buddhist temple. He didn’t know how to say Torii in English, but I mimed two poles with a beam on top showing I knew what he was talking about. We had a laugh about this.
I hit the streets before sunrise, prepared to greet the Land of the Rising Sun. There weren’t a lot of people out yet, nor traffic which, like England, was to the left. In addition to pigeons, there were a lot of crows in Tokyo. They cawed loudly from the low branches of small trees. Eerie at this hour.
Vending machines everywhere, glass fronts displaying numerous products in neat rows, a poster showing a model enjoying the product. My map was in Japanese, but the tallest buildings were clearly pictured, so I used the buildings as my guideposts. I saw a torii, but not quite in the area the concierge told me. I didn’t see the kanji ideogram for tera, Buddhist temple, so I kept going.
After another block or two, I selected a random side street and left the main drag for the first time. I combed the streets unsuccessfully until a cat came my way, meowing. I had a cat named Scruffy when I was a kid, I thought he was the Buddha. This was a good sign.
I found a neighborhood map directing me back to the torii I had passed, turned out to be the right place after all. I walked underneath and found myself in a small courtyard. There was a woman sweeping and washing stones. She paid me no mind, but a dog started barking at me. Dogs have Buddha nature too, but I could do without the barking.
This seemed to be a cemetery. Each stone was like an individual altar, with urns, offerings of flowers, even cups of tea. I ambled deep enough into the cemetery so the dog stopped barking.
Not that I was dissatisfied, but I was expecting something to click just by being here, but it wasn’t clicking. I tried that Buddhist exercise where the Buddha taps you on the shoulder and says, “Let me take your place for a while in this experience.” And he did.
My Buddha has a sense of humor.
“I know as much about this culture as you do,” he said, being from Nepal 2,500 years ago, but in my mind he still sounded Japanese.
The crows were cawing, and death abounded in other ways, this being a graveyard, but I was feeling quite alive. My Buddha prodded me with questions:
“You have come here to find something, what?”
“You say you are under pressure—what demands are being made on you besides being on time for soundcheck hours from now?”
“What do you hope to learn here that you cannot learn at home, if only you will apply yourself?”
Sensible questions. I pondered these things as I tried unsuccessfully to find an entrance to the temple, which proved impenetrable.
Rather than giving up, I squeezed past and found a hidden garden in back. There was a pit where they’d been burning papers, it felt intrusive to poke around, but there was also a break in the bushes which lead to an intimate grove and… an actual Buddha. A statue, anyway. That slight smile. Something clicked, I smiled too. I’d found what I was looking for.
I worked my way back out to the street just as the sun was rising. It was true, there was no place I needed to be, and I had plenty of money in my pocket if I needed it.
No longer looking for anything in particular, I folded my map, stuffed it into my back pocket and resolved to keep it there, folded.
I was now prepared to let myself get lost in Tokyo…
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