i have quite a bit of work to catch up on, and a stack of scores waiting to be learnt up, but feel about as motivated as… well… a cat learning to swim, perhaps. it must be the summer air, the cicadas, the sound of fireworks outside… everything is so intensely summer, i feel as if i must just run to the beach and spend a whole day staring at the blue, blue skies.

i went down to kichijyoji to catch up with a friend today. having heard my endless entreaties and desperate whines about how you can’t get affordable eggs benedict in tokyo, he had gone out of his way to look for (and found!) a lovely little place packed away in a side alley in this suburban town, which bore the proud proclamation on its menu – HOLYDAY SPECIAL, eggs benedict. it did feel like a holy-day of sorts, being sunday and all… and my eggs benedict prayers answered at long last.

 it was such a lovely, cosy place. quiet chatter, friendly (and rather good-looking) waiters, good food at reasonable prices. sunday and eggs. i felt like i was back home for a moment.

i was given a quick tour of the area, including inokashira park, which is one of the more famous parks in tokyo. it teems with activity over the weekends – boaters on the lake, people selling knick-knacks on mats on the ground, street performers. one old man in particular caught my fancy with his english country music and guitar-harmonica-dancing-around-randomly act, all of which was fun and rather well-done. but most importantly, he had the best bod i had ever seen on a man his age (not that i have seen many…). and he apparently zoomed to and fro from the park on a motorbike. i would love to age as energetically as that.

 and then, i happened to glance out from my window in the evening and discovered a glorious rainbow arching over tokyo. the odds of that happening!!

bliss, in small doses.

…and we are into our third day of rain.

i am rather ambivalent when it comes to rain. i suppose i do enjoy the lingering cool air and that soppy sentimentality (unintended pun!) that gets you as you sit in your room, staring out into the gloomy sheets of water that just keep coming. i do happen to have a couple of good books (fiction!) and have no complaints against curling up in bed and just being lazy. but i miss the sunny outdoors, and even the fierce summer heat back home (fatal last words…). rainy days in tokyo are awful when you have the brave the peak hour train crowds, all toting wet umbrellas, the stuffy trains smelling even more dank and stale than ever. sometimes, i imagine walking through those cabins with a bottle of febreze in my hands, spraying the seats (and people) like a superhero with a gun, and then turning the entire train inside out and laying it in the sun for a day. i love febreze. my walls (wallpaper) get that treatment from time to time, like after i eat natto. or kimchi.

but there is to be no more korean pickled vegetables for a while. i have gone clean, so to speak. and though i still stare wistfully at all the coffee and tea left on my shelves, and the fried chicken at lawson’s, i must confess that things are improving slowly. the heart burns no more, and i am slowly making the return to normal meals. for now, i cannot seem to get enough sleep; my body seems bent on getting its full share of sleep before it gets started on the eats, so i can only tag along and nod obediently, munching endlessly on apples as i go along. at the rate i am consuming the fruit, i foresee their appearance in my dreams before long, running after me, with wicked faces like jack 0 lanterns.

i bought a new kazuo ishiguro work just because i liked its title – nocturnes, five stories of music and nightfall. i can’t describe why that attracted me so much; it is simply one of those word combinations that tug at your heartstrings. i am trying to pluck up the courage to pick up murakami in japanese, because… well, it is always good to read good literature in its original language, but i haven’t quite gotten past that mental barrier. i read an acceptable number of japanese academic books only because i have to, but the grand total of fiction books i own? 2 (or maybe 3), one of which is alice in wonderland. rather embarrassing, i know, for someone who may end up teaching in a university here, but… i will get there. one baby step at a time.

something happened this morning.

someone jumped onto the tracks of the yamanote line and halted the entire line for an hour and a half (possibly longer since i entered the fray some time after the deed had been done). right in the middle of the morning rush hour.

i had left early to catch breakfast before heading to school, but found myself stuck in shibuya. the yamanote line is one of the busiest lines (if not the busiest line) in tokyo, and probably in the whole of japan. at rush hour, trains come almost every minute – all packed to the brim with all forms of humanity… one of whom decided to end it all this morning.

it is not unusal for trains to be delayed in tokyo because someone had jumped, but the delay is usually short ( i suppose they have had much experience dealing with these “little inconveniences”). but to have the yamanote line halted for hours at rush hour because of one man – that is a major catastrophe. you should have seen the mad crush dashing here and there, trying to take alternative routes to work (because, you know, this is japan and you might as well kill yourself if you are going to be late for an important business meeting). jr staff stood around bowing and apologizing profusely to a disturbed and angry crowd… oh really, you should have seen it. you wouldn’t have thought it was something as minor as a train delay.

i remember being rather horrified when i first arrived in tokyo and found out that people jumped with alarming frequency. but gradually, the alarm faded, and like all true tokyo-ians (or whatever you call them), i learnt to be annoyed and frustrated.

but today, i could not stop thinking about the person who had jumped. on the yamanote line. at rush hour. i wonder if he had planned it. what he had thought as he plunged. and i became horrified beyond words once again as i stood on that very same platform from which he had jumped, all these thoughts running through my mind.

hello tokyo, we meet again.

i suppose i overreacted. after two hours of cleaning to yo-yo ma playing piazzolla, the room looks and feels more habitable. now that i can walk barefoot without treading on gobs of dust, i am more inclined to overlook the stains i could not remove, and remember that i am, after all, being paid to study here. and the moaning neighbor is now silent, thanks be to god.

i took a long ramble around the area at noon, walking round and round ceaselessly till my body temperature returned to something more akin to that of a healthy mammal. the unseasonal cold winds made me wheeze, but i would have walked anyway – anything to escape the dust clods and disturbing neighbor.

it is a lovely area, not least because the bestest and mostest university in japan is just next door to the dorm. there are any number of schools in the area besides the university of tokyo – junior high schools, high schools, international schools… there was a nice geeky feel to the people i met on the streets – those bespectacled, serious countenances; hands thrust deep into their pockets; future nobel peace prize winners, no doubt. you can find them in the numerous cosy eateries around here as well, nodding vigorously over a bowl of steaming noodles. i peeped into several such establishments and liked very much what i saw. i foresee spending much time reading at one of the tiny cafes, looking and feeling a little pretentious, and enjoying the whole masquerade immensely.

having said that, the litle area map that the dorm so kindly provided listed several “drag stores” in the vicinity. i am still wondering if i should point that out to somebody – i cannot quite remember what the japanese people take offence at and how easily wounded their pride may be. but mistakes like these are too disturbing to let go, and surely, with all the brains that should be residing in this building, we can afford to look a little more intelligent than that?

i did not do all that i set out to do in tokyo. what i did, i shouldn’t have, but i have no regrets anyhow, so we shall leave it at that.

i grimaced at the 31 degree heat when we first hit the airport, but now, sitting at my desk, my trusty old fan spinning away some steps away, i cannot help but embrace this warmth. perhaps it’s age, but boy… is it good to be back.

much work awaits, but i have to hop into bed before that dastardly flu makes a full-blown comeback. it is nice to be snuggling under a single sheet, listening to the tv blaring away (in mandarin) in the hall, and sending irreverent messages back and forth.

ah, home.

tears?

or just my nose running from the cold january winds?

today, in the winter chill in tokyo.

i bared my soul, and froze momentarily.

not to a theatre near you, but to my life.

i am getting all excited and jumpy about new york. i have really wanted to be there since i first started watching felicity and her whole nyu-in-the-big-apple life. (it’s embarrassing, but i even wanted her hair.) that was almost a whole decade ago…! tokyo is metropolitan and crowded, and i suppose, exciting in its own way, but… new york is new york. sinatra did not sing about it for nothing. while i try to avoid doing the typical tourist-y stuff in other places i go to, you just can’t avoid it in nyc. in fact, there would be hardly any point in going to new york if you miss the tourist traps. fifth avenue! times square! broadway! everything is seriously glitzy and punctuated with exclamation marks. you can’t help but want to act like a tourist. oh, and visiting m&m’s world! the very thought is almost orgasmic.

and then after new york… i can start thinking about tokyo seriously. seriously seriously. that means i will have to dig out my books and try to read them all again (and then more) before i head off. all the self-doubts haven’t gone away – if anything, they are even stronger than before. faced with the thought of long hours of reading and weaving my way through social theories for three whole years (and then the rest of my life!), i can’t decide if i am jittery from excitement or dread. i imagine people reading my papers and saying, if she can do it, so can i! i imagine them tearing me apart at conferences, leaving me to crawl under the table in shame and horror. i imagine freshmen asking me questions i cannot answer (and then, crawling under the table again). i imagine having the scholarship taken away from me because i couldn’t graduate. i have to stop working myself up like this, but it is like itunes on loop, and i am quite powerless to stop it.

i will also have to go for surgery to extract my wisdom tooth. more reason for dread. it will be a good crash diet - nothing but liquids (more or less) for at least a week, and that is the only motivation i have right now. if not, i might have preferred to let it rot and kill me with pain before i agree to surgery. next to childbirth, this might be the most painful thing to undergo in life. (they didn’t say that. i did.) and yes, i should stop working myself up about this too. perhaps, in some crazy masochistic way, i really do enjoy being a paranoid freak.

what else? i don’t really know. i suppose it will be enough to just be, for a while. to enjoy the balmy breezes and tropical showers on our little island; to sing; to eat, drink, and be merry; to forget people and things that should have been relegated to history a long time ago… to give up, and yet not lose hope… just for a while.