Tokyo Diaries
When it rains, it pours.
Who even am I when I’m not proving myself anymore?
Tokyo Diaries. An intimate series on substack.
Maybe the rainy season isn’t coming?
My friend and I are sitting outside one of my favourite cafes in Tokyo (go as early in the morning as possible, or on a weekday, and certainly not during sakura season, even though it is beautiful)(and definitely get the carrot cake).
It’s the first real hot day of the season, or maybe the second.
When I say hot, I mean hot enough to pull out the sun umbrella to walk the thirteen minutes from Yoyogi-Uehara station to Paddlers. Hot enough for me to feel relieved that I finally got over myself and started to use the sun umbrella. Hot enough to buy one of those salty plum electrolyte drinks from the convenience store on the way. Just over a year ago, even the thinnest suggestion of buying a sugary bottled drink was offensive to me. Then I experienced my first Tokyo summer. Now I laugh at the thought. You don’t eat sugar, that’s cute. Now I’d hook Pocari Sweat directly into my veins every July, if I could.
We thought the rainy season was coming two weeks ago but it hasn’t yet. It’s a theme so far this year. Sakura season was delayed. It snowed in late March. The winter kept coming and coming and now we are here, a plump bead of sweat rolling seductively down my spine at 9:30am, sitting under the shade of a tree.
A friend of my friend steps out of the cafe and we chat for a bit. I am sitting between a mosquito coil and a stick of incense, drinking cold brew. Everything feels right in this moment. I want to extend time and stay here, forever. My friends tiny dog is curled up on her lap. My friend is sweating profusely, but her dog outright refuses to sit anywhere else.
What a gift it is, to be loved so hard.
My Japanese teacher said the rainy season can start anywhere between early June and mid July, the friend of my friend says.
We haven’t missed it yet.
He tells us there’s a semi-disastrous weather system brewing in South East Asia that could be on the way. Maybe, he shrugs, obviously I don’t have any real idea about that stuff. Before he leaves, we talk about the smell of summer in Japan. It’s controversial to like summer here, a season that will chew you up and spit you back out more times than you can count, but it does smell good. You could bottle it and sell it. I think Aesop already has. The hot wood of old timber houses. The asphalt in the late afternoon. The mosquito coil smoke mixed with the warm, wet earth.
We meet another dog owner dressed head to toe in blue. She looks incredible. In the hour or so I sit there, I mentally restock my entire wardrobe, even though I know I can’t pull any of it off. Full length skirt. Backless top. Big sleeves. Colour block. Pointed toe ballet flats.
There is a handmade jewellery pop-up inside the cafe.
I’m still thinking about a necklace I saw. Multiple shades of sky blue. Tiny silver hearts, intertwined.
I’ve never been loved that hard by anyone my sister jokes, commenting on a video of my friends daughter crying and screaming my name at the train station when I leave Osaka after spending a weekend together.
My friends youngest daughter is three, and over the last year, I have spent about six weeks in total living in their spare bedroom. A year is an eternity in the life of a three year old. She has a hunger for learning English that shocks me. Her pronunciation is perfect, better than her older sister, or even her parents who have been speaking English for years. We read English books together and she looses it completely when learning sea anemone. She throws her head back and cackles at the ridiculous sound of the word.
Over the weekend, she sleeps next to me on my futon both nights. I leave the windows open and read my kindle in the dark while her breathing becomes rhythmic and light in my ear. In the early morning a tiny foot poking my jaw brings me out of sleep. It’s raining. My heart bursts. When she wakes up and registers my face she beams. Ohayo Emmie she whispers, in her perfect, morning toddler voice.
What a gift it is, to love so hard.
I’ve had moments, over the last four months, where the distinct lack of desire to prove myself is so apparent and so alien, I wonder if I’ve lost all ambition completely.
If I stop trying so desperately hard all of the time, maybe I’ll lose it all.
Lose what exactly, I’m still not sure.
It first hit on my flight from Sydney to Tokyo.
Boarding the bus to take us to the plane, So Beautiful by Pete Murray starts to play (I have since listened to the lyrics of this song and find it kind of uncool, but sometimes, nostalgia is best left undisturbed). Before take off I start to sob and the sobbing doesn’t stop for an hour or more. I fish a surgical mask out of my bag and put it on, I let it all come until the mask is soaked through, completely.
As the plane shifts heavily up into the airspace above the country I have called home my whole life, I feel something close to a physical release of emotional weight from my body, forcing it’s way out through my eyes and nose. It shocks me, but I have also been in what felt like a semi-psychedelic state for the last few days. In-between worlds. Etheric. Excited. Anxious. Poised at the starting block, waiting for the gun to go off.
Flashes of my life from childhood up until this very moment play behind my closed, wet eyes. Standing on stage holding academic awards, people clapping. Playing the big solo in the school band on saxophone. A desperate desire to fit in. A desperate desire to be even a little bit tan, to be considered hot, to look cool on the beach, or anywhere at all. The shame I carried, the shame I smiled all over the top of without a single pause. All the praise for my ability to work harder and harder and harder. All the praise for my ability to perform. All the times I’d been underestimated and let it hurt me. All the times I’d been hurt full stop. All the times I’d been underestimated and put my whole body weight into trying to prove myself in the face of it all.
I would say I let it go, but that sounds like it took some kind of action on my part.
It left my body back then, mostly.
I’m still learning, awkwardly, how to to carry the space it left behind.
Yesterday I woke up, hot, with my hair stuck to my face.
I swim around my apartment for twenty minutes, trying to find my balance, side-eyeing the air conditioner, not yet ready to cave, unable to bring myself to boil water for hot coffee, sweating through my morning pages.
Anticipation builds alongside the humidity. The season can’t be far off now.
〰️
This morning, I open my sliding balcony door and watch two massive crows taking shelter under a tiny awning. Defying gravity somehow.
The air is cool and soft and very, very wet. The rain is so hard it looks like lines drawn diagonally in the sky.
I boil water for coffee and sit down to write.
If I could press pause inside this moment, I would live here for days.
What a gift it is, to live like this.
What a gift it is, to love yourself just a little bit more.
What a gift it is, to love yourself without having to do anything to deserve it.
When it rains, it pours.
This piece is part of a new series on substack called Tokyo Diaries.