je lis trop: she who lives in Tokyo
april essay on experimental decision-making, reading the signs, walking the unnamed streets, the dangers of interpretation, and dazzling maths
When I briefly woke up in the middle of the night, in the middle of my flight, my eyes fixated on a man across a few aisles in front. The view was still blurry, but I saw him pinching the screen and zooming in on the virtual representation of the plane, moving steadily toward Japan across numerous countries. I woke up multiple times in the odd hours—it wasn't sleep, to be honest, just tuning out, squirming in my seat, and involuntarily coming back to reality—and each time, I would see him going through the same motions. He was tracking the plane's position more diligently than anyone might deem reasonable. The exploration was inexhaustible.
Six hours later, I was sitting on an airport floor waiting for my turn in the queue for the train tickets. I have been planning this trip since I was thirteen—it was then that I became charmed with Japanese culture. I had recently uncovered my list, filled with whims and ideas on what to do there, and I was surprised that even at twenty-seven, I could keep the bigger part of my teenage plan intact. There was one detail I hadn’t foreseen, though: my time on the island got assigned a much more significant role than vacationing. I wanted to figure out experimental ways to make two important decisions. I didn't know how to do that conventionally, with a blank paper sheet divided into pros and cons. That’s never worked for me, anyway.
I adopted one such measure and called it "Read the signs". It is applicable both on the surface level (for example, read the signs to find the metro station you were looking for) but also to find answers, whether to a personal or a creative question. Signs are open to multiple readings, and these readings can shoot in drastically different directions. Signs can also be fabricated. I decided not to overthink it and accept situations as they came.
It is fitting that before the trip, I read Roland Barthes's Empire of Signs—a reverent look at the Japanese culture and its signs. The book analyzes many of them, from handling food to chopsticks to haiku to gift-giving to the theater. Barthes's reflections are both informative and emotionally moving. I was most interested in the city grid and the fact that one cannot orient in conventional ways (it's because the streets are unnamed). The idea of streets without names—the experimental nature of walking the city—compelled me. It meant letting go of the usual notions, relying on the sights and circumstances, and accepting that practicality is just one way of thinking. Yet, I was afraid to let go and go on for long stretches without navigation. I was wary of the massive scale. Tokyo is the ultimate experience for a city enthusiast—a city so big that it's made of cities.
Barthes argues that when you come here for the first time, you start writing the place. My writing process started earlier than that. It started perhaps with the flight attendant’s question: Are you going to transfer to Tokyo? In that stretch of time before boarding the first plane and landing in the city, I read Hiroko Oyamada’s The Hole. It is a tale about a woman who moves because of her husband’s new job. One day, going to the convenience store 7-Eleven, she sees a strange animal, follows it, and falls into a hole. The rest of the story is about her figuring out what that episode was about and whether it was a hallucination. While in Tokyo, I went to 7-Eleven a handful of times. I went there for snacks, ice cream, or an ATM. The story was long finished, but I felt as if I were an extension of The Hole. I had my reasons to feel that way—my own 'hole' to climb out of.
Turn the book's cover, and you will find comparisons to David Lynch and Lewis Carroll. They make sense, to some extent, but ignore the very peculiar atmosphere that a Japanese writer could only conjure. This atmosphere envelops me each time I pick up such a book (the first case: reading The Ring trilogy by Kōji Suzuki when I was thirteen). I accept that this atmosphere might be something of my own doing, too. The writing in The Hole is down-to-earth but also has nuances of magic. The characters are down-to-earth but also mysterious. Consider falling into The Hole if you're looking for dream-like textures and meeting characters in bizarre situations.
Once again, reading the signs is about interpretation. It is a big theme in Katie Kitamura's Intimacies, the next book I read. Intimacies is a page-turner about “a woman of many languages and identities” who is lost in her work and relationships, unsure of the direction to take. Having left New York, she comes to the Hague, where she works at the International Court as an interpreter. Not a job for the weak: She’s exposed to difficult situations, manipulations, and war criminals. In addition, she’s trying to find her footing in tricky new relationships, where everyone mingles and seems to be co-dependent. The story’s texture is frayed, but its pull is strong. Some plot threads were left hanging; I wanted to resolve them, wrap them up. I am often content with things hidden and unknown, things left in a mysterious state, either in life or books, but here, I was almost disappointed not to understand what happened. A sign, perhaps, that in some situations, I might allow for more mystery in my life, while in others, I will draw a sharp line, asking for explicit answers.
"My job is to make the space between languages as small as possible," the protagonist says. I experienced a chasm between the languages. But it wasn't glaring discomfort. It fuelled my curiosity and led me to more revelations. I think of my first day in Tokyo, my first visit to a coffee shop. While waiting for my order, my copy of Intimacies on the table, I accidentally discovered that one of my articles had been translated into Japanese. I found out because I was scanning the shelves of the coffee shop and found a magazine I had recently contributed to. That article was heavily edited to the point of erasing crucial moments of my narrative. I didn't see it as my work. How ironic that 'my work' that has traveled furthest—literally crossed the ocean—is the one where I am masked, hidden. It was strange to realize that someone worked on it and brought an additional level of complexity, a translation. I took it as a double sign: that disappointments can become ocean-crossing surprises and that I should continue writing so that one day, my ideas could travel far and wide in their truthful form. (Don’t get me wrong, though: It was still lovely to see that translation).
Moving on to the signs of a different sort, let's turn to Yōko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor. I bought it because I wanted to read a book by a Japanese writer. Plain and simple. I found it in an eight-story bookshop; it fell into my basket together with a manual for the basics of the Japanese writing system Hiragana. The story is about maths, about signs and the logic behind them. Sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden. But most crucially, it is about beautiful friendships that form in unlikely situations: how do you become and stay friends with someone who only has short-term memory and will not remember you tomorrow? I took this book as a sign that some things, even if they seemed offputting or scary in the past—maths always seemed monstrous to me—can be brought out in a dazzling light, especially when you’re surrounded by the right people. What’s more, convictions such as 'this is for me' or 'this is not for me' are much more tricky than we might think. They can be twisted, turned upside down, and proven untrue. The last year has given me at least two instances of such conviction twists.
This is a story of my five days. For five days, I was a she who lived in Tokyo, who read the signs and interpreted them. This mode of decision-making and orienting myself was a worthwhile experiment. There was no fabrication, nothing that felt unnatural. What happened in the process seems much bigger than I envisioned. I had plenty of room to put my intuitions into words: What should remain mysterious and what should be explicit; what feels right and what feels wrong; where is the right place for creativity and where it is not. And I realize that the trip is over, but I haven't exhausted it. New interpretations rise in waves, and something is tugging at my chest, whispering I still have something substantial to uncover.