A Distraction To The Business Of Prayer

I went drinking in Asakusa last night with Junko, New Guy, and the five-year-old teacher. We were only in Asakusa because New Guy seems to have a particular fondness for Asakusa and Junko and the five-year-old are on some kind of mission to make New Guy feel welcome.

We met in Asakusa Station at six p.m. I arrived first, perhaps three or four minutes early, and I was met by New Guy at six. Japan having a reputation for people being on time is only so much talk--in Tokyo anyway--as I have never made a date with a Tokyoite that I wasn’t the first to show up. I emailed Junko and she was on her way, so as we waited, I chatted with New Guy.

We talked briefly. I tried to point out (without saying as much) that some of the things he is wrestling with are probably the edges of an inevitable culture shock. I mean, I suppose that I wanted to let him know that when I first arrived, I too found it strange that grown men and women are addicted to Snoopy and Hello Kitty. I too found it strange that the mass of people seemed to betray no emotions whatsoever. (In fact, the Ex-Student also commented on this phenomenon when he lived for a time in Tokyo, so maybe it’s Tokyo versus the world and not just an East meets West kind of division at play here.) We only had a few minutes to chat before Junko arrived. I complimented her coat, a long green-and-brown plaid wool coat. She thanked me and told me that it had belonged to her mother, who wore it forty years before.

We exited the station a few minutes after six. Outside, it was already dark and the afternoon’s cold winds had turned bitter. We headed toward the temple.

Along the shopping arcades that radiate from the temple like spokes, the merchants were closing up their shops, rolling down painted metal doors against the night and tossing water into the streets. A few stands remained open, but they were mostly selling food, the puffed rice cakes and candy that Asakusa is famous for, roasted chestnuts, and these donut-like cakes, deep fried, in flavors like vanilla, chocolate and green tea. I was hungry and tried to pull Junko and New Guy over to the food stands but Junko steered us into the wind, heading for the temple grounds. We walked up to the temple and the walk was strange in the dark and without the hoards of people who come in the daytime. Without a word, Junko led us up the stairs of the temple and she and I prayed. I didn’t see if New Guy joined us.

I tossed my small, light go-en coin and clapped twice to call the spirits and as I brought my hands into anjelie mudra and bowed my head, The Brain just completely abandoned me. It was cold, yes, and against The Brain’s advice, I was out in the cold, so we were barely on speaking terms as it was--but it’s been months since I walked up to a temple and The Brain couldn’t come up with some prayer, some wish. When that happens, I usually pray that everything will be okay. This is my wish or my prayer whenever I am given such opportunity, a birthday candle, for example, or a found eyelash. This time The Brain snagged at the moment nettle-like. In one brief and bearable rush, I became aware of the cold and the night that pressed against me. I was aware of a grainy quality of the air, the cold, an absence of people, the enormity of the space that was only incidentally but spiritually associated with the physical space itself. I felt fully the strangeness of praying before the closed doors of the temple, and now this strikes me as sensible, praying before closed doors, because what is on the other side of the closed door is also on this side of the closed door, but what it is that we might feel necessitates being kept behind closed doors is often only a distraction to the business of prayer.

I released my hands and looked up, and Junko and New Guy were waiting. We headed down the stairs. Junko said something that only the wind heard, and I nodded.

We walked the streets behind the temple grounds, Junko leading, and finally chose at random an izakaya where we took a corner table, took off our shoes, and sat on blue-and-white fabric colored cushions placed on tatami mats. Junko ordered a beer for New Guy and hot sake for her and me, and then I began to try to sound out some of the items on the menu. I say there was a menu, but that means that there were long bits of paper upon which were written the offerings and the prices. In very traditional izakayas, there is no concession to the fashion of using English on the menu. Here, as in other places I’ve been, the izakaya used Japanese exclusively including the kanji numerical system for prices.

Junko began to order food. She ordered something and I don’t remember what the Japanese was, but when I asked her for a translation, she looked in her book, a kind of dictionary for restaurant terms and foods, and she eventually came up with “salted fish guts.” They were slimy and salty and chewy all at once. We also ended up with seaweed, cucumbers with miso, grilled liver and chicken, and a plate of stewed beef and tofu. We drank and Junko and I ate and New Guy sampled a few things, but mostly he held back, claiming that he had had a late, large lunch.

As we ate, we talked a bit, Junko often listening. I’m very much a driven conversationalist, so I ask fast, pointed questions and often make the mistake of not giving people time to consider answers. New Guy seems to need that time, and Junko is often translating in her head, so I had to remind myself time and again to try to make space. Make space. Make space.

And we drank.

After about an hour and a half, the five-year-old joined us. We talked about relationships, a favorite topic in Japan when people are drinking--and when they can corner Westerners the game is even more fun. “What kind of women do you like?” Junko finally asked New Guy. He either didn’t hear, or, I think, pretended not to hear. I helpfully repeated the question.

Eventually, we all revealed some small bit of our relationship histories that might serve to bond us together. For some reason--for any reason--that’s important. The five-year-old has commented to me that after almost two months, she still feels like she has to treat New Guy like a guest, and that is not the way to go in Japan. There is inside the circle and outside the circle, and New Guy is remaining outside the circle (even among the hyper-Westernized Japanese with whom we work) for the time being.

After a bit, we were asked very politely to pay our bill, and we did. Junko and the five-year-old suggested karaoke, and I agreed and New Guy said nothing, which was taken for agreement.

As we walked through the darkened back streets of Asakusa, New Guy pointed out the doors, the large metal garage doors, that businesses pull down against the night. The doors are often painted with traditional looking scenes, samurai and geisha, and he told us that he had been out in Asakusa the night before to look at the doors and photograph some of them. I asked what time he had been out to look at them. “About nine-thirty,” he was all he said. but his answer revealed more of his personality than anything he had revealed over dinner. And, too, my response to his answer revealed something to me about my own personality.

Tokyo after dark is a different place from Tokyo during the day. A city exists beneath the city, and I am loathe to face that place. At that hour, I’m not wandering the streets. If it’s a workday, I’m usually coming home from work, home, then to the gym through the back alleys in Higashi-Mukojima. If it’s a weekend, I’m alone, at home, or with others, never out alone. I’m not an alien out alone at that hour. It’s not that Tokyo isn’t safe, it’s just that I’m unwilling to confront the demons who thrive at that hour, in that kind of darkness.

It occurs to me--later--that if one is to wrangle demons, that one has to realize that one has to leave behind the illusion that one can choose the time and place to do so. One’s training has to reflect the understanding that time and place are negligible quantities to demons. It is not a new understanding, this, but a new angle to something I’ve understood for years.

I am not afraid of nighttime, of any hour of the night. A long history of insomnia has led to an intimate acquaintance with every minute of the night, and three a.m. is the same to me as three p.m. It’s not the time then, not the hour, so what is it? What keeps those hours padded and hidden, stuffed with unfamiliar demons? Why do I eat and eat myself into unconsciousness as the sun falls? What’s there and what needs to be understood? What do I think is on that side of the door that makes it more important than what is on this side of the door? What do I think I am protecting?

New Guy abandoned us at the door of the karaoke place, one of the chain karaoke places, in Asakusa. Junko and the five-year-old bid him stay--as did I--but he would not. Instead, Junko, the five-year-old and I went in, sang and drank for an hour and came home. I was home a bit after eleven, slightly drunk, and, not seeing, bought yogurt and chocolate and ice cream at the convenience store near the station. I came home and ate sugar until I felt sick, then I went to bed.

And I slept.