A BONE TO PICK WITH THE 6:22PM TRAIN | IF WILD BOARS COULD SWIM | CRACKING A COLD CASE
04.04.20
Writing under house arrest seems to have become a publishing prerequisite for this best-selling series. Six months back during Typhoon Hagibis, it took the form of a 30 square- metre Japanese apartment cell. Now, having crossed a number of national and state borders, it has morphed into an Australian outhouse of equivalent size.
A mere three months ago, this New South Wales South Coast corrugated-iron loo was sitting on 40-acres of bucolic beachfront bushland at the centre of Australia’s unprecedented bushfire crisis. The green country had become a land coated in fine white ash, the golden beach lost to thick black ash, vegetation fell as burnt eucalypt leaves, and the wind blew ice cold from the left and red hot from the right. Add to this a grassfire next door, countless evacuations, and no running water, no internet, no telephone and no television signal for up to 10-days at a time. These recollections are not my own – they are Julie Mill’s story to tell – I merely watched and listened to the nightmare unfold from the cool, calm, safe-haven of Japan. Although away from the pall of smoke, the distance elicited a bizarre voyeurism towards the disaster. Without proximity your only weapon is information. And as the world is quickly learning, saturation of something that is prevalent but not quite present, can be incredibly anxiety-inducing. Despite my attention firmly fixed on Australia’s red walls, charred animal remains, and smoke screens, I started to become acutely aware of my feelings towards Japan.
I had been warned about a six-two-twenty ailment, but thought this was simply a matter of missing the 6:22pm train home. The truth was much more revealing; dare I call it the ‘Japan virus’. Experts predict the average foreign resident will experience a significant reduction in Japanese surface glow around the six-month mark. Assuming the individual can hold their tongue, and refrain from criticism of everything, most phase one survivors find themselves fronting another review two-years down the track. Pass that, and you’re safe for the next twenty years.
Failure to make the 6:22pm train does need to be addressed.
Whilst the city culture has its quirk and Japanese practice its peace, the country has aptly been titled “a land of contradictions” – impeccably clean with a waste problem, digitized on a paper system, electrified by coal, democratised without a voice. It does such an excellent job concealing its negative inputs with positive outputs that when the mask slips around the six-month time trap, many have reported finding themselves completely out of sorts. I emerged in a cone of silence facing charges that included “sustained attempt to broach discussion on social, political and environmental issues” and “overuse of the word ‘why’”. As a human programmed to question everything and fill-up on answers, Japan had me at high risk of developing a sensory input deficiency.
I’m pleased to announce that a dose of social activism and reporting helped change the outlook. I’ll save the finer details for a rainy day – if you refer to Briefing #1 and #2 you will see these come in abundance – but the key takeaway was that until Japanese people recognize they have autonomy to influence events, not simply endure them, they will be stuck in the status quo. Whilst Japan mulls over this existential crisis, let me draw you into a personal one.
Hopeful I could forever change the parameters of reality television, I piloted a program, ‘Hikers of High-Risers’. Casting myself as the character who subsists entirely in fleece, I was committed to making the identity my own. Challenging though it was, I made the massive leap from woolen thermals to all manner of polyester. No sooner had I fleeced-out in my white tracksuit and green and purple beanie than I was stopped in the street by one of Tokyo’s leading coiffeurs. Despite the fact I was wearing the aforementioned beanie with not a shred of hair on show, he had a vision for my locks. In that moment, I had no choice but to drop the synthetic act and take on a character that instead prided itself on cutting-edge haircuts and a high-end wardrobe. In the name of ‘portfolio development’, I subscribed to subsidized styling, pitiless pouting in Tokyo’s version of 5th Avenue, and a major role in the potential sequel of Lost in Translation. And so began a moonlight career as a hair model – a byline that has an infinite restraining order on my CV.
Whilst on set in the Ginza-based hair salon, I noticed an interesting correlation between workplace hierarchy and audibility. The more senior the person, the quieter the voice. For strong words need not be spoken any louder, but rather listened to more intensely. The art of slow silence is a phenomenon not yet mastered by Western societies, who instead tend to lean on the loudest voices for authority. In Australia, the traditional owners of the land see colonial descendants as “white cockatoos” because of a frenetic way with words. As a self-proclaimed talking addict, I certainly have reverence for those who walk the halls of silence. Having said that, regular decibel Japanese is hard enough to understand. So whilst the low volume no doubt accentuated the manager’s gravitas, it drastically hindered mine.
Choose your words wisely.
Silence took on a slightly more sinister form a few doors down at the Ginza tailor where the chief couturier used her standing to with-hold information from me. Although I grew up operating a bedroom seamstress service, I was not taught how to pin a price to an alteration. When you have never before enlisted a professional to hem a ten centimetre overhang, you have no data to conduct a comparative cost analysis, and nothing to sound the alarm in the case of exploitation. I thought 10,000 JPY (150 AUD) seemed exorbitantly steep for two pant-leg straight-line slice-and-sews, but I dared not question the authority of she who practiced the fine art of ‘less is more’. Courtesy of Google, I later found out that the alteration store was part of a franchise, with each shop serving a separate purpose. Whilst partner stores promised quick and budget fixes, the staple Ginza showroom boasted on its website that it “doesn't just take the task of reducing the length” but rather caters to reservation only high-end creativity. Fifteen-years of dress-making and only then, was I formerly inducted into the fashion industry.
Following this ignominious encounter, I opted for a considerably more hardline approach to trading. Despite the Japanese rental market’s overwhelming aversion to foreigners, if you can get yourself into a tiny house, there are deals to be done on the decor. In order to stand a chance – short of relinquishing your foreign passport – you need to enlist a real-estate agent that has chosen to capitalize on the hostility of the market by providing foreigner-friendly services. Perhaps the charity they offer their clients helps them justify such steep rates. But even with professional help, we were knocked back from a succession of apartments on terms that constituted a gross violation of most countries’ racial discrimination acts.
The place that read best on paper was still under construction. Although there were no qualms about the Nakameguro location or earth-quake resistant structure, neither a world-class architect nor a scientific grade microscope could have made anything of the interior plans. Only prospective buyers, not renters, were entitled to zoom-friendly copies – clearly not a market for the risk-averse.
Despite the enduring trauma of my architecture training, I took myself down to the site, equipped with a Japanese glossary of terms for building components and a list of missing measurements. Although the builders refused to admit me entry, I came away with a comprehensive set of plans and new-found confidence. The excitement was short-lived however, as the application for two-people was rejected on the grounds that only one person could live in a space less than 40-square meters. Whilst these terms may have the backing of humanitarian watchdogs in Australia – low-risk criminal offenders are entitled to more space – in Japan, if two people cannot live in 40-square meters they can only be described as highly incompetent in living management. I am pleased to report the pair did eventually secure the top 30-square meters of a four-story walk-up in Ebisu. And so began part two: move-in missions.
Two Japanese men live comfortably in five-square metres.
The previous apartment had us packed into a semi-double (glass half-full approach to a king-single) bed but despite the opportunity to reduce the risk of sleepers falling overboard in the dead of night, curb the spread of insomniac contagions, and put to bed highly contested doona disputes, the decision was made to pursue the existing sleeping arrangement and instead capitalise on the extra space with the acquisition of Ikea’s Expedit turned Kallax shelving unit. Back in 2014, the global retail giant controversially announced it would suspend production of what had become a staple piece of furniture for vinyl LP collectors. Although Expedit 2.0 (aka Kallax) was swiftly rolled out and aficionados were reassured the product was identical in all but name, for many, the fear of missing out – ‘empty-shelf syndrome’ – was almost too much to bear.
We fell victim to this line of thinking, when a week out from the Ebisu move-in date, our Kallax dealer announced the sale was now or never. And so, to save two-rounds of removal vans, the 147x77centimetre giant joined us on the Tokyo subway. The actual train-ride was relatively straightforward, but what wasn’t accounted for were the line changes, ticket gates and stations three-storeys underground whose lifts had been halted for service. The bookcase arrived to the old apartment in considerably better condition than the self-professed removalists. At least there was a week to recover before again transporting the now family heirloom to its final resting place.
The following weekend’s move was even more exciting. We struck gold with second-hand table and chairs, bed, and an assortment of household goods sold via a state-of-the-art Excel inventory, but it was the fridge that proved the most fruitful. The seller was entertaining her entire extended family for lunch when we arrived. In the two-minutes it took to wheel our second-hand acquisition out the door, we had been introduced to each of the ten family members by name. In the frenzy of excitement, due diligence that would later prove critical was neglected. Only once the fridge had been transported up four flights of stairs and re-settled inside the apartment, did forensics intervene. They noted a persistent aroma of off-curry, supported by widespread oil stains. The hypothesis: a dirty fridge in dire need of a scrub. But many rounds of elbow grease and plant-based cleaning product later, a much more sinister counter-narrative had begun to emerge: six small bodies extracted from the interior, all prostrate as if taken by shock, no signs of foul play.
Fast forward a day, the half-unpacked kitchen space had been repurposed to a podcast production studio for an episode on Australia’s bushfire crisis. The script was halted by the entrance of two young and able-bodied cockroaches scuttling across the fridge. Carbonization of vermin suddenly became a more compelling narrative than the burnt remnants of Australia’s native forest. The fridge quickly found itself in pieces and the 1000-roach breeding ground it was housing, exposed. The regiment had built its headquarters inside the electronic casing of the fridge and although most of the young soldiers were unhatched – for now – had it not been for the two early risers, we may never have blown the lid on the operation. A refund was requested and swiftly denied on the dubious grounds that the seller “paid for the item too”.
In order to take the edge off my spectacular blunders, I decided to introduce my father to Japan. A long weekend in Kagawa prefecture visiting Japan’s art islands had the desired effect, pitting him against some of the world’s most unforgiving acoustics. Inside the incredible concrete monolith of Teshima Art Museum, you could hear the structure breathe. Every time I crouched down to inspect the membranes on the floor – the structure functions as a natural spring, drawing-up water from underground to play on the surface – the silence would rip with a chorus of cracks. But it was father’s complementary audio tour which likened the natural phenomenon to “sperm swimming to victory” that left the greatest legacy on the space. The sound-bite went straight to the archives, playing back on an infinite echo cycle.
Teshima Art Museum: a sound structure.
The artwork was not however the only competent swimmer on the island. When wild boar heard that Teshima was no longer being used as a dumping site for toxic industrial waste, they swam across from the mainland to set up camp. The seaborne migration has given them what many locals see as a disproportionate stake in the Benesse three island restoration project. Despite the influx of unwanted foreign investment, ecosystem regeneration through ground-breaking art was lauded a success. The introduction of my father as an uncontrolled variable risked derailing the operation all over again. In a single day on neighbouring island Naoshima, he set off an alarm by attempting to walk backstage into an artwork and then settled on a separate artwork for a seat.
Exhibit C: father becomes a part of the artwork.
Although father fared much the same back at the ryokan, knocking his head on the low-hanging entry ways and his shins on the low-rise bedframe, he was undoubtedly better off than our predecessors who found their heads on stakes in the vegetable garden. My guess was the Airbnb guest was suspected of premeditating a less than average review.
Alternative explanation: the scarecrow was no longer outstanding in his field.
Despite a number of my own brain-dead days – of note, the Japanese class where I was asked to describe a friend, but the only friend I could think of was my boyfriend, and the only way I could think to describe him was as a good dancer – the country has me hooked. Ironically, a degree of separation from Japan has allowed me to look into my own personal crisis with Japan from the very place whose crisis had me so beleaguered about Japan. As my Australian posting flipped its switch from the most dangerous places on earth to one of the safest, I realised there may be more than one great ‘land of contradictions’. Six months into Japan and I’m lining up for the next two years.