Dome and Home

[steepholm]

I should have mentioned in my last that when I was booking some trains at the JR office in Shinjuku station the other day - the very one where I had watched Date Masamune give a demonstration of samurai moves a few days earlier - I witnessed that rare thing in Japan - physical violence, or at least its aftermath. By the time it actually happened I was out of the office, and buying a snack from the Tokyo Cheese Factory stall next door (highly recommended), when a loud shout issued from a nearby stairwell, followed by loud clangs and bangs and a few clongs too. A young man emerged, kicking the street furniture, followed by some police, then more young men and more police, and finally a young man who appeared to be quite unconscious and was being hauled away on the back of one of his comrades.

If this had happened in any other big city I might not have paid it much mind, but in super-peaceful Japan, and the middle of the day (I'm not sure whether they were sober), it was very surprising. Mind you, it wasn't far from Kibukichou, the entertainment district, which is as close as Tokyo gets to a dodgy area.

I, meanwhile, have been indulging in far more peaceful pursuits, such as going to Ogikubo, the next stop down from Nishiogikubo, to photograph the house (or rather the building on the site of the house) where in the 1950s the legendary Momoko Ishii started the Katsura Bunko, a home library that was very influential in post-war Tokyo. It turns out that my friend Miho has never been there, despite Momoko Ishii being one of her heroines and despite Ogikubo being on her daily commute. Luckily for me, my photograph was the spur she needed to put this to rights, and she has now rung the Bunko and arranged for their Ishii Exhibit to be specially opened for the two of us next month, which I'm pretty excited about.



Yesterday I went to Taishou University, where my friend Yoshiko works, to give a lecture to her students (on Japan and Alice in the Nineteenth Century, since you ask). Afterwards, a few of them went with us to the Tokyo Dome, a slightly antiquated but very fun theme park in the middle of Tokyo. We went up in the ferris wheel, took photographs of each other having photographs taken, and generally had an excellent time - topped off with beer and sake in the case of Yoshiko and me. The students were a lot less formal and more bubbly, even - gasp! - tactile than most Japanese I have encountered, although being gripped by the forearm as we went round an obake yashiki (haunted house attraction) did bring back memories of being similarly clung to by a couple of random girls in Kyoto in 2015.



I've written about being all alone here in the Foreign Teachers' Residence, but I spoke too soon, because it turns out that I have a fellow resident in the form of (at least one, but there's never just one) very large Japanese cockroach. In Britain, I have never seen a cockroach at all, so to find it scuttling clumsily across the bathroom floor was startling indeed, especially as it was an inch long and had wings.

I mentioned this discovery to Miho, who said that, when Anne and Anthony Thwaite were staying in this very flat, some decades ago, Anthony T wrote a poem about cockroaches which proved to be one of the most popular of his time here at TWCU. I was duly impressed, and of course cockroaches have long been associated with poetry in the public mind thanks to Don Marquis, but all the same, I'd happy forgo both roach and rhyme. Let me throw myself rather on the mercies of another TWCU alumna, the redoubtable Marie Kondo. I feel sure that the cockroaches wouldn't dare bother her, lest they be put in a drawer sorted neatly according to size.

Finally, here's the latest in my collection of rather off-putting beauty salon names:

Comments

[calimac]

Somehow it'd never really settled on me that Archy is a cockroach - not enough to be reminded of his author when I see an actual roach. They're quite common in US urban environments. We've even gotten one or two out here, though what we mostly get are tiny ants and even tinier flies.

[steepholm]

I suppose that's the power of rarity. Archy and Mehitabel is one of the few cockroach encounters I've had, and all the more acceptable for being fictional. However, I suspect that his bulky Japanese counterpart would have no difficulty working the Shift key.

[calimac]

That suggests a referential joke:

"The cockroaches in Japan are really big ..."
"How big are they?"
"So big that they'd have no difficulty working the Shift key."

And then see how long it takes people to get it.

[ethelmay]

I've only twice seen them in Seattle, though my relatives who've worked in restaurants are much more familiar with them. The types of pests seem to vary a lot by neighborhood. We seldom get pantry moths in our current neighborhood, but frequently get sugar ants, which I never once saw in the house I grew up in.

[steepholm]

Sugar ants sound adorable.

[ethelmay]

They aren't as disgusting as they might be, but you get pretty tired of them. Also if you squish them they make an alarmingly large smell, considering their small size. (They are also called "odorous ants.")

[ashkitty]

I once saw a cockroach shopping at Tiffany's in Santa Monica. I'd popped in to have a necklace cleaned, and was waiting for it to be returned. The cockroach was massive, and calmly strutting along the middle of the sales floor as if just trying to decide if it needed some extremely expensive jewellery. No one bothered it and eventually it toddled off underneath a chair.

[steepholm]

It was probably disgusted by the lack of customer service.

[ashkitty]

Probably so! Even a cockroach wants to feel like a valued customer sometimes.

[hoodcp.wordpress.com]

Good luck with the cockroaches! There are so many bugs in Japan that just look like miniature versions of Godzilla characters!

[steepholm]

This may not be a coincidence!