Moving days

The deluxe nun of Ochiai

I’m writing to you from the third new moon of the year, from a new vantage point in Tokyo, the ground of an unfamiliar environs. Sitting on the floor is a big part of life in Japan, and it has been for as long as the country has had floors. Japan is relatively late to the global chair game, for reasons that I have explained here. You could argue that the floor of a new apartment is the precise angle from which to really get to know a real Japanese home, that I’m standing on the shoulders of (read: sitting on the floor of) the ancestors of the people who built the country I live in and that in doing so I get closer to the lines, the design, the aesthetic values that underlie traditional Japanese culture. 

Except what has really happened is I bought a used IKEA couch off of Mercari, because I really wanted to sit somewhere other than the ground, but I had unreasonable faith that I could do the final assembly on my own, and as it turns out, I was wrong. So here I sit, on the floor, my knees up against a third of a piece of couch, in an apartment that is now 40% deconstructed sofa, waiting to be rescued by a prince who had dinner plans in Hatagaya first.

“How are the new deluxe nun quarters?” writes A.

I keep flipping the wrong light switches in my new apartment. They’re clustered together five to a panel. I mindlessly switch each on and off, no not that one, on and off, no not that one, on and off, there it is, instead of bothering to commit anything to memory. I am desperate to settle in, to have every item in its place, so that I can move smoothly from waking to sleeping again, to put everything where it belongs; and also I’m not, I want to stay here in transition, because settling means staying, and staying means falling out of love. 

I don’t have a fridge, a microwave, or a washing machine. I put green peppers and a cut onion outside on the balcony. I buy expiring blood oranges at the supermarket because they’re cheap and because it’s been so long since I’ve had one, and I immediately realize my mistake. Everything is new. Yesterday walking home from the train freezing my hands off I see a 24-hour laundromat. Yes. This saves me from having to ask another favor. The favor isn’t so much, “Hey G can I use your washing machine?” of course he will say yes, it’s, “Hey G can I hang around your place for hours doing nothing waiting for the sun to dry my cotton socks?”

Everything is a test against itself in the past. This morning in the cold sun I lug two bags into the dingy space. The last time I’d used a laundromat was in the Village. Compared to those machines, this one has way more instructions — please do something and then please do a second thing within 30 seconds! — and way fewer buttons. Actually, just one. So many words, and so few actions. It doesn’t add up. 

My first week in Japan, four and a half years ago in Fukuoka, I was faced with the same panel on the washing machine in the lobby of my building. I had rented a 20-square-meter studio for less than $350 a month in a bougie neighborhood with a ridiculous supermarket and several bakeries that had lines out the door. I couldn’t read any Chinese or Japanese, but I thought intuition should be enough to get me through a load of laundry. Wait, why was there only one button? 

The next time I saw my real estate agent, the only person I knew in Fukuoka who spoke English, who also happened to be the only person I knew in Fukuoka, I asked him about the laundry machine. Where was the hot water? He looked at me gravely. “Nobody in Japan has hot water in their washing machine,” he said. He raised his index finger, and both eyebrows. “Not even the prime minister.”

This morning at the laundromat, reading skills and memory form something close to intuition. I recognize the machine from my past. This one button that’s here? It’s not even for washing clothes. Its purpose is to wash the washing machine. 

I’ve had worse moves. That first apartment, I didn’t have internet for over three weeks. I didn’t have hot water for ten days or so. The same two men in uniforms kept showing up, neither party able to communicate with the other, them taking off their shoes, rolling out their “don’t make a mess” mat, making a mess, rolling it back up, mess contained, and leaving again, without the situation changing. They replaced the entire boiler before someone realized it had been an error of paperwork. I had a contract with the gas company and a contract with the water company, but I needed a subcontract to link the two. One phone call later, and I had hot water. 

The spring equinox is in ten days. It means the end of the most romantic time of the year, the last days of winter. Spring is all that pollen, all that promise, it’s supposed to mean hope, life, love, hearts instead of eyes. But when I see that first burst of petals, I feel a swell of bittersweetness: It means the beginning of the end.

I want to stay frozen, pre-bust, holding only potential, none of the disappointment. Don’t fill all the cupboards with all your baggage. Not yet. Don’t make memories tilted laughing loving with people who are going to leave. Not yet. Don’t spend nights on the couch, staring into the void. Not yet. Stay here, the before. Just like this, all this potential, this place unspoiled by, well, all that me. 

Knees up against the not-yet-couch, I write to you. I find that blood oranges and salt flavored potato chips go really well together. Everything is new. There’s bloody juice everywhere. Wait, I hear my prince. He’s come. Wait, wait.