Tokyo 東京

“Mr. Sato, was the coffee too hot for you?” the woman asked, and paused as if she was waiting for me to say something.

I didn’t say a word, just looked her in the eye and shook my head twice. During the pause, I glanced at the business-card that we just had exchanged with a bow. Like a chef carefully selecting the right knife, I deliberated over which word to use, finally picking one that was neither too sharp nor too worn but just right.

“The name’s a little embarrassing,” the woman broke the silence.

Keep ing the words to myself, I laid a memo pad in front of me and wrote down the woman’s name in Chinese characters, in Japan known as “Kanji.” Her name was “Higashi, Kyo-ko.” In Japanese, the last name comes first. In Kanji, her name has three symbols. “Higashi” means “East.” “Kyo” means “capital city.” “Ko” is “child.” One Kanji can have a several pronunciations and meanings. Moreover, when paired with other Kanji characters, it can change again. Therefore, Kanji characters can be used to construct clever written puns. In her case, “Higashi-Kyo-ko” can also be read “Tokyo-Ko,” meaning “Tokyo child.”

“I have always said when I meet a new person, ‘My parents had a sense of humor,’” Ms. Higashi said.

I tried to smile but I didn’t know if I succeeded. The word “Tokyo” hit my mind.

We were at a quiet coffee shop in a small seaport town seven hours from Tokyo. I was there to investigate the workplace of illegal immigrants who worked as fisherman. Ms. Higashi was a member of a local human-right-group that helps such workers and their family to seek both social and legal protections.

“Are you from Tokyo?” she asked. She saw my business card that had the name of a national famous newspaper company where I was an intern.

“No, I am not from Tokyo headquarter today. But I lived there for two years when I was a kid.”

I kind of lied to her. I wasn’t a kid when I lived in Tokyo. It was after my high school graduation that Tokyo became my town.

The city of Tokyo is an archetype of the modern metropolis, and offers a case study in extremes and contradictions. When night comes, the electric billboards bathe the city in fluorescent lights. The city’s multiple scales present a kaleidoscope of visions; neon ads flash incomprehensible messages, tiny street vendors lie at the feet of fashionable stores, young teens relay images between mobile phone, pets and handbags accessorize the fashionable. It is the powerful city that consumes people’s joy, pain and ambition as energy.

Before I became a writer (most times working as a freelance journalist), I had a different job. People from my old town thought that I was a comedian in Tokyo. It was simply because they had no idea what to comedy scriptwriters do and don’t do. I wrote comedy sitcoms for television and radio, but never be in the spotlight.

There were countless numbers of scripts and characters that I created that didn’t appear on any show. Some of them were just not the director’s taste. Others were not suitable for the prime time audiences. It took a quite long time to get used to having to say good-bye to new-born characters. In the end, that’s what the nature of this business is, I understood.

One of the tabled characters that I named was “Higashi, Kyo-ichi.” It was intended be read “Tokyo-Ichi” meaning as “No1 in Tokyo.” He was a character who came from the Northern part of the country full of ambition to become a “big man” but has been rejected by the atmosphere, rhythm and mood of Tokyo.

The character can be anybody who is an outsider but pretends he or she is cool with the city. Tokyo, a city, that has three times more outsiders than those born there, has many a Tokyo-Ichi.

And in a sense I was a Tokyo-Ichi too. Nobody told me but I felt I couldn’t blend into the city well. There were many unspoken rules or “agreements” that had me bound hand and foot. If you don’t follow them, it is a sign that you are a hick, I guess.

I couldn’t stand it when people wouldn’t give up their seat in the subway for the elderly but pretended to be sleeping. Because of the quick tempo of the city, every two months the night cashier at 7-11, probably a student from the nearest dance school, quit. The city confused me because everybody walked so fast there and seemed to know where they were heading to in their life but I didn’t.

Ms. Higashi reminded me of a Tokyo-Ichi and myself as 18-year-old felt sense of failure in Tokyo.

Since then, I have been trying to find a moral in all of this Tokyo experience. It happens to thousands of Tokyo-ich every year. They probably tell themselves that maybe it will turn out to be a good experience; maybe it will teach them something about life, and about dreams, and about putting too much faith in those dreams.

That’s what I tell myself too, but I don’t believe it. All I know is that I have been shown that I wasn’t good enough.

While wandering through old memories, I glanced at the business-card again and asked her this time without carefully choosing my words.

“Are you from Tokyo?”

“No, I’ve never been to Tokyo,” she said.

I felt a little bit of relief, somehow.

“Neither of my parents is,” she went on. “Of course, I had chances to go there more than a few times in my life. In high school, my class mates went to Tokyo for a weekend shopping trip. I could have gone to a college in Tokyo if I had wanted to. A friend of mine was married at Akasaka-Prince Hotel (in Tokyo). Things like that. But because of my name, I suppose, I have always avoided Tokyo. The city is not just a capital, it’s something special for me, you know?”

“I think so,” I said. “When I was a kid, I always saved my favorite part of the lunch box for last.”

She smiled. I could smile this time too.

Even though Tokyo is not my favorite “dish”, I knew that I shouldn’t or had no right to disillusion her. Or more like, not disillusion myself.

I laid the pencil on the table, leaned a little bit back in my chair, and started up wondering what happened to those many a Tokyo-Ichi.