Day Trip to Tokyo (Part 1)

After school, we get together on the slant of the popular grass mound. To watch the on-campus dormitory presentations- a group that's large enough to fill a dormitory with themselves and their stuff stands in crane-ish formation on top, headed by white dudes in costumes. These guys are taking turns to walk forward, destroy their own costumes in some slap-stick comical way, and then introduce themselves (and continue being surprising or comical) screaming in Japanese. I know the fat American guy inside the cardboard ballot box, he, the loud, sloppy, terrible stereotypical American student, doesn’t speak Japanese. In Japanese 2, he curses it every moment he’s trying, every moment he drowns out the voices of everyone with his jabbing, wet, forceful pronunciation, it’s like he’s being dunked in water and popping up to gasp and deflate of his terrible, wet voice. I know this guy. He doesn’t know shit! Yet, he’s doing it, introducing himself. He’s regurgitating what he’s been told to regurgitate. After a rant, he backs up the hill, back into formation.
Nick and Rachel are watching with me. Today we’re going to the Imperial Palace. Soon, it’s over, the boys, white dudes and all, run away screaming and flailing. We leave the thing and walk to the bus stop, up the long runway entrance road to the college (which used to be an actual runway for planes before the college). The bus comes and gets us, we go into the ear and I pay my coins (210 yen) 1 (100), 2 (200), 3 (210)! GREEN. We sit in the back while the bus moves to Musashi-sakai and I worry about my bike. I left it unlocked. There’s a little key that you’re supposed to pull out of it after parking so that the spokes are blocked by a metal loop. All bikes have this. This morning though, I came crashing into the parking lot late. Trying to shove my bike between others, parked bikes starting falling over to the left of mine. Dominoes! Grabbing the furthest fallen bike in fall, I stopped the chain. And in all this embarrassment (there’s more that I won’t go into), after it was resolved I forgot to take my key with me. We arrive at Musashi-sakai and I call my host mom to ask what she thinks. She says it should be ok and I’m relieved. I didn’t want to go back for it, the Imperial palace closes at 4pm! (it’s 1:30) and the center of Tokyo is about 30 minutes away by train.
We get on the train together. Watching the outside- the buildings, so massive and decorated and numerous, mostly decorated, like they’re wearing armor. Everywhere. So many buildings. Watching the river the runs along this railway, my stomach is getting sick looking at it. I look away, at the white guy opposite of me in the train. Always surrounded by Japanese people. He’s probably not here for long because he’s giving me that look like, ‘hey, I bet you speak English, let’s discuss something.’ Which is a thought I have had numerous times since being here. But somehow I manage to feel in power. ‘I’m not here to baby you! Foreigner!’ I manage to politely think at him. We get off the train into Tokyo station where there are so many businessmen. Salary men. They’ve been described elsewhere, you probably know them though, if you’ve ever thought of Tokyo. But if the term is strange, here’s my perception of them: They wear nice clothes, work overtime in them, drink heavily in them after work, are exhausted, think of love hotels, think of boating, think of drinking heavily, work often, more often than anything, sleep while standing in the train across town. Seem sad. Seem miserable.
Nick, Rachel and I cross the salary men, who are all stopped before the end of the shade like vampires, and stop at the edge of the crosswalk. The buildings here are gods. So heavy. The Earth can’t hold them. How can it? There are cranes in the middle of them, building them higher and higher. We’re walking under them, unnoticed by them, toward the green. Outside the imperial palace there is a gang of policemen at every entrance. We avoid them, trying to find the right entrance but then have to ask, time is running out, the place will close, we’ve come a long way. The closest guy in a uniform, who has been watching us so cautiously as we approach, says, ‘This is a private entrance, the public entrance is back where you came from.’ ‘Thanks’ I think we say. We’re running back to where we came from past foreigners who aren’t running. ‘What fools!’ I manage to gain power again. ‘This isn’t America! Where running is uncool! This is Japan, everyone does this! This makes more sense to do! Jesus! Run!’ We get tired at the bridge and cross it walking. We cross the bridge looking at the Queen of England’s swan, floating in the giant mote. We get inside and go under an old metal/wood gate. I know its old, the metal looks like wood! Or is it wood? It’s cool. It’s big, that’s why. We get a free ticket from the kiosk and begin our walk inside the walls of the Imperial Palace. After turning a handful of times and walking for a while past neat things, we come across something unthinkable. It’s unthinkable that this exists in life. An expanse. Of flat, green grass, cropped hugely into an organic shape, round. It’s like a cell from god’s eye. Forever, there is green grass. And above, everywhere above, thousands of dragonflies. I feel here, but it's hard to believe. It’s really beautiful. And here people some people are sleeping on the grass, one man’s journal lies open while he does tai chi beneath a tree. Further up, a little girl roars into the air, surrounded by grass. Her dad watches from ten feet behind, crouching. The imperial palace will close soon. We walk around, posing for pictures that we take, enjoying the green, enjoying the contrast of the vast garden we are in and the machine-ish horizon, with the massive armored buildings that are being built higher by cranes from their centers jaggedly discomforting the sky. But the sky is blue and beautiful. The sun is getting emotional. It’s time for us to leave; there’s something else we want to see today. We walk back to Tokyo station.