The Citizenry Have Waited

On a plane and shortly I will be landing for the very first time in the city of Beijing  . . . This is terribly exciting . . . and it is the first of April, fool.  It is the three hundred and seventy-ninth time I will land in Beijing.  No worries.  I’m going home.  I have some infectiously perky Guinean Guitar playing up in the ears.  Tired, for sure.  There is a week’s worth of work I’ve yet to do.  And it’s all right.  We’ll get a bit of it done tonight. 

I realize, as I get older, the degree to which I rely on the approximate status quo of international relations.  It has worked within certain predictable parameters for most of my adult life.  I am able to come and go as I please, with little hassle.  It all works remarkably well for an enormous minority of humanity.  This fluidity is buttressed for some and beyond the means of most.  This election cycle more than any I can recall, brings all this to mind. 

Is it ever not nice, to be in Tokyo?  Surely the 1930’s earthquake and the 1940’s carpet-bombing are two times that come to mind.  But generally speaking, it is a consistently pleasant experience, to visit the eastern capital and mill about in a rather different version of urban density, urban refinement.  I always leave with a tinge of regret.

The train out to the airport is so remarkably convenient. From where I stay I need only budget thirty minutes.  And on the train I gaze out at Tokyo’s vast suburbia.  This hamlet and now another has a center square with cherry blossoms fully ablaze.  The citizenry have waited all year for this to pass.  Is the start date on all these trees, the end of war?  I was so busy watching and texting people that I almost missed the Haneda Airport stop.  Double check . . . yes, this is most assuredly the airport.

I get some last-chance sushi after checking in.  I haven’t had any this whole trip.  I convince myself that I should enjoy the taste of saba and aji before I leave.  I do and it is nice, but not as tasty as the place I always used to visit in Narita Airport.  That one is certainly not worth the extra thirty minutes of travel, just to get better quality last-chance sushi.  But I do miss the Narita joint.  This piece of kohada is rather plain, I’m noticing now, with my second bite.  My waitress, like all the staff call out a greeting in Japanese.  Later I hear her speak to another patron in Chinese.  It is the second time today this has happened.  So much restaurant staff in Tokyo seems to hail from China. When she was speaking Japanese, I had a whole Japanese identity I’d constructed for her in seconds.  It disappears in a blink.   “So, where in China are you from?”  “Dongbei?”