Scary Uniforms

Landing in Haneda.  It wasn’t my choice to be over here in Japan just now, so soon after having been in Singapore and Indonesia. But Japan is generally rejuvenating.  This one is firmly anchored as the pride-of-place peripheral in my US-China mindscape.  No other place demands reckoning quite like this.  No other place complements reckoning in the same way either.

We’ve landed.  We’ve landed one hour later than it is back home but thirty-seven minutes earlier than when we were supposed to have landed, local time.  How a group of people butcher your language is a remarkable filter into how we view them, isn’t it?  Think of Chico Marx fresh-off-the-boat Italian English. It’s ridiculous but oozes a certain truth.  The stewardess is saying "truly" in a manner like Elmer Fudd.  

Japan does scary uniforms better than China.  Better than Indonesia too, with their two-tone combat boots.  I’m on a train I’d just rushed out and on to at Haneda station.  There’s a guard who has the purple armband safety pinned on to his shoulder in a way that isn't dissimilar to the Chinese version.  What is it then?  There are the white gloves, but the Taiwan taxi drivers also have white antiseptic gloves.  He’s tall which is important. But it may be the vaguely fascistic epaulette, white ribbon he has draped across his shoulder.  The epaulette and the uniform blackness of his attire.  The overall effect is martial, even though we all know isn’t.  It was.  It ain’t now unless this archipelago is provoked in the extreme. 

No one on the train except me cares about the guy.  Before me suddenly are a circle of salary man who've sprung up like a redwood standing circle.  They’ve been drinking.  They seem loose, or at least a few of them are.  Two or three of them are pensive.  I’d probably be amongst the loose buffoons were I to be one of their tree-pack. 

It’s a fine thing to be in a city that works well.  This is noted.  Beijing requires so much lubricant to make the gristly gears pull smoothly.  Some of that lubricant is the “wow it’s all changing so fast.”  I don't know if it’s enough grease to get us through the winter.  This place has already had most of its change, it’s well oiled and easy to navigate, easy consider even if it is impossible to be absorbed within it.