I bought my first plant in Japan today. Back in New York, I used to keep a wide array of greenery—baby jades, rubber figs, avocado trees, golden pothos, snake plants, you name it—at home and in the office. C. and I finally moved into our long-term apartment a week ago. Although we’re still missing a few key pieces of furniture, this place feels like home already. What better way to clinch the sentiment than to begin accumulating flora again.
The plant shop I visited was on a street corner in Bunkyo ward, about an hour’s walk from home. Initially I tried going to a store that was much closer, but it looked rather shabby and uninviting when I passed by. Figuring I might as well take advantage of the sunny afternoon, I went for a long and leisurely stroll northward, with a few missed turns along the way.
I’d traveled to Tokyo no less than half a dozen times before arriving here for good in November, and yet it’s only been recently that I’ve started getting a handle on geography. Never mind that it’s an absurd sprawl of a metropolis that makes New York or Los Angeles pale in comparison. There’s a unique gratification to building a mental map of a new city, getting to know individual streets and subway stations, one by one, before working up to whole neighborhoods or districts—all of these with their own distinctive flavor.
A very simple thought experiment that I’ve been tripping out on concerns simultaneity. The home I’ve come to inhabit in Tokyo was built in 1989. I was a child then, either in China or Denmark, speaking nothing but the slew of country-bumpkin, Wuhan-adjacent Mandarin that defined my early years with my grandparents. This unassuming little building tucked away in a corner of Iidabashi housed many others before me, each with their own dreams and desires, fears and hopes. What kind of people were living here in the past thirty-odd years as I was ping-ponging around the world? How serendipitous that I found my way to this quaint space, in this neighborhood, in this country. So much history precedes me.
Anyway. It’s hard to believe there was a time when New York was unknown to me in the same manner that Tokyo is now. Before I ever owned a smartphone, I’d look up maps and subway routes online, maybe jot down a few directions in a notebook. This was on the cusp of Obama’s first term. I’d wander out from my first apartment in Harlem to walk around Chelsea or SoHo, brave the freezing cold to go to a Greenpoint loft party on the other side of McGuinness (what felt like the edge of the universe), or delight in the D train express hop from 125th Street to Columbus Circle and down to Chinatown via Grand Avenue.
I miss being able to navigate Manhattan, large swaths of Brooklyn, and maybe a few parts of Queens like so, by instinct and muscle memory alone. Still, I’m very pleased to explore little pockets of Tokyo, especially in those moments when I can connect the street I’m walking on with the memory of a past excursion—fitting them together neatly like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
This has happened a few times as of late. On our way to get Korean fried chicken takeout for Christmas, we walked from Yotsuya to Sumiyoshi, passing a realtor’s office we visited by Akebonobashi Station. Last weekend, when we took a different exit from Iidabashi Station, we retraced part of a route by which we’d made our way over to Akihabara to investigate mobile phone plans sometime in November (although that feels like a century ago already). Then there was the short walk from a Chinese grocery store in Shin-Okubo, southward along the train tracks until we emerged on the same side of Shinjuku Station where we’d first ventured after quarantine. Or buying plates and bowls in Kagurazaka and realizing that another realtor’s office, the one that introduced us to our current apartment, was at the bottom of the hill. A most satisfying click in the brain, each time.
I’m still homebound for most of my days, what with the state of emergency in Tokyo and my classes for the semester continuing online. Nonetheless, these small excursions make me feel that much more settled in the city, strengthening my internal GPS, bringing color and detail to the black void of uncharted territory, as in the world map of an old school video game. Two months in, I can claim some passing knowledge of these little nooks of Tokyo. Maybe eventually I’ll be able to get to know a bar or restaurant or two, but sadly, now is not the time for that.
As for other aspects of living here, particularly as a foreigner with a middling to poor command of Japanese language, it’s not all roses. I feel quite unmoored at the moment, truth be told. But that’s a topic for another time.
For now, I just want to enjoy the sunshine in my new workspace. Today, it wasn’t until I returned home that I realized I had bought a Thai ginger plant. I’m cooking constantly these days, so maybe this will be a fun thing to experiment with if I can manage to grow it properly. One day at a time.
I enjoyed the tour. And the desk chair. Sorry you’re unmoored.