one evening in Yokohama (1-10-10)

On a Saturday during the Christmas season last year, having finished my work of the day as a radiographer shortly after three in the afternoon, I headed for Yokohama to meet my friend working there. Takeko--a pseudonym--a lady aged around 50, was handing out packs of tissue paper by the Yokohama station, an advertising means often taken in Japan.

Until this time, she had sometimes worked around the same area and told me that Sakuragicho, a neighborhood of Yokohama, was a nice sightseeing spot at night especially during the Christmas season. To travel from Kameido, Tokyo, where the hospital I worked for was located, to Yokohama after work on a weekday would make my schedule tight as just the entire process of arriving there would take more than one hour, but since Saturdays allowed me to leave the hospital earlier, I decided on the day.

Takeko, also a student of a major English conversation school company which I belonged to as well, is a good friend of mine, as she has people skills which enable her to talk with a wide range of people, from rude guys to non-Japanese people.

But actually, I had an ulterior purpose behind meeting up with her, besides seeing the lights dotted along the railway between Yokohama and Sakuragicho. Actually, that was an expectation that I would bump into a lady, a cat, as I knew that she, to whom I had an attachment, was living in the area around a certain station on my way to Yokohama.

In the train car, sitting on the broad set as was I, two young men were talking with each other beside me. While intermittently dozing, I could catch their every remark clearly. In sum, they, both university students, were talking about how their job-hunting was going. Within their conversation were numbers like 50, or 100. These were a supplementary piece of information, helping me understand better how many companies a university student applied for.

More recently, an NHK TV news program (NHK is a semi-state-run broadcaster) introduced a lecture wherein a lecturer was giving advice to university students engaging in finding companies to work for. He noted that they should settle on the prospective job at the last minute.

At present, the unemployment rate in Japan is around five percent, and nearly half of high school grads enter universities. While companies prefer university grads to high school ones, through competitions only some small number of them from either high school or university successfully procures a desired position relative to their major/merits, unless it is very specifically associated with a one-way profession such as the doctor or lawyer.

After exchanging both calls and text messages with cell-phones, Takeko and I met together by the Yokohama station. She was wrapping up her work of the day, and let me follow her in her working area and ensure that there were no packs of tissues on the surface, thrown away by anyone who had received one. Although I was surreptitiously thinking about the female cat, Takeko was looking happy being with me.

“Let’s walk to the Sakuragicho station to save money,” she suggested.

In the enchantment of darkness, Takeko and I were walking along the wall which was leading to the Sakuragicho station. As a matter of fact, this relatively long meeting up with her was the first in months since she became busier. Takeko was apparently enjoying even just a walk with me, but seriously, I had changed a lot through the period. I might have wanted to say, “I acknowledge that you have given me a lot of fun time until now, but my life is probably not for you!”

It must have been before summer when Takeko started doing additional jobs, including an odd one that was to interpret a catchy song (into exact notes with her piano skills?) which would draw the attention of shoppers at some shop or store. Moreover, she also started both going to a school of another major English conversation school company and being taught English by a teacher in private, a compounded situation which reduced her chances to meet me to eventually be almost zero.

During the summer, I suffered severe dizziness which stymied me just walking normally. As my expectation was any palliative text message from her, I forwarded her mine with my cell-phone but no reply came back.

There had been special classes in which students and the teacher in charge, David, discussed current affairs, held on Fridays at my home branch of the English conversation school company in Kinshicho. While the dizziness was subsiding by the day, the special classes which had been one of the prime reasons that I chose the branch as my home, ceased. At the same time, I almost finished using the name of a female teacher for my first novel (she had once come to my branch when I was looking for a female name), who usually worked at a separate branch in Tokyo. The classes for free conversation were held at this branch too on Fridays, then, with virtually no fear of being punched after using her name, traveling to Tokyo and seeing her after a while would not seem a bad idea. Yet, Takeko somehow broached recently that she wanted to meet up with me though I preferred the other.

After the walk, Takeko and I shared a dinner table at a Chinese restaurant near the Sakuragicho station.

After being piloted by Takeko, I still remember the lights of those surrounding structures including Queen’s Square, Cosmo Clock 21, a Ferris wheel, and the Landmark Tower around Yokohama Bay.

Nevertheless, I kept stuck in the puzzled state of my mind through the day.

Takeko, if you had your own kid, would you have wanted to take one to this place? I wished that the difficulties of each of us would turn around by daybreak.