Lost and Find

Walking lost in Osaka, a young lover finds more than just the right way home.

Lost and find

My girlfriend works in Daikokucho and I live in Saguragawa, which will mean nothing to anyone who doesn’t live in or hasn’t visited south Osaka, Japan. All you need to know is that it’s about fifteen minutes ride on the subway, or ten if you can change lines quickly enough. She finishes at 6.30pm and I finish work at 7pm. However, I was in Suita, in north Osaka, which meant a good thirty minutes travel by train if nothing unexpected happened.

“I’ll be back at 7.30pm.” I said, knowing that this was probably not true but I was still at that stage in our relationship where I would do anything to see her, even lie.

“I don’t know.” She said, hesitating.

“C’mon, I’ll cook. You have a key now, just go in and relax. I’ll be home in no time!” The key had been a big step for us but, months later, she was yet to use it.

“I don’t know.” She said, but I didn’t not explain what it was that she didn’t know.

“I want to see you.”

“Me too. But it’ll be late by the time we finish and then I’ll get home late and then I’ll sleep late and then tomorrow will be hard." A pause while we both regroup, "What are you going to cook?”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I scanned my memory for what I had in the cupboard - teabags, flour, curry sauce, white rice.

“Well, how about lasagna?”

“Umm…sounds good I guess, I’ll ring you after work.”

“Great! See you later then.”

“I’ll ring you later. Bye, bye!” And then she put the phone down and my final goodbye was only heard by the phone I held.

This was my first time to today's English school in Suita so the Japanese assistant teacher met me at the station to help coordinate. I was a little early so I just sat on a bench with a book and some chocolate. Recently, I don’t know why, but I’ve become addicted to chocolate - I crave it and sometimes leave my apartment in the middle of the night and go to the 24 hour convenience store across the road and buy a big bar of dark chocolate, the darker the better. I never used to be that much of a fan of chocolate, I could have taken or left it, but now….maybe I’m pregnant?

We took the bus to the school, which annoyed me a little because it was another cost I could have done without. I’d been out of work for a while and my savings, if you could call them savings, where shrinking rapidly. And of course we got off the bus after about 2 minutes.

“We could have walked.” I said with an angry smile.

“Oh no, it is too far walking, it is about ten minutes.”

“Of course.”

“You can get JR back. Much quicker, it’s down that road.”

“Great! JR Suita?”

“Yes, you must work in Umeda tonight, don’t you?”

“Yes, business English. I start at 7pm.”

“So you can’t help me tidy then?”

“Sorry.” I said, although I wasn’t sorry at all. I would have killed someone to get home at 6.30 and JR Suita �" the national Japan railway as opposed to the other, privatized line - was a sufficiently quicker way to get home. Which only meant one thing.

We were predictably early arriving at the school and with my lessons already prepared and with my students not arriving for another 30 minutes I skipped out for a vending machine coffee, a cigarette and yes, some more chocolate. While I was eating it I thought about my girlfriend and seeing her tonight. She would be the first one home and for the first time. Normally, I just wait in the kitchen or play on the computer, waiting for the clock to turn and the doorbell to ring. I started fantasizing about what I would catch her in the middle of: would she be making tea, getting changed, would she be in the shower or in bed? Perhaps covered in head to toe lingerie brandishing a whip? I fantasized a little more and then went back to the school.

There were four lessons and they went as smoothly as teaching the fundamentals of English grammar to Japanese four year olds possibly could. It’s not my ideal job at all and sometimes I’m so relieved that no one I know can see me sing and dance with these kids, but it’s good money and it’s easy and it’s nice to be surrounded by youth and their free laughter. If it were a choice of ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’ with them or some heavy business talk with old men I’d be singing every day.

The lesson finished at 6.30 and I was ready to leave four seconds later. And then the parents asked to take some photos: I hate having my photo taken and it’s not anything to do with my appearance, I just find it hard, that fake smile you have to put on which makes the whole thing feel so embarrassing. But I said yes because the faster they took the photo the quicker I could get home and the more likely my girlfriend would stay. A few minutes later and after a lot of peace signs and “Hai, cheezus” I was free.

“So JR, go right until you hit the T junction and then turn right and it’s on the left?”

“Yes, thank you for today, do you have any suggestions for the kids?”

“No, they were fine, fine!” I was gone. I had suggestions for her and the kids but I couldn’t care less. The whole afternoon, during all the singing and the dancing and games, I'd been thinking about what my girlfriend would be doing in my apartment when I returned. She’d bought me a ring for my birthday a few weeks ago and it still felt new on my hand. Whenever I looked at my hand I thought of her and then her in my apartment and what she would be doing and what I would say to her when I came in. I left and went right and hit the junction and turned right and began to walk.

As I walked I held my phone in my right hand waiting for her to call and in my mind I played and replayed the journey home: JR Suita to Umeda, the central hub of the city, ten minutes, Umeda to Namba, 8 minutes, Namba to Sakuragawa 2 minutes, station to my apartment and my girlfriend doing something I couldn’t wait to see, another 2 minutes. Allowing transfer times and a bit of luck I could be home in 30 minutes easy. But more likely 40. I probably wouldn’t cook, I thought, just go out for dinner in some small restaurant. My legs moved faster. But she hadn’t rung yet. Which was probably a good thing because it meant she was still at work, which gave me more time. This was all I could think of as I walked towards the station. And she still hadn’t rung.

Ten minutes had passed according to the clock on my phone and there was still no sign of the station. I kept walking. After a further five minutes I realized I was going to be home a little later than I expected. In hindsight, which is a useless thing, I should have known then that I was going the wrong way and the assistant had given me the wrong directions and I should have just spent the 210yen on the bus and taken the other line home. But at the time I was sure I was going to save time and money and see my girlfriend and cook something nice and then sit down and kiss and have sex and then walk her back to the station. I was sure I was making the right decision, the cleverer of the two choices. After a few more minutes my phone beeped to signal a message had arrived from my girlfriend. When she calls or messages me a photo I took of her pops up; she’s on my sofa wearing a sweater and some grey tracksuit trousers of mine and looks as if she’s about to fall asleep. She looks beautiful. She looks like she’s dreaming of the most beautiful thing in the world. When I see her there I think that if I ever lose her that photo is going to smash my heart.

“Sorry,” it read, “I’m going home tonight. I’ll call you later. Enjoy the lasagna.”

I stopped walking and my heart fell. It was then that I realized I had gone the wrong way. I raged. I turned around and walked violently - almost marching - in the opposite direction. My anger and my strides increased together and soon I was cursing aloud the assistant teacher and Suita and my job and the kids and myself. If anyone had seen me I would have looked like one of those crazy guys you see walking around parks shouting at trees.

After ten minutes I was back at the T-junction. For some reason I was intent on getting home as soon as possible, even though there was nothing to go home for. Suddenly it became a race to me, a race against myself, as if everything - my job, my girlfriend, my life - depended on me getting home by 7.30pm. It was now almost 7pm and there was no station to be seen. Soon the usual sights of an urban area �" chain restaurants, convenience stores, bright lights shining on busy people �" faded away and only apartment blocks and parking-lots remained. Traffic was thinning and there was no one to race with. What strikes me as strange now is that I was rushing to get home for no reason and having no reason to race home depressed me so I raced home even more. My breath was getting quicker and I could feel sweat grow under my arms and slide down my chest. A minute later my phone beeped again and my heart jumped. But there was no photo, no tracksuit bottoms, no dreams; only work wanting to confirm tomorrow’s class. I didn’t reply.

A few minutes later, on the stroke of 7pm in fact, a big blue street sign appeared and on the right it read ‘JR Suita Station’ above a big white arrow. I began that kind of run middle-aged people do when they cross the road in busy traffic, not quite jogging, definitely not sprinting, somewhere lost and embarrassed in between. I turned right and rushed ahead. The road was a little quiet, I thought, for an entrance to a major station but then a couple of taxis swept by reassuring me. I thought about getting a taxi home and then realized my girlfriend wasn’t going to be waiting for me anyway and I stopped racing. I looked at my watch: 5 past 7.

And then there it was, the station, the shafts of light on the platform, the rows of black cables joining the next station, the distant dry rumble of a train, the harsh electronic beeps of vital signals. It was still quite faraway and to get there I had to pass through a long underground passage but it didn’t matter. I decided to call my girlfriend but her phone wasn’t on, maybe she was going through a tunnel or something. I quickened my pace and raced down beneath the street.

When I came up out of the underground passage, I was surprised to see the station had vanished. Gone. There were no lights, no cables, no rumbles, no beeps. There was an empty car park and a couple of bright vending machines. I turned round to see if the underground passage had bent away or turned off but I could see straight through to the other side of the street where I had been only a few moments before. Where had it gone? I felt I knew that Umeda was still in this direction so I carried on the same path, reluctant to address the growing alarm I sensed. What harm could it do and, anyway, I had all night now, I could walk for hours and it wouldn’t matter as there was no one waiting for me anymore.

But where was the station? All I could see now were apartment blocks after apartment blocks - some very nice and modern, some old and tired. My legs began to tire so I perched up against a low wall and lit a cigarette and thought about having some chocolate. I looked up at the apartment block opposite me and watched as lights came off and on one by one. I thought about all the stories that could be in that one apartment block and all the stories that could be in this area, wherever it was, and all the stories in the world. I finished my cigarette and got that grimy, velvet taste in my mouth and wished I had a brought a drink with me. I must have been on the only street in Japan without a vending machine. I started walking again.

As the streets passed by and the road kept on, I reread my girlfriend’s message and decided not to call her again. She was on her way home by now, there was no way she would come to my apartment tonight. She lives in Nara, which is a good forty-minute train ride from her work. I guess it’s strange that the girl I would fall in love with would be on the other side of the world in a place called Nara and would sit on my sofa wearing my sweater and fall asleep as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I realized that it was perhaps lucky she had gone home tonight otherwise she would have been waiting for ages and then been in a bad mood when I returned late. I would have got a taxi and been in a bad mood too because of the money I had wasted and the time that we had I had lost. We probably wouldn’t have even had sex. I remember thinking on those lines for some time and soon forgot that I was lost in the northern suburbs of Osaka. I was thinking, quite vividly I recall, that could I have fallen in love with anyone? If I hadn’t met my girlfriend, would I have met another girl and fallen in love and would she be waiting for me at home on my sofa about to fall asleep? What train line would she be on? I was trying to decide which one was better when I saw the building.

I had seen it many times on the way into and out of Umeda. It is one of the tallest skyscrapers in Osaka, which is saying something, and the circumference of its summit is ringing by spotlights, as if the top was an enormous helicopter pad. I had just crossed the street and there it was, perhaps a fifteen minute walk away and, to the left - ah-ha! - some train tracks! I had gotten back on the train line and was closer to Umeda than I had thought. Could I walk there and save the 170yen? My soul smiled. Whatever happened I would be home soon and, some time in the future, I would be in a hot bath and my girlfriend would be making tea or on the sofa or in bed or doing something I couldn’t even imagine. I walked faster and, to make matters even better, saw a vending machine on the corner of the street. I bought a hot chocolate - no surprise there - and had another cigarette and walked with a snap in my steps.

I decided that, if she hadn’t called by the time I got home, I would call my girlfriend later and tell her about this and enjoy her laughing at me and saying what a fool I was, to get lost, to not take the bus to save a tiny bit of money, to lose not only a station but also its tracks. She might even say it was lucky that she hadn’t come round and I would probably agree with her. And then I thought I wouldn’t tell her about it because the next time she finished work I offered to cook for her she might say no, that I might get lost again, that she’d just see me on the weekend when I would be at home waiting for her. Then a flash of fear screamed through my heart as I thought for a moment I might never see her again. And then it passed. And then I thought one of these days, whatever happens, that moment is going to come again and be real, and then what would I do? Would I crumble, would I cry? Would it be my decision, or some capricious whim of fate? I looked up and saw the building and turned right and saw the tracks and then the moment passed away and I just thought about going home and having a bath.

It was almost half past seven now. I was late for something that had already left. I started to walk slower. What was I going to eat when I got home? Would I go to a cheap restaurant for some Japanese food, or to the supermarket and cook? But cooking alone always makes me sad and I always finish as quickly as I can to have a cigarette and wash up and get back to what I was doing before. It was a joyless chore, like walking to the station. Maybe I’d ring a good friend who lived near me and we could go for a drink and I could tell him about this and he could tell me what a fool I was. I decided to wait to see what time I got home before I rang him. Maybe I’d be too late or not even hungry or not in the mood and just settle down for some tea and flour instead.

I’d been walking now for an hour and I was beginning to tire. The big building was getting closer and I was still following the tracks. I took my Dad’s advice that was whenever you’re in trouble just look at the facts, nothing else, because nothing else is going to help you. Facts-wise, I didn’t know where I was, or where I had been, I didn’t know what road I was on, or what town I was in. I knew I was on the right way to Umeda and there were train tracks near me so I couldn’t be going far wrong. Was I lost? Yes. Was I going to get home tonight and in a few days time laugh about this to myself? Yes. So everything was ok. I crossed the road and came up in front of what looked like a big entertainment parlor all covered with flashing lights and noise and posters of cartoon characters and photos of blonde women with big breasts - I was near the city. As I approached, the enormous building with the square of light on top hid behind another entertainment parlor and my phone beeped. It was my good friend, asking me to go out for a drink tonight. Things work out, just never as you plan.

When I finally came round the side of the entertainment parlor I was not entirely surprised to see that the enormous building with the square of light on top had vanished. Gone. But I didn’t even stop walking. I looked to my right and the train tracks had gone too. I thought, hell, there’s no rush, I’m going the right way and I’m sure my friend will wait for me, I’ll see my girlfriend soon and besides, there’s plenty more people more lost in this world than me.