“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
Anne of Green Gables, L.M.Montgomery
The world begins to still, and I wander through it. Leaves fade, burgundy reigns, cicadas die and bury themselves. In the spring, children will emerge from where their parents lay, identically almost as if there was never a rift in body or song between them. In Summer their sound fills worlds, but for now the air is quiet here. I tuck myself in nightly now without even pausing to consider the necessity of air conditioning to get me through the night. Instead, I pull the covers loosely all about myself, till I am cocooned and cozy.
Sleep is at its most rewarding in October. Days present themself better now too as Autumn crisp draws in and I am granted a reprieve from the chaos of Summer in the city. Life settles down, as do I.
Even as I trudge like a snail unwillingly to work, of a morn I am wont to pause, to perceive, to take out my headphones blasting indie rock. Instead, I listen to the diegetic soundtrack of my life, cut clean as the sun through clouds - more gently than I have yet known it in all my three months of Tokyo life. Buses, bikes, the unmistakably rambunctious chatter of these students I ignore plainly and pointedly in the hope they don’t see me as a real human in the wild (‘Charlotte, where do you live? Do you have a boyfriend?’). Teachers are at their best in a child’s mind when there’s no life attached to them. I see the students differently now too, distinct as they are in uniforms set against the unexpected background of convenience stores and traffic lights. They walk incomparably slowly, so much so I do not struggle to overtake them with my below-average gait. I clomp heavily on the pavement most days, but now the weather is too nice to hurry, so I bask in the soundscape of a gently dying year.
Even my walk home now is slower, not because of satisfactory tiredness from a day at work, but almost unintentional, caused by the cool brightness of golden hour. And today amongst the glimmer and seasonal gilt I bumble leisurely before coming to a pondering stop. A cricket whispers in my ear. It’s too early to go home I think. Not for a few years yet.
I decide to be hungry, which is a big step for someone who was once a teenage girl.
Twenty minutes later I am sat in a park with a brown paper bag, the world in hand and a rumble in my belly. The light is a faded corn colour now, bringing out the cool tones in the trees and ground. At some point in the Autumn calendar, all things go from gold to beige, moist waxiness to a dry crisp that makes the more conductive amongst us sparkle with static electricity. Earlier when I entered the convenience store I was greeted with a cheerful “Irasshaimase!” from the clerk and a not-so happily-received shock of welcome from the metal door handle. I took great care when opening the park gate, having learned from that particular mistake if not others in my chaotic yet surprisingly amiable life. I wasn’t shocked again,
I know it’s only a matter of time before this dry air comes back to bite me - my skirt’s been sticking to my legs for days now, crackling in disgruntled tones when I try to tug it free from against my shins. I appear to have taken on a different kind of stickiness to Summer. Beige patches of sand and dirt from the park floor cling to my trainers, with no hope of a September typhoon to wash them away. The season sticks to me like glue, but unlike in August I rarely feel a rush to run away into the comforting arms of artificial temperature control. Instead I refocus my mind’s eye on the natural warmth and sweetness emanating from the brown paper bag in my hands. Encased within this insubstantial wrapping is the object of my heart’s desire.
I feel the yam in my hand and know it is Autumn. I know it is good and will be even better in my belly. So I sit down on a perfectly placed park bench dappled with ginkgo-washed light and take a sip of barley tea as a palate-wetter. My school bag is slung a loose half-metre away from me on the bench’s edge - it is still a novelty to worry less about one’s possessions when out in public. I haven’t side-eyed passersby whilst ferociously clutching every object I could even tangentially be said to possess for quite a while now. That’s refreshing. The only real object I at all fear being robbed of here is my umbrella. Maybe this is foolishness combined with blind luck on my part, or maybe it’s a genuine respect for strangers’ personal property in Japanese society - I have yet to integrate myself enough to find out.
Maybe I never will.
It often feels as if I will always be a cicada walking through the winter here. Noticeably out of place in my looks and rhythmic dissonance. But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the beauty of my current surroundings - the people, places, things, all dramatically overpopulating my life as if I’ve been pulled into another dimension.
Some things are magnitudinal in force, like lunchtime earthquakes and Shibuya station on a Friday night.
Others are small but perfectly formed.
Like me.
Or the yam in my hand I unwrap in Japan.
Like this treat that I bite in the Japanese light.
It tastes so autumnally warm. Like comfort. Like Gilmore Girls and thick-knit cardigans.
I chew the tuber, and it tastes like home. Even though yams don’t grow in Wales. I definitely would have mistaken one for an oddly-colored sweet potato had I seen it in my local Tesco. Which I wouldn’t have. Because we like common-or-garden jackets with beans and cheese in that part of my world. Well, I don’t like them, but what am I here if not the filler for a gaijin-shaped hole in the mind of many a local? I might as well carry a tin of Heinz around my neck like some post-colonial millstone. What little culture do I have in comparison to where I am now? Maybe that’s why yams draw me in, as do temples, onsen, the bright lights of a summer matsuri and the calming warmth of tea ceremonies.
It is for all these reasons and more that it must not be forever.
But certainly for now.
Almost everything tastes richer here. It’s too sweet to lose just yet before life starts creeping in.
So I resign myself to temporary hibernative bliss. I sit and savour the sun and the yellow sugar given by the ground. The starch crumbles against the skin of my tongue, sediment sticking to my teeth in a way that is only rid through a good swoosh of water. I am certain as I swallow and smile that something else smiles back.
It is an intensely good present. One which I shall not take for granted anytime soon.
The leaves curl around me, and I am happy to be alive.
What novelty. What life.
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