SANDEEP SANDHU

Kintsugi

Out of all those kinds of people // You’ve got a face with a view
– ‘This Must Be the place,’ Talking Heads

I kissed a girl in Tokyo last night. I’ve liked everything about her so far, even the things I shouldn’t. Like, how she called Morocco and Turkey the fun Muslim countries, or made up fake words when rapping the Japanese parts of ‘Chopstick’by Bad Hop, one of the songs she put on when we were back at her minuscule apartment. Maybe I’m still in the endorphin swell, or oxytocin or serotonin or whatever chemical it is. Maybe it’s because she’s currently sitting across from me, smiling in a way that makes it seem like our silence is an inside joke, drenched in nostalgia or love or some warm, fuzzy emotion people write songs about. Or, maybe it’s the fact I only landed in the city a day ago, so everything I’ve taken in has been laminated by the dreamlike sheen that accompanies being somewhere new. Whatever it is, I feel like I know her as well as some of my best friends, even though it’s only been around twelve hours since we met.

Naïve, right? But there’s something really intimate about going back to somebody’s place in Tokyo because of how compact apartments can be here. People have to concentrate their sense of self into these shoebox spaces, figuring out what parts of their personal mythology they want on display. It’s a tough ask, because we all want to show the world our best selves, even if we don’t admit it — or even know what that best self looks like. This was something her and I agreed on.

‘People will tell you everything they want you to know about them, if you just listen,’ I said.

We were sharing a cigarette out her window, both on our knees and using our elbows to lean on the ledge. Wisps of smoke melded into the grey morning, leaving the smell of burnt tobacco. She didn’t respond for a few moments, and the only sound that passed between us was the sizzling of the tiger-striped cherry as we pulled in nicotine soaked air. The weather was as dreary as an English autumn day, but it felt homely, not boring or over-familiar.

‘You don’t even have to be listening, really,’ she eventually replied.

My decision to move to Tokyo was abrupt, but not totally spontaneous. I’d only recently completed my Teaching English as a Foreign Language qualification and was itching to get out of the UK. I’d been having the same weekend with the same friends for the past few years, a pub purgatory that had swallowed much of my late-twenties, and felt a major change of scenery was needed. Plus, Britain’s insular, incestuous political and media culture was grating on my mental health, even as I avoided newspapers and doom-scrolling through social media. Despite knowing Japan was the opposite of a progressive paradise, I thought heading somewhere I couldn’t understand the language would allow me to avoid all that guff for a while.

I’d like to say I stumbled into the bright lights of Tokyo straight from the plane, in high spirits from the free Nikka I’d guzzled on the flight, but my entry was tamer than that. I’d been cooped up in the cabin for almost fourteen hours, the whirring air conditioning trying and failing to lull me into unconsciousness. Because my seat didn’t lean back far enough, I ended up stuck in a strange half-sleep I couldn’t move beyond, with drool congealing on my cheek and discomfort pumping through me like blood. After that, I was anything but ready to jump into downing sake in Shibuya.

With some assistance from the school I’d be teaching at, I’d secured a three-month lease for an apartment just by Tokyo Medical University. Instead of unpacking when I arrived, I dumped my luggage by the door and went downstairs to grab some food from a noodle bar I’d spotted on my walk from the metro station, my decision propelled by the rich aroma that had drifted from the restaurant.

It was between lunch and dinner, although for me it was nearing breakfast time. I walked in and the chef gave me a little bow, at which point I felt I had permission to sit. There was an older Japanese man plopped on a tall chair by the counter, a couple of seats down from me. He wore a sharp suit, although he’d loosened his tie and undone his top button like a red-faced uncle near the end of a wedding. We were the only two customers.

I stared at the menu above the chef’s head, seeing if I’d subconsciously taken in some Japanese while slurping ramen in London. The letters were chunky and stylised, so even if I’d somehow learned the language by osmosis it would have been unreadable to me. I called the chef over and pointed at the other patron’s meal, then to myself. He picked up some tongs and artfully layered thick udon noodles into a bowl, which he topped with a ladle-full of dark broth, before garnishing the dish with a wrinkled pink duck breast. He then added a side of tuna sashimi. It was a vivid watermelon red that contrasted with the pale, wobbly slime I was used to from cheap sushi spots in England.

He slid the bowl over. Liquid sloshed from side-to-side. I picked up some chopsticks and slid the paper wrapper off, already self-conscious about my upcoming display of technique, even though the other customer was minding his own business. Or, so I thought.

‘Indian?’

The man in the suit was staring at me, his brown irises shimmering against the red of the rest of his eyes. A bit of his breath wafted past, hoppy and sharp. My eyes didn’t spin backwards in exasperation like they usually did when I received questions about my ancestry from strangers. The automatic motion was instead replaced by a warm curiosity. Something about being somewhere so alien made the familiar query seem innocent, childish even. I shook my head while smiling.

‘Mum and dad Indian. Me English.’ I cringed at my pigeoning of the language, but he didn’t seem to mind. His mouth popped into an o-shape as he launched an intrigued sound from the back of his throat.

‘Beer?’ he asked, elongating the vowel and flicking the last consonant out with his tongue. He pointed at his own glass for extra clarity. I glanced at the sad-looking strip of meat the chef had crowned my meal with, then nodded at the man. He said something to the cook, held up two fingers, and turned back to me with a sloppy but friendly smile.

His name was Takuya, but he insisted I call him Taku. I gave him my duck, dripping ale-brown liquid on the counter as I did. We talked using Deep-L and good will. He was from a small village in the Gifu region, but had been living in Tokyo for three decades, working at an advertising agency. He was unmarried.

Taku told me how much he loved Tokyo life, from the pulsing throngs who pumped through the arteries of the city during the day, to the fluorescent phantasmagorias that flared into being at night – he either had a wonderful way with words, or DeepL was a particularly poetic translation tool. As booze blurred the edges between us, he described the way hydrangeas in Gifu erupted in lilac, and how he missed the guttural grunts of the cormorants his fisherman father had owned, so much so that he sometimes watched videos of them crowing on YouTube and shed a few tears. I told him I missed nothing about England so far, and had no idea what I was doing in Japan.

‘Sure?’ he asked in English. An alcohol-exaggerated eyebrow pump and rising inflection dispelled any notion of it not being a question. His cheeks were the colour of the Hinomaru, he could barely keep his chin on the little stand he’d made out of his arm and upturned palm, and his eyes were fuzzed, but he still managed to stare straight into me.

I always easily fall into people’s eyes, and this was no different. Photons bounced back and forth between us, quicker than all the planes and bullet-trains in the world, until I could see right into Taku’s depths and him into mine. I couldn’t bring myself to lie or to brush him off, even as I pulled my gaze away. The truth tumbled out, pushed by the stream of beer coursing through me.

‘Home stopped feeling like it, so I thought why not go somewhere I definitely don’t belong and see what happens.’

I said this slowly, while looking down, and without using the translator. But Taku didn’t seem to care. He patted me on the back, grinned a drunken grin, and called for two more drinks, as if he’d been waiting for me to admit that since we’d met.

I woke up glazed in sweat. The lingering remnants of the cologne samples I’d spritzed on myself at duty-free made me smell more pleasant than I felt. I grasped at my phone and tried to click it into life, but the screen remained blank. Multicoloured lights strobed through my window, bathing my barren room in sharp, lurid tones, so I used them to check my watch and discovered I’d only been unconscious for around two hours. Despite my lack of sleep and the beer swilling around inside of me I was wired. I was also still fully dressed, shoes included, so I decided to head out with just my wallet and new keys.

The city at night was a neon fever dream. Sound and colour streamed past, leaving trails in my peripheral vision. I tried to go back to the place I’d met Taku but couldn’t find it, the restaurant seemingly disappearing into the space between shadow and illumination. The only time the world was truly solid was when I focused on something, at which point whatever building or sign or car I stared at became a hyperreal, refulgent version of itself. I walked a bit further down the street and an izakaya flickered into existence, so I strolled through the entrance, headed straight to the bar, and ordered. The bartender was pouring my beer when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

‘New round here?’ he asked.

The man was white, an inch or so shorter than me, and handsome in a classic sort of way. His blonde hair reminded me of those silky, perfect omelettes the Japanese are famous for. He smiled, and the rising corners of his mouth made the skin around his eyes rumple. In the din of the bar it sounded like he had one of those television-standard American accents.

‘Yeah. Teaching at Shinjuku English Centre,’ I replied.

His beam widened, showing off the margins of his teeth.

‘You’re fucking with me.’

I realised he was Irish, and was thankful I’d figured it out before asking where in the States he was from. I shook my head in response to him, and he dipped forward in laughter.

‘We work there too,’ he said, pointing to a pair of women sitting a few tables deep from the bar. The four of us were the only non-Japanese people in the bar.

‘What are the chances?’ I responded. I turned around to see the bartender silently staring at me, my frothy beer in front of him. I raised a hand in apology and gave him a little bow of the head alongside some guilt-stained yen. The Irish man had leaned into my ear to carry on the conversation while I paid.

‘Pretty big, actually. Best izakaya in the area. I’m Eoin, by the way.’

We shook hands, and he suggested I join his group. I agreed, and we snaked through tightly packed tables full of drunk salarymen to get to the table, where I was welcomed with smiles and my native tongue.

I don’t remember who brought up Fumiya Tanaka first, but within minutes of him being mentioned we were crammed into a taxi on the way to some club in Koenji to see him DJ. The other two teachers were named Brogan and Miranda, and were Scottish and Canadian respectively. Brogan was having relationship problems, which I discovered were the same all over the globe.

‘You riding him, though?’ Eoin asked.

‘Just the once so far. Was pure class, even though we were steaming.’

I joined in with the chorus of laughter as if we were all old pals, but then a vision of my friends coming up to the end of their workdays in London punched through me, and for a moment all I could think was how ridiculous it was for me to be with complete strangers in a taxi on the other side of the world. Nobody noticed my withdrawal, the conversation having quickly moved onto another facet of Brogan’s burgeoning romance. My excitement soon returned, aided by tipsiness and the familiar sounding banter that filled the taxi.

We arrived at the club just after midnight. As we stepped out of the cab the cool, fresh air hit me, making me feel like it was a new night. I had no idea how much money I’d spent, notes falling from me like blossoms after the bloom. Beer splashed around inside me, ebbing at my energy. I knew there was no chance of any powdered boosts, so I made the switch to spirits when I got in. I was waiting for a whisky and soda when I grazed her arm. Though our wispy forearm hairs barely brushed together, it felt like I’d been hooked up to one of the blaring signs outside.

I introduced myself, and when she replied in kind she leaned in to make sure I could hear her over the music. I was suddenly very aware I hadn’t showered since landing, and hoped the dregs of the duty-free scents I’d doused myself in were still clinging to my clothes. She smelled like cinnamon and strawberries. We stopped touching, but electricity continued to crackle under my skin. She was wearing a Libertines t-shirt, and the weight of what they’d once meant to me momentarily collapsed time. For just a second I was fifteen again, drinking beer in a park, screaming along to ‘Can’t Stand Me Now,’ thinking I’d found my tribe. As she moved close to my ear to say something else, her hair swept across my arm, bringing me back to the present. I fizzed hot and cold inside, a sensation that had nothing to do with how much I’d drunk.

‘How do you know those guys?’

She turned her head so I could answer. Her helix was studded with silver earrings, a fashion choice that marked her out against the rest of the club. I’d never been so attracted to a piece of cartilage in my life. I was careful not to let my lips brush her ear as I spoke into it.   

‘I work with them,’ I replied. ‘But we met tonight for the first time. I only got into Tokyo today.’

‘What?’ she asked, face scrunched in a smile. I cupped my hand around her ear and repeated myself. My stomach somersaulted as I touched her soft, sleek hair.

‘Here for a day and already in Koenji, you hipster.’

‘I have no idea what that means,’ I replied.

‘Good,’ she said, with a wink.

When the two of us left the nightclub, dawn was a distant, grey thought against the darkened sky, and the drizzle-topped streets shimmered under the streetlamps like a river of sequins. We walked through Nakano Shiki no Mori Park, and even though I’d been in the city for less than a day the gorgeous, green scent of wet earth made me feel like I was breathing properly for the first time since my arrival. Although it was autumn, the trees were mostly still dressed. There were some ducks awake despite the early hour, dipping their heads in the rippling, foggy water, their bodies bobbing back and forth as they drew their necks back up.

Hours later, my cheeks still hurt because of how much I smiled on the journey back to hers. We talked the entire time, sometimes staring at each other, and sometimes stealing glances when we thought the other wasn’t looking. We held hands, and we walked a fake tightrope on the edge of the pavement like we were kids playing make believe. My mind gobbled up everything I learned about her, as if there would be a test. At some point I found out she was from the Home Counties, but went to secondary school in Birmingham after her parents got divorced.

‘No accent though?’ I teased.

‘Thankfully not.’

We talked about literature and art and culture. I argued Anna Karenina was better than War and Peace,but Crime and Punishment was superior to both. She persuaded me that cave art was much more likely to be prehistorical memes than religious scratchings. We agreed that while Hamilton was an entertaining show, dragging contemporary African American culture into an idealised version of the founding of the States was gross.

‘Colour-blinding white supremacy isn’t my favourite thing in the world,’ she said wryly, to a laugh from me.

We also agreed that to be happy, people just needed a purpose in life.

‘What’s your purpose, then?’ she asked me as rain drenched us. A small drop that had been clinging to my fringe lost its battle and cascaded down my face. I shuddered a little, mostly because of the water.

‘To get out of this rain as quickly as possible,’ I said, trying to be cute. She laughed, letting me.

When we got back to hers she threw me a towel.

‘You’re shivering, go get warm in the shower,’ she said, guiding me in the right direction with a nod towards the bathroom, although it wasn’t like there was anywhere else it could be in the tiny apartment.

I hadn’t noticed, but she was right. My hands were trembling, and nearly the same colour as the sashimi I’d eaten earlier. She, however, seemed fine, as if she’d been acclimatised to this aspect of Tokyo life for a while.

The bathroom air was thick with the smell of strawberries and cinnamon, which turned out to be a combination of her shampoo and bodywash. Under warming water I lathered myself in the latter, scrubbing it into my skin until I was as fragrant as a bit of the tree bark. Once done, I went back out to join her.

‘What’s your purpose? For coming here, I mean,’ she asked me again, later that morning.

I was sitting half upright, my upper back angled against her bed frame. She was lying on her front, her cheek resting on my chest, her eyes facing away from mine. Her hand was on my stomach, and she played with the wiry trail of hair beneath my belly button. Her nails were painted uniformly red and the polish she’d used was lacquered, so they were luminous like a Tokyo night instead of being soft and muted like a Tokyo morning. The Japanese rap and excited talk about other places we wanted to travel to was long gone, leaving a warm bath of silence. I thought about what I’d said to Taku the previous afternoon.

‘Who knows?’

‘You, better than anyone.’

‘What’s your purpose?’ I deflected.

‘Learning things, I think. That’s why I came here.’ She nestled into me a little more and I stroked her hair, the rose gold strands soft and bright as the sunrise I imagined we were being denied. But I knew there would be plenty of chances to see the rising sun, so I didn’t mind missing out. She carried on. ‘Because I wanted to expand my horizons. And get out of England, for sure.’

‘Me too,’ I answered, even though at that moment I was certain my only purpose in life was to be taking in the last vestiges of cigarette smoke in her boxy Tokyo bedroom, with a tsunami of happiness swelling to life in my chest.

‘I’m running away. I think that’s what I’m doing here,’ I tell her now, after I’ve had time to think about it, be embarrassed by it, and get over it.

We’re waiting for our drinks at a coffee place. She jokingly suggested we go to a maid cafe, but we ended up at what she refers to as herlocal, a few streets over from her apartment. A folded, fluorescent, yellow piece of paper lives under one of our table legs, keeping the surface steady. It reminds me of waking up in my room on the other side of Tokyo, drowning in strobe lights. I find it strange that room is still empty, unlived in, because right now I don’t feel like a stranger to the city.

She’s just shown me a video on her phone of a duck playing the drums with its feet. Before that, the server took our order. I’d only been able to communicate via points and nods, and she proceeded to order in Japanese, then told me she thought it was funny to let me flounder. I teased her about her command of the language not being good enough to rap along to popular songs. My joking was mostly to hide my worry that the waitress is going to come back with something strange for me, a fear stoked by years of pop culture bombardment reinforcing the idea that Japan has an odd food culture. But when I ordered, I didn’t want to come off like the sort of person who was afraid of new things, so I didn’t say anything that would have betrayed my caution.

‘Who isn’t trying to get away from something?’

She smirks and raises an eyebrow as she says this. I want to put my mouth around it and feel the hairs bristle against my tongue, just to see if I can taste her feelings. Instead, I reach over the table and grab her hand. ‘What from?’ she eventually adds. I decide to change the subject.

‘Your eyes look like autumn,’ I reply, surprised at how little self consciousness I feel after saying something saccharine enough to cause diabetes. It helps that we’re surrounded by Japanese folk, oblivious to the strange sounds coming out of my mouth as I am to the noises flying from theirs. We’re in our own little world in more ways than one.

‘A girl?’ she asks, acknowledging the compliment with a squeeze of my thumb.

I grimace, then decide to be as honest as I can.

‘No. I guess I was just bored of being different.’

‘So you came somewhere you’d really stand out,’ she laughs. It’s like a souffle, delicate and airy.

‘But in Tokyo I’m a novelty. It’s fine to feel that way when you’re completely alien, like here. But when it’s where you were born…it’s not like there’s some other place to go back to.’

Her head bobs in agreement, reminding me of the ducks in the park earlier that morning.

‘Can’t be as big a culture shock as going from bucolic Throcking to the delights of the Bull Ring,’ she says, puncturing the silence before it becomes big enough to worry about.

I snort. She grips my hand harder. Aside from the lack of drunken redness, her eyes aren’t so different to Taku’s, a collection of deep browns, each fractal telling its own tale like rings in a bark can teach you a tree’s history. Once again, I find myself hypnotised into vulnerability, and I’m not sure what words will come tumbling out of my mouth. Soft images of this morning whir through my head like they’re being played off an old projector, but then I’m flooded with memories of drinking illegally obtained beers in sunny parks and awkward kisses in unflattering school uniforms. She breaks the silence again.

‘I used to tell people autumn was my favourite season, because of all the rich colours and earthy smells and stuff. But really, it’s spring. Living here’s only made me more certain of it.’

‘Tokyo autumn seems cool. I’ve only lived it a day, though.’

‘Feels longer,’ she replies, quickly adding, ‘in a good way.’

My cheeks tauten, the gesture so impossible to suppress it’s like I’m being controlled by a puppeteer. The waitress appears with our coffees, and I’m thankful to see my cappuccino has none of the strange flair I’d been bracing for. I lift it to my face, sniffing in the chocolatey aroma. Silky light bounces off the gleaming drink.

‘I think I’m going to like it here,’ I say, before taking my first, too hot sip.

‘You’ll definitely get random people approaching you for a picture, if that’s what you’re into,’ she jokes.

Another waitress walks past with a steaming plate of natto on rice, and the ammonia-like stench threatens to rip off the blanket of contentment I’m under. Just for a moment, I long for the welcoming grease of a Full English, or the taste of my mother’s rajma, the latter’s flavour just as much a part of me as my limbs or brain. But then I look back across the table and I remember the current between us, just waiting for the slimmest, near-invisible arm hair of connections to spark into life. I remember Taku, and Eoin, and the kind lady at the airport who helped me with my train ticket. I remember the feeling as I left my apartment last night and dissolved into the crowd, everything vivid yet dreamlike, like how watching television in technicolour for the first time must have been for my grandma.

I decide that, for now, Tokyo is the place for me.

Sandeep is a writer from London. His work has appeared in the Cleveland Review of Books, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, the Dodge, and other publications. He’s a reader and occasional editor at the Los Angeles Review, and is working on a novel.