Japanese woman on the bus

Yesterday I took the bus home from the train station and sat next to another person.  Another and another person, so rich is this city.

She was texting on her phone, but I couldn't help notice the hiragana, and then the katakana for Nyu Yohku.  Nihonjin.  A person from Japan.  I admit, I think I became a little creepy.  Probably she could tell that I was noticing how she kept checking the Google Map app on her phone to track the place of the bus on its route.  As subtle as I can be, to a Japanese person, there is no hiding.  I imagined phrases that I could ask her, but nothing was quite right.  She obviously didn't really need my help, and the only way I could formulate that was, "Are you ok?"  or "Help?" (me?, you?, unclear ambiguous Japanese formation that I couldn't really remember).  So I just sat there and noticed the fashion backdrop on her screen, the way that she gently tapped her fingernail on it.

The temperament of a place is so special, and also special is the way it is worn on its people.  And as much as it bothered me at times to live there for this very reason, the uniformity of Japan and the Japanese people, especially compared to a beautifully chaotic place like New York, seems sacred.  I could almost imagine advocating a life towards that kind of purity were I to have come from such a culture.  It has always perplexed me how Japanese people balance their culture with the modern world.

As I sat there thinking about the person sitting next to me, I realized that I was not on my phone, nor reading a book, but was taking in my surroundings, also noticing the woman across from me, quite obviously happy with her reading.  I was being a "tourist," someone that does not yet feel the pressure to suppress their awareness of their surroundings, someone who unabashedly takes in the people in their surrounding space.  I encountered two tourists like this two nights earlier on a semi-late night train ride home.  Nothing marked these friends as tourists except that they noticed me (and my cello) when I got on the train (and then later openly conjectured about life living New York).  We learn not to really see the people around us, at least not in the invasive way that I was with the woman sitting next to me.  People are so fascinating.  But just because we must share the public transit together does not mean that we welcome others to observe us deeply, to create explanations for our dress and mannerisms.  What if we all really saw one another?  How would that feel?

I didn't like being noticed by the tourists.  I appreciate the anonymity that the New York attitude allows.  People tend to notice if something really smells or is dangerous, but otherwise, anything goes, no questions asked with words or eyes.  This is nice.

But so too is the constant reminder of other lives.  For the 15 minutes that I sat next to my Japanese friend, I was transported to Japan, to the way that people move and think, and to my own puzzling of the language.  What a wonderful resource we have in this city.  If only we were allowed to become absorbed fully in that treasure.