The phone rings.
Twice. Then it stops. Then it starts again.
I pick up. “Hello?”
It’s her. “I’m at Haneda…”
I can hear the roar of Tokyo International Airport in the background. She’s on a payphone, calling her home phone—calling me.
“I got two tickets for Okinawa,” she says. She doesn’t wait for me to say anything back. “Two tickets to leave Haneda, touch down in Naha, then fly over to Miyakojima. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I–I think so.”
“No, you don’t—you don’t know if the extra ticket’s yours. I don’t even know… My job at the beach is over. I guess it’s been over for a while. I’ve got the money now, and I’m ready to leave. I can even cover a room for two. So… I’m going to Miyakojima. Myself plus one.”
“Plus me?”
“I don’t know…”
“What do you mean?”
“I need to make the same call to someone else.”
I say nothing.
She doesn’t ask me to come.
She tells me her flight number. Tells me her departure time. Says she’ll be waiting by the airline counter.
There isn’t much time.
“I can’t make this choice alone,” she says. The noise of the terminal nearly drowns her out. She sounds a little hoarse, but I can’t be sure. “So you have to choose for me. You have to choose me. If you drop everything and come with me, the ticket’s yours. If you can’t choose me, then I can’t choose you.”
Silence. That’s it?
No explicit mention of Yakisoba Man.
“I’m getting on this plane—I’m leaving Tokyo,” she says, “and I want someone to come with me…”
The call ends with a soft click.
Then total silence.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP—the alarm in my brain is screaming again. I’m fully alert. I decide. I choose her. There’s no need to overthink it. I love her, and everyone fucks up, right? I mean, I fucked up. Right?
If I run as fast as I can, I can get to the station in under a minute and a half.
Save that seat for me.
Komagome Station is on the Yamanote Loop Line—so I’ll take the Yamanote to Hamamatsucho, then grab the monorail to Haneda. But first things first. The Yamanote is a circle—so which way gets me there faster? Something tells me to go with the outside loop, towards Tokyo Station. I don’t count stops or anything. I just listen to my bones.
But something’s wrong at Komagome Station. I hear the announcements, but I can’t get a good read on the situation. All I know is that there’s a situation. OK, they’re saying something about “the power grid”. Outside loop’s down. Down how? How down? I map the Yamanote in my head. The dot for Komagome rests near the northern edge of the circle—Hamamatsucho is towards the south-east. (Counting stations after the fact: Hamamatsucho is twelve stops from Komagome on the outside loop—seventeen stops on the inside.)
OK. Change of plans. The inside loop’s still running, so I’ll take the loop the other way. I’ve already lost several stations’ time—gotta fly.
The train shows up, and it’s packed. Full of people who got turned around, like me. Therein lies the beauty of the loop—it’s a simple detour, go the other way. I force my way onto the train. It leaves Komagome, making brief stops at Sugamo, Otsuka, Ikebukuro. Then, a few hundred metres shy of the Mejiro platform, the train grinds to a halt. I didn’t know about the guerrilla attacks on Tokyo’s power stations. That information wasn’t available on the trains. No one had a cell phone—because the train was stuck in 1994. “Synchronized attacks,” the media would call it the next morning. What the fuck, extremists? Now my train’s stranded between Ikebukuro and Mejiro—the most distant point on the loop from where I need to be. Well, shit. Even the air conditioner is out of commission—in this record heat. The train was hot to begin with, and overcrowded—we’re all dripping with sweat. I hear a beat, leaking out of someone’s headphones. Tick-tick, tick-tick. Tick-tick, tick-tick. Almost like a time bomb about to explode.
A time bomb inside of me.
In this heat, we’re all an inch from losing our shit.
An announcement comes over the speaker. The conductor levels with us: We don’t know when we’re going to be moving again. Please stay calm.
And that’s when I lose it. “I want to get off!” I scream.
Within a couple of seconds, everyone else loses it too: “So what!” “Suck it up!”
You don’t understand, I say. If this train doesn’t start moving, I’ll miss my flight. I’ll never get out of Tokyo. I’ll lose my girlfriend. So—“OPEN THAT FUCKING DOOR! LET ME THROUGH—I’LL OPEN IT MYSELF.”
They try to stop me as I struggle towards the door:
“THE TRAIN WON’T MOVE IF THE DOORS ARE OPEN!”
“DON’T TOUCH THAT FUCKING DOOR!”
But justice is on my side. “MOVE,” I demand. And I push. “I’M GETTING OUTTA HERE.” If I can get off this dead train, I can get a taxi on Mejiro Avenue, or hightail it to Takadanobaba and take the subway. It’s not too late. I can still reach her. So—“OUTTA MY WAY, ASSHOLES!”
I start elbowing, pushing, throwing punches. But the whole train’s seething with rage. When I let my fists fly, fists come flying right back. The harder I hit, the harder I get hit. Action and reaction. I started it. And now they’re ending it.
I’m knocked down, beat up, blacked out.
Yeah… No way out.
BOAT FIVE
ALMOST LIKE PERPETUAL MOTION
Doesn’t look like rain’s coming after all. My prophecy: Christmas Eve, 2002. You shall not know rain. Then the dark sky looks down on me, taunts me. That’s right. Feel the cold—feel it all over. Can’t you see what’s coming? I’m still trembling like I was before.
I make my way over Teleport Bridge. On one side, Tokyo Teleport Station on the Rinkai Line. On the other, Odaiba Seaside Park Station on the Yurikamome Line.
It was ten minutes to noon when I woke up on my stalagmite. Meaning I was out for a good two hours. That long? Something’s definitely calling to me. But it’s not time yet. That’s why the dream cut me out.
Let the memories come. Let them dig in.
Think archaeologically.
I’m standing in front of DECKS Tokyo Beach. Not a real beach. It’s a building made to look like a cruise liner, but it looks more like a ghost ship to me. Time for a little detour. What does Odaiba look like to you? A resort? A glimpse of the near future? A celebrity hotspot? All those images crumble before me as I make my way up the coastline.
I head towards Rainbow Bridge. I follow Shuto Expressway 11 as it veers to the left.
I step into Daiba Park.
Look. This is where Tokyo ends.
The park sits just a few metres above sea level—on a stone-wall embankment. This is the third daiba. There used to be six. No. 3 and no. 6 are the only ones left. What’s a daiba, you ask? An artillery battery built for coastal defence in the late Edo period. To keep the Black Ships at bay. Construction began in the summer of 1853, when Commodore Perry sailed into Uraga. All six daiba were ready for action within a year and three months.
Six stations with cannon. That’s what “Odaiba” means.
See? Fuji TV wasn’t Odaiba’s first station.
This is the front line. On the waterfront. Man-made stations for defending Edo—the city that became Tokyo.