16 Jan Tokyo Love Story Week 2
Something More
I stared into the mirror vacantly, barely seeing the loopholes in my shirt as I strung it up snuggly from my waist to my chest. I could hear Kenji puttering about behind me. The scraping, squishing noises informed me he was making the final preparations for our one p.m. class. I knew I must turn and assist him with the preparations and yet still I gazed with glazed eyes at my own reflection. It had been two years now since my unprecedented move to Tokyo and little had changed to assuage the doubts my mother’s parting words had sewn into the fabric of my conscience. Here, I was seen as having a perfectly respectable life. Mochi is immensely important to the Japanese culture and to be crafting it under the renowned guidance of Kenji Nakatani was nothing short of an honor. Yet in all my conversations with old friends from home I couldn’t help but feel bashful as I ceded that my life here centered around the mastery of making rice cakes in the traditional Japanese style. It felt empty, my life up until my move to Japan nagged me, crying at me that I needed something more. I turned to help Kenji complete preparations.
When we conducted these classes for groups of foreign tourists, I always took great interest in observing them. Their wide eyes and uneasy expressions reminded me very much of myself when I first arrived in this strange country, its culture and people so unique from the rest of the world. On this particular day, my eyes wandered through their ranks, picking out the families and trying to guess where they might be from in my head. Kenji was explaining the basics of the upcoming procedure when my eyes alighted upon a young woman who appeared to be the only lone member of the group. She was very pretty, her blonde hair sweeping gracefully around her face and falling to her shoulders in luscious curls. I wondered what her story might be and decided I would provide her with a practice partner, should she remain alone once the group was paired off.
Sure enough, several minutes later she stood alone by a basin in the far-right corner of the room, looking confused and uneasy. I hurried to position myself on the right side of the room so that Kenji would light the fires on the other side. When I came to her, she looked at me like a survivor at sea looks at a life raft bobbing on the horizon. There was a desperation to belong in her face, and I knew the feeling all too well. Her name was Janet, she said, she’d come from the Netherlands by herself on a whim, simply looking for an adventure before she returned to the humdrum of the working world. I promised her I would come back for her and she nodded vigorously, smiling with relief.
Kenji and I performed our demonstration and I quickly returned to my new student. It was the most wonderful lesson I had ever given. She responded well when I guided her hands on the mallet and the scent of her and the closeness of our bodies was quickly intoxicating me. A roguish voice inside me urged me on and I teased her playfully, toeing the line between instruction and flirtation. All the while she smiled and laughed and I felt a stirring in somewhere in my gut as something I had been missing all this time in Tokyo began to manifest.
At last, my bravado got the better of me. I entrusted her with the mallet strokes and, thinking I would look the daredevil to impress her, I attempted to time my fold of the mochi just before her mallet struck the basin. Her strike came harder and faster than I anticipated and I paid sorely for the error. I’d never broken a bone before somehow, and yet this time I knew my right hand was decimated. I could feel the crunch and the white flash that popped before my eyes foreshadowed a pain more terrible than any I’d felt in a very long time. Mingled agony and embarrassment filled me as Kenji put a stop to the class, informing the group that he would have to take me to the hospital. To my great surprise, Janet came with us, though in my discomfort it escaped me as to why.
The reason became apparent when I entered the waiting room on my way out and found her sitting there waiting for me. She hurled apologies at me and insisted on taking me to get food and some drink. I was so happy to see her that I barely heard the words she said. I agreed immediately to go with her, feeling that I might be on track to finding the special “something more” at last.
