by Lucy Dickens
Now is he being silly with Katie?
Or is he standing next to a window somewhere in England, looking up at the overcast late-morning sky, and wondering what I’m doing across the world in Tokyo?
Chapter 5
Restless dreams, it seems,
Can bring ideas to me.
Call me Scorsese.
It’s been a long day, it’s now really late, I should fall straight to sleep … right? But my midnight mind seems to want to keep my thoughts whirling like the tea cups in Disneyland.
I lie with them for a long while before getting up and out of my luxurious bed and peeping through the curtains at the city, which is very much still awake down below.
Standing on my feet again reminds me how sore and overused they feel from today, and in a lightbulb moment I think of my big, deep soaking tub in the bathroom. A good remedy for tired feet and tired brains? Worth a try.
With the curtains pulled open so I can see Tokyo’s moon above the city from my bathtub (don’t worry, I’m so high up I’m pretty confident nobody can see my own Tokyo moon) I let the hot water tingle around my pinked and sore feet. I’d read that in Japan the act of having a bath is taken seriously as a purely relaxing experience, and that you should wash your hair and body in the shower first and use the tub for luxuriating. I suppose that’s what it’s supposed to be everywhere, but I can’t remember the last time I just lay in the water like this, easing my muscles. Enjoying the sensations. If I have a bath at home I usually spend no more than about three and a half minutes relaxing, letting a couple of pages of my latest book get soggy, and then get out the hedge trimmer on my leg stubble and the disinfectant for my hair. It turns into one furious scrub-fest and I come out glowing and squeaky but hardly wandering through the house with a dreamlike serenity. Not tonight, I think, trying to clear my mind and focus only on the ripples of warmth on my skin. Tonight I am in Japan, and we’ll do this properly.
By the time I leave the bath, my mood has lifted a little. But I’m still not sleepy. I check my phone and my stomach drops to see an email from Amanda, the editor at Adventure Awaits that I’m due to report to.
Hi Charlotte,
We’re looking forward to having you join us at Adventure Awaits next month. I saw that you posted a photo to Instagram that you’re off to Japan! I remember now – you’re on your honeymoon, right? Congratulations. Let us know if you come across any great angles for stories, of course.
Just wanted to drop you a quick note to confirm arrangements for day one. Please arrive at the office for 10am the first day and ask the receptionist to call me. You’ll need to bring your passport for me to scan for HR. You’ll also be starting your internship alongside one other recruit, Thomas, who’ll be commencing an internship on our sister magazine Eco Adventures at the same time. You may have met him at the recruitment day back at the end of last year. We’ll get the two of you oriented together, and we’ll take you for a lunch on your first day, so leave your sandwiches at home!
Congrats again on the wedding and we’ll keep an eye on your trip on Instagram, and look forward to hearing all about it.
Best wishes,
Amanda
Amanda Sakerson
Editor, Adventure Awaits
I really need to reply and let her know my decision. I just can’t do it now, my mind is too fuzzy, too full of dancing Disney characters. So I push the problem aside, turn my phone over, wrap both robes around myself and snuggle down into bed under a cloud of thick duvets, and let my hair naturally dry into a curly-wurly frizz. I flick through TV channels until I land on an intricately illustrated anime movie about two young people who I think have swapped lives. The images in the movie dance across my vision, cherry blossoms and sunlight and mountains. It’s simple yet so perfect and beautiful. Everything about Japan is beautiful and begs to be documented visually, it seems, through paintings or art or film.
I pick up my phone again, avoiding looking at my emails, and check through some of the footage I’ve taken over the last few days.
My videos from Harajuku last night are quite good, actually (thanks to the subject matter, I’m sure; the narration is foggy and I sound like I’ve swallowed a pack of tissues). They’re colourful and with a little tweaking I manage to create a couple of minutes’ worth of montage of arriving in Tokyo and my first evening. I add a couple more minutes from the shrine and Disneyland, and finally a little of the inside of the Park Hyatt. After a while of tinkering around, I’ve made myself a little travel vlog!
And I’m starting to yawn.
I’m proud of it, though, and I think I want to share it with my friends and family. It’s a few minutes’ long, so I can’t just upload it as a regular Instagram video. I open the app anyway and after a little navigating and a smidge of procrastination watching a video from Reese Witherspoon, I think I’ve got IGTV, Instagram’s functionality for longer videos, figured out. I sit up a little straighter in my bed, trying to beat the tiredness now it’s finally here.
This could be fun. A side-project to work on if I’m feeling a bit lost, but without losing my sense of taking a proper break from everything. Because the thought of having to write articles and put everything into words right now feels draining. Should I add some commentary? Maybe next time. This time I find a nice song to put over the top.
There’s just one extra scene, one finishing touch to add on to the end.
Propping my phone up on the other side of the room, I angle it to get a good shot of the window, and the Tokyo night beyond it. I press record and then skitter over the windowsill to sit, looking out, a la Lost in Translation. I heft a butt-cheek up on the thin shelf, grip the window frame and hope the double-glazing is fixed into place. Shakily, I let go, and – no – I’m going!
I tumble to the ground with all the elegance of a hippo. I laugh out loud, and on watching the video, I laugh again and decide to keep it in.
As my finger hovers about over the publish button I consider getting in touch with Benny or Mara or maybe Brienne. Adventure Awaits follows me. What if they see it and it makes them cringe? Would a second opinion help? Should I send it to them to check? I should ask them what they think—
No. This is what’s best for me. It doesn’t matter what anyone else’s opinion is, I like this video, I like this idea. I shake off my anxiety and publish my video, and then pack myself into bed, surrounded by a cocoon of pillows.
On TV, the anime movie is coming to an end and I let the images and the colours soothe me into a light but welcome sleep. Overall, it’s been a good day. And although my whole world feels like it’s in pieces, all I can do is put it back together one day at a time.
Chapter 6
I don’t want to talk
about me tonight, so please
pass the wasabi
In contrast to the warm bath water, the silky waters of the hotel pool at the Park Hyatt are cold. They wake up my body and soothe the headache that developed following my late night, some bad dreams and the odd sporadic tear. It’s too late for me to turn back time, to beg Matt to take back his words and not feel the doubts he held. It’s too late to give up on this trip and go home to England and put my broken wedding and heart back together.
So here I am, the first one at the pool on the forty-seventh floor at 6am. The glass atrium above streams daylight onto the water, though it’s overcast today, and droplets of rain speckle above me.
I swim lengths, slowly and methodically, enjoying the unstiffening of my limbs until they start to feel tired and I rest my arms up on the side and look out the window. Only the very tops of the neighbouring towers are in my vision from up here.
I submerge my face back in the water, all but my eyes peeping out crocodile-style, and blow bubbles for no other reason than there’s nobody else around and it’s nice to do weird things and make noises when no one can hear you. Flopping onto my back, I float about for a while, staring upwards. My honeymoon tour starts today. Not until this evening, but when I get out of the water I’ll b
e heading to the breakfast buffet and it’s odd knowing that some of the other people there might be my tour mates. I’ll have to see who looks like an irritating smug-married and that’ll be them.
Is this tour going to be the most awkward thing I’ve ever done? Will the others think I’m insane for not staying at home?
Why am I so obsessed with what other people think?
I float into the side of the swimming pool and bump my head so I take that as a sign to get out and head back to my room.
Down at breakfast I’m on red alert, picking one of everything from the extensive buffet, filling my plate with glazed-strawberry topped pastries, chunks of dragon fruit, cheese, minced salmon – so much for a svelte, traveller’s diet – all the while keeping an eye on other guests, checking out who might be there on their honeymoon and is likely to have booked onto a romance-filled honeymoon tour like muggins here. I feel a sudden flash of anger towards Matt for leaving me, for forcing me to face all these newlyweds alone.
I suppose that isn’t entirely fair. No one forced me to do this. In fact, I adamantly decided this all on my own. Freshly single and on a group honeymoon tour. Why oh why have I done this to myself?
I shuffle back to my seat with my hoard and eat facing the rest of the dining room. I don’t mind eating alone. I thought I would – I thought this would be one more kicker that I’m a million miles away from everything I know – but actually it’s okay. It’s just like eating in front of the TV, actually, with good grub and some quality people-watching.
Oh, now look at them, they definitely could be candidates. An attractive tall couple in their early thirties have entered the dining room with a definite air of jet lag about them. Her blond hair is swept up in a messy bun that I reckon she slept in, and he hasn’t shaved since the plane left his home turf, I’m guessing. They still look good, but in a ‘celebrities, they’re just like us’ kind of way. She curls her lip at the buffet and selects only a banana, which shoots her down in my estimation, until she uses it to poke her husband (?) and crack a joke, which I think must have been along the lines of ‘this is all you’re allowed’, and then they both laugh and reach for big plates and start piling.
I look down at my food and wonder if Matt has watched my IGTV video. I’m not doing it for him. But a part of me wants to say to him, ‘Look what I’m doing. Look what I can do without you.’ Unfortunately, IGTV will only tell you the number of viewers, not who has watched, and when I checked the app after rinsing the pool out of my hair, my first vlog had had thirty-two views, which I decide isn’t bad, although I’m not really sure how many is good, and I always have to remember to subtract a large proportion of that to accommodate each member of my family watching from their various devices. I don’t know what I’m doing with this minced salmon. I don’t think it should go on this matcha cake, so I spread it on a bit of brie and tuck in. Pretty good, but I do feel like I missed an essential instruction up at the counter so will have to be a bit more careful at tomorrow’s breakfast.
The rain is coming down harder now, so I decide to do what Matt and I had planned for this day anyway. In fact, screw Matt, I planned this whole trip, I found all the fun activities and things to do. Sure, he was invested, but I was the one who spent hours trawling the internet, researching the holiday brochures, watching YouTube videos, preparing everything behind the scenes ready for him to take my hand and enter at stage left once the curtain had come up. And today’s activity was something I wanted to do since I watched James May, Our Man in Japan, and the man himself visited there. So I’m not going to think of this as me doing a ‘we’ activity on my own. I am doing a ‘me’ activity.
Saying that, I do need to do a ‘wee’ activity first.
I navigate the route from Tochomae to Aomi train stations now like a pro, and exit an hour later at the teamLab Borderless digital art museum.
How do I explain the space at Borderless … imagine some huge empty rooms absolutely covered in digital screens that project brilliant colours and images that interact with each other and respond to how you move past or through them. The only light comes from the artwork itself and it’s disorienting but completely immersive and incredible. It’s like being in a Missy Elliot music video perhaps.
I didn’t realise that the gentle music, the swirling colours and patterns that glide around me like candy floss, the sense of calm, would hit me so hard and here I feel tiny and insignificant and alone and totally free and lost. It’s weird, and I’m glad it’s dark because I spend most of the time walking through these darkened spaces with my eyes flowing.
The ‘crystal world’ gets me first, where it seems to be raining a never-ending universe of stars around me. Then I go into another space and a big bear made of digital flowers walks protectively alongside me through the room and for some stupid reason I feel like it’s Gray here with me. Then I move to the ‘forest of resonating lamps’, where thousands and thousands of lights (or at least the mirrored walls and floor and ceiling make it seem that way) warm from calming blue to comforting sunset pink as I walk through, lighting my way.
By the time I reach the ‘floating nest’ and lie down on what is essentially a huge hammock suspended above, under, and in between more screens, I’m more than ready to let these millions of butterflies flutter around me until I die.
I spend hours at Borderless, way more time than I intended to or ever thought I would, and I wonder if this is what it’s like to meditate. I leave feeling a little detoxed, my headspace a little clearer, and I’d quite happily take the journey back to the hotel and climb in my bathtub and stay there for the next month pondering what I just experienced.
But I can’t do that. Because in a short while, I’ll be joining my fellow honeymooners.
I look back towards Borderless as I board my train and wonder if I can run back inside. Maybe nobody would ever find me.
I’m feeling very Bill Murray. I didn’t do a runner from the UK just to live in Borderless for eternity, instead I put on a big brave face and some half-decent clothes and now I’m in the New York Bar of the Park Hyatt drinking a whisky on the rocks because it feels right, even if my taste buds tell me it’s wrong. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the sun has broken through the blanket of clouds long enough to be waving us goodbye as it dips towards the horizon. It’s late afternoon and I’m soon to meet my tour guide and fellow travellers.
I’m not nervous, you are.
Jazz is lilting from the speakers. If we were staying here into the evening, the jazz would become live. But since the brochure advertised, ‘your first night you will be taken into the heart of Tokyo for romantic Japanese cuisine and entertainment’, I’m guessing we’re outta here.
The tall couple from breakfast have just walked in. This cannot be a coincidence. But instead of going up and questioning them, lest they think I’m a prozzie trying to lure them into a threesome, I side-eye them while sipping my whisky and trying not to squince my mouth up at the taste.
They take a seat and look around, their eyes drifting past me without hesitation, searching for other couples. It’s only when a slight but strong woman – high heels, glossy hair, a wide smile and an air of authority – strides in and straight up to them, bowing and introducing herself, and they visibly relax, that I think this is my cue.
‘Hello,’ I say, shyness creeping in, and they all look up at me. ‘Konbanwa,’ I say good evening to the woman I really hope is our tour guide because otherwise I’ve just been unforgivably presumptive. ‘Is this the Honeymoon Highlights tour?’
‘Yes, it is,’ the guide enthuses in English. Her voice has the lightest of accents, calming and delicate. ‘My name is Kaori and you must be Charlotte?’
‘Yes,’ I confirm, and take a seat. The travel agency clearly passed on the change in party number, which is a good thing.
The tall man leans forward, a huge grin on his tanned face, and gives me a stocky, animated handshake. He speaks with an Australian twang and he’s instantly likeable. ‘Hey
Charlotte, m’name’s Lucas, this is my new wife, Flo.’
Flo grins a megawatt smile worthy of Margot Robbie and leans in towards me too. She’s also beyond friendly and greets me with a handshake that involves her clasping both her hands over mine, which is oddly comforting. ‘Love the name Charlotte – that’s our first choice if we ever have a little girl. Great to meet ya.’
‘Where’s your husband?’ Lucas asks, looking around and getting a pinch from Flo. ‘Or wife?’ he corrects himself.
‘Well—’ I start but then we’re interrupted by a silver fox approaching the table.
‘Excuse me,’ he drawls in a soothing, growly American accent. ‘Are you guys here for the Japan Honeymoon Highlights tour?’
‘Yes we are!’ Kaori answers. ‘You must be Cliff and Jack?’ She pronounces their names carefully and the man nods and steps aside for another tall, slightly-less-silver and just-as-handsome chap to step ahead of him and take a seat.
Lucas, Flo, Cliff, Jack, Kaori and I exchange hellos and names and I think I’d better get this out of the way before it becomes the elephant in the very posh room.
‘Um, Lucas, you were just asking me where my husband is, this being a honeymoon tour and all, so just to say that we, well I, well we, um, called off the wedding a bit last minute but I didn’t want the trip to go to waste.’
Jack reaches out immediately and puts a hand over mine, his face shocked and confused as to what to say, and that small gesture breaks my heart just that little bit more.
‘Ah, I’m sorry,’ Lucas says, sounding genuinely gutted for me.
‘Ace of you to come here on your own though, it costs a dime or two so good not to let it go to waste,’ adds Flo.
‘What did he do?’ Cliff, the first silver fox, asks.