Not So Lost in Tokyo After All...!!!

It was a very different world...

As compared to the one I was used to, or had ever visited. The language was very different. All the faces looked the same! The voices on the street felt as though they were from some different world... walking on the pavement they just became a distant hum... I felt I was drowning in a very different world and wanted to learn to swim as fast or as soon as I could and bob along on the surface.

Was it exciting? Not at all! It was all very alien. It was all very incongruous. My soul was looking for that so often heard about "Wa" on Tokyo street. It was all very overwhelming. I was wondering on the streets with two children in tow - one in the stroller and one holding onto it.

I was scared - really scared.

I do not know the language, how will I scream HELP if there was need? My 5 and 2 year old think Mum is always able to do anything... with her around there is nothing to worry... I was desperately waiting for the evenings, when my husband would come back to our hotel apartment and until morning I do not have to go out and fight the alien war again...

Slowly I found small gardens with slides and swings for the children while walking to find a grocery store or a bread shop. Here I learned to first nod, then smile at the local ladies - still all of them looking just the same to me. I tried to remember the toys their children carried and the kind of prams they had to differentiate them from one to another. This is how I took the plunge. Once in the deep end I realised that the part of Tokyo we were in (East Tokyo - Koto-ku) was the most traditional suburb and people here did not speak or understand English as much as they did in downtown Tokyo. I leafed through my Japan Rough Guide and picked up a few phrases. These phrases proved to be my floaters and soon helped me surface and bob along in the sea of unknown.

All of a sudden the hum on the street started making sense to me. My son was my friend at the time. We would learn something then repeat it to each other to remember it faster. We had no time! Now reflecting back I feel I was so naive to think the language they speak was impossible to master.

I had learned from my husband that the Japanese in Tokyo at least understand a little bit of English, if you speak it without predicates and speak really slow. Most of the nouns are recognised by simply adding an "O" at the end of the word. For example : toppingo for a salad topping. I used the logic to buy bread and asked for breaddo... the shop keeper just stared back as though I was an ET. Then started the teeth sucking and the grunting sounds. I realised that he had no clue of what I wanted, so thanking him I went in search of something more easily visible and point-able like fruits.

One of the hotel apartments we stayed in was very close to Tokyo stock exchange, Kayabacho. This is predominantly an office area. We were to stay in this place for three months. The whole locality would be completely deserted during the weekends. There were very few to no family or children to be seen. The truth of Japanese being a slowly dying society could not have been more evident. Our apartment was on the eleventh floor of a very modern building with security gates. Every time we had a slight tremor of an earthquake the building would sway. We were to not do anything except for take shelter under a bed or dining table. Not to panic is a new skill acquired by me after staying so high and not on a terra firma.

Here is where I learned that every inch of space in a residential area must be utilised. Being from crowded city like Bombay this did not come as a big surprise, but it was very educating as to how much space we took for granted even in Bombay.

At this point in time we were thinking that we would not have an opportunity to come back to this exotic world again. We had only 90 days, during which I had the task of showing the children as much Tokyo as I could. This was possible only during the week, as the weekends were dedicated to out of station journeys to the places close to Tokyo along with my husband and his office colleagues. I was well equipped with the Rough Guide to Japan and an English atlas of Tokyo city along with the very confusing Tokyo metro map. With the pin point accuracy of the map I was able to plan our exits from the metro stations using escalators and elevators with the stroller. My departing station was an office station, so I had not ever found an escalator, but always found some or the other smiling gentleman to give me a hand at carrying the stroller up or down. To the extent that I seldom had to carry the stroller single handed. We went out to see places in Tokyo about 3 times a week and then out again during weekends. By the end of the 90 days stay, I was full of appreciation for these very different kind of mortal being who would walk with you for about 15 minutes to show you your destination, just because they did understand what you asked them but could not explain the directions to you in English. This is the way they think. I later learned that they take foreigners as their own personal responsibility. They are more inclined to help out due to the excitement to be seen with a foreigner and a bit due to their own inquisitive nature to look into the life of lost aliens like us.

One of the weekends we had decided to go to a spot inside Tokyo city as a family. There was some construction work going on near the pavement and some of the area was cordened off. I tried pushing the stroller through (what I tought was) the designated area and a police warden came running to me. He carried my daughter's stroller from another secluded area and bowed down profusely apologising that it was his mistake not to let us know in advance where should we be walking from. He also aplogised that the warnings were not written in English and he is sorry about it. I have yet to see such kindness, such sense of belonging and such responsibility to ones country on this planet earth.

Tokyo

When we first set off for Tokyo, in December 2002, my daughter Tanvi was very little. I mean just over two years old. her vocabulary was limited to a few words like, "mama", "dada", "come", "hunggy", etc. She used to see her world sitting in the stroller from her height, her perspective. Sometimes she would request, "Mummy carry!" So I or my husband would carry her and show her our world from our height. Could we say our perspective? Will we ever be able to show her our world form our perspective? If we could, will she be able to see it? Or comprehend it? It feels as though the world we lived in is fast becoming history... as though it is wet sand on sea shore and is just waiting for a wave to come and erase it, for ever.

My son Heman was just over 5 years old. For him the world was not a very secure place if mummy or daddy were not around. He would hold on tight to his sister's stroller so that he could be dragged with us even if he was looking at the other things. He has always been very inquisitive and a fan of trains and planes like million other boys his age. I used to feel that I have two normal children and have a normal family. I am one of the luckiest of the lot.

Three months later when we went back to India, Bombay, my daughter was able to speak in fully constructed sentences. As we set foot on the tarmac, I welcomed ourselves and said, "Welcome to homeland, welcome to our own Bombay!!" out of the sheer exhilaration of seeing the city lights and feeling the familier humidity on the skin. Little Tanvi just looked and smiled her tired but lovely smile at me from her stroller. She could not see or understand much of the city when we were getting home as she was tired. Next day she woke early - early Bombay morning, without any jet lag. She stood up on her bed and started looking around the closed air conditioned room. Seeing her awake and standing on her bed, I was expecting questions like, "Momma, where are we?" Or, "Are we in Bombay?" But her questions were, "Momma, get up, what is that smell? What is that noise?" Hearing this question in Bombay while being half asleep and a bit jet legged, I realised that my transformation to Momma from Mummy was complete in three months time.

Not only that but also the early morning city traffic noises and the smell of the city was so noticeable to the two year old. So her transformation to an NRI child was complete too. It so happened that we had to go to Tokyo again due to my husband's posting nine months later. The children were a little older. My daughter had now started carrying on conversations. She told many stories from her stay to her grand parents and who so ever would listen. She was a little older. As we touched down at Narita airport, she welcomed us to the country saying, "Welcome to our motherland. We have come back to Tokyo!"