Patchwork Yokohama
1. Moving Out To Yokohama
by Pencil Louis
Whenever Vince Patchwork happened to mention that he lived
in Yokohama, his Japanese friends would ooh and aah about
what an exciting place it was, how different from Tokyo. To
Vince himself, the city seemed nothing so much as the urban
drift that had leaked over the Tama River through Kawasaki.
Now, it was heading even further south than Yokohama itself.
The suburban sprawl had bled into Kamakura, the Miura
Peninsula, through Odawara and was on the way to infecting
Hakone. Vince concluded that it wouldn't cease until it had
collided with Osaka and Nagoya.
He realised that Yokohama had every reason to claim to be a
city in its own right. It had a history quite separate from
its northern neighbour, although both Tokyo and Yokohama had
been manufactured political centres very much like
Washington D.C., or Canberra in Vince's native Australia.
Old Edo had been created by Ieyasu Tokugawa as the seat of
government for his Shogunate while Yokohama had grown from a
village into a town and finally into Japan's second largest
city as a result of the European and American invasion of
the 19th. Century. It had originally been a holding pen to
protect every day Japanese people from the sinister
influence of the West and to safeguard the foreigners
themselves from marauding samurai who saw this new breed as
the very devil itself.
The difference, as far as Vince could see, ended there.
While Edo became the political centre and chaotically spread
through a series of land grabs by rival lords, Yokohama was
a planned city. It was centered around a port and because of
the need to regulate visitors to the city, it had, at first,
been neatly divided into two halves - the foreign community
and the Japanese people who served their needs. If there was
anything chaotic about the design of Yokohama, it had ebbed
down from the North.
Vince certainly understood that when his Japanese friends
talked about the wonders of Yokohama, they were hardly
thinking of Vince's apartment in Saedocho in the north-west
of the city, but the port area in which Yokohama had had its
origins - Yamashita Park, the Bay Bridge, Chinatown, the
Foreign Cemetery, Motomachi Shopping Street, Sankeien
Gardens, the New Grand Hotel. Vince's Yokohama was a good
three-quarters of an hour by bus from any of these
attraction.
It had never really been his intention to move to Yokohama
in the first place. His daytime job was in the heart of
Shinjuku and he trudged through Tokyo's busiest station,
every morning in order to teach a reluctant group of 18 and
19 year olds the basics of English Conversation. He was, in
fact, looking for something a lot closer than Saedocho.
Upon arrival in Japan, Vince and his wife, Connie, had
quickly moved into a foreigners' house called Buckingham
Palace in Tokyo's Nakano Ward, just two stops on the
Marunouchi line from Shinjuku. The place was made of
crumbling timber and rooms were divided by paper thin
sliding doors that fell out altogether if you leaned against
them. As gaijin houses went, the Palace wasn't so bad. No
one threw wild, all-night parties and everyone seemed very
friendly to Connie, if not to Vince himself. The landlady
was a petite Japanese woman called Yoshiko who had spent
several years in London and had developed an accent which
was a strange mix of BBC English and Shitamachi Japanese.
Yoshiko informed Vince and Connie that she hoped they would
help to inspire peace while they were living at the Palace.
If Vince hadn't immediately recognised the warning, he soon
discovered that his diplomatic skills were stretched to the
limits amid this strange mix of nationalities and cultural
interests. The problem with gaijin in Japan is that they're
all so damned talented. This shouldn't have come as a
surprise to Vince. People who liked to travel, he readily
understood, were likely to be adventurous in all endeavours.
One resident, a 19 year old American boy called Luke,
practised the bagpipes between seven and eight o'clock,
every evening, right on dinnertime. To his credit, Luke did
teach Vince that there was a difference between bagpipe
music and the sound of cats being strangled. After three
weeks of indigestion, Luke moved out and was replaced by a
Canadian ventriloquist called Leonie. Vince immediately
began to appreciate the regularity of Luke's bagpipe
rehearsals. Ventriloquism could occur when you were least
expecting it and Vince's indigestion didn't improve at all
when his meals started talking to him.
The final straw was when Sebastian, the insomniac mimic from
New Zealand, arrived. Sebastian was the oldest resident in
the house, a lumbering silver-haired man in his fifties.
Unfortunately, he preferred to impersonate a range of
standards from yesteryear. He specialised in Jimmy Stewart
and Cary Grant, but, on the English scene, it wasn't unusual
for Vince to wake up in the early hours of the morning and
find that Alan Whicker and Malcolm Muggeridge were
conversing outside his door. No wonder most Japanese people
thought foreigners were crazy.
If Vince and Connie had not been intending to look for more
permanent accomodation, they were by now combing the notice
boards of gaijin-friendly real estate agents trying to find
an apartment in Tokyo that was remotely affordable. This
proved to be no easy task. Vince soon realised that the
least complicated line of approach for a real estate agent
in Tokyo was to simply look blankly at Connie and Vince and
say that there was absolutely nothing available. Others
seemed happy to see gaijin and these, Vince decided, fell
into two categories - those who saw a bigger profit in
non-Japanese tenants and those who, usually through some
previous good experience with gaijin whether overseas or in
Japan, honestly believed that foreigners deserved the same
deal as the Japanese.
This last category was by far the rarest and when Vince and
Connie finally did find some of these right-minded
individuals, they soon discovered that their clientele did
not always share the real estate agents convictions or
enthusiasm. They had, in fact, signed four contracts,
arranged finance to cover two months of rent, an exorbitant
bond, insurance and a cash present for the landlord, when
their landlady-to-be would call and ask them if they went to
the toilet in the middle of the night.
"Er ... well ... sometimes," Vince would admit.
It would eventuate that the downstairs flat was occupied by
the landlady's very elderly aunt who would not only be
wakened by late night toilet-flushing, but would also suffer
great traumas as a result of it. It was a very regrettable
problem and unfortunately, they would not be able to rent
out the apartment to the Patchworks after all. The first
time this happened, it was doubly annoying because Sebastian
was practising his Richard Nixon impression in the
background while Vince stumbled through the conversation in
broken Japanese. He remembered only after the conversation
had ended that the Shuto Expressway which handled tens of
thousands of buses, trucks and cars in a day was less than a
half a block from the apartment and couldn't see how the
flushing of a toilet would bother an elderly lady when the
constant hum of engine noise and the intermittent honking of
horns didn't disturb her in the least.
By the time of the fourth such rejection, Vince was more
than wise to the elderly relative ploy and simply told the
woman, "No, we never use the toilet at all between the hours
of 5:00 p.m. and 10:00 a.m."
But it eventuated that this elderly aunt was bed-ridden and
toilet-use during the day would be equally if not more
troublesome.
"We both work and so we'll be out of the house most days,"
Vince countered.
But the days when Vince was not at work, it turned out,
would be the most troublesome for the aunt.
Vince exploded, "Why did you get the toilet installed in the
first place? Are they ornaments that only crazy foreigners
use? Don't Japanese people shit?"
Well, yes, they did, the woman admitted, but they did it in
a ... more ... more ... more Japanese way that was quite
acceptable to her elderly aunt.
In spite of his sheer frustration, Vince found himself
wondering just what it was that the Japanese did in the
toilet that was so different from what he himself did. It
was after all a western-style toilet, not one of those
trough toilets that you found in parks and railway stations
that required incredible balancing and manoeuvring skills.
In the end, it was Connie who found them a place to live.
She had some friends in Yokohama who had some other friends
in a four-storey apartment block and the landlady seemed to
have no objections to foreigners. Connie's friends, the
Atsukawas, were respected farmers in the district and would
act as guarantors for the Patchworks. Vince was reluctant at
first. The apartment was in Yokohama and Connie estimated
that he would spend some three hours a day commuting to and
from his daytime job in Shinjuku.
Connie bustled Vince onto the Marunouchi train and they rode
the line as far as Akasakamitsuke. They tramped through a
series of underground passages following little purple
circles before boarding another underground line, the
Hanzomon. The Hanzomon train was obviously a far more modern
line than the Marunouchi. Each platform was spotlessly clean
and had its only unique colour decor. The railway changed
its name twice before they got off. After Shibuya, it turned
from the Hanzomon line to the Shintamagawa line. And once it
emerged into the open air just before it crossed the Tama
river that marked the southern border of Tokyo, it became
the Denentoshi line.
Vince and Connie got off at Ichigao and caught a bus from
the nearby depot. The road for most of the way seemed too
narrow to allow two cars let alone two buses to pass, but on
the five or six occasions that an oncoming bus approached,
they just managed to edge past each other. The 20 minute
ride took in houses with established miniature gardens,
market garden farms and even some rice paddies. Vince had
been on buses in Tokyo and was quite used to broadcasted
messages informing you of the next stop and the ultimate
destination of the bus. He wasn't used to little warnings
from the recording about taking care to cross the road
carefully, the recklessness of riding bicycles too close
behind buses, or the dangers of earthquakes in the home or
in the bus.
Saedo was in Midori Ward, the most north-western part of
Yokohama. Midori literally meant green, but there was very
little green in or around Saedo. Vince's future landlady led
them both to the fourth and top floor of the apartment
building, which was called a mansion. The twenty flats
together, Vince reflected, may have represented what he'd
have considered a mansion, but the flats on their own hardly
deserved such a luxurious title. He scanned the horizon to
the north and the east. There were some hills with a
brownish scrub covering them, but other than that, all he
could see were factories, more mansions and an orange and
white chimney stack blowing white smoke rings into the air
amid far smaller houses with gardens of sculptured pines.
This particular mansion was a pinkish-brown colour. It had
two staircases, a rusty fire escape at the far end away from
the road and a sweeping set of steps at the front, which
reminded Vince of a home in a 1950's American television
sitcom set for no reason which he could put his finger on.
Vince and Connie had just been led through the door of
Manshon No. 403 when the Atsukawas arrived, hardly
containing their excitement. Vince had met them both several
times before, but he knew that Connie was already well on
the way to establishing a close friendship with Nozomi
Atsukawa and that she expected him to do the same with
Osamu. Vince always marvelled at how quickly Connie
established friendships. What was equally mystifying was how
few friends he inevitably made, although he seldom went out
of his way to be unfriendly. Osamu was a mild-mannered man
in his own way, balding with a far shinier scalp than Vince
himself.
Nozomi was gushing about the view to the south and
explaining that it was essential to have an apartment that
faced south because it kept the place warm in winter.
"You're from Australia," she announced to Vince, "you'll
love living in the country."
Vince looked through the windows to the south over the
balconies where he'd soon be hanging their futon and weekend
washing. There were more factories on this side, although he
could just make out one field. He tried to recall gum trees,
sheep grazing, fields of wheat, all the things he associated
with the word, "country" in his native Australia. Surely,
Nozomi must be joking.
The apartment itself turned out to be rather pleasant. It
was much larger than the 15 foot square room they had in
Buckingham Palace. There were two six tatami mat rooms
side-by-side, sliding glass doors that opened out onto the
verandah and the necessary plugs for the television. The
kitchen was definitely a one-person affair. As a cook, Vince
had always been addicted to bench space and he frowned at
the lack of it here.
Nozomi whizzed in front of him and pointed out exactly where
the stove and the refrigerator would go and Vince wondered
if he'd be able to get into the kitchen at all, let alone
cook in it. Then, there was a front room which had the only
window that faced north. It had vertical bars on it to stop
intruders, Osamu informed him, although they could just as
easily climb onto the roof and swing themselves down onto
the balcony. Vince noted the double-lock on the door and
the little phone on the wall of the kitchen which connected
with a speaker at the front door.
There was a shoe cupboard next to the open area at the front
door called the genkan where you took off your footwear
before entering the house and on the opposite side from the
front spare room, he could see the laundry, the shower, wash
basin with mirror, the western-style toilet and the
Japanese-style bath, which Vince loved to sit in and while
away hours.
Vince noted that while the kitchen had fluorescent lights
and a spotlight, neither tatami room had any light fittings
at all. When he asked about this, Nozomi replied:
"If it had light-fittings, it would be furnished."
Vince blinked and turned to the landlady who had been all
but silent since Nozomi and Osamu had arrived. Like all the
other landladies, she had bowed graciously when she'd met
them and offered elaborate greetings.
"Where's the elderly aunt?" Vince demanded.
The woman looked at him and giggled, covering irregular
teeth with her hand.
"Oh," she nodded, "so, you've heard my niece and her husband
live downstairs in 201. Don't you worry. If they make too
much noise, just tell me about it and I'll shut them up for
you."
A week later, Vince, Connie and the Matsumotos met with the
real estate agent and signed the papers. It had taken Vince
a week to sort out another loan from the skeptical office
staff of the college for which he worked. Connie and Vince
owned a small house in country Victoria, which they rented
for $(Australian)120 a week. He remembered that he'd had to
take out a loan to buy it. Now, he found himself in the
position of having to take out a loan just to move into a
rented house. He had to put forward the equivalent of a full
three months rent as bond. Normally, only two months was
required, he was told, but when his landlord and lady had
built this home, they had obtained the loan on the guarantee
that they would not accept gifts of any sort. Thus, the
extra bond payment.
If this made absolutely no sense to Vince, he still signed
along the dotted line. And so, his life as a supercommuter
began. Every morning, he joined the hundreds of thousands
from Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa, who crushed onto the
trains and invaded Tokyo. The Atsukawas helped them shift
into their new home and while Osamu struggled with Vince to
carry boxes and suitcases up four flights of stairs, Nozomi
and Connie went around to the local department store to look
at gas stoves, washing machines, fridges and the minor
appliances that would make them self-sufficient.
When they returned, Nozomi handed Vince a fruit box full of
packaged rubbish bags.
"It is a tradition in Japan," she explained, "to give a
present to all of your neighbours when you move into a new
house. Most people only give presents to the people on the
same floor and the one underneath, but because you are not
Japanese, we think it is best for you to give them to
everyone. This is our present to you and your present to
your new neighbours."
And so, over the next week, Vince and Connie went around the
other flats and presented those amazed neighbours who were
at home with smoky black rubbish bags.
It wasn't until several months later that Vince discovered
that it was traditional to give soba buckwheat noodles when
you moved into a new mansion. Nozomi, it turned out, had
just thought that rubbish bags were far more practical than
noodles. Vince wondered why none of his neighbours had said
anything. Nobody had even laughed at their obvious mistake.
And then, he realised, Connie and he were foreigners. So,
Japanese give noodles. Australians, they assumed, must give
rubbish bags. Crazy foreigners.