Today the weather has cooled down. In fact, since yesterday evening it started to rain a little. The clouds have floated down to visit the tips of the little mountains that surround the town in which I’m living, and there is a thin mist in the air from the constant drizzle. It remains quiet, peaceful, yet busy as people get on with what they normally do. It’s something I’ve noticed to be unique to Japan – quiet and busy at the same time. Especially in Tokyo, during the day at least, you can see lots of people everywhere but no one is speaking. And if they are, it is a quiet hum.
This kind of quiet helps the background noise to be louder. I’ve noticed that the cars here rarely use their horn, and the bicycles never ring their bell. I’m slowly learning to hear the subtle sound of bicycle wheels rolling on the grit of a footpath, or the drone of a car engine coming towards you as you cross the road. More importantly, my ears have become sensitive to the weather. I hear how hard the rain is falling, the drips sounding like beats of a drum from far away. It certainly tells me a little about how Japanese culture may be shaped by its environment.
Well, this is the little island where several tectonic plates meet… and this leaves it in a vulnerable position. Maybe this is why the Japanese are often so organised, motivated by advanced planning and hierarchy. This influence is so strong that not even modern life can change this way of thinking. When you stay here long enough, you can hear that underneath the first layer of quiet there is a sea of thoughts swooshing softly like a school of fish swimming in unison along the coastline. I felt it a few years ago, when I was stuck inside a house while a category 5 typhoon was looming over Tokyo.
It was the first time that I was in such a situation, and I admit it was a little scary for me. The day before the warning, I went to the supermarket to buy some food and there was no panic. People were walking normally on the streets, no one was rushing, even though almost the aisles in the grocery store were starting to be emptied of rice and noodles. It was getting dark, I walked back home quickly and started to prepare myself. The wind was picking up, the rain was starting to pour. I barely slept through the night, and the next day I sat in my bed constantly checking the weather and feeling the walls of the house move. I cringed with every subtle sway, my heart beat a little faster every time I heard an alarm sound. We received alerts through the phone, which automatically had a loud and shrill tone to notify you of the necessity to take shelter or not. That day, the quietness had become very loud.
Thankfully, it only lasted that day. The next morning, the sun came out. I was shocked… it was as if nothing had happened. We went for a walk to a nearby temple, just for something to do, and we happened to witness a festival taking place. I still don’t know what that festival was, but there were a big group of men carrying a float and wearing loincloths. It was certainly an interesting site to see after I had been spending the previous day frozen in place. The quiet busy-ness was once again in the air, a comforting presence for me.
In fact, that happened the last time I had visited Japan… a little less than 5 years ago. The loud drizzle of last night and this morning brought this memory back into my mind. The soft patter of rain, which I normally find so comforting during the night, had kept me up. The faint ringing of an ambulance siren in the background seemed to settle in my mind and after a while, I wondered if I was just imagining it. My mind has joined the sea of the others who live here, racing with thoughts that stay trapped behind my closed lips. Instead of letting out my concerns, I just get on with the things that I need to do… a few more days rest, before I get my pen out and start writing the first chapter of my book.
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