natasha nakamura's diary

August 16

Some things have remained the same.

People still fan themselves with fold-up fans when they're hot. We still have our collapsible umbrellas, thank god, foreign un-collapsible umbrellas being too large to carry without a swagger. (I see that MUJI sells a collapsible bike, a fine idea.) Train stations still have tucked away somewhere a discreet little vase of flowers. There is still Pokari Sweat. The trains still give out super-polite announcements of the next station and which side the doors will open on, in a diction so soft to my foreign-language-tuned ears that it seems childish.  Women still hang cute little dangly things from their bags. They still paint their toenails gaudy colors but have taken to applying glitter to them--ugh. (Might as well apply glitter to their eyeballs.)

At any rate, it's good to be back. The apartment is small--just room for two chairs and a small table, but after all, small apartments are a lot easier to take care of, and the rent is cheaper than a reasonable place in either New York or Paris because apartments in those cities are larger than they have to be if all you use them for is for sleeping and a place to keep your clothes.