In my last entry more than a month ago, Yellow: CITRON Tokyo, I wrote of the sublime, puckering sweetness that had me sorely tempted to return. I could taste it.
I wasn’t kidding. Mid May, a bit down in the dumps after my bi-weekly ikebana classes recessed for summer (as well as other boring reasons I won’t mention), I was deep into a flirtation with the idea of returning to Tokyo.
Image credit to Tokyo Skytree Website. http://www.tokyo-skytree.jp/en/
When I started I had no serious intention of going, I was merely trying to cheer myself up. I flipped through back issues of Time Out Tokyo, Kateigaho and Omosan Street; clicked on bookmarked websites, opened the To Do List files from last year and re-read journals. Much the way I poured over the Sears Christmas Wish Book as a child or later as an adult tore pages from magazines to create a dream board, toying with the idea was enough.
My appetite whet, I studied the Sogetsu Kaikan October and November schedules. Then I revised my “Take to Tokyo” checklist from winter to autumn. Once I was that far along there didn’t seem to be any reason why I shouldn’t send a query to the company which had provided my furnished suite last year. Then I checked flight schedules and airfare.
Torii in Meiji Shrine Park
Even so, I hesitated. When I mentioned that to a friend she couldn’t understand why. GO! She urged. Life is short, health can be precarious. Do it while—do it because—you can! Put that way, I thought: Why not? She was right. There was no rational reason not to go.
Photo credit to Air Canada Website
I fired off an email to my travel agent, put down the plastic and booked the flights. A week later I received confirmation that a studio suite in Nikko House where I lived last winter had become available. That was something I’d been told they couldn’t guarantee and hadn’t expected to ascertain before mid-August.
Yuka-san and I strolling through Asakusa, Tokyo. 2017.
Much as they did last year and in very short order, like pieces of a child’s interlocking picture puzzle, the elements clicked effortlessly one by one. I bite on the obvious cliché. No, I’m not going to write that, but I’ll flirt on the borderline and quote Sir Paul and John: Let it be.