Midnight and the Meaning of Love (27 page)

I thought that arriving in Shinjuku late at night would put me at a disadvantage since I was unfamiliar with the place and its layout. Yet at Shinjuku station, the night was the same as day. Although it was now 11:00 p.m., the station was packed with people as though this was their peak hour. Even though New York is known as “the city that never sleeps,” Tokyo was quite different. In New York there is a day crowd and a night crowd. No way can the New York night crowd match the numbers that flow through the city during working hours. But here in Shinjuku, it seemed to be happening. Men and women in suits, teenagers, families, and tourists were all moving about. This wasn’t the club crowd or the party crowd. These just seemed like everyday normal people ignoring the time and living to the fullest or perhaps just getting off from working twelve-hour days or coming back from night schools. I wasn’t sure. Everything was all lit up with high-watt fluorescent bulbs. The only crime was to stop moving, because the heavy population was constantly flowing in what seemed like a daily march routine and rhythm.

I put one strap of my duffel bag on my left shoulder and the other strap on my right. I picked up my carry-on and began walking. I had an option to jump in a cab but I decided against it. I had checked the map, knew the direction I was to move in, and was drawn in by everything I was seeing and feeling.

It was bugged out seeing hundreds and thousands of Japanese and a splash of other Asian faces and no whites. It was obvious that this was
their
country. Confidence comes in numbers, I know. They were packed in escalators and in all the corridors, the small and the wide, spinning through all the turnstiles and jamming through all the exits and entrances all at the same time. As I exited the west side of Shinjuku station along with three hundred other walkers, I ran up on a wall of vending machines. I stepped all the way in to keep out of the way of the flow. Of course I had seen vending machines before in Brooklyn back when Umma was in the hospital giving birth to Naja.
Yet these machines were different, with different designs and styles and products for sale and much more plentiful. I counted seven on the wall I was staring at and five directly across the street.

Less than sixty seconds standing on my feet in Shinjuku and all I could think about was business. One vending machine sold cigarettes, a variety of brands. I thought about how that couldn’t happen in the US because you had to be a certain age to buy cigarettes and in the business district you would definitely get carded. On my block and in some local hoods, kids could cop “loosies” for a quarter each. Even though the kids were underage, some shop owners would risk their license just to keep the peace with the customers and particularly good customers who sent their ten-year-old daughters and sons to pick up cigarettes for them.

The next vending machine was selling beer and liquor. I didn’t recognize some of the brands but I imagined how much money a vending machine liquor store could make on my block alone. Except if there was a vending machine offering beer or liquor on my Brooklyn block, the owner would have to bulletproof it and use Plexiglas instead of real glass. He’d have to build it sunken into the cement and still put heavy chains around it also.

The next machine sold hot coffee, iced coffee, hot tea, or iced tea. Drop a coin in that sucker and the can came out fully heated. I tried it out even though I didn’t want to drink no coffee. The can was so hot, I had to throw it back and forth in my hands to cool it off.

The next machine sold hot soups of various kinds.

The one beside it sold water, juices, and sodas.

The next machine sold toothpaste and shaving cream, combs and toothbrushes, and even had a row of men’s new and clean white underwear individually wrapped that could be purchased. Drop in a coin and they fell right out the bottom slot.

But the most fascinating vending machine was the last one on this row. It had a slot for bills and a separate one for coins; put in your yen and get a brand-new pair of kicks.
Get the fuck out of here,
I thought to myself,
sneakers! What about a Nike vending machine!
What a quiet and intelligent way to earn money twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. I would be earning money on the Christians’ Christmas, on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, on all the dead presidents’ birthdays and Labor Day too. It was a
good legal business, but I imagined it involved about 85 percent less effort than Umma Designs. If I owned even one of these machines, I could come around at three or four in the morning, collect my stack and rack of bills and bags of coins, and no one would even know who was the mastermind behind my operation. I would switch up my schedule, keep it random so that no one could clock my movements. Unlike being a store owner, and having to sit in the same store all day and welcome any type of customer, if I owned all seven of these machines, no one would even know my name or address or personal information, ninja style.

I looked the machines over searching for a company name or phone number. I wanted to jot it down in my notebook and maybe take a serious look into the business of it. I found a metal plate with information on it, all written in kanji and completely incomprehensible to me.

I pushed off. But I knew I’d be back. I planned to hold on to the idea. As I moved, my mind kept coming up with estimates on how much each machine cost, how much it cost to stock it, and guesses about how many people flowed through this Shinjuku area day and night, night and day.

In this city of lights, every single store was lit up with bright colors that popped. It was impossible to overlook those brilliant reds blaring, some blinking, some neon. There were hot pinks and electric blues and blinding yellow-gold lights as well. On the building tops were gigantic television screens flashing advertisements, the product changing every few seconds. There were people hired to hand out cards and flyers and tissue packs with ads plastered across the backside. There were dancing girls in go-go shorts and leather boots singing jingles to draw in customers. The lights were not in just one section. They went on as far as my eyes could see in every direction.

I was passing by late-night bookstores. Imagine that, a place where readers could chill and read no matter the time of night. These bookstores were packed, not empty like Marty Bookbinder’s. And in the slow walk I was on, it seemed that there were as many bookstores in Shinjuku as the hood had liquor stores and churches.

The streets were lined with vendors manning food carts. They had raised umbrellas and hung lanterns and brought in stools seated close to the ground, they also sat on upside-down crates. There were small
portable tables with stacks of chopsticks and sauces in glasses placed on each one. I couldn’t tell you what food they were serving. I looked but I didn’t recognize it. The main thing was, businesswise, people were eating it up eagerly. Several couples were seated side by side enjoying. I wondered if these carts were considered licensed and legal, or if at a certain moment they would have to break it all down and pack it up and start hauling and running like in New York, where random vendors live a dog’s life and get got for their products by crooked cops who steal their merchandise from them and still hand them a high-priced ticket for a “city code violation.” But I didn’t see nobody running and I didn’t see no cops! Everyone was working or walking calmly, serving customers or minding their business and keeping it moving. I respected that.

I thought it was an oversized arcade, but it wasn’t. It was a spot called “Pachinko.” It took me about three and half minutes to figure out this was their gambling spot.
Strange hustle
, I thought. There were about three hundred fifty men sitting in front of individual machines that looked like pinball machines, with a bucket filled with tiny silver balls. They kept feeding the machines with the balls in hopes of a jackpot. But it looked like they never reached the jackpot. A lot of these men appeared to be businessmen who hadn’t been home from work since they’d left probably early this morning. Still wearing their suits, they had their briefcases and one or two bags of groceries sitting beside them. There was nothing between them and that pachinko machine except tobacco clouds, as they smoked more and more with each try for fast money.

Rows and rows of restaurants were squeezed into tight spaces. I laughed at joints that were legit “eat in” spots, so small that they only had three tables and six chairs. I tried to do the math on how many guests they had to turn all day to make their money back with only a six-person capacity. Some small spots had no tables but had instead one long counter for their customers to eat on and six stools. Their customers all ate facing the wall, not too cool for families and couples, I figured.

The architecture and craftsmanship of each of these shops was dope, though. And each one has its own style. Some were made all from glass. I could stand outside and see everything that was going on inside. I could see the cooks, who were mostly males wearing
either white chef jackets or long chef aprons, their pants wide and baggy but cinched by a drawstring at the waist and ankles. Most of them covered their heads with white hand towels wrapped half like a turban and half like how some Brooklyn cats rock it in the summer or after a game. I could watch them chopping vegetables, grilling fish, and boiling pots of water and stirring soups with a paddle ’cause the iron kettles were so wide and deep. Right next door would be a restaurant made only of wood, no glass. I could not read the kanji signs that identified who they were and what they were selling, but when the doors slid open, I could see the crowd seated elbow to elbow and could tell whatever it was, it was in high demand. Noodle shops were easy to recognize. They were packed with mostly men, each of them seeming not to be with the other, all their backs bent over and faces close to their bowls.

On the streets of northern Sudan, where I’m from, many men moved with men and their sons or their fathers. So a place where men and women moved in separate packs, at separate times, to separate places, was not unfamiliar to me.

It didn’t take long for me to note that in many cases, I stood taller than the front door of these establishments. The seats were so close together and people so uniformly slim that I thought I might be too broad and muscular to fit into their shoulder-to-shoulder seating pattern. This made me feel bigger than life and dominant, like this character named Gulliver whose story I once read.

I was a foreigner watching each of them and all of their things and ways so closely, yet not one of them was watching me. I felt like a black leopard in the chicken coop or even out in the wetlands where the gazelles gathered, while I was camouflaged by the night. Not that I was on the prowl or the attack, but I was definitely capable of being provoked.

* * *

Before I rounded the bend to the side alley where the hostel was supposed to be located, I saw one half-wooden, half-glass shop on the corner, where there was a full pig’s leg with the black hoof still attached, hoisted and mounted on the same counter where the customers sat eating. The cook stood on the opposite side of the counter and carved slices of the pork and placed it in boxed plates for the
customer to eat. It got me more alert. I always know, as a Muslim, I have to be mindful of any eating place because of the difference between what we are forbidden to eat and what others accept. I knew the international symbol for halal restaurants and stores. Tomorrow at sunset, when my first day of fasting came to a close, and during the time leading up to sunset, I would be looking out for that symbol before sitting down to eat anything. I had already walked almost two miles and I had not seen one halal shop so far.

A narrow alley, completely different from the wide main street that I walked down, led me to my Shinjuku hostel. There were no noises in the alley. It was lit with dimmer light and colors and very peaceful. It was completely clean, no garbage anywhere, no piss in the corners or even globs of gum mashed into the ground. There were no tossed or empty bottles or cigarette butts. There was no dog shit or dogs, there were no mounds of mucous or spit on the curb.

There was a cool breeze, like there often is in the warm spring when the sun has been down for hours. I stood still for some seconds, let the breeze move over me and the silence soothe me. I took a deep breath, thinking this is how Tokyo feels after being here for less than one hour. It was an unfamiliar feeling from my seven years in America. The Japanese were conducting business or being served. There was not one menacing glare. There was not one man who exuded a threat. I had not seen one cop or even thought about my guns. Maybe when I woke up tomorrow, it would all change. But for now, I was feeling alright.

* * *

In my temporary room, the heavy and attractive door slid open from right to left. It was well built and perfectly on track. I inspected it carefully. I didn’t know if it was because my Southern Sudanese grandfather was a craftsman, who worked with wood and made and built all types of things, that I always paid attention to the quality and craftsmanship of everything. I just knew that it was something I did.

As soon as I shut the door behind me, I noticed and then confirmed that it actually had no lock on it. It was not that the door was damaged or broken. It simply was not designed with a lock on either side.

A quick walk back down the hallway, I asked about the lock. The
same security guard who had let me in and performed a deep bow to greet me when I first arrived, explained in a series of mostly gestures that the front door to the hostel was locked and secure. The only way for anyone to enter was with the electronic key, the same kind he had given me after I paid for a two-night stay. Or I could be buzzed in, but he assured me that he was in full control of the buzzer and that there was twenty-four hour security. Therefore, there was no reason for the individual guest room doors to be locked.