Six days And Seven Nights In Yokohama

July 8, 2016
Ernest Alanki
Posted in Travel & Places

I noticed that my shoes had been scrubbed cleaned after lunch at the Yokohama train station. I stared at them for no reason other than that they looked peculiar. A sudden pang of hunger—close to knocking me into permanent coma—had hauled me out of my hotel room into the streets in search for food. A large bowl of fried rice, tofu, dumplings, and the tastiest plate of flavorless vegetables, restored my food-impaired sight. Hallelujah. I could see once again.

My shoes. Cleaned?

As far back as I remembered I hadn’t dusted them for months. It wasn’t part of the subculture of Swedish hipster movement to go about dusting your shoes daily. The dustier they were the more radically progressive you were inclined. I’ve seen my fair share of dirtier than filth Converses, worn by urban folks looking more gorgeous than you could ever imagine the arousing face of a beautiful moon to be. Mine were a pair of blue Suede shoes, cream-colored soles and blue laces. And when you have blue Suede shoes with cream-colored soles and blue laces, you don’t normally care a thing about dusting them everyday.

I looked up, to the splendid midday sparkling outside the spotless glass of the window designed with meaningless Chinese characters. The dizzying humidity poured into my lungs and caused me to marvel if that was the source of my abrupt paranoia. The damp air invaded the air-conditioned restaurant, the mostly Japanese clientele seeming oblivious. They were men and women lunching on the variety of rich Japanese cuisine I couldn’t even start talking about right now. They were mostly unaccompanied, which made me wonder.

A myriad of folks minding their business, hurried about the square beyond the window. They went towards the sprawling high rises and the gleaming Ferris wheel facing the Yokohama harbor.

Japanese style, I thought.

Work uniforms.

Pressed white shirts over black pants and skirts.

Subtle shades of formal white and black attires.

Remarkably polished shoes marched in every direction.

Shoes scrubbed and polished to the point that you didn’t need imagination to see the incandescent glow of the starry sun reflecting in them.

I stared at my brand new shoes in renewed amazement, when a waiter hollered in a rapid burst of impressive Japanese, to the appearance of a new customer at the door. She sounded to me like stones breaking down a gigantic glass house. The newcomer was old and bent ninety degrees at the neck. His salty-white head hung in obedience to life’s lessons. This gentleman who walked with a dignified wobble, was no more than four feet tall. Of an amazing small stature, he was wearing black shoes polished to the shiniest. It was the only thing that mattered to me in the mix of his nondescript outfit composed of a loose-fitting dark suit.

Then it occurred to me. The cleaners at the Sakuragicho Washington Hotel, located across the street. They must have taken care of my shoes at some point the day before when I was out and about. There I’d made a home for six awesome days and seven nights of wonder in Yokohama.

The day before yesterday—another sultry Thursday afternoon that ended with a maddening evening downpour—a heavy night out with friends drinking and singing Karaoke, I decided to stay inside. A note on the door announced my need for privacy. My room wasn’t to be cleaned. Soon after, a letter in a distinguished white envelope, slipped in under the door, and rested on the checkered dark carpet. I sat up from my bed with a start, picked up the envelop, turned it over, curiously trying to imagine if a letter had ever been slipped under my hotel room door before. I found not the faintest recollection of such a thing.

“We are afraid we cannot clean your room today because of the sign on the door. If you need replenishment of amenities, contact the front desk.“

It was a well-crafted letter, very polite, with my names beautifully scribbled on the top right hand corner, signed, dated and sealed. It wasn’t just a slip of white paper with some blue ink markings of some bizarre handwriting, slipped in under the door. It was a typed enveloped letter delivered by first class service.

I’ve been fortunate enough to live in more hotels across the diverse cultures of our amazing world than I care to remember. From the trendiest to the trashiest. This one here, this astonishing idea of a typed enveloped letter informing me of a certain sadness I’d caused a certain individual by depriving them of the pleasure of cleaning my room, and perhaps my Suede shoes, was my first. It was an extraordinary first experience.

Let me go straight to the remarkable fact of Japanese orderliness, of their highly ordered politeness and supreme service mindedness—of a whole suite of waiters terrifying you at the restaurant entrance with a unified uproarious chant of welcome, and similar wails of goodbye following you upon departure. In a language you barely understood. And of course, cleaners providing a remarkable shoe cleaning service you weren’t quite sure how you paid for. Or when you realize that you are the only one smoking cigarettes in the sparkling streets. Then you soon find yourself hiding in crowded glass cubicles by a roadside, by a train station, in the company of fellow smokers who are too busy smoking to notice you. Or when you are suddenly caught frowning suspiciously at a row of lonely soft drinks and candy vending machines in the middle of nowhere, when you are out taking a random peaceful walk in the woods, in the lavished greenery of the virgin countryside. Or when you find out to your astonishing disbelief that you may be the rudest person alive. How uncultured of you to tip the waiter?

You name it, but make sure you go and see for yourself. I’m just the message bearer. And when you come back, we can talk for endless hours about the wonderful country where toilet seats are fitted with robot. Mechanical devices wash your bottom and take care of that part, private to only the womankind.

Six awesome days and seven nights of wonder in Yokohama, is all you need.

Ernest Alanki is on Twitter: @eAlanki

Ernest Alanki writes short stories, poems and novel length fiction. His works have appeared or will soon feature in The Journal of Microliterature, DUNIA Magazine and The American Mensa ltd., Writer’s Magazine (Calliope), Big Stupid and Ngoh Kuoh Reviews. Now a Swedish citizen, he lives and works as an academician in Stockholm. His first novel Chocolate Shop Perverts was published by HopeRoad Publishing.