June 16th, the seventh day in Tokyo

The day before we head out to the mountains the sky is falling down. 58 mm of rain. An amount of water unimaginable for me, a person born and raised in the Netherlands, a country known for its rain. 58 mm of rain means rain all day. Non-stop. Rain that gets you soaked within minutes. Rain that doesn’t allow you to open your eyes, unless you wear a big hat or umbrella.

I still can’t stay inside. It is our last day in Tokyo and I need the thrill of this city. I ask Julien to give me a few hours alone and let me run some errands before we leave. I need new film rolls, before we leave to the countryside and I. needs a toothbrush. I am quite certain, I can’t buy film anywhere else outside of the city. Julien is off and he doesn’t like rain. Besides, he’ll go out this afternoon and evening, so I’ll be alone with the kids again. 

I take the train to Ebisu and I sit down at the Blue Bottle Cafe at the entrance of the station. It’s too rainy to move further and the camera shop is only a five-minute walk away. I watch people passing by. Every single person carries a transparent umbrella. There are so many suits, office heels and suitcases. Everyone seems to be in a hurry. 

“Is it okay to become addicted to the call of a city? Why does it feel so ridiculously good to sit here without my children?” 

What is it with this city that it always makes my heart beat twice as fast? The same questions rise as 15 years ago, when I was living here. First as a student, but later as a person who simply couldn’t leave. Is it okay to become addicted to the call of a city? Does this city manipulate me into loving it so much that I could forget my other life? Why does it feel so ridiculously good to sit here without my children? 

I remember how, at some point, I didn’t like myself for loving the energy of Tokyo so much. Tokyo, with its work-hard-play-hard culture. Work hard, spend hard. Consume. Still, I wish I could spend a week alone here. Watching people. Drinking coffee. Writing my thoughts down. A quiet mind in this dazzling, fast and full city. 

Does the fact that I sit down here and watch people passing by make me a romanticus of a privileged white Western observer? Am I still a white observer after being here so many times? After being with Julien and raising our kids with both cultures? 

I don’t think there is a greater contract between the place we are visiting from tomorrow and the street we are staying now. Takeshita Dori, a street that literally yells “buy me” – there are speakers everywhere with music and voices selling products – and that sells only useless, cheap, plastic, probably very unethically-made items. This place versus the house we will be visiting tomorrow, on top of a mountain, completely isolated from the ‘human’ world, with no running water. Completely self-sustainable, only depending on the earth and the water source. 

I am both a city junky and a nature loving activist. But I know I couldn’t live in Tokyo and be lived by it. I hate having the feeling I’m being lived by something. The dream of having the tools to not depend on the city anymore is bigger. And again my thoughts go back to that iPhone. That phone that also got me hooked, that made me not leave the house without it.  

And how about this warm, comforting oat latte for 700 yen? Am I just the personification of ‘oat milk elite’, a term brought to life by Jonas Kooy’s concept Havermelkelite, depicting the generation of Millennials who can’t afford to buy a house and instead shows their wealth by drinking overpriced oat latte’s and natural wine? A privileged white person, who flies to Japan with her family and drinks oat latte, while thinking about the fact that she drinks oat latte and that she is privileged and about her wish to move out of the city, although she will probably die in the middle of it?  

I leave the cafe and go buy 8 camera rolls for the next 2 weeks. I take my time. I watch all the analogue cameras in the shopping window. Buy me, buy me, buy me, they say. I don’t buy one, even though the yen is so low that they have become kind of affordable. I will just keep them in mind. 

When I come home around 11:30 L. is watching a film. 

‘Are you watching Bami?’, I say surprised. I don’t mind so much, it’s super rainy, but at the same time it annoys me, that if Julien is alone with the kids – which is kind of the first time since 10 days, yesterday it was night and they were basically sleeping – he puts them in front of a screen. Besides: it will rain all day. What am I supposed to do at the end of the day? I won’t be going out for dinner alone with them. I will stay home and cook. L. will definitely ask for her usual screen time.

‘Its’ rainy’, he adds. 

‘Yes, I understand, but I brought a lot of games, books, toys and pencils. Besides, isn’t it a bit harsh for a 4-years old, with the mum dying and all?’ 

‘That’s no problem’, replies Julien, without even looking at me. ‘She watched it last night as well. She didn’t mind.’

‘What?’ I say confused. ‘But last night she watched Snow White, right?’ 

‘Yes, and after Bambi’, he sighs, continuing scrolling on his phone. 

I don’t say anything, because my throat is burning and I almost start crying. Sometimes I feel so deeply frustrated by our inability to communicate. How can two people be so different on a subject? I thought we agreed on as little screen time as possible. 

‘It’s holiday’, he adds annoyed. ‘As if you never put her in front of a screen.’ 

‘I do it when I cook. I thought that was our rule and agreement. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it now.’ 

I don’t want to fight in front of the children, and I feel like I’m boiling inside. My euphoric mood is gone. The brief moment of freedom has become a bad thing. It meant I left the kids in front of a screen. 

We go out for lunch. We don’t talk to each other. He is angry at me for being uptight, I’m angry at him for being lazy. I guess sometimes that’s what it means to be a parents too. It can be so difficult.