My first hours in Tokyo were coloured, to some degree, by a medical issue. The colour was tango pink and it appeared on a comically swollen right foot. Some combination of factors, including, no doubt, my hiking expeditions, had led to the formation of painful blisters between and on my toes. I began to notice them on the way to Auckland airport, and then most acutely shortly after I arrived. There, in the corner of a food court, I removed the shoe and sock from the offending foot and undertook primitive surgery before a gallery of horrified travellers. My toes red and weeping, I felt almost as if I were about to faint. During the flight I had to remove my shoe again and prop my foot up on my backpack in the very limited space underneath the seat in front of me. Rest was elusive. As we neared Narita airport I put the shoe back on and noted that it seemed an unusually snug fit.
Limping determinedly with my luggage and guitar, I managed to negotiate the airport's labyrinth of retail outlets and secure an adaptor, some shampoo and a SIM card. It was then a further couple of hours by train and about ten minutes by foot to my accomodation, where, over a tatami mat, the grisly discovery was made. It was as if, by removing my sock, I was unveiling a child's drawing.
One shouldn't catalogue one's symptoms into an online search engine but one invariably does. My research informed me I was in the throes of Diabetes. I imagined inscrutable Japanese clinic visits and tortuous exchanges with my travel insurance company. I took the only sensible course of action: I went to sleep and hoped the thing would bloody well deflate by the morning.
It didn't, at least not noticeably, but the pain had largely subsided and I was able to venture outdoors. Walking the grey streets of Suginami, the initial impression is of extreme uniformity; but gaze headlong down a road and you get the sense of a subtle aestheticism, signposts and lamps arranging themselves into fanned decks. Just remember to snap out of your reverie before you are cleaned up by one of the cyclists wobbling along the periphery.
It was raining on my first day out and even though I was among the skyscrapers of Shinjuku, shelter was scarce. I drew my umbrella from my bag with great reluctance, knowing I was trading the problem of being soaked with the problem of dealing with a wet umbrella all day. I then chose a direction at random and, after a short while, found nothing. Cursing Kerouac, I rejoined the ranks of tourists holding out their phones like bewildered dowsers.