A Place between Places

We wait - bound within the tracks amidst a hundred bodies. The roof keeps snow off our faces but the cold has a different, piercing aura we can’t keep from seeping into our coats. When the rapid train at last arrives swathes of people crash against the carriages like waves against unyielding cliffs.

Japan is made of neat lines and wild strokes. Like the kanji drawn on paper lanterns hung from shopfronts, flapping in the wind – it’s elegant, confusing, full of endless meanings. We stand slightly bent, hand over our business cards with two hands. Always. Never one. We stand to the left side of escalators so those rushing can scramble up/down/up/down. We stand within painted lines. But when it’s peak hour at the station there are no guidelines - you are alone amongst tens of millions of souls.  

My husband’s gloved hand slips from mine. The currents carry him away. By the time we reunite most carriages are bursting at the seams with people. The station-jingle chortles mockingly from speakers. Remember the golden rule - when the music ends the doors close. We make for one, no room. Rush another, a desperate salary-man beats us. I glimpse a gap connecting two carriages. My husband sees space emerge three carriages down.

With travel-telepathy honed over ten loving years we wordlessly promise to find each other at our destination. I throw myself into the connecting space. He throttles down the platform and leaps into a car. The orange soles of his sneakers flashing like traffic lights.

Doors close and we plunge into silence. There is a fingernail gap between my back and the glass. I may have even lost a hair or two. My cheek is intimate with the back of a man’s feather down jacket. The train fires up and forges ahead. Blinding white outside immediately illuminates all faces. We are too fast for snow to catch us. Snow trails down into empty windows of time the flying train leaves behind. We cram in together, bend and flow with the ebb of the train carriage. The train rocks left, we rock left. The train stops, we all surge.

I shuffle around so my face is a wisp away from the window. Sun ricocheting off the snow is so bright I reach for my sunglasses but the space is too tight. I can’t get my hand into my pocket. Instead I rotate again and turn face-in. My attention floats over faces in this crowd.

A couple absent-mindedly scrolling phones, tilting their heads together. Some strapping German lads boldly braving the crush with their bulky bodies and bulkier snowboards. Three old women with suitcases look like they own this train, chirping louder than schoolgirls on excursion. They chatter staccato then raucously cackle.

We stop. Doors open. People peel off. The air already smells fresher. If the word open had a smell this is the aroma. There’s space again. It feels like a place between places. The train lurches and we bend, repeat. This time it’s a big one. Not like reeds wavering in the river but pages being torn from the spine. I go down swinging and try to reach a handhold, surface, something. But my arms are pinned by bodies.

A merciful hand appears. It wrenches me onto a suitcase and latches me onto its handle. One of the gaggling grannies smiles up at me. How is she so strong? She babbles in Japanese. I respond ‘Scoshi nihongo’ and close fingers into a little circle (incorrect Japanese for ‘I speak a little’). She giddily chatters anyway. The others tap her shoulder. Words said in a flurry. There’s warmth floating among them, connections unseen by eyes alone. I realize my hand is still on their suitcase and snatch it away. In the whites of their red-crinkled eyes I see life teeming. At the next stop they leave. The doors close and their voices rip from the carriage to a barren, icy rural station.  

We arrive at Otaru. People and snow drift pass and I find my husband on the platform. Gloved hands conjoin. Magnetic love always finds itself again. Snow plummets with vengeance, frustrated it couldn’t reach us earlier. It won’t hold back now. We get ready for the transfer. The next train is a polar opposite - small, rickety carriages containing us and three other people. The train grips tighter and tighter to the ice-ridden coastline.

We go to Yoichi. Whisky warms us. I pull the toggles on my hood tight. I am arctic chic. We have herring sandwiches and Sheppard’s pie at Nikka Distillery. We taste wine in a hidden enclave at the station. We stumble through snow for hot-pot, cocktails and bars with cats inside. We leave Otaru full of salty broth and negronis.

The ride home always feels faster, sadder. I would never see those women again. 

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Meredith McLean is an Australian writer living in Japan. In addition to ten years’ experience in marketing and lifestyle magazine publishing, she tries to find time to use her qualification in viticulture, and occasionally plays drums at very forgiving jam-night bars. You can find her works in magazines such as Aniko Press, The AU Review, Froth Beer Mag and Concrescence. She resides in a shoebox apartment in Tokyo but diligently tries to visit another part of the Kanto region every fortnight, and a different prefecture every other month.