How Do We Aimasu
Yifan Ma
He is the first one in line waiting for the train to stop. Shortly, with the squeaky noise, the door slowly shifts to the right. He picks up his backpack, grasps the handle of the luggage next to him and carefully walks down the steps extended from the bottom of the coach. One, two. Soles of both feet pressing against soles of shoes. A force exerting on the metal staircase by shoes. All forces in the universe come in pairs. The same force exerts on me from the staircase. Chemical energy converting to potential energy. Muscle contracting, brief suspension in the air, potential energy decreases to zero. I land on the ground. He jumps off the last staircase with his suitcase and lands with both feet on the ground. With a bright smile, he drags the suitcase away, ignoring the strangers’s stares.
This is the first time he is in Japan. It is also the first time that he is in Kyoto, the place he always wanted to visit. Why Kyoto? Could be the sweet desserts; could be the view; could be the anime and manga that he reads. He wants to see and feel the city. And now, he is here.
Walking out of the train station, he begins to wander the streets and the alleys. Those alleys are narrow, maybe a spacious SUV would not even fit through without scraping off the dark-brown bamboo pieces off the walls. There are so many of them, lining up against on the wall and squeezing each other to fit. He feels a bit sweaty. He raises his head up in an angle to avoid looking directly at the sun, and there is the clear blue sky without any traces of shade. Sun is shining directly into the alleys, reflecting off the signs hanging in front of the stores, onto me. “Should have brought my cap with me,” he murmurs. As he lowers his head and looks back at the alley, a unique store sign catches his attention. On the corner of the intersection at the end of the alley, there is a colorful sign painted with a red background and white characters. He can’t understand a single word on it; however, next to the squiggled writing, there is a picture of a bowl with a spoon in it. The line that connects two sides of the bowl probably indicates some kind of soup; the small circles in-between the line and the bowl can be some kind of round things in the soup, and the snowflake next to them. Hmm, so it’s probably cold! Bravo! And let’s hope that it’s sweet.He glances at the small chalkboard that says “open”. Then, with a reasonable amount of force exerting on the transparent rectangular object, he steps in.
When he walks in the shop, the hanging wind chimes knock back and forth on the glass door. A head slowly rises up behind the counter. It’s hot, and Aka is napping with her head lying gently on the glass counter before the wind chimes caught her attention. She immediately stands up and bows towards him, a perfect 90 degrees.
“Irasshaimase.” “Hi!” She’s pretty. She is confused for a little while but soon realizes that he might be a foreigner. Luckily, she has been studying English for the past several years as a student in college.
“Welcome, what can I get for you?” “Can I just get the special, the one that was drawn on the sign?” “Absolutely, would you like it to be cold?” “Please.” As he sits himself down, she walks behind the draped cloth in between the kitchen and the lobby. This is a local family store located in a quiet rural area of Kyoto, next to the train station. As a result, though growing up in a touristy city like Kyoto, she rarely en- counters tourists. Most faces she has seen in the store are the ones who live nearby, and sometimes old customers return and enjoy a bowl of sweet soup even after they have moved away. He is nothing like the usual customers that she meets often in the store. A handsome Asian face; he speaks fluent English, and he walks in a sweets mochi soup shop alone on an August day. She begins to imagine his story; he has presented a mysterious problem that she loves to solve.
Soon she walks out with a well-polished wooden tray in hand. The tray is decorated with golden paintings of bamboos. His eyes follow her as she sets down the tray. There, in the middle, lies the bowl of sweet soup. Dark red soup with mochi balls, white as snow sitting inside.
“Thanks,” he says.
“You’re welcome.”
“Would you mind maybe telling me…” he asks. “Sure, so the soup is made of red beans. You cook them in boiling water until they become soft, then immerse them immediately in ice water so the beans be- come really soft; they are the ones you see in the bowl. The soup itself is made with another set of red beans cooked with crystal sugar under pressure. Then spring water is added in to make the base soup thinner. Finally, mochi balls made freshly in the store are steamed until they’re fully cooked. At last, you put the base soup, the red beans and mochi balls together.”
“Wow, is it allowed to pass the recipe on to customers?”
“It’s never about the recipe. Even when the procedure is the same, the sweet soup could taste very different when it is made by different people. It may even vary on a day to day basis. Every day is different, how can the sweet soup stay the same?”
“Okay. So, could I say that this bowl of soup in front of me is the absolute unique existence in the space right now?”
“I would say so.”
He holds the bowl up and gently sips the soup. “It’s great. It’s the best tasting soup I have had since I can remember things.” Three years old right? You couldn’t form schemas that are necessary for coding of long-term memory before three years old. Three it is.
“I’m glad.”
She bows again slightly and returns to the counter. Adjusting back to the same position she was napping in; but this time, she orients her head to an angle so she can hide her face behind the pile of napkins on the counter while still observing him. They are the only two people in the shop at the time, and neither of them tries to bring up any conversations again. Only the sweet smell of the red beans swirls in the air.
He finishes the soup, gets up, walks to toward the counter to pay. He notices that she sits up as soon as he put down the spoon. Is she looking at me?She waits as he approaches.
“Did you like it?” She looks through the drawer to find change.
“It was great, thanks.”
“Thank you.”
He pours the coins to the zipped section of his wallet and steps out of the store. Should totally have started another conversation back in the store. I like sweet stuff and she works in a sweet soup shop. We both speak English. There were only two of us in the store, in this beautiful city. I can talk about math, physics, any- thing; maybe she will be impressed. He heads back to the alley that he came from. Oh well. Unless I speed up enough to go through blackholes, then the past is only chances missed. Wait, I think NASA is still partnering with Universities that work on a project in this area. One day, it will be possible. He walks forward while reflecting on the idea until he notices that despite considering the possibility of time traveling, he should solve the current problem first. He pulls out a map and starts to move toward the direction of his hotel for the night.
Next morning, according to his plan, he will visit Otowa-san Kiyomizu-Dera, a well-known independent temple in eastern Kyoto. The temple is located halfway up a mountain; next to the temple, there is a waterfall that divides into three streams of water and they all fall into the same pond. Visitors are allowed to use bamboo cups, that are attached to extra-long handles for catching the water before it falls into the pond and drink it. When he walks past the Torri of Otowa-san Kiyomizu-Dera, the sun has barely risen up, yet there is a line in front of the waterfall already. He breathes the mountain air, chilled and clear. While he stands in line, there is a gentle tap on his shoulder.
“Hey,” she says. “Hey!” What is the possibility of this happening!
“You were in my shop, yesterday, right?” she asks.
“Yeah, I remember you. I didn’t have the chance to get your name though.”
“Aka,” she says.
“Aka?” Pretty!
“It means red in Japanese.”
“Very pretty.”
“And yours?”
“Xiatian,” he says.
“Xiatian?”
“It means summer in Chinese,” he says.
“April in Kyoto is pink; summer in Kyoto is aqua; autumn in Kyoto is Aka and gold. I love summers.” She sounds like a poet now.
His eyes follow as she points to the sakura trees, the bamboos, and the maple trees. “The maple trees, when they all change colors, it must be a stunning view to see,” he says, “Unfortunately I will be back in school then.” “I see.” Here’s the awkward silence. I should say something, what should I say? How can I logically continue the conversation after “I see”?
“You know,” he says, “I always think people’s life as straight lines.”
“Okay?” she says.
“We each follow our own paths. When two people meet each other, it’s like lines intersecting. After that intersection, they depart and lead their own way again.”
He pulls his arms up, crosses them like an X, trying to show her the image in the air. She watches him for a little while, ponders.
“That’s a bit sad actually. Then, how can one make the lines cross again?” she says.
“Well, it’s easy actually, think about two parallel lines, how can they intersect?” he says.
“Hmm…. I don’t know, how?”
“One of them has to change direction and create a turning point. Maybe both of them can change directions, just like people making decisions throughout their life- time.”
“Like you decided to step in the shop yesterday?”
Smart!
“Yes, I decided to step in and you made the decision of being in the shop during the time. The reason that we make these decisions are due to the decisions we made before that. It is fair to say, all the decision that we have made so far leads to yesterday’s crossing.”
“The decisions we made this morning allow us to meet again,” she says.
He watches her and smiles, as bright as the first beams of sunshine. Meanwhile, it’s their turn to drink the water. Aka steps forward in front of him. She takes a cup with the long handles. He follows. They stick the cups under one of the waterfalls to catch a cupful. They pour the cold crispy water onto their hands. With cleaned hands, they take another cup of water, hold the cup with both hands and pour the water into their mouths. At last, they take the third cup of water, rinse the handle with it and place the bamboo cups back to where they picked them up. Then walk down the steps together silently. The spring water seems to have washed away the excessive words. They feel the companionship of each other through the breeze in the mountain, that act like an invisible string that links them together.