There's a Gran Turismo movie that is a dramatization of a story you might not know, or don't remember anymore. It got us to thinking about how the dynamics of being "called up to the big leagues" might play out in other genres - the results of our crucial investigation can be found here.
The only Japanese Brenna remembered from her Japanese classes in high school was the phrase:
That's big, isn't it! Can you make it smaller?
Her cadre of venturesome, free-thinking young women - known colloquially by teachers as "The Swing Girls" - found this construction incredibly funny. That's probably what allowed it to lodge so desperately in her mind's craw. For this trip we had the benefit of our Eldest, who has their heart set on linguistics, and who just completed Japanese 2. They were surprisingly adept at the basics. But in a country where restaurant ordering generally involves a press-button or touchscreen kiosk, and often has English as an option, you can get really far between that and, like... your regular phone.
I almost took Japanese, it was one of my alternates, and for the first two days of my senior year I guess I did take it. They seated me by Brenna, and when my first choice class opened up I started going to that one instead. I'm really, really glad. I was not ready to engage her in some kind of romantic campaign then, I didn't have the skills, but that would not have stopped me from failing at it in a spectacular fashion.
Our first day in Tokyo, I needed to do something for Kiko - but it could be contained within something broadly for the family. Last time he was here, he secured for me certain amulets - yes, amulets - and I think they might have helped. Someday, I'll tell you about it. But he told me that you're supposed to return them to the shrine and replace them every year if you can, so all of a sudden this day trip to the Meiji Jingu began to develop authentic psychological heft.
I don't go into it a lot but I'm incredibly superstitious. I absolutely don't fuck around with this kind of shit. Now, do I think these ancient priests invented Blessings as a Service, or BaaS? Even if I thought so, I'm not out here trying to raise the ire of the spirit world. Have you ever seen Yo-Kai Watch? It's a fucking documentary. Shit's crazy out here.
The only thing that marred this profound exchange was that my shorts kept falling down. When I tried them on at home, they fit just fine. But after they'd been washed, and I had heavy things in the pockets, and it was humid in a way language would fail to entirely contain, a larger and larger strip of my own sacred temple became visible.
I was walking around the gardens of the deified spirit Empress Dowager Shōken, there was a sacred spring and a pond, but the whole time I was basically pulling up my pants. It did not feel super respectful. Eventually I developed a technique where I would put my hands in my pockets, projecting an aloof air, but really I was just holding my shorts up from inside the shorts. Coming back to the hotel on the Yamanote Line, holding on to one of the overhead hand holdie things, I looked up Men's Wear on Groogle and unfurled my mind, daring to imagine a world where supernatural pants might defy gravity itself.
Most of the men's wear type places we went to were decidedly more full service than was called for. They were measuring old men in there so they could make bespoke suits and shit. That's not what I needed. I needed a strip of leather about, oh, yea big so the next time I'm in a holy place a cherished ghost doesn't see my mortal ass.
I'm going to move directly after this into the next moment of time, though I will tell you that as I am typing this it is impossible not to travel out into that place - it's unfolding and refolding along heretofore secret axes, a fluid neon origami trick. That's the alley where we couldn't decide what to eat because it all looked so good, and then we went down an alley inside that alley and found a second floor place that had the best ramen I've ever had. Three bowls, four drinks, and we got out of there for fourteen bucks? What the hell is going on in this place.
Brenna and I ended up going out as a team to resolve this task. Eventually we found a shop willing to sell me parts of an outfit without first manufacturing them, literally, out of whole cloth. A nice person materialized as though from a lamp to help us, which was the most common experience we had in the country. I pointed at my sad shorts, and he knew instinctively. But these belts were for most Japanese men, and not for pale, grublike foreign spheres. We tried the most generous of their number, and it was not equal to the task. He nodded, and disappeared, returning in a fraction of a second with a black belt the length of a bullwhip. He had to hold it up high so that it wouldn't touch the floor.
"That's big, isn't it!" said Brenna, in Japanese. "Can you make it smaller?"
(CW)TB out.
