Safety and the Spirit of Exploration

Here in Tokyo, signs of safety and mutual trust are evident on every street corner.

Bits of trash are not–by and large–skittering down the sidewalk. Graffiti is minimal. Bikes are parked just about everywhere, and there isn't a single lock in sight. As far as I understand it, the Yakuza (Japanese mob) are indeed real, but I've also been told that unless you're actively trying to buy drugs or insulting heavily tattooed people in the Roppongi area, it is unlikely you'll ever have a problem with them.

Children as young as four and five walk, jog, and dart up the street without any obvious parental oversight. In fact, some of them are moving so fast, it's clear they are on their own and have a destination to get to–else they would move slower or wait for their parent or caretaker to catch up. I've had at least one seven or eight year old kid zip by me on a bike in a manner that was obviously too purposeful and fast for there to be any adult trailing them. The Japanese don't seem afraid to let their kids roam the city independently.

There are homeless people here, but when I see them, none evoke fear or even wariness. They aren't behaving erratically or accosting people. They do not have the aura of unpredictability about them that screams warnings throughout my nervous system.

About a month into our stay here, Sergey and I were looking for a late-night snack and approached a 7-11. Up ahead, outside the building, I glimpsed a cluster of forms sitting in a circle by the door. Immediately I tightened my grip on Sergey's arm, and was about to suggest that we didn't really need that snack. Attuned as he is to my anxieties, he squeezed my hand and whispered, "It's okay. It's not like that." And as we drew closer, I saw that he was right.

What I'd taken to be a group of dangerous-looking guys at a distance was four or five teenagers–one a young woman–enjoying their own snacks and drinks just outside the store. They all had smiles on their faces and were laughing over some joke I couldn't understand. I relaxed, and something deeper uncurled inside of me.

Things are so different here.

Very quickly I became confident that as long as I could navigate to and from any location, I would be safe doing so by myself at any time, day or night.

The sense of safety, in turn, produced an interesting revelation: my hatred of city life was all sour grapes.

Up until now, I have always wanted to get out of major cities. I thought of my home city of Los Angeles as an angry, fearful place where the weather was best summed up in the words "baked depression". The park at the end of my street in North Hollywood was not a place I could go at night, because everyone knew that drug deals went down there when it got dark.

Seattle felt a little bit better for the few years I lived there, but I carried my mistrust and fear with me like a shield when I scuttled between work, home, and the grocery store, and I don't think I was wrong to. Spring, on the outskirts of Houston, was a little better again, but so unfriendly to pedestrians that a car was required to get anywhere at all.

I'd flick a dismissive hand at the window. "Who needs it? Who wants it? I can satisfy myself with a stash of yarn, a laptop, and a wall of books. Stick me in a forest cabin with those things and I'll be happy." I would begrudgingly admit to wanting a nice coffee shop nearby and missing the beach, but that was the extent of nice things I had to say about the city.

"Great place to visit," I'd often say of Los Angeles.

All that may still be true, but with this sense of safety and the ease of transportation in Tokyo, I'm finding a whole other side to myself that absolutely loves exploring the city.

I needed some sweaters and pants. I'd already noticed several stores with styles up my alley, so I charted a course between them. My route would hit three stores for clothes, then hit a fourth for candles before looping back home. Without interruptions, the walk would take about an hour and a half.

I passed cozy little tea shops. Jewelry stores. Even a store with several finished black oboes on display, with one frontplate hanging in the window. I snapped photos of potential eateries so I could look up their menus later. Every street had a variety of tiny shops and new window displays to peer at. By the time I looped back home, I was shocked by how emotionally high I was flying.

Due to bringing the wrong type of payment, I didn't get my candles that day. So the next day's task was to get candles and yarn. I took a 45 minute subway ride to the only decent-sized candle store I could find online.

The subway system feels like a maze and the terminal is an absolute peanutcluster of information to the untrained (and Japanese-illiterate) eye. There are signs everywhere in English, but it takes time to process what everything means and where you need to go. I took the time I needed and eventually found myself at the candle store, where I picked out several lovely ones to take home.

Sadly for me, the craft store I angled for was undergoing intense reconstruction. However, as I poked around the area, I got to experience Tokyo's giant 3D cat.

I was fairly discouraged by my failure to find a place to buy yarn, so I indulged in a treat while waiting for my next subway car–a "fruit sando". This is fruit embedded in a thick layer of cream, between two slices of bread. It was sold at a small stall between two subway tracks.

I didn't get my yarn until the next day, but I think you get the pattern. Every time I plan my own errands-run lately, I marvel at how different it is from errands-runs in the states. How incentivized I am to just walk if the location is within thirty minutes. How safe I feel even as the sun sets around 4:30. How much fun it is to detour from my route into random shops that have just the right "shinies" to catch my eye.

You can't really explore random shops from a car. And if you're a woman on foot and the sun is setting, you start to feel pressure to head home–if you felt safe to go out alone in the first place. Travel in packs or with a key between your fingers, right?

Not here. This level of trust is the mark of a sort of wealth that I feel most cities in the US lack. I may have to worry about earthquakes and typhoons while I live here, but at this moment, I think I'm happy to make that trade-off.

As Christmas rolls toward us, I am even more excited to continue exploring Tokyo.