Slow Boat

A homeless girl on TV dared us to give her money. May 9: Mandela was named President of South Africa. “The Surgeon’s Photo” of the Loch Ness monster was revealed to be a hoax—sixty years after the fact. In Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, eight people were killed by an unidentified gas. Kansai International Airport opened on a man-made island in the Seto Inland Sea. Sept. 20: Ichiro (playing for the Orix Blue Wave) notched his 200th hit of the season.

In the end, it was the underground loop. The Marunouchi Line.

Our Tropic of Capricorn. The line the sun hangs over on the winter solstice.

Masuo Hashiguchi poses the question: “Where’s our Tropic of Capricorn?”

I answer: “Has to be the line where we dump our trash.”

“Huh?”

“Think about it. Yotsuya… Mitsuke…”

Nothing but blank faces.

I take a deep swig of canned coffee (BOSS, to be specific). What a pain to explain. All right—here goes.

The five of us were in college. We spent freshman year drinking and singing and chasing girls. But not sophomore year. We were sick of cheap booze, karaoke was repulsively mainstream and—thanks to semi-permanent girlfriends—our chase was on hold, for the time being.

Shigeru Kaji: High time we found another way to have fun…

Me: High time?

Takeru Igarashi: We’re sophomores now. We’re in the big time…

Hisashi Iwata: But our girlfriends eat up all our cash.

Me: The price of courtship…

Hashiguchi, Kaji, Igarashi and Iwata all nod.

Shopping was never our bag anyway. So—what else could we do for kicks?

Work. That was the answer to our prayers. Nothing beats short-term employment. You can choose what you want to do, and every workplace comes with its own discoveries (varies from person to person). Best of all, you get paid. Talk about the ideal hobby.

Sophomore year. The five of us landed jobs.

Different jobs doing different things in different places.

But our work hours weren’t all that different.

We always met up on the way to work. Mid-commute, in a subway station. At first, our rendezvous was Akasaka Mitsuke Station. It’s well connected—it has the Ginza and Marunouchi Lines. I had to get to Honancho on the Marunouchi Line (switching or not switching trains at Nakano Sakaue). Akasaka Mitsuke was on the way. Pretty much every morning from August to September, we met up in Mitsuke. To share an underground breakfast before heading to work. Proof of our friendship. Whenever a girlfriend prepared something for one of us, we split the spoils five ways.

We were working for fun. It was just a hobby—so we didn’t stay in one place for long. We switched jobs at breakneck speed. And when we changed jobs, we changed stations, too. The location changed—but our morning ritual was constant.

When we were done eating, the trash had to go somewhere. But some lines had better trash cans than others. If you ask me, the Marunouchi Line had the best bins in the business.

Masuo Hashiguchi: That’s how you think of the Marunouchi Line? The one with the trash cans?

Me: Pretty much.

Hisashi Iwata: Oh.

Shigeru Kaji: I think I get that.

Me: The day before yesterday was the solstice…

We crush our empty coffee cans.

Me (continuing): And I was on the Marunouchi Line—heading to Yotsuya. You know how it’s always dark, because you’re underground, then right before you get to the station you surface and the sun hits you? The other day, at that moment, I felt like the sun was right over me. Then I got off at Yotsuya and met up with you mugs.

Hisashi Iwata: Oh.

Shigeru Kaji: I get that.

Masuo Hashiguchi: Works for me. Real poetic. I guess I was thinking kind of literally. Like, some tropical location somewhere.

Me: What made you ask anyway?

Masuo Hashiguchi: I dunno. Guess I was daydreaming. About a little getaway, just us and our girlfriends.

Me: In the middle of winter?

Masuo Hashiguchi: Haha, yeah… Like those celebrities who fly to Honolulu for New Year’s or something.

Takeru Igarashi: Sign me up, man.

Masuo Hashiguchi: You serious?

Kaji and Iwata and I all nod. Unanimous.

Masuo Hashiguchi: Is it just me… or is it getting hot down here?

The end of the line?

We didn’t know our underground breakfasts wouldn’t last forever.

We didn’t know about the 1995 underground gas attack. Or the citywide removal of subway station trash receptacles that would follow.

A future with nowhere for trash to go.

Nobody saw that coming. Because we were still living in 1994.