This is not a luxury
The Glass Age Diaries | Yokohama | 28.12.25
He’s still there.
The homeless man at Rinko Park I’ve observed since I started walking here in January 2020.
Today he’s delicately peeling the white pith from a clementine with the precision of a craftsman. He stops to examine each soft, stringy filament, holding it up briefly, as if reading it.
There are two wooden benches facing the water here at Tokyo Bay. They sit a little back from the main promenade, concealed by low-hanging ginko trees. You wouldn’t know they were there. This relatively secluded spot feels like a place to hide in plain sight. When Taiga is off school and there’s no privacy in the flat, I often come here to do my mantras.
Later, I’m sitting with my eyes closed on a commuter train to Totsuka. The carriage doesn’t feel packed, but there are no spare seats. Some passengers are standing. The only voices I can hear belong to a young Western couple. She speaks in sustained sentences that sound like a cry. He supports her with intermittent single syllables. They’re too far away for me to make out the language, but I can hear them, and I’m aware that everyone else can too.
This is a fairly common occurrence here. Tourists don’t heed the instructions, or simply don’t understand how universally and voluntarily they are enforced.
I want you, as my friend or as a reader of this diary, to understand how important the practice of not speaking on public transport feels here.
This is our starting point.
This is our baseline.
Later in the evening it comes up again at the onsen. I’m struck by the absence of small talk. Men relax in communal baths and saunas, rubbing salt into their skin, a small white towel folded on top of the head, the only clothing. A typical onsen visit lasts ninety minutes, and they will happily spend this time in silence.
The only sounds are water: the soft trickle of droplets falling from a raised arm as a fellow bather mops his brow, the gurgle of pipes as heated water moves through them.
There’s no ambient music, no screens. Just a group of local men, naked and alone with their thoughts.
They appear content to sit in silence. It’s clear this is an act of respect. Respect for the other’s personal space.
It’s a silence I enjoy too, broken only by a group of American men in their twenties, one of whom is refused entry because of his tattoo.
This is not a luxury.
