Last Night in Tokyo

By Dennis Siluk Ed.D

We had stopped at a tour place, and Kikue gave them two tickets she had purchased a few weeks earlier, then we got onto a bus that morning and drove out towards Mt. Fuji [9000-feet]; later on that day, I would be above the clouds, almost on top of Mt. Fuji, but first we went to a lake and flower area, an outside conservatory of sorts, larger than a garden I should say, and many rows of flowers. Then it was afternoon and we went to eat by a lake, there was but forty of us on the bus, but again Kikue seemed to have gotten mad at me, I was upset also for the way her family and sister treated me, and how she had shunned me, and it was all getting bottle up for both of us. I grabbed a necklace I bought for her and threw it in the lake. Then feeling bad, I bought her a new one. Then when we went to eat, we seemed to be the lone ducks, and the servers had to find more food for us. Thereafter, we went up the mountain to a certain level of Mt. Fuji, and I climbed the rest of the way. It was quite inspiring.

On our way back to Tokyo, Mt. Fuji turned into a pale daunting shadow, from my train window, a most beautiful one.

Chapter Six: Night Five, Day Six

Kikue got angry that night as we sat crossed leg in our little apartment in Tokyo. She had forgotten all the fighting we had done, all the disrespect their family threw upon me; her disrespect with her sister by the subway and cafés, also she forgot the disruption I created by the lake: but it was all coming out now, sideways: her mood was aggressive. Out of me and out of her came unkind words. She was kind of threatening, in the sense I did not know my way around Tokyo, and I sensed she wanted to leave me stranded. I told myself I could find my way to the blasted airport if she left, so I told her if that was the way she felt, angry and didn’t want to cool down she could leave, I’d manage, and she slowed her anger to a more somber, or sad mood than a demanding and angry mood.

I understood she was upset I was leaving to Guam in the morning, but it wasn’t new information, it was what I had told her all along. We had plans up to this point to marry some time in the future [no certain date, just verbal plans, and based on if we could keep a cool relationship in place, or so that is how I based it on], we had talked about it briefly, and I felt I needed more time to look at the whole situation, and she had gone along with it, but I knew this evening it was over. Perhaps I knew it long before but I needed Japan to explain to my subconscious the amalgamation, why so many haunting thoughts were coming to surface in this situation. I was perhaps anticipating marriage on the grounds she was a good woman, and fair. This was really not enough I suppose. And now her parents were not tossing insults over the phone, they were doing it in front of me (or had been). And she was doing exactly what her parents had done, and she was against. They controlled her, and she wanted to control me. Control is a big word, and perhaps over used here, I don’t mind closeness between mates, but domination is not good for anyone—nor is codependency. I wanted a healthy relationship as a whole, not in part. Meaning, socially, with our faiths, psychologically, physically or sexually, and so for and on. Not really too much to ask. I was not looking for perfection, rather, a sidekick, I had been married before, I didn’t really need a wife: I needed a sidekick that was a wife.

And so I left Tokyo, and she looked out the big by window as I left.

On my way back from Java, my ultimate destination, from my visit at Borobudur, the Great Buddha temple, which was magnificent, on my top ten places in the world to go, it was number three, the Taj Mahal being number one, which I had seen in 1998, and the Great Pyramids of Giza, in 1998, number two, and in 1996, I had went to China, and seen the Great Wall, number four on my list. I had plans now to return to Minnesota, via, Japan, and head on to Peru, to see Machu Picchu, that would prove to be number seven on my list. In the future I’d go to many more places, in 2001, the Amazon, and in 2003, the Galapagos, and in 2006, the Panama Canal, the Canal being number #11, but I never made a list beyond ten. Anyhow, on my return to Minnesota I stopped over in Japan, only at the airport to change planes, I had a hour, and as I walled alongside the windows to the corridors to lead me to the right gate, I saw a woman staring from the window at me, her pale silhouette, I think it was Kikue, I’m not sure, when I looked back up after a moment she was gone. She did write me a few times after, and her parents did apologize for their misbehavior, but I had discovered a women I fell in love with in Peru and married her two months later, it felt right, and was right.

Note: although the story is true in fact, the name of Kikue and the suburb of Tokyo she and her family lived have been distorted. The time period is correct.