Seeing Without Looking
It was months before I realized that the bulky red boxes sprouting from the sidewalk were mailboxes.
It pains me to admit that it was several months after moving to Tokyo before I realized that the bulky red boxes sprouting from the sidewalk were mailboxes. Back home, post office boxes are the same color as the flame when the gas is up too high on the stove. In Japan, they are red like the corvette in the Prince song. Similarly, I experienced my own private Diagon Alley every time I walked past the Japan Post Office, oblivious to its existence in my neighborhood. In retrospect, this is even more embarrassing because the words “post office” are engraved in English beneath the Japanese characters on the building’s facade. Despite the fact that English is common in signage and logos throughout Tokyo, because I neither read nor speak Japanese, when I first arrived, I assumed I could not read the signs in Japan and so I did not. As a result, for a long while, I did not see my native language even when it was right in front of my face.
Back home, post office boxes are the same color as the flame when the gas is up too high on the stove.
Here I play catch-up to learn the customs and etiquette. It is humbling. Though I am illiterate in Japanese no one yells, “Speak Japanese!” when I fumble the language. If anything, it is a native Japanese speaker who apologizes to me for their inability to speak English. Nine times out of ten the apology is relayed in near perfect English. When I hazard the dozen or so rudimentary phrases I have learned to say in Japanese I am almost always complimented. Each time this happens, I cannot help but hear the inverse, that ugly American retort, “Speak English!” echoing in my mind.
Though I have yet to see one in person, there are a few unique mailboxes scattered throughout the country. They are mostly modeled on the cylinder-shaped post office boxes found in the United Kingdom. For example, on the grounds of the Kumano Hongu shrine, a statue of the three-legged crow, Yatagarasu, a divine messenger in Japanese mythology, perches atop an inky black mailbox with green lettering. In Naruko, an area famous for its naturally occurring hot springs, there is a mailbox decorated with hand-painted flowers and fashioned in the likeness of the traditional Japanese dolls called kokeshi.
Today it is my intention to make a conscious effort to look with fresh eyes at all that is before me.* When I leave my home I will keep my cellphone and earbuds in my bag. And I will make no assumptions about what I think I already know - not even about something as mundane as what color I think a mailbox ought to be.
That’s all for now. See you in two weeks.
* (Moving to another country not required 😜.)
In Case You Missed It:
Newsletter No. 20 was a look at Tokyo vending machines and the small role they play in the changing of seasons.
A Few Things:
Every once in a while, especially in the early aughts in the US, I’d come across a mailbox that had been yarn-bombed with tiny mischievous embellishments that never failed to make me smile.
Photo by LornaWatt of Knits for Life I’m midway through “From Scratch,” the mini-series based on Tembi Locke’s, “From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home.” The things I love about this interracial, intercontinental love story between a Black American artist from Texas and an Italian chef from Sicily outweigh the few things I don’t.
Thanks to my friend over at We Will Tell Her for You, I am finally reading “East of Eden.” It’s been on my TBR list for ages and as Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” is an all-time favorite, I have high hopes!
Finally, check out fellow substacker Jillian Hess’s Noted. This week she visits The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem to review James Baldwin’s papers.
TELL ME:
Have you had an instance in your life where an everyday object was rendered invisible despite seeing it on a regular basis? Anyone else out there watching “From Scratch?” Let’s talk about it in the comments. 📭 📮👁️
Wow, guilty! I do this a lot, although mine is a slightly different version of 'looking without seeing.' I have looked at people without seeing them, looked at pages without seeing some words, and at bookshelves without seeing some books. On my fifth return to the closet, I finally see the shirt that I have looked at four times already. I look at people at regular meetings for months before I finally "see" them. As you rightly pointed out, often it's because of our assumptions that we cannot, so we do not. I guess that gets us back to the need for an open mind, genuine curiosity, and an intentionality to seek to know and find out what "the bulky red boxes sprouting from the sidewalk" is wherever we encounter them. :) Thanks for the reminder to all of us to make that conscious effort to look with fresh eyes at all that is before us.
Enjoyed reading this. It’s a special way of seeing that we have to develop in order to see the mundane or small details and the ‘big picture’ before us...and we live in a world where there is soooo much going on all around us. This reminded me of instructions when learning to drive. Pay attention to what’s going on immediately close around you and keep an eye on the ‘big picture’ at the same time.
That way of seeing made such an impression on me. Maybe because as a child in the backseat of the car when my father was driving, I watched all kinds of small mundane things outside the car window and did not have to concern myself with the over all ‘big picture’ ahead....having no awareness of the need to see both. But not until years later, with that instruction for driving, did I hear it formalized as a way of seeing. This reminded me how much we sometimes miss and are amazed that we did. Yet I’ve noticed when I’m thinking about something else, and like the comment before by Tomi Daniel, I can look literally without seeing, missing what’s right in front of me.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I so enjoyed reading this piece!