DEPAYS5 STACK001

Text :

You’re returning from Hong Kong, oyster of the hundred thousand
pearls, and from the very first train (the one that takes you straight
from Narita airport to your beloved Yamanote Line, short-circuiting
the interminable trip by road) your heart is stolen by Japanese kindness.
Who will find the proper note to sing the praises of xenophobic
hospitality? It’s because there is something really tragic, an irremediable
flaw in the misfortune of not being born japanese, that one must show
All possible consideration for the foreigner (as for the Cat). You mount
the staircase to the train station, and suddenly your bag hangs less
heavily from your arm. A robust country-dweller has taken hold of the
other strap, and will accompany you like that as far as the quay, where
you will exchange thanks and little bows. A man circles around you:
you recognize him, he’s the one you asked, in Esperanto, for the
number of the quay. It’s not his train, he has nothing to do here, he’ll
leave in an instant after this new exchange of formalities: he has simply
come to make sure you understood correctly, that you don’t risk
ending up in Yamagata, in Aomori, cursing him. In the train, you
inquire as to the number of stations before you must change (you
could look on the map, but it’s so much more amusing to play
Passepartout). A young guy starts counting on his fingers, like a nursery
rhyme. Obviously he got lost somewhere, because the girls in his group
start laughing, their mouths half-hidden by a cupped hand, as Japanese
Girls do (the surest way to flush out the cross-dressers is to trick them
into laughing). Another one steps in, gets confused as well, and now
the whole car is cracking up. The sketch continues all the way to the
right stop, where naturally you’ll be guided by a confident hand. You
crossed Japan that way from Hokkaido to Okinawa, with almost no