Dear diary,
It’s been two days since we’ve touched down. I’m writing this from our hotel in Tokyo which overlooks the Shibuya crossing. I’ve never seen anything like it, it’s a traffic nightmare. I wonder where all these people are going, but more than that, I think about the diversity of human life. Despite having such different lives from one another, so many of us cross paths here, our trajectories aligning for mere seconds. I think about how many people I walk past each day who, if our destinies were slightly different, have the capacity to change my life forever? A potential lover, a potential best friend.For Sunil and Deepa, it’s not that deep. Any spare moment they have in our room, they’ll be sitting by the window playing ‘I spy’ with the pedestrians. They’ve loved Tokyo so far. Two days in, and I’m already getting pleas for us to relocate. I think what really did it was the robot restaurant I took them to last night. I didn’t listen to their protests to sleep in after we touched down yesterday afternoon. Instead, I dragged them to lunch, knowing the robots would instantly make them forget about their exhaustion. This gave them enough energy to do some sightseeing. We strolled through Yoyogi Park, revelling in the scent of the fresh cherry blossoms and ended our short afternoon at the Shibuya Loft. The boys were all riled up with robot-mania since lunch that when I told them to choose anything from the Loft, I swear they were looking for some kind of AI to take back with us. I begin work tomorrow, which means that they’ll be left to their own devices for a while. Although the worry jabs at me and makes me want to tell them to stay in the hotel room until I get back, the culture centred around the independence of Japanese children paired with the guilt of keeping the boys cooped up all day overrides the worry. Location services on their new mobile and my phone number should suffice. I, on the other hand, have no one looking out for me. Getting lost in a strange city is one thing, but what scares me more are the expectations I have to uphold in this new workplace. Suddenly, I’m hyper-aware of the implications of this promotion.
If I slip up, will it all be over for me?
Anika.
Note: Dear Diary is a fictional feature article written by Senushi Liyanarachchi, who is based in Australia. The character she portrays is ‘Anika’, a single mum with 2 children and how life unwinds and she battles through a new romance, emotions, struggles and growing children.
