A Fat Man

At the moment I’m reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. The version I have is a bit of a tome, so I haven’t really had a chance to lug it around much. I threw it in my bag on Friday and, due to some crossed wires at Kobe station, I had the ride to Osaka by myself. I wedge myself in a corner seat I pull out my book. Immerse myself.

Some time later, I notice that, for rush hour, the carriage has gone unusually quiet. I look up from my book and glance around. Directly opposite me, across the aisle, an enormous man has just sat down. He is dressed in an austere blue kimono, his hair is tied back behind his head and he is arranging himself in his seat. Seats. His enormous bulk requires that he spread himself across the entire bench and sit with legs splayed out in front of him. His massive thighs quiver beneath the fabric as he moves. This is a sumo wrestler and, judging from the complete silence in the train carriage, he may be quite a famous one. The business man across from me whispers something to his colleague and they both pause for a second and then sneak a look from behind their newspapers.

The man-mountain pulls out small package from somewhere and lays it on his lap. It’s about the size of a tissue box and wrapped in beautiful patterned cloth, the same way teachers at school wrap their packed lunches, no folds and a delicate knot at the top. Wabi-sabi. The thickness of the fabric and the simplicity of the design betray the quality of the cloth. This is an expensive item or, at least, is wrapped expensively. He fumbles briefly with the tie and removes something from the package before retying it with remarkable dexterity for someone whose fingers resemble thick, meaty sausages. For a while I can’t see what he’s doing and I don’t want to stare, or to be rude, but I’m intensely curious as to what he’s playing with. I pretend to read my book and steal glances by looking at his reflection in the window next to me.

The train reaches Osaka and I snap my book closed and grab my bag from the floor. As I push past salarymen on the way to the exit I glance down at the Sumo. Cradled in his hands is a tiny, latest model mobile phone, shiny and sapphire blue. It looks like a toy in hands. A little blue pillbox. He taps at the keypad with a single finger and I can see emoticons sprinkled throughout his text, animating in tiny frenetic yellow loops.

My phone rings as I step onto the platform and, just before I reach to answer it, I hear the two women in front of me conjecturing as to who he was, concluding that he “looked like somebody famous.”

Posted in Japan on Monday March 13, 2006.