EYES WIDE...OPEN

This short, satirical article was first published in Tokyo YY Vol 4 No 88, Sept 1999

"Shibuya Crosssing" by Marco Santaniello (click to enlarge)

I’ve got a revolutionary new suggestion for my fellow Tokyoites to make their cramped, stressful lives a lot easier.

HOW ABOUT LOOKING WHERE YOU’RE GOING!

I know this may sound a little difficult at first, but if you carefully feel the upper front part of your face, you might discover two soft, pulpy, slightly moist organs. Now I know most of you think these are only for studying kanji, but this is not quite true.

To be brutally honest they are not for studying kanji at all and any attempt to do so will only irreparably damage them and prevent them from serving their true purpose. This may come as a complete shock to most of you, but they are, in fact, navigational devices.

Don’t take my word for it though, please try them out for yourself. All you have to do is raise your head from that greasemark on your chest and move it a little from side to side. As you do this you will notice a flood of new sensations as something which we scientists call ‘light’ comes bouncing into your newly-discovered organs from the sea of objects moving in front of you in a typical Tokyo street scene.

I have yet more astonishing revelations. Most of those objects bobbing around before you, are in fact your fellow Tokyoites! Once you use these frontal, light-sensitive navigational organs, which we will hereafter refer to by their medical name of ‘eyes’ - you will notice that with a little physical co-ordination, it becomes possible to anticipate the movements of your fellow citizens - and even foreigners! - and so avoid bumping into them every 2 or 3 steps.

The best results are achieved when everybody uses their eyes together, then, by mutually turning only a few degrees left or right well in advance, it becomes possible to slip by people without even scraping shoulders, never mind lodging your elbows deep in their rib cages.

Once you have mastered these simple arts of anticipation and navigation, you might find that your once neglected organs have several other interesting uses. For example, as you deftly glide through the densest of crowds, you might happen to see other enlightened souls glancing back at you instead of careering into you as they stare down at their feet. As your frontal navigational organs detect each other and make what we medical experts call ‘eye contact’ you might experience a pleasant sensation and even feel like smiling at a complete stranger, or, if you have truly mastered your new organs of sight, winking!

Once this has been accomplished, you have truly emerged from the primeval realm of push and shove and entered upon the sunlit uplands of mutual awareness and respect for other people’s personal space.