The employees at Iidabashi Station sort and tag thousands of objects left behind on Tokyo’s subways and trains. On a whim, I call and describe the day I visited, an extended layover really, and how when I arrived, I made what was then a long-distance phone call. I had used an arcane pay telephone on a wall of several. The tiles were the palest blue, or maybe it was the light.
A bored voice interrupts, “What is it you lost?”
“I was twenty-three and called home. I expected to talk to my mom, but she wasn’t in even though she should have been, and I’d worked out the time differences in my head and I was angry at her. She’d gone shopping. She had no idea I would be surprise calling her, but I left a rather snippy voice mail and it must have hurt her and that day popped into my head with such aching regret. On a subsequent trip, a two-week vacation I studied for, I learned that wasuremono meant forgotten things and that’s your department, so I’m wondering if I left behind any clue as to how I can make amends to her now that she’s dead?”
After rushing through the words to avoid crying on the phone to a stranger like some idiot, I expect the young man to hang up on me, leave me to the tears of sorrow, but he asks me to hold while he checks.
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