Tokyo, Which Outside? — Oversized Tee

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You have both arrived at Shinjuku Station, which feels like the difficult part of meeting someone in Tokyo should now be over. Your friend texts, “Outside.” You text back, “Same.” Several extremely confident minutes pass before it becomes clear that outside is not one place. It is a generous category containing quite a lot of Tokyo, including two people waving at completely unrelated strangers.

You send a photograph of what you can see. Your friend sends one back. There is a building in each photograph, which narrows things down hardly at all. You begin describing a sign, then notice that you are describing its colour with the intensity normally reserved for identifying a missing heirloom. Eventually somebody names an actual exit. This is an excellent development in the history of your friendship and a slightly embarrassing one in the history of agreeing where to meet.

When you finally find each other, you both say, “There you are,” as though the other person has just returned from a small expedition undertaken without permission. Then you laugh long enough to forgive the entire geography. Lunch can still happen. You decide to choose somewhere together, while occupying the same piece of pavement. It is a promising new technique and you are interested to see how far it takes you.