The Tatami Prophecies (Part 1)

October 1

Now that classes have started up again, I’m resuming the diary I abandoned in January.

I wrote the title on the front cover of this college notebook: 4½ Tatami Diary―Scenes from an Insignificant Life.

There’s nothing more appropriate to record the life of a college student in than a college notebook. It might not be very handy when you need to look something up, but then again why would anyone want to be able to quickly search through a collection of shameful memories? A diary is most suited to re-reading by yourself during long autumn nights, your cheeks flushing a modest pink at the recollection of some embarrassing, long-forgotten episode. One day when I’m rich and successful, I’ll edit this diary and publish it as “The Memoirs of Matsumoto Kiyohiro”. So I’m going to keep writing until the day that this insignificant life is finally vindicated.

Today I headed to school in the pouring rain. Start of classes was so sudden that I could barely keep my eyes open. Wish admin would put themselves in our shoes. 1st period, Organic Chemistry: slept through it. 2nd period, Intro to the Biosphere: slept through it. Had tempura udon for lunch at the student co-op. Third period, English: professor never showed up, slept through it. Fourth period, Spanish: the lightly lilting lullaby of the Spanish language carried me off cozily to the land of Nod. Is college just one big hypnosis machine? ZZZ

At night worked on paper for History of Japanese Religion, plus this diary.

October 2

Stayed up until 3 last night clacking away at a report on my temperamental laptop. Of course, all that effort would go up in smoke if I didn’t turn it in, so I dragged myself up to the 1st period history section. I figured I’d better make up for yesterday’s snoozefest, so I forced my eyes to stay open through 2nd period Fundamentals of Physics.

My afternoon schedule was lecture-free so I wandered around Mt. Yoshida. “I’m free! Nothing can bring me down!” I was thinking, until I remembered that I’d forgotten to turn in rent.

I ran down the mountain towards Jōdoji, retrieved my bankbook and the money, and went to the landlady’s mansion behind my apartment building. She’s a loaded old spinster, and every time you go pay rent she stamps your bankbook with her hanko and gives you a can of coffee. “You ever need anything, you know where to find me!” she says. There’s a sweet osmanthus fragrance lingering around her front door; no sooner had I muttered to myself, “Ah, the smell of autumn,” than I felt a powerful drowsiness coming over me. I went back to my apartment and slept like a log, and when I woke up it was dark. Dinner was a cheap bento. Frugal.

At night I read in my nice quiet room.

How I love these empty days! I spent the first year and a half of college engaged in pointless struggle until I had a revelation: the essence of your college days is Nothingness. If you really take the time to savour each empty day, you’ll discover a dainty sweetness reminiscent of the famed *karukan *sweet buns of Satsuma. By the time I fill up this notebook it’ll have become an one-of-a-kind artifact that all the money in the world couldn’t buy.

What I’d give to have some delicate, sensual karukan right now. But I guess that this can of coffee will have to do.

October 3

Woke up this morning at 10. Breakfast was a cup of hot cocoa.

After last night’s pitched battle with my history paper, my laptop has at last fallen into its eternal slumber. Maybe it was all the porno flicks I saved up on there, but starting near the end of September it’d sometimes get so hot you could fry up a whole bacon and egg breakfast on it, and after that white-hot writing session last night, my worst fears finally came to pass. I hope my video collection survived.

I barely remember what I did today.

I’m getting bored of keeping a diary. I gave up pretty fast at the beginning of the year too.

But my research group is meeting tomorrow, so I bet I’ll have plenty to write about. I’m looking forward to seeing Tamako too. You know, she reminds me a lot of karukan. Her skin is pale, and she has this classic Japanese elegance, and she’s round and petite. I wish I could shove a karukan in my mouth right now (don’t take that the wrong way).

Around sunset I had a sudden spurt of motivation, so I rode my bike north up Shirakawa Street for some ramen.

October 4

Slept like a log until 10:30am. Breakfast was two brown sugar buns with black tea.

I headed to campus for an afternoon meeting of the Weird Research Society. Barely anyone attends, so it’s basically dormant, but we’re publishing a fanzine for the cultural festival in November. The meeting was to plan for that, and surprisingly we had over ten people attend. In the end though Ishikawa Tamako just bulldozed through the proceedings, so everyone else basically has nothing to do except setup and sales the day of the event. Last year Gotō was so self-absorbed that he didn’t make any progress writing the fanzine, but it’s seeming like Tamako cowed him into submission this time. For my part I just made up some twaddle about the Tunguska event, but Tamako just said in a deadpan voice, “Wow, this is a load of garbage. You can’t just make things up to hit the deadline, you know?” She’s so driven.

After the meeting Tamako said that she was going to get a bite to eat before work, and I said I’d come with, but that douche Gotō caught wind of it so I had to put up with him tagging along.

We went to a café on Imadegawa Street and Tamako told us all about this grand theory she was working on. Gotō kept saying, “Yeah, totally,” but zero chance that dumbass had any clue what she was talking about. After it got dark Tamako headed to work; she works at this bookstore called Ryokūdō near Kinrin Shako.

“Autumn is such a lonely season,” said Gotō, who ended up rolling up into my apartment.

Gotō’s a third year who never studies, always lazes around, and looks overly well-fed. Also he wears these disgusting black-rimmed glasses. No one makes those glasses look as gross as he does. When I told him about my laptop he said, “Idle hands watch too much porn!” I would have retaliated, if only he weren’t so spot on. I was annoyed though so I scrounged up a disgusting dusty bottle of whiskey from behind the TV stand and made him drink it.

Once he was sloppy drunk on that cheap whiskey he started digging through my closet and slurring, “What filth is hiding in here?” After I’d let him fish around for a while he pulled out a college notebook from deep within the closet that said, “4½ Tatami Diary” on the cover. I nearly had a heart attack, but on further inspection the handwriting wasn’t mine. I guess it was a parting present from the previous resident. I don’t know why you’d leave something like that behind.

Gotō flopped down and started reading it and wouldn’t go away. “It’s time for you to go home,” I told him. “Sure thing…if you give me this notebook.” More than happy to oblige.

After he left I finished off the brown sugar buns and went to sleep.

October 5

Went to school today like a good boy.

Co-op had yesterday’s leftover fried food on sale, but all that grease made me feel so gross that I didn’t eat anything for the rest of the day. Good way to cut down food expenses.

After morning lectures were over I had third period free, so I rode my bike down Shirakawa Street to visit Ryokūdō. Tamako was minding the store, exuding a karukan-esque elegance.

Ryokūdō is an antique book shop on the first floor of a little building on Shirakawa Street. Inside the bowels of the dingy cavern is a little fortress-like checkout counter constructed from the collected works of Izumi Kyōka and Kunikida Doppo and the like: and behind this quietly sits Tamako. There’s a card catalog beside her whose wood has faded to an amber hue. Apparently the job pays peanuts, but the owner lets her read all the books she likes and fiddle with the unused catalog and cards. So Tamako has ensconced herself here and gets to plug away at her oddball research. Very admirable.

She made a bowl of instant *shiruko *for me with her hot water dispenser and we shot the breeze for a little while. She told me that growing up at her house in Toyama there was this door which no one ever opened; that, plus The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, had sparked her interest in parallel universes.

“You can find traces of parallel universes all over the place,” she told me. “Supposedly this shop has a back door, but it’s blocked by all the books, and no one’s ever needed to use it, so even the owner forgets it exists. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that it’s connected to another world.” Back of the shop too dim and cluttered to make anything out. I asked her if she’d ever open it and see what’s on the other side. “Someday,” she said with a wink.

I’d meant to skip 4th period and discuss parallel universes with her instead, but who decided to show up but Gotō. “I predicted I’d find you here,” he said with a disgusting smirk.

Picked up a copy of The Prophecies of Nostradamus from the 100 yen bin and beat a quick retreat.

After Spanish I headed to the library to do some research, but ended up dozing off on a sofa. I woke up with a start to find Gotō sitting beside me. “As I predicted,” he said. How does he keep finding me? Is he stalking me? “Stop following me!” I told him before getting out of there.

Randomly rode my bike around town at night. Visited a used book store on Kitaōji Street and was debating whether to buy a manga or not when my mom called me. “Look up! It’s a harvest moon,” she said. It was indeed a full moon, and as I crossed the Kamo Bridge the brilliant white orb was peeking through the clouds. It felt like the mysterious moonlit night upon which Princess Kaguya would return into the sky. I thought about what Tamako had told me earlier.

Back in my room started reading The Prophecies of Nostradamus.

October 6

Weird encounter today. As usual it involved Gotō.

2nd period was Fundamentals of Mathematics. I shudder whenever I think about my exam grade from last term, so I think I deserve credit for soldiering on and going to class. Went to a café on Imadegawa Street with some friends in my department for lunch, mentaiko spaghetti. Gotō was already there, watching me with that creepy grin.

After physics in the afternoon found a sofa in the library to keep reading Prophecies. Feels pretty darn pointless to be engrossed in a book about how the world will end at the end of the 20th century from the safety of the 21st. But maybe the world really did end. Maybe these insignificant days are the end times which Nostradamus predicted. Can’t help but think how lame it would be for it all to end so dully.

“There are more interesting prophecies to read than Nostradamus, you know,” a voice said to me, and I turned to see Gotō sitting at the sofa next to me yet again.

“Okay, seriously. Why are you following me around?”

“The answer lies in this ‘4½ Tatami Diary,’” he said, showing me the notebook which he’d dug up from my closet the other day. It described the ordinary life of a student who’d once lived in my room, and Gotō had discovered that the entries matched what I did almost perfectly. It was hard enough to believe a story like that, let alone that it was coming from Gotō.

“How stupid do you think I am?” I snapped at him, but then he opened it to yesterday’s entry, October 5. He wasn’t kidding, it was eerie how it described everything exactly as it had happened: feeling sick after eating the fried leftovers at the co-op; talking to the girl at the antique book store; falling asleep at the library; riding my bike around town; gazing at the moon and thinking about The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. It may as well have been this exact diary. There was no way Gotō could have faked it. Super creepy.

I reached out for it but he pulled it back.

“You want to read it, you’ll have to pay for it. 5000 yen per entry.”

5000 yen for a single day from the life of some dorky college student!?

When he saw that I wasn’t interested he leaned back into his sofa and started flipping through the notebook. “It starts on October 1 and ends on the 17th,” he told me. “If you buy the rest of the days that’s only 55,000 yen. Pretty cheap for a glimpse into the future, no? You never know when something horrible’s lurking around the corner, knock on wood…”

It was pretty obvious that he was trying to scare me into paying up. What a scam artist. But when I got up to leave he handed me a copy of tomorrow’s entry, as a “free sample”. Read it when I got back to my room: just an ordinary, insignificant diary entry. Crumpled it up and threw it away.

October 7

Assaulted by an out-of-season mosquito early in the morning. Hats off to what must have been a battle-hardened veteran, accustomed to sucking the unadulterated blood of innocent college students, but its luck ran out when it violated the sanctity of my room. I pressed my palms together, the corpse of my enemy still stuck to one of them, in a 5 am prayer.

Screamed out loud when I saw the time after waking up again: 11 am! Second period was a special lecture with required attendance. Damn those out of season mosquitoes. Had the funny feeling that this happened before, but chalked it up to déjà vu.

Went to campus and bought a sandwich at the co-op, and attended third period like a good student. Fourth period was English. Have to take English more seriously. Don’t want to be left behind in a globalizing world, I thought to myself as I stopped by my local supermarket on the way back to my room. Bought 2kg of rice, furikake, a 5-pack of chicken ramen, a can of broiled mackerel, and instant miso.

What a pointless day. As I chowed down on the mackerel with rice, I had that feeling of déjà vu again. Haven’t I muttered “What a pointless day,” to myself while chowing down on mackerel and rice before?

Reminded me about the sample diary page that Gotō gave me yesterday. I uncrumpled the page and saw that it predicted everything that happened on this insignificant day, from the mosquito attack at dawn to my lonely dinner. Pointless the events may be, but how could it be so accurate? Not a lot of stuff shakes me, but this did.

Gotō called me at this exact point, like he’d been waiting for this to happen. Told me he’d see me tomorrow afternoon at Ryokūdō. “Go away!” I told him, but he giggled, “You’ll be there. The 4½ tatami diary knows all, ohohohoho!” before hanging up.

Note to self: stay far far away from Ryokūdō tomorrow.