Saturday
5th October
The scent of hair oil subtly floating from a dignified sumo wrestler
One of the things I like to do in Tokyo is to go to a department store and discover the many products I’m unfamiliar with. In the section with electronic devices, I encountered a playpen with a robot in the form of a small dog with outsized eyes. When I moved to the right it rolled to the right, when I moved to the left it rolled to the left while staring intently at me just as our dog Lucy does. We performed this little choreography for a couple of minutes and when I started to leave the robot dog came as close as possible and looked at me with pleading eyes while making high pitched noises. I immediately felt guilty about leaving the dog and knowing that it was nonsensical to feel guilty towards a computerized apparatus didn’t make any difference at all.
Then I came upon the area where Japanese niche scents were sold. I smelled a scent that was called ‘A shaft of light’. According to the label its warm, earthy smell was inspired by the scenery where lights shine like a ladder straight down from the clouds to the ground in the forest. I tried a smell that was inspired by the scent of incense surrounding Japanese temples and one that claimed to capture the scent of cherry blossom petals fluttering down into a sake cup.
I was intrigued by scents with curious names like ‘Rainy Sunday afternoons’, ‘A warm embrace after a bath, with a rosy cheek’ and ‘The scent of hair oil subtly floating from a dignified sumo wrestler’. Each fragrance triggered a different sensation in me and I completely forgot the robot dog I had so heartlessly abandoned.
When I left the department store with an ample supply of scents, I counted all the different feelings I had had in the span of forty-five minutes. There were thirty-two ranging from anticipation when I stepped into the store to amazement, wonder, guilt, pleasure, amusement, and the beginning of boredom which instantly turned into excitement when my eye fell on a pair of bright orange sneakers.
These feelings disappeared as quickly as they had come up. The sense of guilt lingered longer though, perhaps because it was such a familiar feeling and one tends to hold on to familiar things even if they are not necessarily pleasant.
Observing the feelings I had during that visit to a Ginza department store taught me not to engage with the countless sensations that spring up during the day, particularly the unpleasant ones. The less attention I pay them the faster they leave. In case a disturbing feeling does persist, I just open one of my Japanese perfume bottles and deeply inhale the scent of hair oil subtly floating from a dignified sumo wrestler. That will take care of any undesired feelings.