Marshall Moore
Lucky me, I got one of the aisle seats at the very back of economy, opposite the toilets. People needing the loo would bump into my left elbow twice: going in, coming out. The pong of their collective relief put me off breakfast when the cabin crew wheeled the trolleys out. Strangers’ butts swung into my personal space. We were still two hours out of Tokyo—Narita, descending. Although I was hungry, I’d have a few hours to kill before my onward flight to Singapore. I had yen in my money clip, vague expectations, and a sore backside from staying seated most of the way across the Pacific.
We landed, disembarked; we made our way to new gates and terminals and customs and baggage claim. I had read online that Narita was bland. Everything around me—floors, walls, furniture—was an oblique middle shade between grey and beige. There were vast departure lounges, empty rows of low seats. Clusters of shops and restaurants at regular intervals. The occasional muted announcement somehow loudened the overall hush. When I went to the restroom, it smelled clean, was clean. After, I found a noodle bar and ordered a bowl of udon. Not bland at all, I decided, sweating from too much pepper. If this terminal looked like the rest of them, then it wasn’t meant to be Shinjuku or the Ginza, wasn’t meant to be noticed. The difference lay in the intentions.
Before I left, I had also read about an ongoing security situation at Narita. The Japanese government built the airport on land expropriated from local farmers. Armed conflict broke out. Cars were checked for bombs on the way in. Nothing struck me as dangerous, though—just another paradoxical space where you belonged by not belonging. A few of my friends had voiced concerns about this trip. I had bought the tickets through an air courier agency, not the conventional way. In exchange for checking only one suitcase instead of two, to let the agency use that space for fast airborne shipments, I had access to discounted fares—in this case, a few hundred bucks from San Francisco to Singapore via Tokyo. Was it safe? What if there was contraband involved? Would I end up in jail? Another friend had flown via the same program a few months before and not gotten in trouble. Worth a try, I supposed. I had plenty of emptiness to store up the collection of moments I hoped to acquire, the kind that couldn’t be curated at home. That would never happen if I prioritized absolute security above everything else.
After eating, I took the longest walk I could without leaving the terminal. I didn’t want to explore the other ones because I worried I’d get lost and miss my flight. Despite the signage in English, I worried I’d need Japanese to get found again. Was it naive to hope for revelations in a single departure lounge? It wasn’t the exotic I was chasing, just… something new. Little molecules of transcendence. So far, Narita might as well have been a cleaner, quieter O’Hare or LaGuardia. LAX, even. But the trip had barely started. There was still the leg down to Singapore, where I’d be spending several days before heading up to Malaysia for a couple of weeks. I found a seat near my gate and tried to read, distracted by a mild sense of impending anticlimax.
The time came. Boarding was orderly. The captain made the requisite announcements in English and Japanese. The flight crew performed their safety demonstration, that set of international gestures everyone recognizes and no one quite understands. The plane backed away from the terminal. Bored with the emergency pantomime, I looked out the window. Below, three ground-crew guys stood side by side at a safe distance next to their now-empty luggage carts. I could see grins. From a distance, they looked sincere—kind, even. The three men waved goodbye in unison as we pulled away.
My eyes stung. I told myself it was the sun reflecting off the terminal windows.
Marshall Moore is an American author, academic, and recovering publisher based in Cornwall, England. He is the author of a number of books, the most recent of which is an essay collection titled Sunset House (Rebel Satori Press, 2024). His short fiction and essays have been published in The Southern Review, Eclectica, Pithead Chapel, Trampset, and many other fine places. He holds a PhD in creative writing from Aberystwyth University.
Social media: linktr.ee/marshallsmoore
Featured photo: Departures level, Terminal 2, Narita Airport, Tokyo by David McKelvey (Flickr, 2009)
