Autumn Rain

An autumn rain in Tokyo wedges hours and hours of low-hung gray between brisk days of crisp, clear blues and wide, high autumn skies. Slightly out of practice from the just-forgotten slog of rainy season, Tokyoites suddenly find themselves in a chill ballet of unbalancing motions.

The streets become slick, sopping threats to unconsidered fast steps or the unconscious sidesteps twisting out of the way of oncomers. The rain lubricates the accumulated film of leaves, pollen, unwashed muck and oil on the sidewalks, streets and walkways all over the city to make Tokyoites, reluctantly, slow down.

Balance is both encumbered and enhanced by the stage prop of umbrellas. Walkers turn the streets into a pumping carousel of colored quarter-spheres. Umbrellas sway like individually molded flags along streets crowded to a complete cover. Shopping areas become vast fields of overhead jousting. Friends, lovers and companions edge in closer with shoulders as intimate as they can be. Umbrellas parade like nylon bubbles cut open to dangle two people below.

At stores, slick wrapping mechanisms help slip on prophylactic, anti-dripping bags at fancier shops, while at local drinking spots, large ceramic pots sprout umbrellas unafraid of the contagion of public misappropriation or conscious theft, the great untold crime of Tokyo. A Tokyoite without an outraged tale of a stolen umbrella is rare, even while favorites left behind are only briefly mourned and then forgotten.

Because of the asymmetrical off-centering of people below the umbrellas, rain hits the edges of shoulders, bags, lower pantlegs and all over shoes. Portions of clothing, and at the very worst, entire socks, cling and pull like an added flab of fat or a facial wrinkle -- inevitable, even accepted, but hardly wanted. The autumn rain sucks out warmth from the patches of skin it has soaked into and makes muscles clinch up tight.

Rain drips at different speeds in Tokyo, slow and steady from the ribbed lines of the umbrellas, then erratically quicker and heavier from overhangs, balconies and rooftops. Then, as if choreographed to create a contrasting texture, it comes down fast, light and windblown from the sky unhindered. The rain turns to water, a brief difference of terms only, and pools into leaf-blocked pools along ankle-high curbs and the earthquaked unevenness of sidewalks. Then it all goes somewhere.

Eventually, several clear days will follow each other in a row, then several more, until finally, umbrellas can be given their winter drying out on balconies and back porches, wrapped neatly to be sealed by the button or velcro cross-flap and maybe even slid back into that long-ago, store-bought sleeve laying mismatched at the genkan since the beginning of the typhoon season.

-- Michael Pronko