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On the train this evening, on my way back from a long day of volunteer work, I started to recount a few things that happened over the past few days as I absent-mindedly leafed through a notebook I had been carrying around with me here in Tokyo for most of the last three years. And when the train started to move again after stopping at one of the smaller stations along the Chuo Line, I suddenly felt as if there was something amiss: I was, for that moment in time, convinced that the conductor suddenly reversed the direction of the westbound train towards the east. This, however, did not make me panic. I figured that as long as I am inside the train, it doesn’t matter which way it took me. The train could only run along the designated tracks and nowhere else. If the train was in fact headed in the wrong direction, I could just get off at the next station and switch trains. My life, here in Tokyo, is reduced to being one of the thousands of commuters on a train somewhere in a big city.

Time froze at this moment, allowing me to look around a little. I noticed two young women looking at me. They were talking about fortune telling and being able to sense the color of someone’s aura (whatever that means). After a little hesitation, one of them told the other, “Go ask that foreigner over there if you could read his fortune. And can you try to make out the color of his aura?”

The fortune teller of the duo sheepishly walked over to me and asked me where I was from. I gave her the usual, “try to guess, would you?”. The fortune teller said, “Italy?” and I said, “close enough” (to encourage her fortune telling skills). She then said, “Can I take a look at your palm?”. When I showed her both the palms of my right and left hands, she looked confused. She then said, “umm.. maybe I should try looking at your aura first?”. I said that I didn’t mind showing her my aura as long as it didn’t involve anything socially unacceptable (I said this with a laugh). She then looked at me again and said, “hmmm.. mysterious. But maybe it’s because you’re a foreigner here, and not like a local. Perhaps the way one reads the aura and palm of a traveler is different than one who is settled down. Sorry, I can’t do this.” She said this as she turned around and walked back to her friend.

I’m still not sure whether all this was a scam, a philosophical encounter, or two girls trying to strike a conversation with someone who was obviously from a faraway place. On the upside, once the fortune telling girl walked away, I felt that the train seemed to be running in the proper direction again. Was all this some sort of joke? Perhaps it was.