Black and Gold Mornings

Each work day Jess and I enjoy (or endure) a brilliant, blinding 7:08 am walk to Mukogaoka Yuen Train station. Our eastbound trail is a radiant golden river of light. A glow illuminates our greyscale streets, casting all the apartment windows in gold.

It’s a blessing that the Kanagawa sky is so clear. Our winter stroll is rarely rainy. This quarter-hour trek consists of cold, wind, and conversation. We wait for clear crosswalks and watch for jay-walkers.

Japanese Quants visit their genkan every day at least twice. Our Japanese-style entryway is the portal out of comfort and cozy. It also serves as our arrival gate beckoning us back into our quaint apartment. It’s a welcome part of our home.

After our wake-up routine, it is a low-risk battle to find shoes for the daily trek. Only the bravest venture to work barefoot in a concrete jungle. Discretion indeed is the better part of valor.

Standard genkan exit procedure is a 30 second skirmish with our entryway light. Our mechanized light-thingy only heeds wave offerings. This picky sentry senses for proper gesture performances. It only illuminates our outdoor shoes when its arbitrary conditions are satisfied.

With mild effort we push back the darkness. Victory is putting the red, white, and/or black shoes back on. We exit the apartment. Our walk, at first, ventures past families of bicycles and backed-in cars.

Then one does not simply ignore 2 black Nazgûl on the trash heap. They are a winged and dark stain on the daily adventure to golden river road. Tokyo’s ubiquitous and oversized crows again obstruct our waste removal ritual. One crow sits as Beelzebub on his precious pile of plastic and poop. On Wednesdays and Saturdays crows jealously scrape bags for hidden garbage flesh. These minions peck our putrid remains, spreading it over and under the yellow crow “safety net.” Proof that black birds aren’t dragon sized without sufficient sustenance and sacrifice.

Residents of our shaded buildings sacrifice more than their time. Looking at the solitary trash collection and instruction stand, we remember. There is always reckoning for how we’ve stewarded our trash cans. Local garbage men, with pure expertise won’t collect any mixed trash. For example, on Monday, mixed paper day, no cardboard is taken with the paper filled bags.

Our property manager moves trash sorting errors into public quarantine. An A4 note attached and addressed to “resident of x building” completes the sentencing. The rejected refuse will languish on the curb. Its prison sentence lasts until the owner realizes their misdeeds and sorts it out.

Additionally, our property manager laminates paper mugshots of the most unscrupulous residents. Each improper waste disposal is captured in the memory of the all-seeing camera eye. Sorting sins require shaming with picture evidence. We shudder at each laminated, blurred mugshot on the garbage wall of shame. Neighborhood social media thrives on negativity. It is also effective, even if the posts are laminated prints.

Walking away from the crow ridden garbage heap, we notice there are no new mugshots.

Human trash-sorting-failures could find black feathers perched over their pictures. Impudent and shameless, the scary dark sorting crew is always forgiven. The black birds seem miraculously granted a permanent pardon with no end in sight. Clemency is water hose clean up by the property manager for the bird’s rotten “trash sorting” twice a week. 

Whatever has dared to drive crows away before eating garbage, it hasn’t worked. Some residents muse a proper defense has never been tried. Crows in Tokyo know they are safe. Safe from hurried men and women harassed by managers and unhealthy homes. Black birds make a weekly muck of our messes (after we’ve cleaned them up) and they aren’t held accountable for it.

The stench gives me pause on this morning’s walk. 

Sinful humanity is morally responsible for our messes. We deserve decisive punishment but do not receive it, like our local crow overlords. The immeasurable gift of God in Christ redeemed a rebellious, mess-loving humanity. At first, we didn't see our desperate need for a Messiah to redeem our sin-stained lives. We fought him to his death that we actually deserved. Jesus is far better than I can explain, and far more merciful than I could hope.

Darkness and battle precede illuminating light. Our home, surrounded and safely sheltered from blinding by boxy buildings, is a mix of black and white. Rarely does our journey run red.

We finally step into the scintillating glow of the golden road-river. There I offer a prayer. Again I’m praying for daily grace in God’s great, but on-its-own-time world. Feeling grateful for a new day is natural here.

Thanks for redeeming us Christian crows, Lord.