1996/2/11 COCO Long, Long Journey to the Second Floor
(dream) I am going to be late for class. I must get to a classroom on the fourth floor (though I am with my husband ). However, there are no stairs or escalator to the second floor nearby anywhere. We are not far from the main lobby of the school, a huge librarywith a green house-like, glass-enclosed reading room. It is open also to the public and bustling with middle-aged women. I consider using the main escalator in that lobby. We must first exit the building we are in and go around from outside. When we do, a queue has formed at the escalator designated for public use only. We are told it is a 15-minute wait at present and a 1200-yen fee to boot.
That for a few-second escalator ride, I think and go around to the side of the building. There is a mountain and the university is built using its slope. The second floor classrooms are reached by climbing the mountain.
There is a janitor there who would lend us a ladder, but having long been in disuse, it was missing rungs and did not seem climbable.
I sum up going from there, then go around to the other side of the building. There is an escalator that nobody uses. The lights are off but it is moving. It says there is a hidden camera. I no longer care about my class but just want to get to the second floor. Aware I am on surveillance camera, I become playful, get the notion of riding up and back with my husband piggyback, and do it!
Again, I am looking for another escalator and this time come to one that is in regular use and has many people using it. Mr. M, a guy from my previous office, is the guard. He knows about the surveillance camera escalator incident and is laughing. I get on Mr. M's escalator and go to the second floor, which is somewhat like a rural supermarket, selling handbags of all sorts targeted for middle-aged women. Interestingly, they are all out of style, and I pick them up one by one and look at them.
return to "Closed Box"