From Le Dépays, which was published in May by Film Desk Books.

You’re returning from Hong Kong, oyster of the hundred thousand pearls, and from the very first train (the one that takes you straight from Narita Airport to your beloved Yamanote Line, short-circuiting the interminable trip by road) your heart is stolen by Japanese kindness. Who will find the proper note to sing the praises of xenophobic hospitality? It’s because there is something really tragic, an irremediable flaw in the misfortune of not being born Japanese, that one must show all possible consideration for the foreigner (as for the cat). You mount the staircase to the train station, and suddenly your bag hangs less heavily from your arm. A robust country dweller has taken hold of the other strap, and will accompany you like that as far as the quay, where you will exchange thanks and little bows. A man circles around you: you recognize him, he’s the one you asked, in Esperanto, for the number of the quay. It’s not his train, he has nothing to do here, he’ll leave in an instant after this new exchange of formalities: he has simply come to make sure you understood correctly, that you don’t risk ending up in Yamagata, in Aomori, cursing him. In the train, you inquire as to the number of stations before you must change (you could look on the map, but it’s so much more amusing to play Passepartout). A young guy starts counting on his fingers, like a nursery rhyme. Obviously he got lost somewhere, because the girls in his group start laughing, their mouths half-hidden by a cupped hand, as Japanese girls do. Another one steps in, gets confused as well, and now the whole car is cracking up. The sketch continues all the way to the right stop, where naturally you’ll be guided by a confident hand. You crossed Japan that way from Hokkaido to Okinawa, with almost no linguistic baggage except the indispensable excuses and thank-yous, along with various combinations of the word neko, and from each stop you’ve kept the memory of the merchant who left his shop to lead you to the foot of the building you were looking for, the guardian of the cat temple (neko dera) in Osaka who escorted you for twenty minutes, absolutely undiscouraged by the limited nature of your vocabulary, plying you with all kinds of intimate observations, to leave you on a major street traversed by buses (which also means of course that you, stupid foreigner, would never have been able to find it all alone—but since courteous condescendence is so much more pleasant than hostile equality . . . ). This kind of interchange also takes far stranger forms. In one of those charming little trains in Hokkaido, all dark wood and green felt (Larbaud would have loved them), you keep sneaking glances at the magazine being read by your neighbor, as you’ve seen an illustrated article on the takenoko, the little Sunday dancers in Yoyogi Park, and you think you recognize one of the young girls you also photographed. Without having expressed your intention in the slightest sign, you mentally form the project of politely borrowing her magazine when she finishes reading. At which point, still reading, she slips off to sleep. I’ll wait till she awakens, you think. A few minutes later she does, and immediately she hands you the magazine. Clear enough. Harmony has struck again.