Lost in Japan Part III: Guards at the Gate

Exiting the Minato-ku subway station, for a moment, Tokyo looked like Manhattan. It wasn’t new. It wasn’t clean. It was nothing like Sapporo. There was litter on the sidewalk. There was rust on the raised train track in the distance.
I felt so… diminished.
It was raining a misty rain. A sea of umbrellas scurried past in every direction. I had no umbrella.
I walked up the street, wiping the water from my face, and found a big brown sign above the sidewalk.
Cars and pedestrians rushed past. Nobody spoke. Nobody honked; not a sound but the rumbling of engines and the rolling of tires against the asphalt.
I tracked the brown sign with my finger.
Holy hell, there must be a hundred embassies…
Canada, Finland, Switzerland, Lebanon, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Haiti, Romania, Pakistan, China…
America.
I turned right, feeling like I was going home – like I was going to see Taylor.
I walked up the crumbling Tokyo sidewalk.
After a few blocks – in the distance – I could see a brick and mortar wall, and a big brown sign which read:
The Embassy of the United States of America
Two blocks away, there was a guard standing before a closed twenty-foot-tall wooden door in a giant, dark brown wall. He looked like a WWII statue, perched atop a two-foot-square steel crate, and jammed into a white casket-looking thing. The steel crate propped him above the sidewalk traffic while the upright rectangular tent sheltered him from the weather. At this point, he was the size of a G.I. Joe action figure.
I trudged toward him, immediately aware of the passport applications in my backpack.
100 yards away.
I could see the white rifle over his shoulder and the black pistol at his side.
His bouncing image got closer and closer, as I realized that this fight was not all in my head.
80 yards away.
I’m walking toward an armed Japanese soldier.
100 feet away.
Fuck.
Keep going.
80 feet away.
He’s not moving. Is he staring at me?
50 feet away.
Is that a real man?
Is that a statue?
Go. Keep going.
30 feet away.
Why doesn’t he move? Can he see me? Am I supposed to just walk past him and try to push open the gate myself?
25 feet away.
I can see the whites of his eyes – is he staring at me, or staring past me?
20 feet away.
He’s wearing a navy-blue hat and uniform with a white stripe down the leg. I wish he was U.S. Navy.
10 feet away.
He stepped robotically off his crate and out of his white casket.
I stopped walking and gasped.
He marched to me, as though in a parade, and stepped directly in front of me.
1 foot away.
My head rocked back.
He placed his white-gloved hand in my face, like a traffic cop demanding I stop. His expression was stone-cold.
His white glove still in my face, he spoke English.
“Why are you here?”
I halted.
I inhaled.
I gripped my orange and black backpack with my right hand.
“Passports.”