After yesterday’s spontaneous events, I had another happy experience already planned for myself today. So, when there was a choice between that and going to the railway museum with the parents (both of which I’d originally wanted to do, but woken up too late for and was now faced with a choice), I didn’t hesitate for a moment in choosing the capybara cafe visit. I’d gotten only a single reservation due to a lucky cancellation weeks prior, and I wasn’t about to give it up.
It was a crazed morning — as I mentioned, I overslept, under the wrong assumption of the capybara cafe being relatively close to home. In my head it was be a 30-40 minute journey, but I found out in the morning that that I had gotten my period and there were no pads in the house (Mom and Bua had gone through the last of them just days prior, it seemed), so I had to go to a konbini 5 mins away, get pads (and breakfast, while I was at it), putting me a half hour behind already by the time I checked the route and realized that I’d have to rush out immediately if I was to reach on time.
I had to half-jog to catch the only train that would get me there on time, and I ended up defying Google Maps’ estimated walking time by about 5 minutes — a feat impressive enough to get me on the train before the last one I could catch, but which was a disappointment because the connecting train earlier than last had left 2 minutes before I even reached the connecting station — humanly impossible to catch.
Anyhow, I was hurried but also relieved by the time I got on the second leg because while the journey after that was out of my control to speed up, I was on time to reach the cafe over 10 minutes before my slot — a safe margin.
When I reached I was asked to wait in a room upstairs that resembled a waiting area in a clinic. Along one wall were lockers, which I took the liberty to use to put my bag and jacket in, having experienced other animal cafes before that have had explicit instructions to do so.
There were leaflets about capybara cafe rules like not touching their mouths directly and not chasing or grabbing them, which all made sense. I also looked at the drinks menu and decided on an apple juice for myself and some vegetables for the capybaras.
I was finally called in and boy were they two capybaras handsome (and huge!).
It wasn’t like the cat and dog cafes I’d been to, where some people who have food get all the little animals’ attention and the others get ignored. There were two capybaras, happy and chill to be around people, just doing their thing, and the visitors crowding around both of them to give out their share of head and back and butt scratches.
Note: I Googled that last one and found out that they supposedly love them. I tried it out and I think it’s safe to say by Biscuit (one of the capys)’s reaction of repeatedly stretching his neck out that it was hitting the right spot.
It also wasn’t too crowded with humans because, as I mentioned, there were limited spots and reservations booked out well in advance. So everyone there really wanted to be there, and it showed.
I loved being around animal lovers. I distantly bonded with a couple other guests by volunteering to take their pictures with the capys — Kohaku and Biscuit, as I found out by asking one of their very nice staff members their names in Japanese!!
It was feeding time soon after I entered, and both capys had had bowlfuls of pellets, but a while after, the nice boy from the staff brought some carrot sticks and a small blanket in and ushered me to sit on the sofa (I was crouching on the floor next to one of the capys at the time), since I’d ordered vegetables for them.
He put the blanket over my lap and showed the carrots to Biscuit, ushering him to climb on to the sofa. Biscuit was full from the pellets, but it worked on Kohaku and the boy took pictures while I hand-fed and cuddled Kohaku.
So much oxytocin. I was the first in my timeslot to get to feed them, and everyone else was in awe. Soon, the others who’d ordered got their carrot sticks and feeding experiences too. I got almost a full half hour of petting in before my time came to an end.
As I said, Mom and Dad and Bua (Onkar was busy today) had gone to the railway museum all the way in Omiya, and as I expected, they were taking their time. I Googled ‘things to do around me’, and coincidentally, the main attraction only a short walk away was the Tobu Museum — another railway museum.
I spent a couple hours there, doing the things I imagined the family was doing — seeing miniature train models running on miniature train tracks, as well as exploring lifesize old train model cabins put on display and even driving a train simulation between two stations, monitoring the speed and the distance left and accelerating and braking like the nice staff men told me to (in sign language because I didn’t speak the amount of Japanese required and we were too rushed to communicate verbally anyway). It was only little kids that ran the simulation, as I later realized, but I’m glad I did it regardless.
I bought mom a souvenir keychain shaped like the front of a train as I was leaving, because she’s been intrigued with Japanese trains ever since she arrived here and I knew she wouldn’t buy something like this for herself but that she’d appreciate it as a gift.
I also spent another half hour or so at a pretty park, followed by some nearby mall exploration and some work at a coffee shop called Doutor, making it a nice, quaint solo date before I finally headed towards Ikebukuro to meet the family.
We had dinner together, and I’d made plans to later meet Onkar at a net cafe in the area — another bucket list item for me, and one I was glad to have company for as I found the idea a little intimidating to follow through on my own.
We originally planned to meet around midnight, and there was still time to go when the rest of us finished dinner. We waited on his response for a bit to confirm the plan before deciding whether it was worth me going home or meeting him directly, but with no clear communication, I decided it was safer to wait at home and come back out (it would be a 15 min walk to most net cafes near the station) whenever he was due to arrive.
When finally he did respond, he said he’d be a half hour later than expected. I had enough time to fit a nap in so I set an alarm for his new ETA but told him to text dad in case his plans changed because I’d be asleep.
I only half-slept, because the lights were on. Everyone else was up — they wouldn’t sleep until someone successfully dropped me off at the net cafe and found Onkar. Dad and Bua had things on their morning to-visit list that didn’t interest Mom much, so she figured me and Onkar were a better party for her to join and made plans to stay the night at the net cafe with us— she’d read her book there while we’d work.
Except even when I woke up, Onkar still pushed the time by another half hour.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to even get him to respond, and my head was starting to ache, but I’d made a commitment and he still seemed in a mood to honour it. It was past the last train and Mom and Dad were still concerned though, because he wasn’t at a walkable distance from either his hotel or us, but he’s lived in this city for 5 years and I figured he knows other ways of getting about. I assumed cabs still run, for example.
A bit of the backstory: Onkar was at karaoke with his friends in the evening. He mentioned that was in Shimokitazawa, but that was in the early evening and now it was past midnight and the net cafe he’d originally suggested I meet him at (before the plan changed to the one in Ikebukuro) was in Shibuya, so we assumed that he suggested that because he’d moved to that area after karaoke. There was no clear communication about his whereabouts though, so we had no way to know for sure, and in the largest city in the world, it’s difficult to locate a person.
Not that he was missing or anything. Yet.
But, as I said, his responses were getting increasingly foggier. I tried to get him some clarification out of him after the last time he delayed our meeting time by 30 minutes, asking if he was sure he’d still meet me there at the time he last said he would (in which case I would have to immediately start getting ready to leave the house), or if that was still tentative and I should wait for further communication from him.
He didn’t seem to understand my text and replied with a ‘WHAT’. I don’t like fighting and I don’t like getting shouted at, so I retorted along the lines of ‘WHAT ARE YOU SAYING’ to get some clarification, but was just met with another ‘WHAT’.
He was clearly drunk.
And now the parents were properly worried. Trains had stopped running and we couldn’t go to him, not even because of the trains but because we didn’t know where he was. And soon, when he finally replied a clear(er) ‘Unlikely’ to me asking about the net cafe one more time (he’s not usually one to stand you up for plans), and subsequently stopped replying at all to anyone, the parents went into full panic mode.
Although him being too drunk to consciously reply is an objective concern, my first thought was honestly that he would be passed out in a pub somewhere and that he’d call back when he came to. But I also understood the parents’ perspective. Their son had made a commitment to their daughter, hadn’t shown up for it and by the looks of his messages was clearly incapacitated, away from home, without them knowing where he was and if he was even with friends or not. Karaoke should’ve been over a long time ago, and his texts didn’t indicate he was still around anyone.
He ignored multiple calls from Dad, Bua and myself (he doesn’t have WhatsApp installed on his new phone and Mom doesn’t have Facebook Messenger on hers, which the rest of us were using to get to him).
Soon our messages stopped even getting delivered.
We did so much. We called his UK number (first dad with the Airtel roaming plan the eventually got that allowed local calls, then me by first topping up my Three SIM, then putting it in my phone) in case he still has his SIM in. Unavailable. So either his phone was dead or had no SIM (he was using an eSIM for mobile data too).
If, like me, he’d taken his SIM out, he wouldn’t be traceable at all.
Overwhelmed, Mom and Dad left around 1:30am to go to the local police station.
They were picturing the worst in their minds. It had suddenly gotten a lot colder over the past couple of days, and they were imagining him in the cold outside, too drunk to realize he’s cold and getting hypothermia.
Dad had read articles about such cases, and since his son had stopped replying, he’d read up more.
Apparently more than half of fatalities in men that go missing in Japan happen in the months of December to February are because of the cold, either just getting hypothermia on the streets or not realising there’s water nearby and falling into streams/ponds when drunk.
When we were in Kyoto, we had witnessed a boy looking younger than Onkar — extremely drunk and barely able to walk — crossing a road, supported by his friends. He fell in the middle of the crossing. His friends helped him up. They all had proper suits on and looked like students.
An hour or two later, we saw the same boy without his blazer (only in a shirt) sitting on the outside window sill of a shop at a crossing near the one he’d fallen at, alone this time, in the cold, swaying, trying to keep sitting and not fall over.
We sat across the road from him for quite some time while we waited for our bus home and Mom felt so awfully bad for him. She imagined Onkar quite possibly having been in a similar situation during his undergrad here.
She was wondering if the kid’s friends had taken his blazer from him, and what his own mother would be thinking if she knew what he was like.
Tonight, Mom was reminded of this boy and was imagining Onkar like that somewhere on some street in Shibuya or the likes, except that it was a much colder night. She and Dad couldn’t stand sitting around doing nothing.
Initially, Bua and I had opposed the police station idea. There was a tiny possibility the police visit could cause a mark on his record, and we were scared of him getting angry when he finally did come back. But in the slightest off-chance that something actually was seriously wrong — as Dad’s thinking went and I agreed — going to the police was the right course of action on their part and it would forever be a regret if they didn’t go.
Onkar clearly wasn’t going to respond anytime soon so they set out. Bua and I stayed back with the front door unlocked in case he did somehow make it back home to us. If he was sober enough to remember, he’d know that I was home waiting for him to text and not at the net cafe we’d decided on.
Mom and dad spent 4 hours at the police station, and Bua and I stayed up at home keeping in touch with them, getting a friend from the UK to call Onkar’s UK sim number in case that somehow worked, trying to contact another close friend of his to ask if he might know any of his friends in Japan that he could’ve been out with who might know where he is now, and even cold messaging another friend of this that I knew was in Japan for their mutual friend’s wedding a few days ago but had never spoken to on my own, not even knowing if she was still in the country.
Dad had phoned his hotel earlier and gotten them to transfer the call to Onkar’s hotel room, in case he’d somehow made it back there and was asleep — hopefully he’d hear the phone ring and let us know he was okay.
There had been no response at the time, but they got the police to call up again and explain the situation better to the hotel staff in Japanese, even getting them to open the room with their master key card only to confirm that he was not in there.
The police took down a lot of information about him and the family and the circumstances of our trip. Dad was on the phone with an interpreter back and forth for 4 hours to get all of this through. Bua and I ran out of things we could try to do to track him down, and just waited, hoping he’d come to his senses soon, charge his phone and text someone.
Mom had been saying for a while now that she wanted to go look around Shibuya, on streets and in gardens and the like, because in her head hypothermia was still the biggest enemy.
As cool as I was about the whole situation in the beginning, and even though I still knew that he must’ve been in such situations countless times before, just without us knowing, and he would know how to handle himself in them, I couldn’t help letting mom and dad’s intrusive thoughts getting to me too.
I was equally angry as I was worried though, because even if he was completely fine, as he most likely was, he’d made the parents worried sick. They’d walked to the police station in the same cold they were worried about him being out in, and sitting there all anxious for 4 hours straight. I could look past him standing me up, but he was the only one to blame for the night he had caused for the parents. And he was oblivious to it.
The extreme anger and worry only worsened my headache, but it was no time to sleep — I was constantly in touch back and forth with Mom and Dad, keeping up with whatever the police were doing and still trying to call Onkar every few minutes in case he would pick up. I took a dolo, and even though the police advised them not to, the parents insisted on heading out to Shibuya and searching the streets.
The morning trains had started running, and they told me they were on their way home to pick me up since I’d be of help to them, as the best Google Maps navigator.
Again, pretty sure that he was just fine and still angry at him for causing us all to worry like this, I didn’t consider going to Shibuya a good option at all. There were literally thousands of places he could be. How many could we search? Even the police said there was no point. But, for Mom and Dad’s sake, I agreed. I had to.
The police had confirmed there had been no emergency ambulance calls or hospital admittances with his name (he had ID in the bag he always kept with him) or image description, which was a relief, but not enough to comfort the parents. He could still be outside somewhere, with no one around to make a call to a hospital or anything — their biggest fear.
The police had taken all the information they needed and said they’d get in touch if they found anything, but that there wasn’t much they could do since we didn’t know much about his situation in the first place. I started packing myself up to leave, since the parents said they were on their way back home from the station to come get me.
Before I left though, Dad phoned and said that he texted. At long last. He’d just woken up, and he’d be home by 7am. He was at a friend’s place.
I hadn’t been teary all night before this — I reiterate that I seriously wasn’t the level of scared that Mom was, and I trusted him to keep himself alive and handle himself drunk. And I was well over being stood up. But the amount of combined rage and relief I felt when I heard about the text brought me to tears. Tears I barely let out, because Bua was there too and I don’t like crying in front of people, but tears nonetheless.
I didn’t want to be awake when the explosion of him coming home happened. To be honest I didn’t even want to be up when the parents came back but they did before I could go to sleep. Thankfully, and naturally, they looked too relieved to still be so angry.
I fuzzily remember some exchange of words when Onkar finally came back in the morning — Mom was sleeping on the big bed next to me I think and Onkar asked for her place so she moved to the sofa bed or something. I slept so angry with him that night for so many reasons.
No matter the amount of confidence I had in him, his behaviour tonight and hearing all of Mom and Dad’s intrusive thoughts dented that trust. Because other than keeping himself safe, which it turned out he did (but there was the possibility of things going very, very badly), he should have been responsible enough to know that the family would worry and to make sure they know he’s safe too.
His night was spent out drunk, while Mom’s and Dad’s was probably one of the most panicked of their lives.
I disappeared at my mama’s wedding one night for an hour or two when I was eight, and I was scolded for it so bad. From my perspective, I’d informed an aunt that I was close to at the time but who turned out to be not the most trustworthy person, as I later learned. I’d found a new friend from Mami (the bride)’s side of the wedding, and went with her to catch a glimpse of Mami before she came out on stage. When I was found (I only learned then that people had been looking for me), even at eight, I understood how panicked Mom had been and how relieved she was when she finally found me, and from then on since I’ve been trying to make up for it by being responsible.
It was selfish and immature of Onkar to get into such a drunken state when he knew he was expected to meet me, and that the parents for sure wouldn’t sleep until they knew he was safe after not turning up to do so. I didn’t think I’d have to worry about him taking care of himself, but tonight I felt betrayed.
When I reflect on days to write about them, I try to find a silver lining and work it into a nice conclusion. Today, I just can’t.