The first time I lived in Tokyo was in 19__, in my last year of school, when I worked the summer at Disneyland. I won an internship in an essay competition. The title of my essay was ‘The Importance of a Smile’.

I was sent to stay with my uncle, who lived with his wife in a two-bedroomed apartment. They began trying for a child as soon as they were married, and decided that their first home should have room. Six years later, the room was still empty. According to the tests, neither of them was completely infertile, so there had always been hope.

The day before my induction I arrived at the house. My uncle was a slight, balding man, but in the small lift he still towered over me. I have always been little. He ushered me into the flat and showed me the room. It had been decorated in a neutral colour, and there were no mobiles or toys or anything like that, but I still felt that I was trespassing. I had a lot of stuff, it seemed – more than I could ever remember carrying on my own before. I had told my parents firmly that I was quite alright to travel to Tokyo on my own, and that I would get a taxi from the station. My mother cried and told me how grown-up I was, and to be careful, and that Tokyo was full of strange things and I should be careful, and I told her she had already told me that and she cried some more. I didn’t cry. I don’t know what I felt. Nothing, I guess. My mind was full of skyscrapers, and I couldn’t see my family at all.

My aunt arrived home from the store with two bags of groceries. I tried to help her unpack but of course I didn’t know where anything went.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, as I opened the door to the waste disposal unit.
‘It’s fine. The tofu goes in that cupboard there – no – there, yes, that’s it. This way, you can find out where everything lives and we can have a catch-up. So, you won a prize!’
‘Yes. I want to do a degree in marketing, so this internship will be great experience.’

She asked me all the usual questions, about my family, my studies. I began to relax a little and the walls of the kitchen retreated slightly.

As we sat down to eat there was a great thump that seemed to shake the building. I thought for a moment that there was going to be an earthquake. My uncle, noticing my confusion, laughed, and said;
‘Don’t worry – it’s just the sumo wrestlers training next door. Sometimes they make a terrible crash! But the old place hasn’t fallen down yet.’
Over dinner I told my uncle all the things I had told my aunt in the kitchen. She listened with perfect attentiveness, as if hearing them for the first time. The city made so much noise, even through a closed window: cars, aeroplanes, sirens, drunken shouts, and the occasional discreet rattle and crash, from what I imagined was the dojo.

I had been to Disneyland once before, when I was nine years old, and I had loved every moment. From the first sign on the freeway to the characters from the TV screen made flesh, to the scary rides and even the queues, I was as happy as I can remember being. So this job was a big deal for me. Also, it was a real job, with training, not like helping out in the fish restaurant in my home town, clearing tables and fetching more sake.

I had received a letter from the company, detailing every possible thing I could want to know about my internship. At the bottom of the letter, Yukio Mishima, Vice President of Marketing, had handwritten; “Great Essay! Look forward to making your acquaintance!”
I had been told to go to the main gate and give my name. They issued me with a plastic laminate pass and directed my to a small building about a hundred yards away. I pushed the buzzer and was led into a smart set of offices. There were six of us. Four girls and two boys. The person who gave the induction was not Yukio Mishima. He was not much older than we were.

‘Okay, please let me introduce myself; I am Toshiro Watanabe, Assistant Marketing Officer here at Tokyo’s Disneyland. I would firstly like to congratulate you all on winning a place here. I myself won the same competition not so many years ago, and I can assure you that it will stand you in very good stead for your university applications and job prospects. Who knows, you might even secure a position here!
As you will have read in your information packs, your internship will take in all aspects of working life at Disneyland. You will each rotate through six areas, working a week in each. You will be given a roster with your shifts, which will include some evenings and weekends. You will be given written assignments to complete based on your experience; these are very important and will be taken into consideration when we come to write your references. Any questions so far?’ No hands were raised.

We were taken on a whistle-stop tour of the complex. I sat next to a girl whose name was _____. She lived in a rich suburb of Tokyo and seemed bored with the idea of working already. Before I could meet anyone else we were siphoned off to our first position. Mine was on the reception desk of the African Savannah Hotel. I was introduced to the duty manager who was told to take good care of me.

One morning before work I went looking for the dojo. It was an old building, surrounded by a wooden veranda, set back across a large courtyard where a few chickens scratched in the dust. The concrete apartment building in which I lived loomed up behind. Delicious smells emanated from what must have been the kitchens, mingling with sweat, and laundry drying, overpowering the usual city smells, and a man’s voice called out, to be met with the response of twenty answering in unison. I hovered around the gate, hoping to catch a glimpse of the fighters. I had only seen the wrestling on television.

Suddenly a man burst across the courtyard right in front of me, carrying an armful of vegetables. I was so startled that I screamed, which in turn startled him, so that he dropped some of them. He lunged to rescue them and tripped, sprawling on the floor. He leapt up and began gathering the vegetables, and I hurried across to help him. He looked up and said;
‘Don’t you think you’ve got me into enough trouble?’
When I saw his face I realised that, although he was much bigger than my father, he was no older than I.
‘I’m sorry – ‘ I said – ‘I was just looking, and you did scare me’.
His face was flushed as he scraped together a bundle of spring onions that had scattered across the courtyard.
‘Look at this mess!’ he said, ‘The sensei is going to kill me!’ He paused for a moment and looked up. ‘What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you know that girls aren’t allowed?’
‘I work at Disneyland. I just moved here from ____________.’
‘You don’t look old enough to work at Disneyland’, he said.
‘You don’t look old enough to be a sumo wrestler’. I answered.
He smiled shyly. ‘I have to go. What’s your name?’
‘Mieko. What’s yours?’
‘Kizuki, but everyone calls me Mr Chanko’, he shouted as he hurried off.

My first few days at Disneyland were wonderful. I set my alarm for five a.m., showered, did my hair and put on make-up, walked to the station, bought a pear and a newspaper, and caught the six thirty train. I experimented with the different routes I could take, and every new thing I saw excited me – a stray dog, a noodle bar, a disused park, a canal. Most of the time I spent on the reception desk, checking people in, taking messages, and once I helped organise the working hours for the following week. My boss was kind and polite and went out of his way to explain what he was doing all the time.

I was very tired in the evenings and, although I offered to help with the chores, I usually just ate and went to bed. I had brought two books from my father’s library – a copy of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. I had begun Anna Karenina on the train down, but after reading the opening pages several times, had put it to one side. On the other hand, Dickens’ vivid description of the boy on the marshes and the terrifying convict had drawn me immediately and I had read almost a hundred pages. I never read for very long, and once I awoke at midnight to find I still had my glasses on and the book in my hand. The whole of the first week went by and my route did not take me past the dojo once.