Pac-Man in the Sky

I found out from Facebook. Of course, I did. That’s how, in what is considered by many to be the pinnacle of modern technological life, I stay connected with the world. Forget retrospect, it’s depressing at present, too. But, the event listed on Facebook was still in front of me, “Total Eclipse of the Heart... I mean Sun,” it said. And that’s how I found out about the upcoming solar eclipse. Now, I’m not a sciency person, but I do distinctly remember at one point looking up solar eclipses for the next decade in the hopes of maybe seeing one while living in Japan. As it turned out, there weren’t going to be any and I thought little more of it. And apparently, I didn’t fully understand how to look up solar eclipses, because all of the greatest astronomers and the world wide web said there was going to be an eclipse now. Despite inheriting my mother’s all-knowing super powers, I had a feeling that perhaps the internet had been mistaken in my earlier research. Honestly, I didn’t put too much thought into it. I put very little thought into anything in the mornings beyond trying not to be late to school. In the weeks leading up to the big event, everyone was talking about the eclipse. Getting a further tip-off from Facebook, I stopped in at my local electronics store after school. My iPhone Japanese dictionary out, I pulled up the entry for “solar eclipse” and formulated a perfectly understandable if probably somehow incorrect question, “Have solar eclipse’s glasses?” I enquired of the store greeter. Yes, they did, in fact! There were four different designs to choose from, she explained, leading me to the giant box of solar eclipse glasses not two feet behind her. I settled on the coolest pair, then changed, and changed, and changed again, blowing through all the different designs momentarily before settling on the coolest pair. I carried my glasses past two more displays of glasses, stood in line next to a display of glasses, then paid for my glasses while once more admiring the different designs at the display on the check-out counter itself. “Have solar eclipse’s glasses?” indeed! Like all great characters in traditional tragedy, I have a fatal flaw, a defect that leads my otherwise perfect self to her tragic downfall in a destiny of doom. My fatal flaw is named Indy. He’s 5’9” tall, scruffy, and my boyfriend for the past year. He doesn’t so much as have a fatal flaw as have a graduate school education that is out to destroy him. When conversation on Saturday turned to the eclipse, he was lamenting that he wouldn’t have time to buy glasses and didn’t know where to get them. In an act of purest generosity, the kind my brother doesn’t believe I possess, I came up with an easy solution. I gave Indy my glasses and decided I’d just buy another pair myself on the morrow. After a day planting rice, I joined a group of other English teachers and we marched back into the electronics store. Someone with better Japanese than mine asked the question. I didn’t understand the answer, but two crossed hands forming an X is universal. We were horrified. I was horrified! There had been so many! Always polite, we bowed and thanked the unhelpful store, and frantically continued this pattern at a few other stores. Despite our increasingly pleading and desperate looks, the employees just gritted their teeth, sucked in their breaths, and looked awkwardly pained as they turned us away. Back at home, I grabbed my bicycle and cycled to a half dozen conveience stores, on a tip off from some shopkeepers and a coworker I happened to see in the station. Pulling out my iPhone, I cycled to every one on the map and a few that weren’t. I didn’t even bother to lock my bike, merely kicking down the kickstand and strolling into the shop and straight up to the counter. Every shop had had them. And every shop was out. According to Indy’s reports, Bic Camera was sold out in all of Japan, as was the local hardware store in Kyoto, and the University museum. It was as though the entire country was conspiring against me. Finally, accepting defeat, I turned my bicycle homeward and sat hunched over my kitchen table and a plate of chocolate chip pancakes to formulate a new plan. The new plan was simple. Everywhere used to have glasses but they were sold out. Which meant that everyone else had glasses. Everyone else would be outside the following morning between the hours of 6:30 and 8:30. All I had to do was turn my pitiable look on my neighbors rather than hapless convenience store workers. I awoke early and pulled back my curtains and looked directly at the sun. It was bright and appeared round, though, in that blinding blaze, I really couldn’t see much at all. I concluded that the eclipse really hadn’t started yet. I munched a bit of breakfast, got dressed, and got a text from Indy that said he was looking at the eclipse. I pulled back my shades, but was still just met by a blinding blob of sunlight. So, deciding to put plan B into action, I made my way outside. There, all of the foreign residents gathered and slowly approached the thong of elementary students and their parents who gather each morning in the local park to walk to school together. This morning, rather than running around, most were standing in orderly rows looking up at the sun through dozens of pairs of solar eclipse glasses. Some boys were using two pairs, and I couldn’t help but envy them their excess. I was in kindergarten during my first solar eclipse. I remember the day vividly. I remember being told not to look directly at the sun or we’d go blind. As scuh, I remember not even looking up all day out of the complete fear that I might accidentally look the wrong way, see the sun out of the corner of my eye and get zapped by instant blindness. Anything is possible as a child. I remember going outside and having someone cast a shadow on the ground like an eclipsed sun. I remember being skeptical and unimpressed and ultimately confused as to what this had to do with anything. Lacking glasses, one of my neighbors had been given a card with a hole punched in it to view the eclipse. Carefully, we held the card up and shined the light on a notebook. Instantly, a little cresent appeared. It supposedly resembles the sun in the eclipse but my feelings remain mostly unchanged in the past 19 years. I am unimpressed. A glance skyward was not met by instant blindness but also revealed that the sun was still there, still bright, and still looked like a sun of indeterminable shape. I found myself wondering how ancient people even could tell that the sun was eclipsed if you couldn’t even look at it without the use of “Solar Eclipse’s glasses” or see any change from usual if you did. I can’t imagine that cavemen had a local combini to pop into two days before their checked their cavewalls and saw a message carved from a friend that mentioned an upcoming eclipse. The Japanese children and even some parents gathered around to see what we were doing. The kids shared about as much interest in looking at shadows as I did and moved on. One of my neighbors, though, noticed that our little group had no glasses and let us borrow her pair. Eagerly, we passed them around out circle. And through those glasses, I finally saw my first eclipse. It was amazing. It was beautiful. And it resembled Pac-Man on a black background. After a quick glance each, we returned the glasses to our neighbor’s four year old daughter, who was at the end of her patience with sharing, and played with our pathetic shadows. Another spectator then noticed and approached us with a three pack of unused glasses. He gave us one and we thanked him gratefully. Soon thereafter, the kids were off to school and the adults off to start their days and we were alone in the park, just the four of us, and the sun. And the moon, which really only materialized as lack of sun. Passing the glasses around, we watched the moon slowly make its way through one side of the sun and out the other. Around us, people had gone back to their daily lives, but I wasn’t quite ready to do that yet. Above us, a solar eclipse flamed, of a particular style that wouldn’t again occur within the lifetimes of anyone on earth. The morning commute could wait another minute for this truly once-in-a-lifetime experience. Especially now that we had those blasted glasses at last. This entry is dedicated to Alan.