Keitai* Family

People leave things on the Shinkansen* sometimes. It just happens. They’re busy, grabbing their boxes of omiyage*, their senior’s bags and their backpack and the thing they were carrying just gets lost. Usually it’s something unimportant, a manga book or a magazine. They’re expensive but not returnable and not something I’m sure they’ll really miss. I mean, the guy (it’s always men. Women never leave things on the Shinkansen) will get home and realize somewhere between Tokyo and Fukuoka he lost his manga. No problem, he’ll just go around the corner to 7-11 and pick up a new one. But sometimes, they do leave something important that I can return.
Today is one of those days. I’m wandering through car 5 on my way to Hakata, the end of this line before I switch cars and head home. I make my way through the cabin as fast as I can because I really hate it when customers ask me questions, but an oba-san* gets my attention. She hands me a black folded cell Keitai and tells me that the man sitting next to her lost it. I accept it with the most professional of assurances and head back to my station concealing my private glee.
Keitais are fairly easy to return but more importantly, they’re fun. It’s boring on the Shinkansen. Nothing really happens, few people are ever drunk or unruley and they’re almost impossible to scam. I get bored pretty easily and sometimes I like to think about people. When I get someone’s Keitai that they’ve left on the Shinkansen it really gets me thinking. I open the Keitai and the most telling thing about a person is their background picture. If a guy has some anime or manga character on his Keitai, he’s probably an otaku and why would he splurge on a Shinkansen ticket? If it’s a pretty pop star he’s probably single (I know this because mine is this right now.). I sometimes get Keitais with pictures of young girls who aren’t pop stars. It always pisses me off when it belongs to an old guy who stammers something as he takes his Keitai back. Today’s Keitai has one of the cutest pictures I’ve ever seen. It’s a young wife, shoulder length hair that curls just perfectly under to frame her round face. In her arms is a pudgy little baby that from all the pink has to be a girl. They smile at the man taking the picture with Keitai Wife making Keitai Baby wave. They look immensely happy and I’m jealous for a moment. This happiness that the photo conveys, it can’t be real. It only exists in teenage girls love comics. I’ve seen too many men smelling faintly like a love hotel to think that such happiness exists.
I check the contacts, it’s the only way to be certain. His wife is listed under wife, naturally. Sometimes it’s wife, sometimes it’s family but never their name. I scroll past the various men’s names. Some are friends from college, some from high school, one or two that you met through work who started at the same time you did. You dutifully have your senpai’s* name in your Keitai, naturally but it doesn’t say who it is so I imagine it’s one of the names listed alone in his contacts list. Just as I’m getting so annoyed I want to throw the Keitai in the trash I finally see it. A woman’s name. But the mix I feel doesn’t settle as well as I hoped. I’m pleased, in a perverse way, that this man is cheating on his wife and family, he’s normal, their happiness is a front like so many other peoples’, like my genial smile. I snap back to the Keitai Family and I feel an emotion that I don’t normally connect with. It’s righteous anger. I mean, I get annoyed with people, I get frustrated but I’m never angry on behalf of someone else. I am so utterly pissed off that such a man can have such a gorgeous Keitai Wife and cute Keitai Baby and still fuck around with some woman, probably a woman at his office or something else. I’m at the point where I can’t see straight and prepare a grand sweeping speech I will give this guy about how little he deserves even a fraction of the happiness he experiences simply by waking up in the morning next to Keitai Wife.
But I hate feeling angry, it’s uncomfortable to get that angry in long sleeve uniform. I try to calm down. In my world, I’m the husband of Keitai Wife and Keitai Baby (their names don’t form in my head as clearly as their images do). It was I who snapped this photo before I headed out to Tokyo on a business meeting. I wouldn’t see them for a whole week and the thought of being separated from my Keitai Wife and new Keitai Baby was something I couldn’t bear. So I snapped this picture to keep me company; and then kissed my Keitai Wife and Keitai Baby. I promised to call them everyday and I did. I was worried Keitai Baby would say his first words while I was gone but I was lucky and he didn’t. Hearing Keitai Wife made me miss her even more. Every Conbini* bento* I ate made me want her miso soup even more. Ever night when I went to sleep on the western bed I missed Keitai Wife sleeping next to me. I excitedly got on the Shinkansen to head home, back to Okayama. On the way a thin haggard looking conductor takes my ticket but even he can’t dampen my happiness because I’m going home to Keitai Wife with a Tokyo Cheese Cake and Keitai Baby with a Tokyo Kitty-Chan* toy.
I do something I have never done before. I usually call the person’s company or the person’s wife to alert said person of their lost cell phone. Sometimes they pick it up, sometimes we mail it, sometimes we drop it off at the closest station and they come and get it. But today I break protocol on behalf of my beloved Keitai Wife and Keitai Baby. I open the contacts again and call the woman’s name.
Her voice is pleasant with a tired quality. “I would be tired too if I was waiting for my married lover to come do unspeakable things to me” I think to myself.
I somehow stammer out pleasantries but she sounds confused. She’s probably trying to cover for the fact she’s been caught. I smirk even wider to think of the fight this will cause, the end of their little tryst.
Then the hammer falls along with this entire fantasy I’ve built up. Her little brother is so forgetful. Ototo-chan?!* Is this another lie? After I tell her where his phone can be picked up, I hang up and check the contact information. How was I so stupid as to miss it before? As clear as day it says “Nee-san” and my palm smacks my forehead. I really am an utterly pathetic person. I close the phone and try to put the world away, the fantasy away. I manage to suppress it brilliantly until I’m almost home. I feel more worn out from this shift probably all the energy I spent trying not to want Keitai Wife and Keitai Baby.
I open my door and feebly say “Todaima”*.
Somewhere in the house I swear I hear a sweet musical female voice saying “Okarinasai”*. Keitai Wife is waiting for me, if only for a moment longer.

Keitai/keitai denwa- cell phone
Shinkansen- The Bullet Train, a high speed train.
Omiyage- presents brought back when someone goes on a trip. They’re usually a local specialty that can be bought at train stations.
Oba-san- Grandmother, collective term from a woman past middle age.
Senpai- the “senior” is the best English translation, this person is also a mentor at work
Conbini- convenience store
Bento- boxed lunch
Kitty-Chan- Hello Kitty
Ototo-chan- affectionate term for Little Brother
Nee-san- older sister
Todaima/Okarinasai- “I’m home” “Welcome Home”
On the Shinkansen back from Kyoto a man left his cell phone on the Shinkansen. He didn’t interest me but our conductor did. He had a very interesting smile as he held the phone and I was trying to imagine what the smile was about. It was actually a bit more of an impish grin than I make it in this story.