Model Misfit (Geek Girl, Book 2) by Smale Holly

Author:Smale, Holly [Smale, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

I ♥ Japan.

By lunchtime, I am incoherently, head-over-heels in love with Tokyo. As my brand-new T-shirt, baseball cap, pen and pencil, and badge will tell you.

I ♥ the strangeness and the noise and the height of it.

I ♥ the politeness and how simultaneously ordered and manic it is.

I ♥ the two-storey-high televisions stuck to buildings, and the way the shop assistants bow and sing irrashaimmaasseee!!! (welcome!), as if you’re royalty.

I ♥ the fact that you can throw coins in a ticket machine any way you like and it still counts them properly, and the way people fall asleep on the tubes against the shoulders of strangers.

I ♥ the electric toilets with warm seats that play music and spray water at your bottom and pretend to flush while you’re peeing so that nobody can hear you.

I ♥ people who actually wait on the side of the road for a green light, even when there are no cars coming.

I ♥ the sense that I could never be bored, not if I lived in Japan for a billion years.

And, more than anything:

I ♥ how ignorant I am here.

I can’t read, I can’t write, I can’t speak. All I can do is marvel with wide eyes at just how insignificant and tiny I feel.

Bunty was right: I even feel temporarily free from being me.

“Tokyo’s OK,” Rin concedes with a casual shrug. She’s been racing us through tourist attractions as if there’s a twelve-hour deadline before the entire city falls down. We’ve been up the enormous Tokyo Skytree; lit incense at the Asakusa Kannon Temple; wandered through Ueno Park and watched the jugglers. We’ve eaten bits of chicken on sticks and coffee jelly and tuna mayonnaise wrapped in rice and seaweed and bits of fried octopus in balls of batter (sorry, Charlie).

We’re now in Harajuku, having crêpes on Takeshita Street, and it’s taking every bit of my inner dignity not to attempt a joke that – frankly – I’m too old to be making.

I stare at Rin over the top of my strawberry, banana, ice cream and cheesecake pancake. “Rin, Tokyo is incredible.”

“Not like Sydney” – Rin shakes her head – “There is no aces beach and BBQ and flaming gallahs.”

I laugh. “Did you know that there are more people in this city than there are in Australia and New Zealand put together?”

Poppy sighs. She’s picking off bits of strawberry, wiping cream on her napkin and then flicking it on the floor. “I find it all a bit much, really.” She points at a tiny, fluffy dog walking by in a green dress with a bright green, lit-up, pulsing lead. “I mean, what exactly is the point of that?”

“But that’s what’s so brilliant,” I say in surprise. “There isn’t one.”

We watch a couple of Japanese girls wander past. One has bright pink hair with blue tips, a purple tutu, green stripy tights, a camouflage-pattern jacket and yellow shoes. The other is covered – head to toe – in cuddly pink toys, as if she’s doused herself in glue and run really fast through a toyshop.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.