A Day In The Life Of A Tokyo Witch

Everyday is the same. I work at the gas station convenience store. The customers come in. They pay for gas, cigarettes, vapes, or other snacks that are so full of preservatives that they will still be edible one thousand years from now. It is a slow and boring life. I wish corporate would have assigned me to a convenience store closer to the centre of Tokyo. At least that way my life would be more eventful. There would be more people. Rich people. Poor people. Old people. University students. Definitely some hobos. Who knows? Maybe someone would try to rob the store. Imagine that! Not saying that would be a good thing, but nobody could say that would not be exciting! Maybe I could even stop the robber and become a local hero! But alas, this will remain only a fantasy. I live and work in a sleepy suburb of Tokyo. So sleepy. Only old people live here. Occasionally you will have the thirty-something single loner wage slave walk in, but they are just as lively as the old people who walk in to pay for gas or buy cigarettes. I know that I sound like a complainer, and maybe I am. But these are my days. But not all is doom and gloom. Notice, if you will, how I said DAYS. I said nothing about NIGHTS! You see what I did there? I bet you were about to start feeling sorry for me. Nope. Save your pity. Days only make up half of our time on this earth. The lack of fun and excitement I experience during the day is more than made up by my adventures at night. But I am getting ahead of myself. I have not even introduced myself yet. My name is Yuki Yamamoto. I am twenty seven years old and I am a witch.

Now, I already know what you are thinking. If you are a witch, then why do you work at the convenience store of a gas station? Well, I have a counter question. How many people do you know who are hiring witches? No, really. I will wait…..What's that? NOBODY?! Well there is your answer. Nobody in Japan has needed or requested the services of witches since the fall of the shogunate. It is not that we are useless and have no talents. It is just that nobody believes in us or our magic anymore. And for whatever reason, that has led to the gradual disappearance of witches altogether. With witches and their magic, it is a use it or lose it kind of deal. If we are not constantly practicing our magic, it becomes weaker and weaker. Kind of like a human bodybuilder who decides for whatever reason to stop working out. So we are disappearing. There are so few of us now. So few. But there are some witches, especially those who come from Japan's most prominent witch families who go out of their way to keep the magic in our bloodlines alive. My mother, for example, was one of those witches. Ever since I was seven years old, whenever I would come home from school, my mother would have me practice magic inside the house. This was especially tricky at times because in addition to the outside world not knowing I was a witch, neither did my father. When I would come home from school my mother would have me wash the pots and pans using my magic. Dishes would be floating in the air and water and suds would be flying everywhere. It was so much fun. But when dad came home from work, it would be back to cleaning the pots and pans by hand. Imagine that. Even my father didn't know his own daughter and wife were witches. You would be surprised how many men don't know that their daughters, wives, mother, etc. are witches.

I forgot to mention another important piece of information that is probably worth mentioning. Do you know where witches get their magic from? Do you think it is from their wands, for example? Do you really believe in that Hollywood nonsense? Then you are going to be disappointed. How does that even make any sense anyway? How could magic come from a lifeless stick? To the end of my days I will never understand how humans came up with that idea. Magic cannot come from something that is lifeless. Magic is literally a type of life force. It has to come from life, or more specifically, something that is alive.

So where does a witch's magic come from then? Easy. It's her cat. The wand gimmick is a Hollywood fake. But why do you think throughout history, witches have always been associated with black cats? That is because the cat is the source of the magic. Without her cat, she is just a crazy lady with a pointy hat. And also, the cat by itself isn't magic either. The way it works is a witch and her cat are like a positive and negative charge, like for a battery. By themselves you don't have much. But when you put them together, you get a charge. You get power. So that is basically how it works.

So like I was saying, during the day my life is pretty boring. I work at the convenience store, and my cat, Yasuke, walks around and does his own thing. But when I clock out, right when the sun goes down, is when things get more interesting. I clock out, grab my broom in the back, and with Yasuke in tow, we go to the alley behind the store. And then….Lift Off! We fly into the air and head for downtown Tokyo.

My favourite activity at night is to fly around with Yasuke and people watch. It's always been a hobby of mine, just watching the comings and goings of the people. It gets especially fun even later at night because that is when you have more drunk people walking in and out of bars. When I get bored, and I see some drunk guy walking out of a bar, sometimes I like to cause a little mischief. But this is when it is very late at night. I am talking like two in the morning. And also, I will only interact with a drunk if there are not a lot of people around. Afterall, I cant have a bunch of people recording a flying witch with their phone, especially if I have work the next day. What would my manager think if I walked into work after he saw a witch with my face flying around Tokyo with a broomstick? Just because I am a witch, that doesn't mean I don't have bills to pay.

Anyway, Ill give you an example of some fun I had the other night. A twenty something year old guy was walking out of a karaoke bar. He was walking out with his friends from what was obviously a night of singing and drinking. He walked with his group for a couple blocks, until they got on the subway, and he continued on his own way. He was stumbling and swaying a bit. That is when I knew now was my chance. This guy wasn't going to remember me anyway. I swooped down right above him, and I tapped his shoulder, and flew off. He turned around to see who was there, but there was nobody to see, since I was flying directly above his head. Then I turned upside down on my broom, looking directly at the back of his head. Then he turned around to continue on his way, and that is when we were looking at each other at eye level. He was speechless. And before he could even think of anything to say, I said ¨BOO¨ and then I flew off. Even if he remembers after all that night of drinking sake, nobody is going to believe that he saw a witch flying upside down on a broomstick. Yasuke thinks my antics are immature, but for me, those moments are priceless!