Finally Tokyo
The thing that got me was watching everyone else go. People with half my reasons, half my want, all of them making it to Tokyo before me. I’ve been wanting to go there for twenty years, maybe longer. This place I fell in love with through music and images and the way it looked in films. Somehow I’m still here while half the internet posts photos like they were just visiting a friend.
So yesterday I booked it. Early September, one month, because I couldn’t keep waiting for whatever excuse I was manufacturing. A PR invite. A reason. Something to make it feel earned instead of just mine.
The plan is basic: spend a few weeks in Tokyo learning which trains I’m allowed on, then drift out toward Kyoto and the coast, maybe Fukushima. I wanted to go to Fukushima for years just because it seemed forbidden and cool. The radiation thing isn’t funny in the way people want it to be, so I’ll skip it. The point is moving through a place I’ve loved from a distance, checking if the real thing matches what I built in my head.
If it is—if I don’t come back destroyed because Japan is a beautiful nightmare and I’ve wasted my emotional energy on it—I’m going back next spring for longer. The working holiday visa gives you a year, but only if you’re under thirty. I’m running out of time, which is its own kind of panic, but it means I need to know if this is real before I commit.
I know how I’ll look walking around. Lost. Obvious. Some guy with a camera taking pictures of things that probably don’t need pictures. I’ll probably get on the wrong train. But at least I’ll finally be there, after all this time.
If you know Tokyo, let me know. If you don’t, that’s fine. Just be a little happy for me.