Seventeen Centuries of Wanting This
People who couldn’t tell you the difference between Utada Hikaru and a ringtone have been to Tokyo. People who’ve never sat with a Shiina Ringo album, who don’t know what Ayumi Hamasaki did to early-2000s pop—they’ve been there multiple times while I’ve been here wanting this for what feels like seventeen centuries. The one exception I’ll grant is Mareike from Bottrop, who goes to university in a Sailor Moon costume. She’s earned it. I’d have done the same, given the outfit and any remaining relationship with formal education.
Yesterday I booked the flight. Tokyo. Early September. One month.
I’m staying in Berlin as long as the summer holds, and apparently autumn in Japan is genuinely worth the wait—mild, clear, everything photogenic. The timing also buys me a few months to actually work on my Japanese before I land, which seems less optional than it sounds. I have vague fears about subway barriers and ticket systems and being ejected from entire districts for reasons I can’t parse in time.
The plan is deliberately loose. First stretch in Tokyo, learning how the city actually works rather than how it works in my head. Then some travel—Kyoto, the coast, whatever pulls. Fukushima is apparently very affordable at the moment, for reasons I won’t elaborate on.
If I come back from this in love with it rather than weeping over two decades of misplaced devotion, I’ll go back in spring for a full year. Japan has a working holiday visa program, but it’s only available until you turn thirty, so the clock is running and I can’t overthink this for much longer. The alternative—going illegally and risking a permanent entry ban—I’d prefer to avoid, mostly for practical reasons.
I know nobody there. I own a Canon and I will absolutely walk around looking like a tourist, there’s no version of events where I don’t. But if you know people in the city who’d show someone around the places that don’t appear in any guide, let me know. Same if you know whether the consumption tax exemption genuinely works when you show your passport at the register—I’ve read it does, but I want a human being to confirm it. September. Tokyo. I’m going, and I’d very much like not to die before then.