The End of the Beginning
The runway accelerates past the window and then we’re airborne and I’m sitting there with tears on my face, which I knew was going to happen, which I’d been actively refusing to think about for weeks. Three months in Tokyo, and now this.
Three months. I met people I’ll think about for the rest of my life. Saw things I can’t quite file away as memories because they still feel too recent, too present. I ate things in places that don’t make sense to describe to anyone who hasn’t been there. I lived inside a world that shouldn’t exist—one that looks so much like ours from a distance and then turns out to be operating on completely different rules, somewhere in the future, on another planet, at the same time. I have never felt at home anywhere the way I felt at home there, and I don’t say that casually.
Everything you’ve heard about Japan is true. But stories can’t carry the actual weight of it—the specific density of that mix: old culture and new technology pressed right up against each other, politeness so pervasive it becomes its own form of intensity, the way the city moves fast and also somehow holds still. You can read about Tokyo for years and still arrive completely unprepared for what it feels like to be inside it.
I didn’t understand the language well enough to go really deep. That was the limitation I felt most. And yet the accumulation of small perfect things makes coming back to Berlin feel like a reduction. I notice that now, being back—how much has been subtracted.
What I miss: the specific electric glow of Shibuya at night. Convenience stores open at 3am, stocked with Asahi Super Dry and rice balls and green tea in every possible variation. Trains that arrive exactly when they’re supposed to. AKB48 playing everywhere, or Shiina Ringo, or Ikimono Gakari. Alarm systems with little smiley faces on them. Everyone reading manga on the train, in restaurants, everywhere. Bars where you can play Super Nintendo.
Schoolgirls in uniform everywhere you look. Being able to touch a Pikachu. Grapefruit crushed ice in paper cups. Never having to flag down a waiter. The entire country apparently running on limited-edition soft drinks. The Kamo River in Kyoto in the late afternoon. The sand dunes in Tottori, which I hadn’t expected to affect me the way they did. The arcades in Osaka. The fashion in Tokyo, which operates at a level of invention and commitment that makes the rest of the world look like it’s still figuring out clothes.
What I’m afraid of: that these three months will fade into gray. That they’ll become a dream I keep misremembering, the details softening until they’re just an impression—Japan, nice, I went once. The people there already starting to feel like they don’t fully exist, the way people do when you can’t reach them anymore. I don’t want that. I’m scared of exactly that.
But here’s what I remembered somewhere over Russia: this was always meant to be a test run. Before I left I told myself I’d go for three months to see how much I actually liked Japan—the real Japan, not the one I’d constructed in my head. To find out whether Tokyo was where I wanted to be, or whether some other city might fit better. I’d forgotten I’d framed it that way. The trip consumed the framing entirely.
Not a single bad moment in Japan that wasn’t caused by something from home. Not one. That alone tells me everything. There’s more to find there, more cities, more years. This is the end of the beginning, and the second part starts soon.
I have allies now. A friend I made in Tokyo, who’s living in Berlin, is going to help me learn the language—she says it’s easier than HTML, which I choose to believe. And I’m moving to Japan in early 2013 for a full year on a working holiday visa. My work is online; I can do it from anywhere. The plan is real.
The runway accelerates and we lift off and I’m crying again. But it stops. Because I know I’m going back—better prepared, for longer, with people who’ll be waiting. Next time I want the islands. But until then I lean back, put on Utada Hikaru, and that’s enough.