I came back from Tokyo last month.
This post is meant to give closure to this short-lived journal, and pave the way for another project of greater scope.
My time in Tokyo has been absolutely frantic. It’s been eight months I’ve been living in flashes of a whole new definition of human and human experience. My everyday has been only remotely similar to anything I knew and anything I dared to expect. It’s been an explosive cocktail of sounds, smells, sights, tastes, humans and conversations. Tokyo has pushed the limits of what I believed to be the existing humanity spectrum in directions I did not expect it to exist, and has been a wake-up call in this sense. Even though I have traveled exotic lands that have blown my mind away on a constant basis, I hadn’t yet experienced this kind of long-term journey where, in spite of having a home address and a wallet full of membership cards, ecstasy is central and routine was a twice-removed second cousin who was there, but not really.
I would wake up sweaty, if not awaken by yet another earthquake before dawn. I would look around, lay back down and then race against Marcel Proust and Kenzaburo Oe in absorbing my reality and fetching every drop of remembrance to piece me back together on the way to the bathroom, passing by the 5-foot-tall mirror glued to the cardboard wall, next to the unplugged TV. That was me. Then I would step into the one-piece, sort-of-claustrophobic plastic bathroom and the kirei-kirei smell from the soap would invade my senses as it mixed with water. Kirei-kirei soap came with a brimful of memories, flashes of frenzy, and suggestions for the new day. Some days I would go to my laboratory, some days I would conquer neighbour towns on a bike, some days I would take a train to go somewhere, anywhere and everywhere in Tokyo, and a lot of days I would make my first stop at the convenience store, the holy konbini stores, おコンビニ.
Convenience stores are among the quintessential elements of the country that finely showcase Japan’s modern society. They sell instant noodles and other pre-cooked dishes Japanese workers massively consume day after day; stressing the importance of time and the inability to cook of the younger generations. The much needed self-sufficiency of the powerful, committed rising workforce would be greatly challenged were the convenience stores to reduce their opening hours or disappear altogether. Step inside one, and you’ll be cheerfully greeted continuously as you browse around till you exit the place. Stop at the magazine section and you’ll find yourself surrounded by four, five men reading the latest Jump, Big Comics or a hentai of some sort. Close your eyes and try to count how many times you’ve heard the oftentimes-awful tunes. Get yourself hot take-away food from the counter and you’ll always have someone outside to share it with for a laugh; typically a bunch of teenagers whose bousouzoku ideals are too grand for school. 7-Eleven stores did in fact save me huge trouble a few times. In Tokyo, only three or four lesser-known banks do accept foreign cards besides 7-Eleven. So, if you find yourself without a penny in the streets of Tokyo, you can’t use your card to withdraw money in the banks, nor use it to pay for train tickets so that you can at least go home. If you don’t know where the closest CitiBank or ShinseiBank are, you would be pretty much trapped if 7-Eleven and its helpful, welcoming ATM machines did not exist. For that, and for the free Wi-Fi I used till successfully getting my own phone card, I thank you! Convenience stores are also a great place to spend the night if you missed the last train and don’t have enough to taxi yourself home.
The silver medal would go to the karaokes of Japan: the expensive ones, the cheap ones, the ones I got kicked out of, the ones I sneaked into, the ones I got caught having sex in, and the one I met Mr. Holy, the secret hero of many mind-blowing stories and poems. He’s the guy I shared a flat with in the end, and he’s the first lasting friendship that started in a karaoke. You showed me so many things, inadvertently blowing my mind. I can’t wait to travel and experience so many more things with you, brother.
Endless warm sunsets, crazy nights and colorful mornings. Be it alone, or with brothers from Kazakhstan and the States, with friends from the lab, or with hordes of guys and girls firmly marching behind me from the narrow streets of Harajuku, down Omotesando or all the way to Ginza or Shibuya. Guys and girls that worry about things I don’t worry about, and don’t worry about things I worry about. Nights with my squad, nights where everyone would disappear in rooftop parties, nights where getting lost was an excuse. And, at the end, the grandiose train journeys back west. Riding with inebriated salarymen, the weirdest weirdos from Yoyogi, the mad obasans; gaudy times with the fauna of the city.
I was very lucky to be where I was, and be with the people I was. My everyday interaction with my lab friends allowed me to delve into the values, the morals, dreams and expectations, hierarchies and howtos that compose the Japanese human. I was lucky to be in the place I was, where everyone wore a smile first thing in the morning, and where every otsukaresamadesu was heartfelt and kind. My sempais made it really easy for me to adapt to my new life, joined me for mountain trips, beach trips, park-at-night-when-the-fireflies trips. One of my last weekends was spent at Kamakura with Mr. S. and Mr. K., including a flying visit through mid-east Tokyo to get ourselves some guitar picks to never forget. Never forget about each other. Never forget how amazing my time with you was. Never forget how bad I am at baseball, how not to trust a local when it comes to trains, how to enjoy bad results. Never forget that, like haikus, grandiosity is found in the smallest of the details; in unexpectedly fun times biking down Route 16, trying countless dishes in Machida and fixing everything with a nice, hot bowl of soba. Along with my homerun-hitter, partner in crime Mayomayo and everyone at the lab and Gengar, I learnt so much, discoverd so much, enjoyed so much. You took everything to a new level. Even though I had never been much of a foodie, my time in the lab was specially rich in exquisite cuisine and food souvenirs from all over the country.
And so much more that happened. I decided to end the post here because there’s no way I can write down everything that Japan means for me. Every line above could be further stretched to accommodate fun, unique stories, but most of them shall remain with me to be shared more intimately; these shall travel with me wherever I go next, and pop up to my mind and let me relive every single bit of them with an ear-to-ear grin, red blushing and weepy eyes; remembering my friends and my brothers, and our wonderful time on the island where anything impossible is ridiculously possible.
