SuGiRu
I learned something today. That, if anything, when I come back from time spent living in Tokyo, nothing will bother me. There has been so little stress in my life to this point that it's completely incomparable. I now understand why the people in Japan live for after work and the weekends. Every day is a constant, driving push of noise, lights and people. The only way to make it stop is to find Zen, go postal or drink yourself into a complete stupor. Unfortunately, I don't think I desire to nor am capable of truly accomplishing any of these things. I just watch and learn and find that all the good things I love about this city are overwhelmed by the constant pressure of the annoyances of every day.

When I come back, I will treasure that I can wake up at 7:45AM or later daily, take a full load of classes, regularly work out, complete a 20-hour-a-week job and STILL get home every day by or before 5:30. In my other life, I could manage all this on top of entertaining a social life, publishing a magazine, maintaining a relationship, doing chores, fixing dinner and keeping weekends free. Here... no. Just... not possible. Practically every day because of commute time and class schedule, I'm forced to away from home either in transit or on campus from 8:30 to 7PM. You heard me right. That doesn't even allow for more 2 hours at the gym three times a week, much less any part time work.

Everything here takes three times longer than it should, not counting my hour-and-a-half lectures which are a COMPLETE and UTTER waste of time. One of my professors reads to us out of our text in broken English the ENTIRE lecture and can't even manage to answer any questions coherently in English OR Japanese.

All this, combined with the retarded university bureaucracy and langage barrier has so thoroughly annoyed me that I think I've reached my maximum intellectual capacity for irritation. After I leave here, nothing will ever trouble me this much again.

Nowhere else that I have ever been or seen has the sheer VOLUME that Tokyo has. There is too much of everything here. Too many people, too much noise, too much lights, too much money, too much traffic. It's life in excess. The only things there seem not to be enough of are time and connectivity. Dreams.

I keep looking for meaning in all of it, hoping that I'll find some key to unlocking this tangled mass of urban fantasia. What scares me most of all is the possibility that there IS no meaning. Perhaps this is the greatest lesson I can learn; a lesson of true enlightenment. Perhaps none of this should trouble me at all, none of it should cause me any suffering. All of it is temporary, passing, fleeting, human and so by its very nature is meaningless. To overcome it, I have to let it go and cast it off. Rise above it. Care nothing for it.

But I'm too human. I'm captured by the moment, by wants and needs, by passions and dreams. I like complication and drama. I like mystery and fascination. I like LIFE when I can see it.

For example, today, when walking to the station I stopped down my favorite alley with the Thai and French restaurants. In the doorway of one of the neighboring bars sat an orange and white striped cat, miaowing plaintively at the waitstaff and hostess. The cat looked well kept, as did the bar, and the image of struck me as so fantastic and so poignant that I stood for a few minutes and contemplated the raw composition of the cat, the doorway, the restaurant and the city. The light and the color and the movement was so perfect and so ideal that it seemed almost as if this cat had been made for this moment only to exist in the doorway as an image. I don't think I've ever wished more that I had my camera on me. The cell phone pictures I took could never suffice.

So, you see, I can still feel wonder. I'm still looking to return some seed of serenity to my core. It's just that on a weekday-to-weekday basis, the drive of this city and of all the unwanted and understimulating demands placed upon me, I feel nothing but irritation at my life here. There is no time. There is no time to make time or to find time or to feel time. There is only the push, the pull and the city that sucks everything into its nonexistent and inescapable center.