home
I'm going to have to set the date of my return to the states soon. Although I won't be going back until early in the first week of July, the concrete thought of actually leaving Tokyo has given me some very strange feelings.

On the one hand, I anticipate the alleviation of this city's onslaught when I get home. But on the other hand, I actually dread going back. Even though Waseda blows, living in Tokyo has given me a sense of actually being in charge of my own destiny.

I thought I was going to go to the STA travel in Ikebukuro this afternoon to set the date of my return. But after some contemplation, I decided that I hadn't really thought enough about the best date to go back and since I have an extreme loss of time lately, I decided to do it later.

On the train to school this morning, I started thinking about what it will be like to dismantle my entire life here to pack up and go home. Facing that thought has made me realize that while I don't joyously relish every moment in this city, I certainly don't despise it here. And recently, I've noticed that there are people in the department who have a LOT WORSE attitude problems than I do. I think I've mostly adjusted.

I looked out the window of the Yamanote line at the same landscape I see every day and imagined that it was my last time riding my daily route. Will I ever come back? With that sense of finality didn't come the great rush of relief I would have once expected but rather a feeling of nostalgic sadness and pride-- pride that Tokyo feels a bit like home. As stupid as it sounds, it brought tears to my eyes to know that I will miss it.

I don't value my education, nor how stressful each day seems for wasted time. But I do value the setting into which I am slowly fitting, like a lost piece to a twisted puzzle. I love the strange things I see every day, the beauty queens and the transvestites, the businessmen and OLs. I love even more the things I don't see every day-- like today, in downtown Shinjuku, there was a man standing on the street curb setting up an old, OLD-fashioned plate-camera to take exposures of the city. And returning on that same route I witnessed the homecoming of a familiar transient to the place from which (I just now realized) he had been a few weeks absent. The man (and he is a very old, small man) moved some illegally-parked bicycles out of his normal sleeping space and set down three bags, which are his only possessions. He had a new cut across his forehead, swollen red and stapled shut. In the moment I realized he had been gone, I found myself relieved to see him... and curious where he had been that his face had been disfugured.

That's life in the city.

I remember hearing on the news about the Sarin gas incident. Specifically, I remember hearing when they caught several of the perpetrators from the Aum cult. I know that the event made an impression on me, or else I would have no recollection of my interest in it. But my thoughts were with the perpetrators rather than the victims as I was in a place too distant to even understand what it was like to ride a subway.

Now I have ridden those exact trains and stood in the same stations where people, poisoned and sick, lay dying. I can never understand the fear and confusion of that moment but I do understand the place, the feeling and the sense of native identity that gives meaning to such a moment. Unfortunately, I also understand the same sense of Japanese-ness that would allow hundreds of people to pass by the writhing mass of injured on their way to work without so much as stopping to call and ambulance or a taxi for fear of either delaying their schedule or somehow having to take responsibility for something. It's true and it's sad. (A homeless man lay two months dead on a busy Osaka corner this fall before anyone said anything to the authorities.) With the Japanese, it's just not their concern. Concern, I think, unless on a superficial level, is distasteful.

My point, however, is not to criticize the Japanese but rather to look at my lack of knowledge in retrospect. When I was watching the news in 1995 I had NO IDEA I would be here now. I would have laughed to hear someone say I'd study a year in Tokyo. Me? Pffh. For all the hopes I had (have), I'm quite the average girl.

But "they" were right... anything is possible... and anything can be done (or at least well-attempted) if tried. And "they" also knew that this would be an incredible perpective-building experience. But who are "they"? My elders? My professors? Authors of some books expressing obvious self-truths? Nah, I'm talking about the little voices in my head that actually remain optimistic despite my cynical nature.

They knew it would start to feel like home.