yesterday

in kimono at meiji jingu
[gallery]

I'm tired and burnt both inside and out. When you left, I cried all the way back from Shinjuku station and pitied you the hour-and-twenty minute train ride to Narita. Of course, as I said when my eyes were dry and I felt stronger, there really is no use crying about it as it couldn't be helped nor is it really sad. We both have things we need to finish in our own places. This is where I live now, if just for the next four months.

Tokyo has changed me... and yet over the last twenty-four days it has changed for me. By opening the door to the outside world again, you created for me a sense of normalcy here I could not have otherwise imagined. And by exploring this country together-- a place so small and yet so different even just miles from this metropolitan center-- you have helped me understand (as best I can, given the fleeting time we had) the place I live.

We dove together the (frigid) tropical Okinawan seas. We watched the falling Hokkaido snow from the window of a night train and over the lantern-lit Otaru canal. We saw Tokyo from the outside across the bay in an Odaiba date spot. We slept side by side for twenty-three nights.

Yes, we were tentative and fearful. We each bore our own burdens through the roles of guide and guided on this journey. We fought. We sulked. I bit out at you from time and broke down in my own nervous exhaustion. Even in the short time we had together, I managed to take you for granted. But you opened me slowly, like a flower.

I found that though I have changed in the last five months, I still carry the exact problems and indecisions I had before I came here. They have not left me, but probably only because I keep them because I think I need them to survive. Though I said so on Wednesday, this does not make me a failure. You are right that I have grown stronger. You are also right that I should learn to see the good in things that I do and in where I have been.

We are not perfect. Nor should we be. If I at times find fault in us, it is not because we are failing but because we are human and because we are each our own. Even if you "need" me more than I "need" you, we still need each other.

After you left today, I bought myself two strands of orchid at the Odakyu Florist. I walked upstairs to the crossing and put a five-yen coin in the copper cup of the monk(*) who always stands somewhere beneath the eaves of the West Exit. I was crying. (Did he see?) I stood at the crossing and waited for the light to turn. Next to me, a little girl tugged on the hand of her mother and her father rocked the stroller where her sibling slept. Though tears were pouring down my face, no one paid me any mind. Not like yesterday. I thought, I am back to where I started. But something had changed.

Listen. I stood there, invisible in a city of millions, swept back into my singular, solitary, outsider status. But for once I didn't long to stand out, Super-Star. I didn't want another "day extraordinary" hiking to waterfalls or watching fireworks from onsen. I wanted the life of that family; just a quiet togetherness with someone who gives the balance that I am otherwise without.

You.

I have shrouded myself in illusions. I have played the victim to a game that I myself instituted. I have made you the whipping boy for affections that I accepted. I have always kept one foot in the door-- and I have done so for four years. Why? Perhaps so I could come here and find a way out if I wanted it. Perhaps so I could play both sides of the field. But there are no sides and there is no field. There are just ordinary people leading ordinary lives and striving to make something wonderful.

Thank you for making something wonderful with me.

I know you can't turn around and come back. I know (maybe hope?) we will probably never ride the Oedo line to Ueno just to miss the last train to Asakusa. I know (maybe hope...) we won't have to eat many more pickles for breakfast in our lives. But that's OK. I don't need you to turn around and come back. For the time being, I carry you with me. Right now I can look at your picture just beyond this computer and clearly recall the way you smell, taste and feel. With time, that feeling will fade... but that doesn't make me fearful. If you wait a little longer, I'll turn around and come back to you.

I promise.

(*) Or maybe he's not a monk... but it doesn't really matter because when I see him (as I have hundreds of times since that first photo I took of him in Shinjuku), I feel the same strange connection.

OUT TO LUNCH

On vacation in Tokyo, Hokkaido (mission accomplished!) and Okinawa

Be back Feb 29th

tissue
Free kleenex. That's my favorite thing about Tokyo. It's everywhere, winter and summer, rainy and sunny days. No matter where you are, it's likely there is someone standing within three hundred yards of you getting paid to hand out tissue packets stuffed with advertising that no one will even look at.

I keep imagining the shelves of tissue in the drugstores, stacked with lonely boxes that no one buys for lack of wont of kleenex. But no, despite that anyone, like me, can fill a drawer with FREE kleenex without trying, people still shell out a few hundred yen for their very own "decorative" tissue. (If they were in it for, you know, the "quality" quilted or lotion varieties, I would understand, as the free tissue is of course of the lowest par.)

I weep at this consumer culture. I weep and I do no understand. For in Tokyo, all one has to do is hold out one's hands to recieve, even unasked, the offering of free kleenex. There should never be a nose in this city that is not dry!!!!

I LOOK UPON MY FREE KLEENEX AND I AM GLAD.

More fun Holidays!
Juuuuuust in case you didn't know, today is the day where people throw beans at demons to welcome the official old-calendar coming of Spring.

IF you didn't believe me:




Glad we cleared that all up.

Elves!
I've decided that the Japanese people are really bred from elves. Now, I know that while some of you are nodding your heads in agreements, others are wondering, "What the hell is she talking about?" or maybe getting ready to write "you racist bastard!" in my comments box. Allow me to explain:

It always catches my attention when I'm not looking for it. Even more than the pointy shoes and the pointy hats, the tiny bodies and birdlike bones. The Japanese just sometimes look like elves. It's not one thing or the other, it's everything put together. The shoes, the feathered hair, the too-large hats, the clothing that hangs off their small frames like tents but is all made of gauze-like material thrown together in myriad clashing layers. I'll be walking somewhere and -OOP!- there's another elf! It's not just women, it's Japanese men, too... those cheekbones, slanted eyes and shaggy locks... they seem more faerie than human. Every now and then there's some particularly sidhe-like individual that makes me stare as if there is some actual possibility of magick in Tokyo. But most of these Japan-elves aren't elegant, waify faeries but short, petit brownies. They don't notice me staring... they're always too busy chatting on their cell phones on the way to work or school.

And, I might add, where else on earth can you find grammas who INTENTIONALLY dye their hair bright purple, blue or green? I don't know what's up with this but I've seen it a handfull of times and it always makes me smile.

Oh. OH, I had a rather amusing conversation with host mom this evening after we came back from [=D =D =D (Secret cool thing)]. We were talking, as usual, about the differences between English and Japanese when she suddenly busted said that oh, her English teacher told her, if it rains, it might not be good to say, "Oh, I'm so wet!"

O. Kay. Stopped me in my tracks.

I had a bit of a start for a second thinking, well, do I have to explain this to her? Yes, it's gramattically correct. Yes, it makese SENSE... but what KIND of sense? I kind of chewed on it for a second... "Yeah, uh, that's a little personal," I said vaguely. But by then she'd launched into her second example which was that the same teacher told her that when inquiring of someone's hobbies, it's better not to ask, "What turns you on?"

I couldn't help it, I just started laughing. I laughed so hard, I almost cried. It was too much.

It's so true. I never saw these strange things about English before I came here, or the way someone else might see my native language... but it is full of damn weird idioms. Thankfully, my host mom is a good student and understood that these idioms were, well, sexual... and so I didn't have to lead for more than an awkward sentence or two before I was sure that she understood WHY she shouldn't tell a room full of Americans that she was oh so wet and then ask what turns them on.

*dies*

I love Japan.

unbearable lightness of being
Today I turned over the page on my calendar to February. Whereas this morning I woke up groggy and hung over from writing ten pages of a field work research paper the day before, now I feel like dancing and singing, everything is going so well!

I spent the whole day today (except the hour I spent teaching English and the odd 5 hours I spent procrastinating) working on said research paper and my fiction story. The research paper is all but done... I've set it aside to proof it later. And after weeks of writer's block, with the research paper out of the way a story topic fell into my lap and the thing's practically written itself. I have a beginning and an end, so now all I need is a middle! (Strange, you say, but that's sometimes how these things work.)

In any case, I made incredible progress and now, suddenly, the rest of the week seems easy! I even managed to complete ALL the reservations for my March trip to the Kansai region. Looks like Alex and I are spending 7 nights in Tokyo at two different ryokan, two nights in Kyoto, two nights in Nara, one night at a Shukubo (temple lodging) in Koya-san, a major pilgrimage site about 2 hours south of Osaka, one night in Osaka and then three more nights in Kyoto. Boo. Yah. Now all I need to FINISH my travel plans completely is to pay for the rest of the Okinawa package and reserve tickets for the Studio Ghibli museum in Mitaka. YAY! I'm awesome! Say I'm awesome!

I'm also psyched because

1) I finally got the install discs for Panther in the mail
2) My host mom gave me my "refund" money for travel during February and it's more than I anticipated
3) I like chocolate

...

4) Tomorrow, host mom and I are going to (do X very special secret thing) for (X very special time) when (we'll have the awesomest thing EVAR done) so that (X) will have a nice surprise. Isn't that cool? I'd love to rant and rave all about it but, you see, it's a secret.

and

5) YAAAAAAYYYY! JUSTIN'S COMING TO VISIT ME ON FRIDAY!!!

I'm like a kid in a candy store. Except I'm not really a kid any more. And, well, this is Tokyo. But there's a Lawson's right across the street from my house, so it might as well be a candy store.

So, you see, I really ought to go eat some Pinot right now... because I just got out of the ofuro and nothing compliments a nice, hot bath better than some cold, vanilla-chocolatey goodness.

Soto
I decided to write my short story on the subject of a male Hikkokomori and all his quirks and annoyances (seems he thinks he's bored rather than afraid) rather than trying to construct a complicated narrative from the POV of someone with Schizophrenia in Japanese society. I wanted to write something that might help me identify with Host Sister but the fact is that I don't think I can accurately write from that point of view without sounding overdramatic. The perspective I'm running with now is a bit lighter but more in the vein of black humor with an uplifting ending. The kid in my story, Shinji, will have been in his room for five years until some strange repetitive dreams about a very familiar woman drive him to suddenly begin to once again crave human contact. A lot of what I want to write about has factual origin but a somewhat farcical tone. I hope that it still deals with some of the problems concerning mental illness in Japan without being a melodrama. Maybe I'll post it here when I'm done.

Anyway, in looking up some details on Hikkikomori victims, I came across this site, which is quite possibly the most amazing and amusing site on everything Japan you didn't know and don't need to know but really ought to read. Seriously. It really is wacky. Seriously.

I've been doing homework for too long.