東京

a stream of consciousness about Tokyo

Tokyo.

How will I feel about this place a year from now? How will I remember what it was like to be here, in the flesh? To slide open my door and hear the smooth, low whisper of a train coast by. To see the buildings huddled together like a group of penguins, overlooking the many rivers that flow jauntily through the city.

I oftentimes forget that I am close to an ocean, that I am on an island. But when I remember, it hits me like a ton of bricks, and it becomes all the more charming to me. It makes the city morph into a fairytale. How can all this enterprise, innovation, life, be supported on land chopped up by a million different streams? It makes me feel like I’m floating, that all 14 million of us here are flying.

Will I remember the JR trains? The mass of us shifting, lurching, all supported on my body, or so it feels. The strain of my arm holding onto the handle swinging above my head, my surprise that nobody else seems to be struggling as much as I physically am. It always feels like the whole weight of the crowd is pressed into my back at some point or another. It’s funny to me how I can be inches away from a stranger’s face, our breath mingling merrily, and we will just pretend like the other person simply does not exist. We all press against each other, my butt against some old salaryman’s butt, heads in armpits, eyes forcefully trained on whatever each person has decided is the thing they will focus on. We touch, and scrape, and bend, and carry each other to our stop, and then we shove and pull and tear our way out the mass and escape through the train doors into open air. It’s a crazy way to begin your morning.

Will I remember browsing through the konbini on my way back to my apartment? Browsing through the options for a usual favorite, or trying something new because I can and it’s so deliciously easy. A few hundred yen, a swipe of a Pasmo, a small or medium sized bag, a small or medium sized spoon, instantly provided to suit your needs. Browsing is an art that is unique to Japan, or at least, I have never held it in such high regard before coming here. Every item in a store is worth observing, it is worth carefully reading the packaging, noting the tiny details of this or that collaboration, exclaiming how delicious it seems, even though you have surely eaten something similar to it a hundred times before. It feels like your purchase is special, like such a small thing carries weight, it’s the weight of appreciation, of noticing, of caring, of being delighted.

It’s like how I used to think the stuffed animal and character keychains Japanese people always had clipped to their bags were wasteful, cheap, childish. Now I see how maybe I was the one thinking too deeply about a simple keychain. Buy the dang thing and clip it to your work bag. The world keeps turning and now you have something fun to light up your day. Or maybe that’s still making it too deep. It doesn’t even need to light up your day. That’s too American-thinking. You bought it and clipped it to your backpack just because you could. That is enough of a reason.

I know I’m going to miss it here so much. I’m going to dream of this year and reminisce it and it’s going to strengthen me because it is now part of my identity. One year in Japan, living in Japan, being as close to Japanese as I will ever come, I am living it now. I will hug this year close to my chest when I need to feel Japanese, I will use it as a token to show the world, paying for my right to be Japanese. This year will be served on a platter for others to eat and for me to smell with nostalgia for the rest of my life. But I am here now. When is the next time I will be here just to live without an agenda besides just going about my daily life? Without an itinerary? Without an end date in a week and a half? Maybe never? Maybe when I have a kid and I bring them here for summer school? Actually that just really eased my mind. I can be back if I so choose. And at least I got to live it once.

I think I tend to focus on the future a bit too much. I feel alive right now, remembering that I am in fact living in Japan, my window open, the cold piercing my arms and fingers, the car wheels pushing through the rain-slicked streets. The night sky faintly yellow with the flood of light from the city. The apartments across from me lit up various colors like tetris, warm, cool, and black boxes sitting there, everyone’s lives thrown open for me to peer into. I love it here. I really do.

Tokyo!