shigatsu, pt. 1

i figure i'll write these posts and drop them off here, since this blog used to be lie a dumping ground for my feelings and thoughts and i'd put a lot of effort into writing what went on here, and now i don't really do that, since twitter makes it easy for me to just shit out posts really fast. but i feel like it's somehow important that i write this stuff out in depth so i don't forget it. i've basically forgotten how to write out long posts as this point, but i still want to try at least?

this year i spent the month of april living in japan.

idk where to go with this, aside from repeating my usual summary of "it was amazing, i've wanted to go to japan for almost ten years, blah blah blah" all that shit. i'm not a very accomplished person to so speak, it took a lot of effort just for me to make it out of high school and through three semesters of japanese in college. so, while something as simple as an overseas trip might be a normal thing for some people, it's big for me. i never thought id' really go, i thought i'd hype myself up and then chicken out, or end up not having enough money to go. but i went.

it's very different. different in a lot of ways that i could spend years explaining. random little things were the most shocking differences to me- the assigned movie theater seats. the strict obedience of traffic laws. the anime section of the conbinis.

i knew i'd go and see lots of things, but i think my favorite parts of the whole ordeal come in two parts. the first part was daily life. now that i'm back here, i miss the routine i had while living in japan. go to the family mart in the morning and get water and snacks. wander around and go shopping for the day, or stay in and watch tv. go to 7-11 in the afternoon and buy dinner and food for the evening. come back to my room, talk to my family, lipsynch songs and look out the window until i'd go to bed.

when i left, i thought my favorite parts of my trip would be the amazing things i saw. the things i saw were really amazing, but in the end, i feel like the daily life, the routine, the schedule, the mundane things like shopping for food and saying hello to neighbors were the things i'll miss the most. i got to experience a life i essentially do not have- i was living on my own, fending for myself, only half-comprehending the world news, going places i've never been before. sitting on the subway for hours, watching the stations pass. it was almost like being a new person for a month.

i thought about taking pictures of the mundane things i'll miss- the alcove by the ramen shop in morishita made for a parked car but overgrown with little flowers and a wall of moss, the roof where people would go out for a smoke in roppongi. but i didn't. it felt weird. it felt like how i'd feel if i went around taking pictures of the floor here. it's a floor, it's just part of my life. i'm trying to describe this as best i can, but i can't really.

the second part of the things i'll miss was every single person i met.

i started the trip scared and depressed. i came out of canada in a good mood, but after getting to my room in tokyo, i almost didn't leave for two days. the culture shock overwhelmed me, and on top of the fact that i'd never lived by myself before, i had no idea what to do. i went to sleep crying and woke up crying for those two days. i wanted to get back on a plane and go home, but i just cried harder because i had no idea how to get back to the airport. i just wanted to leave. i sat on the computer and waited for my friends and relatives to get online so i could talk to them on skype because i just wanted that contact.

on the third day, i somehow got myself pumped up enough that i got on the shinjuku line and ended up in iwamotocho, which is next to akihabara. i walked around akihabara for a day and it was like something just clicked in my head. i didn't really have anything to be afraid of. people in japan are, for a lack of better words, good. they are good people.

i want to send flowers to every single person who helped me that day, and for the rest of the month. every train conductor that i asked for directions. every family mart cashier who smiled at me. every shopkeeper who knew to attempt speaking broken english to me. the kids at the zoo who giggled and told me they liked my hair. the guy who stopped me to sell me a kebab and the old lady who walked with me in ueno, talking too fast for me to understand what she was saying. the british guy and two girls who sang beauty and a beat with me outside tower records in shibuya. makoto, the flight attendant who became my friend, jason, the guy who helped me onto the train at okachimachi station. every passerby who helped my carry by suitcases up the stairs. the man at the hotel, who was one of the kindest people i've ever met. the guy with green hair that got my water bottle when i dropped it in the street. every single person, every single encounter. they were all so nice. i loved interacting. i loved the strange situations that i managed to get into in that month, and i loved the strangers i met in those situations.

i have this weird, surreal feeling about the entire trip. i can't exactly say why. it feels like i was outside myself for the entire month.

 the feeling of culture shock left as quickly as it had come to me.  it was like suddenly understanding a concept of 'home' that i'd never felt before. home outside of home. home with people whose names i didn't even know.

japan introduced me to a lot of things. this new comprehension of the concept of being home, a lot of food, a lot of strange stores. a lot of words. a lot of anime. a lot of music. a lot of open-mindedness, a lot of patriotism. a lot of respect for trains and timeliness and public courtesy. singing toilets and other ingenious bathroom fixtures. remote controls that count up to twelve.

it's hard to describe it all.

i spent the first half of the month in koto. koto is part of old tokyo, a lot of old, weathered buildings that still have that fragile sense of prettiness, next door to ten story apartments built in the last few years. koto used to be a big sumo area, and lining kiyosumi-dori there are, apparently, still a lot of sumo training areas. sometimes i'd see guys who are very obviously sumo wrestlers dressed in normal clothes riding their bikes to the parco down the street next to the station.

i felt a sense of nostalgia for koto without ever having been there before. my view from the window had me looking out over a residential street where i could see high rises in the distance. it felt so weird to be there, looking out of that window. every morning i'd wake up and open it and stand there for a while, even though it was cold, i still felt compelled to do it. nothing really changed, people and cars came and went, and i felt like i was trying to remember it like it would be some kind of childhood memory to me.

i spent the latter half of the month in roppongi, in an apartment on the sixth floor of a building that looked out over roppongi hills. my rooms were weirdly silent hill themed. the hotel in koto had me in room 302 for the time i was there, and from my roppongi room, i was directly facing the konami flagship headquarters, which was coincidentally almost always surrounded in mist.

i felt differently about roppongi than i felt about koto. koto felt like a memory. roppongi, from the second i stepped out of the train station, was home. i got off the train and immediately fell in love with it. it has a mixed reputation, from being a seedy, creepy area full of misfits to being a trendy shopping complex. the area has tried to revamp itself and come off with a new vibe. my cousin told me she stayed away from roppongi because it was scary. it is, most likely, my second favorite place in the world. i missed roppongi the day i got there, knowing i'd have to leave.

this is really long and i'll talk more about stuff later or when i feel like typing more up. i feel sad writing this because it's making me miss japan dearly, and i've only been back for two weeks.