jmoiron.net

On March 8th, 2002, I made a mistake. In typical fashion, I'll beat around the bush now and explain a lot of things that nobody cares about before getting to the point. It's a sad attempt to build your suspense, and if you are reading this sentence right now, it probably worked. Shame on you.

When I started this website (In February of 2002, when it was blue and only rendered properly in one browser), I wanted to have titles for each of my rants. It quickly became the case that titles were simply song lyrics lifted from whatever I was listening to. This was somehow cooler than live journal's thing, which might not have existed yet, because you would have to be as cool as me and like the same music I did to be in my secret club and know what I was talking about. As we all now know, this was stupid.

Back to the task at hand. In my youth, I brashly used the title Nonstop to Tokyo. This is from a Pizzicato 5 song, a song that, had I an mp3 player, I would have probably listened to for 11 hours straight on my plane ride to Tokyo on December 26th, 2005, just to get me in the mood. Tokyo no Gashou is another Pizzicato 5 song. I'm not sure exactly what it means, because I don't know the kanji they used for it, but I think it means: "A poem named Tokyo" This of course is probably wrong, and I don't like the song much.

But on a serious note, I don't really know how to do this. I could be mysterious, and not say anything. That probably wouldn't work. That doesn't achieve the desired effect, which is to tell you how I've been doing. I could try a crime novel style:

All I wanted was a cup of coffee. I had gotten addicted to hot, vending machine cafe Au lait, as others had been before me. Searching through my pockets, I found 120 yen: 120 yen that kick started a wild sequence of events so outlandish, I'd think them fiction by the time I woke.

But no, that won't work either. Besides, that story is best told in person, over some hot chocolate, with more gesticulations than are probably healthy. I'll take it from the top, then, and leave out details, leave out huge swaths of information so large as to obscure greater truths. It's always better that way, and for the most part, your wildest imagination is probably not that far off.

It's a pretty sweet gig here at WiNSeC. As a full timer, I get 4 weeks of vacation a year, which I am led to believe is astronomical. Bouncing from project to project over the course of 2005, never feeling quite like they could progress without me, I finally had some down time in December with which to utilize those 4 weeks. So I took a month off from work. I didn't work from one 8th to another.

Unfortunately, some classes I was taking had something else in mind, as far as working in the literal sense was concerned. Finals kept me in town until the 15th, and with only 10 days until the United States' big holiday season, I felt tied down due to family obligations. Everyone knows that my largely unacted upon dream is world travel, or at least anyone who has spoken to me at length knows this. Recently. Probably. My dream would have to be postponed until after the 25th.

Talking up a trip within the confines of my home and my circle of high school friends (which, I think, numbers two) created sufficient self pressure to actually go ahead and do it, and after a glance at various sites for this kind of thing, booked a vacation with the added convenience of not having to talk to anyone.

A few days before my trip, I ate a meal that largely consisted of meat with Jean Luc and Jerm. We both reminisced about days gone past, when I suppose we had time to write about the things we did. More enjoyment came from that night than most nights. Jeremy tried to fit his car into a space that was about 3 feet wide. He claimed that a car which blocked his path was not visible from where we had been. I have documentary evidence, a piece I like to call "1.3 megapixels of sorrow", but I am unable to get things off of my phone because I am lazy and have not gone through the effort of figuring out how yet. When I do, you can rest assured it will be available below this text, with the previous disclaimer removed.

Christmas Day is not celebrated by my family. We celebrate Christmas Eve as a day to get together and eat lots of food. This year, the fried fish was muddy, so we tossed it. Usually it's my favorite. Christmas day, I returned to my apartment in Jersey City at around 16:00, and rather than pack I decided that sleep was more important. I woke up at 23:00, packed for 3 hours, and left my apartment. JSQ path -> Newark -> #62 to Terminal C -> San Fransisco -> Narita Airport. It took quite some time.

I don't know what I was thinking, or if I was thinking at all. The girl at the JR counter asked me if I wanted a reservation on the Narita Express. "I don't know.." I replied. She looked at me with this stare that questioned my seriousness. The directions I had to the hotel involved the Keisei line, which I avoided the entire trip. After a pause, I decided to go along with her plans, and got my ticket for the Narita Express train to Tokyo. That was the last time I would be able to communicate effectively with another human being in person in 2005.

When I got to Tokyo station, I was lost inside its hugeness. I didn't know how the JR train system worked, or how the Tokyo Metro subway system worked. I didn't know how to tell which one I was using, and I wasn't sure where my hotel was. I was able to navigate it perfectly by the time I left.

I had decided to go about my travels an odd way: I'd get as lost as possible, and see what came of it. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but emerging from the Ginza line in Asakusa confirmed my suspicions pretty quickly: that it would be amazing. Luckily for me, home base was right next to one of Tokyo's major temples, in the pedestrian friendly Taito-ku, a leisurely and exciting hour and a half walk from Akihabara. My first few hours in Tokyo were probably the best, after I found my way off of the imposing public transportation system. Dark but alive, short and slim densely packed buildings lined impossibly narrow streets. A kaleidoscope of caricatured Japanese life paraded past me, loading small trucks in the backs of ramen shops, smoking calmly outside the koban, and gleefully brandishing 'Irashaimase!' in clothes I thought would surely no longer be in use. Life near Asakusa-kannon was filled with anticipation of 2006 and Japan's biggest holiday, new years, and youth and couples were out in abundance in the balmy and dry winter weather.

Being in a different country means speaking a different language, using different customs, talking to different people, and learning a different history. I like pretty much all of those things about Japan, even the odd way they deal with World War 2. Ueno-san was a 60 year old man I met at a yakitori place in Asakusa. Somewhere in my personal archive of pictures (behold, a public one) is one with me giving a "V" and Ueno-san looking wasted. He looked wasted because he liked Shochu, and drank the better part of 2 bottles while we spoke together exclusively in Japanese: the parts he didn't drink, he happily poured in my glass. He kept repeating, "Japan, United States, Australia: besto friend". He really liked Australia.

Ueno-san was born in 1945, and liked the United States and Australia. Lot's of other things happened in 1945 too, but Ueno-san was born then. He liked the United States, and shied away from the obvious topic of the war our countries had together. It made me realize that mama-san was probably born around then too, and the old guy who grilled my tori brilliantly.

My days went on kinda like that. I'd go somewhere, sometimes with a destination in mind. I would get lost until lunch, where I'd meet some nice people at the bar (lots of Japanese restaurants are set up in a bar style; most of the places with cheap food, which I prefer, use this style) or the people who run the place would tell me how to get to my destination or even sometimes have a map sitting around. A few days were absolutely standout. My first day hitting up Kamakura-kita. My second day in Kamakura-kita and in Kamakura propper. The Daibutsu there is a must see. I'll now skip my (_incredible_) New Years Eve.

In just about every way, my experience in Japan was good. I met interesting people, ate great food, and walked so much that I returned 5 kilo's lighter. Being forced to read things and to communicate mostly in Japanese was a good initiation into the courses that I'll be taking in the language this coming semester. It was a good initiation into life, where too often we fall victim to comfort. I don't mean that in a Tim Rogers way, where I feel like I need to get some street cred by detailing how I shower at work and live on the streets in Shinjuku. I mean it in the way that life without discomfort isn't very lively; it's why I don't plan things anymore.

These words have been bumped around from computer to computer now for the better part of 2 weeks, in an endless effort to perfect them. I suppose, it being the New Year, I am supposed to reflect on the past one and look to the future. In Japan, on New Years Eve, you are supposed to eat soba and clean your apartment. This way, you can take the beginning of the next year off and do no work. History is a cycle; each year is a cycle of seasons, themselves made up of days that cycle forever onward alternating between light and darkness. It's not that deep, if you think about it.

I was busy on New Years Eve, and 10,000 kilometers away from my apartment, but I ate the soba, and started cleaning immediately upon my return. Really, though, I prefer udon.