As the years go by, the land far away from home will be inhabited like our own land. As days go by, the village we settle down in will be our hometown.

Chun Shen Jun, “Bidding Farewell to My Son”

After nine months last year as a tourist, I’m back in Japan – and this time, I have a residence card.

Today has been in the making since I started learning Japanese when I was twelve. Growing up in an Israeli suburb and relocating at twenty-four to a medieval town in England for my second alma mater, I’ve always spurned urbanism. Now, I picked the biggest city in the world, where I’ll live within walking distance to the world’s busiest train station.

I’ve stayed in Tokyo three times as a tourist, for a total of seven weeks. I’ll never forget my first day here: 18 April 2023, arriving in Shinjuku on a long-distance bus from Matsumoto, after travelling all over Japan for two and a half months. I’d kept Tokyo as my last stop in this country.

When I left the countryside and got off at the world’s busiest transport hub at night, I immediately called my sister.

“I feel like Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada,” I gushed with my mouth agape in disbelief. “On her first night in Paris.”

Even my first night in Paris hadn’t dazzled me as much.

Since then, my weeks in the world’s most populated city – with the most opportunities, and the most friends I’d made – were marred by a shrinking budget and escalating alienation. I found myself not knowing where to spend the night, and felt like I had no one to count on.

Now that I’ll live in Tokyo in my own apartment, will I be able to build a more robust social circle? Will my dating life finally grow stable?

The next few weeks will be hectic. School every day, apartment hunting, job hunting, legal errands to complete my relocation, treasure hunting for second-hand furniture: writing should be the last activity in my head. So, naturally, I decided to overhaul this blog, and start a new chapter.

Once I settle in and do all this, I’ll spend my weekdays at school and my weekends at the club, because that’s what your twenties are for. I already know the latter will involve a lot of rejection. That’s what society is for.