Anyone who is going to die is already dead and does not know it.

Jose Saramago, “Blindness”

8 November 2023

Settling into Life in Tokyo

Life as a volunteer at a language café in Tokyo. From here on, I spent most of my time going on dates or simply hanging out with tourists and locals.

This morning, for example, was dedicated to planning a 3.5-day trip to the Izu Peninsula for my three days off next week. Then, after lunch, I went on two back-to-back dates. Neither spoke to me, though. My mind was fixated on a certain someone.

Back in the share house, I spent better quality time with my roommate, Alejandro. I learned that he was living in a share house in Rome next door to a night club. He was popular with both sexes, even in Japan, despite landing here a mere few days ago. While getting ready for a date, he asked me how he looked, what I thought, and we chatted like longtime roommates.

Without intending to, I went on another date at night. Five dates in two days, not a shred of chemistry in the air. There wasn’t anything wrong with the people I’d been meeting. They were nice. I just felt nothing.

Yet another disappointing recreation of my life in Busan. A lacklustre period between romantic emotions in April and July. Tohoku in August and Tokyo in early September hadn’t differed – until the time for Sapporo had come. Would November become another frustrating bridge, perhaps until a less grey December sparked something within me like a Christmas light?

Adamant to find that elusive spark, I arranged a sixth date for tomorrow, choosing people over tourist destination.

Today’s highlight: booking a getaway to the countryside. Again, a sole, underserving highlight, just like in Busan.

9 November 2023

• Harry Potter café in Akasaka
• Hie Shrine
• 18:00-22:00 shift at the language café

Harry Potter Café

This morning, I took the train to Akasaka, an area of Tokyo I hadn’t visited prior, that had become a Harry Potter playground.

The staircase from exit 3b of Akasaka station was Hogwarts-themed, with a red carpet leading to a large time turner, and portraits of wizards gracing the walls. Harry Potter theme music was playing, making me smile like a child. Overground, Hogwarts banners decorated several façades, including that of the theatre which played the Cursed Child.

I met a 26 years old Japanese guy for lunch at the recently opened Harry Potter café. A reservation and quite some budget was of the essence.

He had a short, spiky hair, an angular face, and wide eyes. Stylish in all-black, with touches of jewelry and an LV bag. Originally from Yamaguchi prefecture, he’d worked at USJ, and now at Tokyo’s Disney; he had previously done voice acting, and now studied stage performance.

The café was magical. Electric blue walls, lamps reminiscent of the Hogwarts Great Hall floating candles, portraits of wizards. The food was acceptable – a small pumpkin soup, a nice salmon and avocado toast – but it was the atmosphere that made the expensive meal worthwhile. Hogwarts house plates and a Hedwig-shaped dessert. Perhaps it was the setting, but after five consecutive letdowns, I finally had fun.

Stomachs bursting, we barely managed to get up, and browsed the nearby Harry Potter shop, where I gasped at everything and wanted to buy all. Then we rested at a nearby park and walked around, checking out the nearby Hie shrine. (Nondescript and under renovations.)

Since the Disney guy wasn’t working today, I invited him to my first shift at the language café, from 18:00 to 22:00. Bringing friends was allowed; they even received a discount.

First Shift at the Café

We took the train to Shin-Okubo, grabbed takeout from the cheap bento shop, walked to the café in Takadanobaba, ate, and then chatted for four hours. Tea and coffee at the café were all you could drink. I needed caffeine to remain sharp.

I got to meet some of the other volunteers as well.

A shy yet energetic 25-years-old Swedish girl, with thin, long hair, and Shin-Chan socks, wallet, and various other anime merch. She’d studied Korean for a few months in Seoul before COVID, and now a little bit of Japanese.

An outgoing 25-years-old Italian guy from Sicily with lavender highlights, sunglasses (even indoors), a graffitied hoodie, and torn denim. He had studied Japanese as a foreign exchange student for a year, and recently applied to a work visa (by hiring a lawyer, just as the Rabbi had suggested!) at a casino in Shinjuku.

There was also a Catalan girl, a Costa Rican girl, and an American guy from my flat.

Six staff members for three customers, including the Disney guy. A slow evening. Bringing a friend (and a customer) along was quite fortuitous, then. His English was intermediate, so chatting with him and the other volunteers turned a shift into a fun hangout.

At 22:00, we all went to Hidakaya aross the street for cheap fast food. I ate an omelette rice. Then I walked the Disney guy to the station and invited him to come again. He said today was fun.

Throughout the evening, the conversation flowed so well, that when I walked alone back to the share house at night, I didn’t feel so alone anymore; so alienated. I recalled what it felt like to be around people you liked.

Back at the share house, Chris had left. It was just me and Alejandro in the sun-roofed room now. We talked forever about men, women, relationships, and everything in-between.

He’d been living the sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll life in Rome, London, Bangkok. I shared with him my attempt at letting loose, especially in the last few days, and subsequent struggles.

“Sometimes I feel so bad and don’t want to hurt them, that I just say yes,” I said.

Not for the first time, I’d been thinking of someone while with another.

Alejandro tried to teach me how to blow off someone I wasn’t attracted to.

“I’m a bad boy,” he said. “You have to think about yourself first.”

Then I recounted to him the Harry Potter café. He turned out to be quite a fan as well. And, while on the topic of good dates…

A couple of days after arriving at Japan, he’d already met a Japanese guy who had him head over heels. Alejandro couldn’t stop thinking about him. On the contrary, he could already picture their future.

It was his first time falling at first sight for someone he’d have limited time with while on a trip. A feeling I knew well.

A girl volunteer popped by our flat at 2:00. A tall beauty, with touches of pastel-blue highlights in her silky hair, and an effortlessly cool aura. I overheard her talking to one of the guys in the messy hallway about Akasaka.

Alejandro and I joined the Harry Potter conversation. It was the first time in years a girl had made me feel confused.

“You’re a Gryffindor,” Alejandro blurted, realization widening his eyes, as I was talking to the girl.

How perceptive. A fact I wasn’t proud of. I knew he was a Slytherin before he proclaimed it the next moment.

“Slytherin was always my favourite, though,” I lamented.  

“I’ll teach you how to be a Slytherin,” he grinned.

Today’s highlights: the Harry Potter atmosphere in Akasaka; lunch at the Harry Potter café; a fun first shift; night in the dorm.

10 November 2023

• 13:00-17:00, 18:00-22:00 shifts and dinner at the café (Friday night party)

Double Shift at the Café

A piece of an apricot cake from a bakery was waiting for me by my bed this morning. Alejandro and I had been bonding so much, that I’d done his laundry, while he’d treated me to calories.

“A Gryffindor and a Slytherin walk into a dorm…” I thought and chuckled. With just us two in our room from now on, I couldn’t have asked for a better roommate.

Double shift today was from 13:00-22:00, with an hour’s break in-between. Lunch was as slow as Thursday dinner. The Sicilian, Catalan, and Swedish volunteers were on duty. A nice Asian-Australian guy showed up, followed by a middle-aged Japanese woman, the lead singer of an Italian heavy metal band.

She was the edgiest, most unexpected customer. The first Asian woman to perform in Wacken Open Air, one of the largest heavy metal festivals in the world.

Originally from Osaka, she educated us on its cultural differences from Tokyo (and how it was gradually becoming like Tokyo, much to her dismay). Apparently, Osaka people were livelier, more direct; less patient, but also less duplicitous. The average Japanese’s veneer had become my least disliked aspect of this land. I valued direct communication, whereas Japanese people often avoided any form of conflict for the sake of politeness.

There had to be a way to do both, I protested. To be both a Gryffindor and a Slytherin.

The evening shift was a completely different affair.

Friday night was a party at the café. Free drinks and heaps of food. Two sangria, pineapple juice, pizza, nachos, chips, brownies… were some of the things I devoured. The café had filled so much, that I could barely stand still, let alone make conversation. My throat began to hurt. Most of the patrons were regulars.

Free food and good company for the most part. Talking to people I didn’t vibe with was part of the job description. Every now and then, however, I encountered someone interesting. For example, a Japanese guy who spoke and behaved like an American college boy, so lively and energetic and hood-like.

Meeting a dazzling number of people in a short while was another déjà vu to Busan. Back then, I’d been cleaning an eight-floor party hostel, where almost everyone was brisk, young, friendly, and international. I’d hung out with too many people to count, befriended some, and listened to plenty of behind-closed-doors drama.

Now, the café was no different. I saw a lot of people who sparked my interest in more than platonic manners. They were all cishet. In a packed café, from the other side of the room, while chatting to customers, I watched them talking to equally attractive members of the opposite sex.

I couldn’t do it. I had not missed it. That feeling of being the odd one out. It seemed as if everyone fit into this perfect world of “good-looking boy meets good-looking girl”… while I gave them travel advice, only for our friendship to be discarded.

It was a painful reminder of heteronormativity. I wanted to talk to Alejandro, but he was off duty. Busan had also featured only one other queer person in the bunch.

The fact that the girl from last night hadn’t batted an eyelid in my direction the entire evening didn’t help.

A Soul-Crushing Night Out in Shinjuku Ni-chome

At 22:15, the party ended. All the volunteers, and some regulars they’d befriended, wanted to go clubbing. I wanted to party with them – yet couldn’t go out to a straight venue again. Not another Seomyeon.

We stood outside the café’s building in busy Takadanobaba, on a cold night, and continued in different directions. Fifteen of them walked together to the station to catch the train to Shibuya, while I walked alone for 35 minutes to ni-chome.

I felt lame for ditching them. But I also felt lonely and misunderstood. Different. No one had wanted to come with me to ni-chome.

I wished I were born as someone else.

Then I reached ni-chome, teeming with queers (they existed!), and entered the most popular nightclub.

My last time here was in April. I’d assumed the east Asians were all Japanese. Now I noticed they were in equal parts Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese. It was curious to see how many of them resided here, particularly Chinese. More than other nationality.

I danced using my usual technique. Letting loose, making a fool of myself, closing my eyes, and smiling, pretending that I didn’t care. That I wasn’t looking at anyone around me, that I was too busy enjoying myself. That I didn’t need anyone to have fun, and that I’d come to dance by myself.

Sometimes, faking it made it. Half the time, it worked. The other half, I looked around at all the attractive people around me, who acted like the Belgian girl. I always tried to hit on people I liked. Tonight, I couldn’t, and wondered if someone was also stopping themselves from doing so.

I felt jealous. So, so jealous. And inferior. I looked in the mirror while dancing and thought, “I don’t blend in.”

Tonight was Korea all over again. Even the Japanese guys at the club, I considered off-limits. One kept looking at me. Yet something in me was broke.

It was one of those nights when I felt everything. A rush, a fall, fear, desire. Bliss and inferiority, jealousy and apathy, loneliness and loathing, verve and mortality. Ennui. Empty.

I longed to be courted after. I yearned to hide under a rock.

It wasn’t even a physical need anymore, but an emotional one. I needed to know that someone I was into was also into me.

At 2:00, an Egyptian guy with a reserved disposition entered the club.

“Yo – you’re the Egyptian guy from Pride!” I exclaimed, immediately recognising him.

A student from Yokohama on the prestigious MEXT scholarship. I’d asked him to dance here on April 29. We’d had a good, flirty time doing so, until he’d started pointing at all the other guys he was into, and ditched me.

“I remember you,” I said.

He returned a bashful smile.

“I remember you too,” he said calmly.

I could feel his composure was a sign of indifference. So I smiled and left.

I felt dead inside, yet continued dancing.

At some point, I got on a platform where a short, older Japanese guy was dancing by himself. He grabbed me and forced me to join him.

“Look around,” he gestured at everyone. “No one looks at us.”

I tried to let go of his hand, but he strengthened his grip.

“No one wants me,” he said, and added: “You’re cute.”

I didn’t know what to say. The crowd ultimately separated us.

At 3:30, I left, after four hours of nonstop dancing. When was the last time my ears had been ringing?

I noticed a text from two hours ago. The Chinese guy from Ogikubo I’d gone out with on September 10 and wanted to meet again: he hadn’t echoed my sentiment, and now asked if I was in ni-chome.

“Yeah,” I replied.

He didn’t. Probably left already.

I left ni-chome as well, walked north to the share house, and burst into tears. My voice was hoarse from eight hours of speaking and four hours of screaming lyrics.

The Ogikubo guy replied. I wiped my cheeks, returned to ni-chome, and waited for him for a whole hour. Better than ending the night in tears.

We chatted outside the club for half an hour, freezing our asses off. It was good to see him again. Most of the time, he avoided my gaze.

We walked together to Shinjuku station, where he would take the 5:00 am train. I hugged him goodbye. He didn’t hug me back.

At 6:00, I went to bed. Light from the sun roof was filling my dorm.

Today’s highlights: apricot cake; the Friday night shift; and, ironically enough, crying alone in the streets of Tokyo after a night of clubbing.

11 November 2023

• 15:00-19:00 shift at the café

Shift at the Café

I slept five hours, and woke to another cake on my bedstand.

Alejandro was a mess. An emotional mess. The new guy – he couldn’t stop thinking about him. He’d started frequenting a bakery in search of European dough.

“But it’s good that you feel this way,” I said, relishing my chocolate and coffee cake.

“No, I’m a Slytherin, I don’t want to be a Gryffindor,” he complained in his thick accent. “I don’t want to be sensitive.”

He preferred playing with girls to being smitten with a guy.

My shift today was the same as last night’s. The café was always packed on weekends. I gave an extra hour in the evening in exchange for one less hour tomorrow, when I’d sleep at a ryokan 3 hours away from Shinjuku that locked its doors at 21:00. The owner of the café had let me swap hours and leave tomorrow at 17:00.  

Another Soul-Crushing Night Out in Shinjuku Ni-chome

After my shift, I ate dinner, showered, and walked to ni-chome. No one from the café wanted to join me tonight, either. So at 22:00, I returned to the same club, determined to be more sociable this time.  

The venue was only half full at first. I managed to dance quite loosely. No one was drawing my attention, while I was drawing some eyes instead. As if the crowd tonight was the opposite of yesterday’s.

So I felt quite good about myself. Then the Ogikubo guy showed up unexpectedly near 23:00 with a friend, an Uyghurian who’d fled China eight years ago for Japan. We danced a little, but they weren’t the dancing type, and left after an hour to catch the last train.

Then the club filled like crazy. It got so busy, that I couldn’t even stand. People pushing each other, a stampede almost forming. I could no longer get cellular reception.

Before I knew it, it was last night all over again. The same sort of crowd. Three Korean guys making out simultanously right next to me. I managed to dance with a bespectacled Chinese guy who had drawn me. Then he left.

Sometimes, someone would glance at me. No, more than a glance. A meaningful look on a poker face.

I would do anything in those moments to read their mind. To fathom if they wanted to approach me, as much as I wanted to approach them. Eye contact, smile – those were my usual cues. Why were not enough for others?

A couple of times, I was asked why I’d come by myself.

I could count on one hand the guys who’d showed up alone. How did I end up recreating all the good and bad of Busan? Why couldn’t I find a friend who would go out with me to a gay club? And how come all those people who’d come in large groups had so many queer friends? When would I get to be a part of one?

Throughout the night, a short, older Filipino man kept trying to dance with me.

“You really bring the energy,” he shouted, “you look like you’re having fun.”

He told me several times that I was cute. My mind, however, was replaying steps I’d taken on dance floors in bygone days, recalling better nights, better moments, trying to figure out what was the one that ruined all.

I wanted to hit pause, to hit pause, to go back in time.

Being tossed by the crowd like a wave of models, I’d grown unmoored: emotionally isolated, mentally immature. Like a ship lost at sea, after a lighthouse that had been shining from far north had turned off its beacon. I thought of that northern light, and the dimness of a drag club across the pond. I dreamed of smelling a kerosene lamp. It was real enough to get me through.

At 1:30, I retired.

I stood outside the club for an hour, freezing while using my phone, because I didn’t want to walk back to the share house and for the night to end.

At 3:00, it started to rain. No sooner had I started north than the Filipino man approached me and asked me out.

It was never the person I wanted. And if it was, it didn’t last.

So, just like in early September: I could either become a Slytherin, or continue writing posts addressed to the void. Become Alejandro, while he was trying to resist becoming me.

My choice was fairly obvious.

I went to bed at 4:00, thinking about my romantic disturbances from February, and April, and July, September, and now, November. It was also obvious to me that this pain would last forevermore.

Today’s highlights: chocolate and coffee cake; dancing and clubbing.