The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”

2 August 2023

• 17:00-18:25 Sanggye Jugong Apartment 6 danji to Incheon airport terminal 1 bus number 6100
• Flight to Haneda airport

South Korea’s Incheon Airport

After publishing my last post, my host insisted on paying for my expensive bus ride to the airport. She wouldn’t let me argue with her. I was about to hand her a small present I’d wrapped a few days ago, when I felt like it wasn’t enough.

As we hurried to the bus stop, me practically ran with my suitcase, I tried to say all the final statements on my mind.

“I’d never be able to thank you enough.”

“I’ll never meet someone kinder and more selfless.”

“You care about people. You want to make them happy.”

“Tell me everything that’s going on with the things we talked about. I want to stay in touch.”

“We have to meet again someday. I don’t care where.”

And, after hugging in our last seconds together:

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said.

I dashed with my suitcase and turned around in the middle of the road.

“Until next time!”

I heard a lot of Japanese at the airport. Music to my ears.

Well, not really, because I had a lot of catching up to do. I’d write down new words on my notepad on a daily basis, from now on.

I signed the Israeli company’s contract before checking into my flight. Starting a new job right when I return for a limited time to my favorite place on earth. On the eve of the most hectic week of my trip.

I might die.

The future didn’t excite me much. It came with a timer.

As I stood in the huge line to the security check (the opposite of the emptiness in Narita Airport on the morning of May 9), I wondered why I kept chasing my desires, when I ended up disappointed.

I left Korea with less than 0.1 gigabytes of cellular data left. I’d managed to limit myself to 2.4 gigabytes of data in the past three months.

After a fast food dinner near the gate (still better than convenience store gimbap – anything was preferable to that), my final bite in Korea was the Korean knockoff of my favorite Japanese snack. My first bite in Japan was blueberry Hi-Chew, one of the Miitaka’s favorite snacks.

Sometimes I sounded so laughable, that I wanted to punch myself in the face.

I did not buy insurance for Japan. My first time traveling without one. Japan was the last place on earth where I would be worried about theft. I’d left my valuables unattended there dozens of times. I simply hoped that medically, everything would be okay. No more cycling accidents.

Airports at night felt like a gateway to another dimension.

As the plane began taxiing, I found myself crying once more, despite my new resistance to it, issuing quiet tears in the back of a plane filled with passengers to the brim, all busy with their phones.

I couldn’t stop the cold tears. And as the plane took off – immediately wobbling, to the dismay of the passengers – four images resurfaced in my mind.

• February 28, crying about a special someone inside a train from Matsumoto station to the countryside, on a sunny winter day, with two unrelated young, gay Japanese couples exhibiting furtive PDA next to me…

• May 8, sitting alone in Yanaka Cemetery during sunset on my final night in Japan, tearing up while listening to Paper Bag by Fiona Apple…

• May 9, Japanese staff outside my nearly empty plane waving goodbye and bowing, as, for the umpteenth time on this trip, I broke into hot tears…

• July 24, late, fast-food dinner with a special someone, and a special smile…

I wished I had a photo of that smile.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fall asleep during the short, nocturnal flight. A textbook red-eye.

I listened to Midnights again. The power that You’re on Your Own, Kid and Labyrinth had on me…

“He wanted it comfortable,” Swift sang in Midnight Rain, “I wanted that pain.”

I realized, while writing this, that I might have gotten to a point of documenting my life too much. But I wanted to remember. Every single moment.

The story I’d mentioned in yesterday’s post, about the failed painter and the astronaut – the latter was one of those uber-rare individuals with perfect memory. She remembered every single detail from her time with the painter. And she wrote them all down in her free time in the spaceship, somewhere in outer space, while gazing back at Earth…

Someday, I hoped to make my dream of writing full time a reality.

3 August 2024

Japan’s Haneda Airport

It is 1:40. I am sitting in Haneda airport, back in the Land of the Rising Sun.

When the passport examiner asked me in Japanese if I understood the language, I replied yes. Thus ensued a few questions regarding the nature of my visit. Without proof of the return flight I’d booked to Israel at the end of my 90 days, I probably wouldn’t have been granted re-entry.

Withdrawing cash from a 7/11 ATM was a comforting experience. Half than Korea’s fees. Fancy sound effects. And one heavier pocket.

For the past three months, I imagined this moment again and again, always picturing me enraptured to be back in my favorite place on Earth. Now, I feel mixed emotions.

I miss Korean food and my Korean friends.

I am relieved I am no longer in a country that has given me so many bad moments.

I am afraid of the looming day when I am left with no cash.

I am happy to be back.

But there is no time to reflect on all that. The following week will probably be the busiest of my trip. Maybe even the following two weeks. Or three. Depends on how things go.

I drew up a tentative itinerary of my next three months.

I don’t know how I end up planning more and more hectic itineraries. But to make it to four different festivals in one week, starting tomorrow, and to take advantage of my upcoming JR pass, I am going to get minimal sleep, and travel all over Tohoku region.

When will my next post be? And what will I write about? I don’t know anymore. I have some exciting things planned. Two and a half weeks from now, one day in particular has me agitated more than any day so far on this trip. But how all of this will unfold, and what will transpire between them – I can’t even to begin to guess.

After everything that’s happened to me in the past six months – happiness, heartbreak, a drift ice bath; friendships, rejection, fateful encounters, clubbing to death; mountaintops, a news interview, a cycling crash; blood, fear, freedom, suicide, vomit, tears, and pride parades – I know one thing. Life cannot be determined.

It can only be accepted.

So, with my bloodshot eyes, I look beyond the airport’s glass panels at the dark sky, lie horizontally on some chairs, and surrender to slumber.

Three months from now, who knows where I’ll be, and what I’ll have experienced. This period might be the last time.