Worry before all worries in the world, and enjoy after all enjoyments in the world.

Fan-Zhongyan, “Gakuyoro-ki”

Never thought I’d be thrilled to leave Japan’s capital and the largest metropolis on Earth.

11 September 2023

• 11:55-12:05 Onarimon station to Suidobashi station train (Mita line)
• Koishikawa Korakuen (1h)
• Kodokan museum (30m)
• Kodokan – watching a judo lesson (1h)
• Bunkyo observation deck (1h)
• 19:04-19:10 Korakuen station to Komagome station metro (Namboku line), 19:20-19:30 transfer to Mejiro station (Yamanote line)
• Sento in the evening
• 22:42-22:44 to Ikebukuro station train (Yamanote line)

Koishikawa Koraku-en

I checked out of my hostel at 11:30 and formulated an itinerary for today. A Bunkyo City ward day.

First off: Koishikawa Korakuen, the oldest garden in Tokyo. I’d deliberately avoided it in Round One in the hope that I would get to see its fall colours. But now I realized they would come after I left Japan. So it was now or never.

Korakuen was first laid out in 1629 by Tokugawa Yorisufa, but completed by his successor, Mitsukuni. It was a kaiyu (circuit) style that had shrunk over the years from 255,000 square meters to 70,000, owing to Tokyo’s urbanization.

Still, it was one of the only places in Japan with the double designation: Special Historic Site and Special Place of Scenic Beauty.

The garden was green and peaceful. Just what I needed. It enjoyed very few visitors, which increased my enjoyment in return.

There was a field with scarecrows; traces of burnt shrines; and one of the oldest stone arch bridges in Japan. More birds than cars. A Saigyo poem inscribed on a stone monument. And, as the garden’s centerpiece, quite the shallow pond, with a turtle-shaped island.

I came across a waterlily pond situated against skyscrapers. Only in Tokyo one could behold those two sights at the same time.

A Complete Failure

Sitting at a rest pavilion overlooking the pond, I recalled one day in middle school when I’d told a friend (alias: H) that I couldn’t see myself ever turning 30.

“I’d rather die than become old,” I’d not-really-joked.

At high school, this had changed. I’d begun forming stories – novels, screenplays – in my head.

“Behold the lot of man,” said the veiled Ayesha, as she drew the winding sheets back over the dead lovers, speaking in a solemn, thrilling voice, which accorded well with the dream that I had dreamed: “to the tomb, and to the forgetfulness that hides the tomb, must we all come at last! Ay, even I who live so long. Even for me, oh Holly, thousands upon thousands of years hence; thousands of years after you hast gone through the gate and been lost in the mists, a day will dawn whereon I shall die, and be even as thou art and these are. And then what will it avail that I have lived a little longer, holding off death by the knowledge that I have wrung from Nature, since at last I too must die? What is a span of ten thousand years, or ten times ten thousand years, in the history of time? It is as naught—it is as the mists that roll up in the sunlight; it fleeth away like an hour of sleep or a breath of the Eternal Spirit. Behold the lot of man! Certainly it shall overtake us, and we shall sleep. Certainly, too, we shall awake and live again, and again shall sleep, and so on and on, through periods, spaces, and times, from æon unto æon, till the world is dead, and the worlds beyond the world are dead, and naught liveth but the Spirit that is Life. But for us twain and for these dead ones shall the end of ends be Life, or shall it be Death? As yet Death is but Life’s Night, but out of the night is the Morrow born again, and doth again beget the Night. Only when Day and Night, and Life and Death, are ended and swallowed up in that from which they came, what shall be our fate, oh Holly? Who can see so far? Not even I!”

H.R. Haggard, “She: A History of Adventure”

I’d never forget reading She: A History of Adventure for the first time. I was 18, in 12th grade. It was Passover vacation. 2013. My mom had been renovating the house, replacing the damaged floors. There was mess everywhere. I’d watched South Park during the day and read She at night, sleeping on an old bed in the dusty basement. Then the idea for my first novel had popped into my head.

By the time I was 21, I’d had all the stories in my mind fleshed out. Enough projects to last a lifetime.

Suddenly, I could picture myself past the age of thirty. I’d planned my career until retirement.

I’d lived a lifetime in my brain. A life worth living. A life I would not have.

I didn’t have any regrets. Every big decision I’d made, I’d stood behind. I’d always stayed true to myself. If anything, this explained why my life had amounted to nothing. Who I was and who everyone else was simply did not mesh.

Deep down, I knew that I wasn’t meant to come into this world. Maybe to a different era, or a different planet. Maybe in an alternate universe, I fit in, and my dreams came true.

The truth was, I still felt like the 14-year-old who’d called himself a monkey.

Today during recess at school H said something I’m almost certain was a joke but I know is true.

“You’ll always be alone, because you’re gay, oh but you’ll find yourself a gay boyfriend” (sort of).

The truth hurts and it’s the first time since all the process I’ve been through this year that I’m hurting again. Because it’s true. I will be alone. I’m an ugly monkey with a disgusting personality and confidence and self-esteem that yearn to escape the minus threshold, and I know it’s all true. I think I’m allowed to sink into self-pity a little – I’ve earned it. I can’t be happy about this after all.

“Coming Out, Chapter 6” (15 March 2009)

There were a million things about my existence I would change in a heartbeat. I couldn’t even begin to list them all. From the country I was born into, and the body, and the period.

It would’ve been easier to have been born in ancient times, or as a lesbian. At least girls were better at communicating.

It would’ve been easier to have been born with normative dreams, and a personality that fit into societal expectations.

I wanted to change every single thing about me. Yet, if the moment actually came, I doubt I’d change anything. Probably just one or two. Anything more than that, and I’d become someone else.

Perhaps it was just me, but life felt like an ouroboro. You tried to break free of the cycle – you glimpsed the light past its end – and then its beginning bit you in the ass. Back to square one.

Now that I was approaching 30 in a year and a half, I wondered if there was some meaning to my words from middle school. Perhaps something bad would happen to me in my travels. A few things already had.

I wrote all this while sitting in front of the water lily pond, with its Chinese-style gate, which seemed remarkably understated. I loathed myself, and loathed humankind. I loathed life and the fact that I was writing this.

I recalled the ending of the poem I’d written after visiting Miyajima: one of the best days of my life.

Perhaps one day I will make a connection

A small success, a goal achieved

Perhaps the day will never come

And in its stead, my fears

But boredom is the enemy of the mind

Remorse, the heart’s disease

Better to have tried and failed

Than to think at night about what could’ve been

The possibilities are endless

Yet feel out of reach

It’s time to take a leap of faith

If I fall, I’ll mend my knee.

“Coming Out, Chapter 1” (28 March 2023)

A few days later, I’d failed to camp alone in Japan’s most secluded valley.

I sat down on the steps in front of the river and waited for help. I was all alone in the world, I realised, not just in this moment and place, but overall as well. 

This morning, when I’d made the call, I’d assumed I would meet some guests here. I’d pictured us chatting, pitching tents, sharing snacks, gazing at the stars. I’d had a similar image for every place I’d reached in Japan. The vast majority of the time, it hadn’t come into fruition.

That was the thing about my life. Thing always went wrong. When I looked at the big picture, nothing went according to plan.

I could manage on my own just fine: travel the world, reach remote places, cook for myself, clean, entertain myself with writing and all sorts of hobbies. Once something depended on another person – publishing a book, getting a scholarship, maintaining friendships, finding intimacy – it always went wrong.

The life I’d been leading inside my head couldn’t have been more different than the one I’d been living outside. Now that I thought about it, “Not What I Had in Mind” might be the perfect way to sum up my existence in six words.

I felt like a complete failure. I was 28, unemployed, with no prospects whatsoever. I looked like a sleep-deprived vampire with acne and scars. The only vocation that brought me joy – storytelling – had yielded me nothing. No money, nor readers.

I couldn’t even pitch a tent.

All things go, I thought. Friendship, intimacy, affection; youth and looks. Money, it went by so quickly, if you wanted to live. At this rate, I’d be broke.

The campsite owner parked his car. We tried to assemble the tent together for half an hour. Almost succeeded. Yet something continued to go wrong.

“I think the bungalow might be better,” I said, exasperated. It was beginning to grow dark, and I needed the reassurance of a safe haven for the night.

“But… it’s expensive,” he said.

To hell with it. I paid him and packed the tent. He gave me a tiny discount; might’ve also felt bad about the whole situation.

It was still more expensive than most of the places I’d stayed in.

“Are there any animals here at night?” I asked.

“You might see a monkey,” he said. “But they’re not dangerous. Iya Onsen has a lot more.”

He vacuumed the bungalow. It hadn’t been opened since late fall.

But there was light inside. And a socket, to charge my phone. A tap and a sink. A blanket-less kotatsu.

I locked the door. The view of the darkening river from the window freaked me out. I drew the curtains, to not attract animals with my light. A lizard fell out from between the fabric. It was still alive.

“Are small, black lizards venomous?” I Googled. Then I decided that I didn’t want to know.

I checked my Mondrian food bag. Inside were two soft drinks, one sour orange, and a chocolate snack. Better to leave those for breakfast, despite my increasing hunger.

Water was streaming more loudly than ever. Birds were screeching. Those sounds had never disturbed me before. Something reminiscent of feet kept touching the roof. 

Maybe I wasn’t alone in the world, after all. Plenty of animals were right outside.

As for humans…

I’d been meeting so many people on this trip. We’d had a lot of fun. But then it was over. Even though we could stay in touch, or find another opportunity to meet up in Japan. Nearly all of them had moved on.

I wasn’t sure I had as well.

I thought about all the friendship breakups I’d been through. It always happened, in the end. The same cycle, over and over again. People got tired of me eventually. At some point, they grew apart, until I heard from them no more.

It was rare for me to find people I vibed with, could be myself around. But I still hadn’t found someone who saw the world the way I had. And I both reveled in and despised this fact.

I wondered if anyone out there would ever understand me. Unreserved, total support of everything I believed in and stood for: someone who would genuinely have my back.

Maybe my values differed too much from the norm for that.

So why was I writing this blog? Why was I exposing so much of myself? For some relentless porn bots? If I’d known this would be the outcome, I’d have thought twice. Why was I uploading pictures to social media? Why was I sharing my coming out story by posting my childhood diaries in such a raw and nearly unfiltered way?

I knew I sounded like a broken record. Worse, like a baby. But what did it matter, when no one was hearing it anyway?

All things go wrong, I thought, until they just go.

I laid down my futon and improvised a pillow out of my red hoodie. My blanket was flimsy, and the exposed kotatsu was too weak to heat up the room. It only emitted a strong orange light.

Then I wrote all this in my futon (the thinnest and hardest one on Earth.) That helped. Writing, even if in vain – even if read by no one but myself – made me feel less scared.

For this reason, and this reason only, I decided to continue posting on this blog.

I took some melatonin, put on an eye mask and earplugs, and forced myself to forget about my current location, followed by everything in the world.

“All Things Go” (1 April 2023)

Things escalated from here on. Three weeks later, after resolving to continue traveling past my originally-planned 3 months and continue to South Korea, I’d written this in Tokyo’s Rikugien Garden.

Last night, I’d made up my mind regarding my next step. My intuition had instructed me. Yet it brought me no comfort or relief.

I knew anything I did, post-Japan, would be just another band-aid – an escape from my problems, a step rife with immaturity and denial. Before Japan, I was hopeful that this trip would open new doors for me, enable me to make progress with building a platform and publishing my writing. Now, I knew this would never happen, no matter how much I continued to travel.

It was the nature in the garden that almost managed to heal me. Wandering around the pond and various trees, I understood the meaning of “forest therapy”. If I lived in Tokyo, I’d come here every week.

Ultimately, not even the color of life could raise my spirits, or spread energy through my veins. I was tired of constantly worrying about my future. I was tired of denying myself food. I was tired of hoping against hope, and ending up disappointed.

I sat on a stone bridge and watched the sun reflect on the water. A sentence I’d written for a story a few years ago popped up in my head.

“Someday, I will die, too. But until then, I will live.”

I broke into tears, yet again this week. A tiny lizard crawled up my pants. I recalled the train ride in Matsumoto to the wasabi farm on February 27, when I cried and no one noticed.

“Back to being invisible,” I thought, and wished I was born in a different world.

Birds were tweeting. A soft breeze was blowing. Elderly locals paced past me on the bridge. I felt like them, in a sense. Their best days were behind them.

I got up and lifted my pants. The belt I’d had adjusted to my waist before this trip was already two or three sizes too big. But I wasn’t hungry, at that moment. I just wanted to sleep.

Not much had changed since then, apart form my belt growing more sizes too big. I’d made more connections, but now, they were gone.

“High on Life” (27 April 2023)

Kodokan

After Korakuen, I walked to Kodokan.

The birthplace of Judo. It all began when Jigoro Shihan had undertaken Jujutsu (“flexible technique” in Japanese), a martial art that uses only the hands, as a youth. He’d sought to grow stronger due to his small build.

And indeed, jujutsu had allowed him to became stronger, both physically and mentally. He’d even gone from having a short temper to rarely exhibiting anger.

Over the years, he’d incorporated his own ideas into the techniques he’d learned, and invented judo (“flexible way” in Japanese) as a way to pursue character formation.

In 1882, he established Kodokan (“the hall to teach the way”), where judo was taught. Its symbol, reminiscent of a cherry petal, was actually a red center (representing a burning iron core) surrounded by pure white (representing floss silk). The judoka should possess a strong body, yet a calm and gentle attitude. 

The teaching of judo incorporated four aspects:

• Kata – formal, pre-arranged practice – comparable to grammar
• Randori – free practice of offense and defence– comparable to composition

Both grammar and composition were required to write an essay. Both kata and randori were required to practice judo.

• Kogi – oral lessons
• Mondo – Q&A lessons

In addition, Kodokan had invented 100 Waza techniques.

I learned all this from the excellent 18-minute introductory video at Kodokan Museum, on the second floor. There was also two rooms with memorabilia, such as Olympics medals won by Japan, calligraphy, and old photographs. An ancient threadbare judo-gi from circa 1887.

At 14:50, I went to the 8th floor, to watch a judo training for free.

No one was there.

Not knowing when the next class would start, I sat down, just charged my phone (a wall socket!!! Thank god!), and wrote on my computer.

At 16:30, a kids’ training session began. They stretched and ran laps around the tatami stage and were just overall very cute. The class consisted of exercises to improve mobility, such as rolling, running backwards like a spider on all fours, crawling, somersaulting…

Bunkyo Observation Deck

I left at 17:30 to catch the sunset from the adjacent, equally-free Bunkyo observation deck. I hadn’t managed to watch an actual judo match today, but Kodokan was still a decent way to pass my afternoon.

Bunkyo civic center offered visitors a fantastic observation deck with a view of the Skytree and west Shinjuku at sunset.

I watched cars move and pedestrians cross. People working in offices. They all seemed tiny. We all were.

As the sun set at 17:55 and the sky turned darker, more and more buildings lit up. The city looked sad: gray, blue, dots of yellow. A few tree-filled parks here and there.

Unsuccessful Date #2

Then I went to Mejiro for a sento.

At 19:00, in between changing trains, I devoured a NewDays onigiri: my first bite of the day. I hadn’t felt like eating before that.

I met the Chinese guy outside his building. We walked to a sento in his area. This experience was also somewhat new for me, since there was a rest room with incense, as well as funny, long, beanie-like hats guys were inside the sauna. First time seeing those.

I took an ice-cold bath in-between soaking, as so many people had been urging me to, for the sake of my immune system, and also drank milk after, which my host from last week had told me was customary. Two new onsen traditions unlocked: cold water and milk.

It always astounded me how I was practically the only one with a towel folded on my head. Japanese guys didn’t bother to do this anymore.

Overall, it was still too hot to soak for more than five or ten minutes. I longed for Hokkaido’s open-air baths in colder weather.

After the sento, the Chinese guy and I walked back to his area. We arrived at a corner leading to his building.

“I need to go,” he said all of a sudden, and walked away. “Bye.”

At least he looked back at me.

I sat inside Mejiro station, wondering where to spend the night. I was still tired from my four hours of sleep in Shinjuku.

In the end, I found a ne-café near Ikebukuro station that was almost three times cheaper than the one I’d stayed in near Shinjuku station. The booth wasn’t a private room, so there was light and noise. By now, as long as I wasn’t sitting down, I could doze off anywhere. I was this tired.

The drink bar was good, though, and to my delight, the ice cream machine even included a toppings corner. Vanilla and matcha flavours, with various fruit-flavoured sauces. I liked this ne-café better.

Today’s highlights: forest therapy at Koishikawa Korakuen; learning about Judo and watching a class; sunset over Tokyo; milk after sento.

12 September 2023

• 12:00-12:45 Ikebukuro station to Honancho station train (Marunouchi line), packing for Hokkaido, 14:20-14:30 Honancho station to Shinjuku station (Marunouchi line), 14:36-14:45 transfer to Ebisu station (Yamanote line)
• Yamatane Museum of Art (1.5h)
• Shibuya Scramble
• 19:01-19:12 Shibuya station to Takadanobaba station train (Yamanote line)
• Italian for dinner in the Takadanobaba area
• 22:36-22:50 Takadanobaba station to Ebisu station train (Yamanote line), picking up luggage from coin locker, 22:57-23:05 Ebisu station to Yoyogi station train (Yamanote line), 23:13-23:45 transfer to Toshimaen station

Yamatane Museum of Art

7 short hours of sleep. The mat was too thin and short for me. Throughout the night, I’d kept waking up. (Why did they play background piano music 24/7? They couldn’t turn it off after midnight?)

Weirdly enough, the part of my body that hurt the most was my shoulders.

I had hot chocolate and a matcha ice cream with melon and mango dressing for breakfast. Then I checked out and wrote for an hour on a bench under the blazing sun (beads of sweat again all over my torso… it had been a while. Sapporo’s temperature was already growing cool!).

In the late morning, I took the train to Saki’s, to grab some warm clothes from my other suitcase in his apartment for Hokkaido.

As I replaced my T-shirts with long shorts and jackets, I instructed him how to achieve the right consistency of a tahini dressing. He’s bought a jar during our visit to the mosque.

“So you hate Israel, but love Israeli food?” He asked. “At least you like one thing about it.”

The next time I would see him would be at least five weeks from now. Yet we weren’t on hugging terms. He was Japanese. So we just said 「またね」 (“See you”).

At 14:30, I took the train to Ebisu station, stored my luggage in a locker, and rushed to Yamatane Museum, because it closed at five.

It was a small, private museum in the artsy area of south Shibuya that Moki (who had hosted me on August 30) lived in. This was the final days of a temporary exhibition called The Elites Who Challenged Nihonga. Modern nihonga from the Meiji period onwards.

(No photos allowed, apart from one painting.)

With next to no English explanations, I found the exhibition a bit challenging to follow at first. I was forced to employ a purely visual approach to its viewing. Which was actually the way paintings were supposed to be looked at? I regarded them with nothing but my own interpretation, as clueless as I might have been towards this genre.

Part 1: The Modern Painters’ Challenge – Creating the New Nihonga

After Japan had reopened to the west, artists had begun incorporating western elements into their paintings.

The exhibition started with the more traditional examples.

• Fluffy snowflakes by Uemura Shoen (1944): a beautiful portrait of women in a snowy landscape. Felt both pretty and tranquil and quiet and melancholic at the same time. Very calming and emptying. Very zen. I wanted to return to snowy Hokkaido and wrap myself in a thick kimono like the ladies. I adored the empty, grey space and snow-white parasols.
• White cotton roses by Hayami Gyoshu (1934): similar vibe. Empty, grey-white, small, delicate, fragile, sad.

I wanted a replica of those paintings hanging in my future snowy rustic cabin.

From here on, the more modern the paintings got, the more colourful and vivid they became. More subject matter filled the canvas. Less empty and void.

But still very flat. Japanese painters had never bothered to pursue mimetic depictions; to recreate reality. 

• Oharam, women peddlers by Tsuchida Bakusen (1915): incredible folding screen art. A celebration of green hills, white cherry blossoms, and gold earth. The innovative element found here was the deliberate neglection to erase the sketch lines of the women’s feet. It added a rough element to this otherwise perfectly pretty and traditional depiction.
• Eve by Ochiai Rofu (1919): a shocking painting about the Old Testament that looked as if made by Gauguin or a Fauvist. If it weren’t for the folding screen medium, I would never have imagined a Japanese person had painted it. Eve looked like a plump Japanese female ghost or demon, with pearly white skin and raven black knee length hair, while the fig, like a peach. Most of the canvas was green leaves.
• After the rain by Hishida Shunso (1907): the artist achieved in my opinion that misty atmosphere of a sublime yet mysterious landscape. Da Vinci-esque sfumato combined with Turner on a smaller, more restrained scale. Turner had depicted tiny humans against a monolithic landscape; here, there were only dots for birds.

Part 2: The Contemporary Painters’ Challenge – Overcoming Post-war Circumstances to Connect Nihonga to the Future

Japan’s defeat in WW2 had led artists to turn against the Japanese style of painting. Thus, this part was almost fully western-like.

• Setting sun by Yamamoto Kyujin (1963): a ball of fire sun setting over Martian mountains. Rough technique, almost as if Cezanne had been tasked with Turner’s subject matter.
• Waterfall by Yokoyama Misao (1961): a cubist depiction.
• Maelstroms at Naruto by Kawabata Ryushi (1929): even though the artist hadn’t been to Naruto prior to painting this, this gorgeous blue and white folding screen made me want to return to Shikoku, and this time, stop at Naruto for the famous whirlpools. Gone were the slow, static, small moments of everyday life. This painting’s style was dynamic, forceful, round, sharp, in your face. Neither empty space, nor void.
• Oei, Hokusai’s daughter by Kataoka Tamako (1982): an almost Matisse-like portrait, with its juxtaposition of patterns, colours, and a monochromatic background.
• Yokagura – shrine dance at night by Omori Kazuo (1975): the angry version of Gauguin’s religious painting 1988 with the red background and the women praying (forgot the name)! What a bombastic scene. Even though the colour palette was restrained, it reminded me of the energy at Japanese festivals.
• The Hojoki (an account of my hut) by Nakano Hirohiko (1979): this was basically an Ancient Egyptian tomb art done by a modern Japanese painter.
• Wolf by Okamura Keizaburo (1987): a bit like all the Renaissance depictions of Prometheus being eaten by an eagle, such as by Titian. This painting, which closed the exhibition, was the ultimate antithesis to the traditional Nihonga. It was dark, bloody, violent, gruesome, powerful, and chaotic. A fitting finale.

The exhibition was modest (3 medium sized rooms), yet every single painting was worth lingering in front of, in my opinion. I wanted almost every single painting to be hung in my future home. Maybe I should just have settled inside the museum.

Interesting how the art that moved me the most in Japan was modern Japanese paintings, in Yamatane and MOMAT (Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). I made a mental note to return to MOMAT for their renewed collection in late October.

Shibuya Scramble

After this phenomenal afternoon, I walked 25 minutes to Shibuya station. The secret observation deck someone had told me about was closed. It was on top of the Yamanote line platform, so too dangerous for people to walk on.

I crossed the scramble. Always chaotic; always fun. Giant billboards with commercials of anime, video games, all quintessentially Japan.

A few minutes from the station was a love hotel block. Every single building in those streets was one. Moki had snuck into an abandoned love hotel here last Halloween. Now I found that it had been barricaded. No crazy adventure for me.

So I used my free time for the next hour to call my family. It had been a while.

Successful Date #2

Finally, I took the train to Takadanobaba, for a dinner plan. The guy I was supposed to meet ended up late because someone jumped onto the platform and the trains stopped running.

What.

He said this was a weekly occurrence in Tokyo.

While waiting, two guys approached me one after the other, inviting me to a Japanese language café held every Sunday in one of the many Japanese language schools in this area. Lunch was free, too.

Why was I leaving Tokyo.

We exchanged details; I would consider going there upon my return.

Anyway, soon I met a 27-year-old guy from China with delicate features and bangs who had moved to Tokyo five years ago. (Another 27~28-year-old gentle Chinese guy who’d been living in Tokyo for 5~6 years now? Purely a coincidence, I swear…)

We ate Italian for dinner at a nice restaurant (shrimp and zucchini pasta for me) that he’d picked because I didn’t eat meat. He was studying sociology and writing a thesis about Chinese drag queens. Judith Butler, Jessica Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Hegel: it was refreshing to finally be able to discuss those names and their theories with someone. Our conversation was academic and engrossing.

Having intended to return to yesterday’s cheap ne-café, I hadn’t booked an accommodation for tonight. He kindly offered to host me instead. So we took the metro south to Ebisu station, picked up my luggage, and then returned north to the Nerima City area, where we passed the recently-opened Making of Harry Potter studio. (No interest in doing that – I’d been to the original exhibition in London.)

Inside his large, stylish apartment building, I chatted with his Chinese roommate, who had also moved to Tokyo to study Japanese. The night ended with the Chinese guy reading my tarot cards. He was well versed in that field, completely unfamiliar to me.

“You need to pick a simple question,” he told me, after all the questions in my mind were too big for him to read.

“Will I find a job?” was my first one.

“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” he said, observing the three cards he’d pulled. “You will find something. There will be small things that will bother you about it. But it will work out…”

“What kind of person will I fall in love with?” was my second question.

“Someone gentle and considerate, who can sacrifice himself for the sake of others,” he said, reading the scary-looking sacrifice card. To me, that card didn’t seem so positive.

Today’s highlights: a decadent breakfast at the ne-cafe; the Yamatane exhibition; Shibuya scramble; a sociological-philosophical dinner.

13 September 2023

• 8:30-8:45 Toshimaen station to Ikebukuro station train, 8:52-9:10 transfer to Ueno station
• Exploring another side of the Bunkyo ward: Nezu shrine, Todai (Tokyo University), Ueno Zoo (1h)…
• 14:07-14:30 Keisei Ueno station to Keisei Takasago station train, 14:37-15:16 transfer to Narita airport building 2 station (Narita Sky Access line)
• Flight to Shin Chitose airport
• 19:15-20:30 Shin Chitose airport bus stop number 12 to nishi 28 chome station bus

Nezu Shrine

The Chinese guy and I woke at 8:18. I jumped out of bed and left at once. I was already late.

I dashed past the Making of Harry Potter studio and boarded a local train to Ikebukuro, which was Harry Potter themed. No time to snap a photo.

An hour later, at 9:20 in Keisei Ueno station, the Morioka Woman and I reunited. She came to Tokyo often for work; that was how we’d met, on May 9 in Narita Airport, when she’d approached me with a tourism questionnaire.  

I met her wait twenty minutes for me. No time for breakfast, let alone a sip of water.

We walked to Nezu shrine. Very pretty, very scarcely attended. Lots of torii gates. She’d shown me pictures of an unbelievable Azealia festival here in May.

“Tokyo is best in May,” she said. “Flowers, festivals, good weather.”

I already needed to return to Japan.

Tokyo University

Next, we walked to Todai (Tokyo University, number 1 in Japan). The western architecture gave me a British vibe, bringing up memories from my 1-year M.A. at UEA. It would’ve been nice to have been born Japanese, and to have attended Todai.

Right outside the campus stood Yayoi Museum, tiny and obscure. Dolls, trinkets, old-school memorabilia; mostly colourful girl stuff. There was also a temporary exhibition about the Great Kanto Earthquake, as well as Takehisa Yumeji, with his one-of-a-kind nihonga (basically, children’s book illustrations on hanging scrolls, with rough lines and empty space) and drawings of women in kimono (1920’s flapper style, very pretty and sentimental).

At 11:30, we returned to Todai campus for a cheap meguro rice bowl, and walked back to Keisei Ueno station, for a famous sweets shop that specialized in anmitsu.

This was a first for me. My matcha anmitsu consisted of anko (sweet red bean), kuromitsu (delicious honey-liked dark sauce), and matcha ice cream. I disliked all the jelly served with it, though.

Ueno Zoo

“Now what?” we wondered at 12:30. With one and a half hour to kill until my train to the airport, we decided to make a quick, one-hour tour of the famous Ueno Zoo.

Like Nezu Shrine and Todai, the Zoo was likewise sparsely attended. Great day to show up. Yet many of the animals were sleeping at this time of the day.

Monkeys, owls, seals, tigers, gorillas, giraffes, penguins, flamingo. I felt a bit bad for paying money for an institution that kept them behind bars. The Morioka Woman lost it when we spotted shoebills standing completely immobile. Among her favourite animals. So ugly and funny.

The highlight was the pandas – either sleeping or eating, but still, probably my first time beholding those. So big and fluffy, that I wanted to give them a hug.

After a hot hour at the zoo, she walked me to the ticket gate. We’d meet again in a month from now, in her turf.

Narita Airport

An hour of train rides later, I swiftly went through the baggage self-drop and security check at the airport. It was always a delight when a passport check wasn’t necessary, as someone who’d hailed from a tiny country.

Gate 162 in Narita Airport’s terminal 3 to a Jetstar flight to Shin-Chitose airport was one of my happy places in Japan. This precise location was where my trip had begun on February 9^th. Returning there today made me think back of that time, and everything that had occurred since then.

Today, a month in Hokkaido would start. I would see autumn leaves for the first time. My 11 days in that island in February were full of discoveries and potential; lonely and moored by a constant dreading of the future, yet at the same time, among the happiest days of my life. Now, I felt the end in sight.

My flight took off a bit late and landed earlier than expected. I managed to charge my phone a little and find a direct bus to my accommodation for tonight, instead of faster, more expensive, multiple trains.

Home in Hokkaido

Landing in Hokkaido felt like landing last month in Japan. As if I was back home.

My SUICA needed recharging, and I only had 1,500 yen in cash left. The bus to Sapporo departed in five minutes, once every two hours, and cost 1,200. Thank god.

The bus featured reclining seats with USB charging ports and Wi-Fi. Hallelujah.

Yet the road to the city was long and completely dark, and I was reminded of just how much Hokkaido is a vast prefecture of countryside.

I arrived to a western part of the city, where I would meet my host for tonight. He was a friend of Saki. As a matter of fact, he, Saki, and Moki, all 28-years-old like me, had all met through school. He’d done the Vipassana course in Chiba, per Moki’s recommendation.

Originally from Tokyo, he now lived in Nagoya, working as a news director for NHK. He’d come to Sapporo for a month-long business trip, and offered to host me in the company’s apartment.

But first, dinner. Toriton conveyor belt sushi, arguably the best sushi chain in Japan (no other prefecture could beat Hokkaido’s fish), was within walking distance. The restaurant closed at 22:00; last order was at 21:00. We met there at 20:50, yet the staff told us it was too late now.

Bummer. Toriton was one of the many things I hadn’t gotten around to doing in Sapporo during Round One.

We picked up a few cheap dishes from a grocery store that cost next to nothing. Huge, end-of-the-day discount. And a carton of milk, of course. Hokkaido was Japan’s manufacturer of dairy.

“This is way bigger than my place in Nagoya,” he joked as we entered the spacious and modern apartment. And then, “Are you sure it’s okay?” When I gifted him traditional pottery. Same reaction as my Yuzawa host.

From here on, he swarmed me with questions about Israel, a country he’d visited five years prior. I was interested (and quite shocked) in hearing about his experience travelling there. The cultural differences, the people, the weather, the food. He’d couchsurfed in a city south of Tel Aviv, found the people not as well-mannered, the food not as good, the weather not as hot, and the whole Middle-Eastern conflict was a subject he could neither understand, nor discuss with his couchsurfing hosts, who had snapped at him to never inquire after that.

I slept in a fetal psition on his couch, wide enough to go all the way to my knees, without a blanket. Sapporo was already colder at night than Tokyo in mid-September. But inside, all the buildings had better insulation.

Today’s highlights: strolling around Todai; Takehisa Yumeji’s nihonga; anmitsu; beholding pandas; flying to Hokkaido.

This song was on repeat on my computer more than any other song during high school, surpassing even the Beatles.

I think I appreciate the lyrics now more than I did back then. I was probably too focused on Gerard Way to pay them attention. The look in his eyes captured how I felt.