Ninety-​​Nine Leagues

September 20, 2007 | Laughing Knees | 18 Comments 

Some pho­tographs I took dur­ing a walk to Kujukuri-​​hama (Ninety-​​nine Leagues Beach) from my home. What you see is the beach dur­ing off-​​season. In sum­mer it re­sem­bles a se­ri­ously peo­pled garbage dump. Un­til the walk I hadn’t re­al­ized just how close the ocean is. It ex­plains why the cli­mate around here never gets re­ally cold or hot like Tokyo two and half hours away by train.

Reed war­blers sing their click­ing songs amidst these rushes.

I never saw the horses, but it was a sur­prise since there is so lit­tle room for horses to manuever in Japan.

In an ef­fort to evoke the spirit of Cal­i­for­nia and Hawai’i the beach is lined with wind­blown palm trees.

The wind be­gan to blow stronger when I arrived.

The sand tells sto­ries of all who pass…

…and has a way of hush­ing conversation.

You can walk for hours think­ing of noth­ing, and let­ting the waves wash in and out of your consciousness.

It is hard to deny that the ocean is alive and as moody as any singer or storyteller.

There are those who seek out the edge of the sea to ask its ad­vice, so of­ten at the be­gin­ning or end of things.

The an­swers are of­ten harsh, but they never re­lin­quish the beauty of each encounter.

When the storm came I re­treated to a restau­rant and lis­tened to the wind out­side buf­fet­ing the win­dows. The beer and pizza gilded the be­gin­ning of forgetfulness.

I just man­aged to es­cape the down­pour at my apart­ment door. The wind blew and blew all night long.

Stepping On Ants

September 15, 2007 | Laughing Knees | 18 Comments 

It’s been ex­actly two weeks since I left Switzer­land and re­turned to Japan. It’s hard to be­lieve that I was ac­tu­ally out of the coun­try. Like a dream I stepped onto the plane back at the end of July and headed west. Then a month fol­lowed as if pass­ing through a cur­tain, glimps­ing a wider world that I had al­most for­got­ten went on every day out­side the bor­ders of my aware­ness. Eu­rope man­i­fested it­self as a walk-​​in mem­ory; so much like my child­hood in Ger­many, and in­ter­ac­tions with peo­ple so much closer to how I nat­u­rally ex­press­ing my­self. Trav­el­ers ac­tu­ally made an ef­fort to lean across ta­bles to talk, women flirted with me (un­like in Japan where no one ever makes eye con­tact with you… you’d think no one was ever in­ter­ested in oth­ers), the food was fresh and healthy even in the small­est, out-​​of-​​the-​​way towns, life moved at a man­age­able pace, every­where trav­el­ers and towns­folk alike tak­ing the time to sit and talk. And while the pretty towns and green slopes and mil­lions of sheep and cows got mo­not­o­nous af­ter a while, there was some­thing about the way the pop­u­lace val­ued what they had and in­sisted on re­mem­ber­ing what is im­por­tant about a com­mu­nity that stayed with me through­out the trip.

I promised my­self on the last night in Zürich that I would re­mem­ber the re­vi­tal­ized spirit I had started feel­ing through­out the trip and would do my best to keep the mo­men­tum rolling, but the mo­ment I landed in Narita Air­port and felt my­self get drawn right back into all the pre­dictable weight of the cul­ture… all the girls on the trains preen­ing them­selves in front of mir­rors and putting on makeup, the boy star­ing at me whose mother just laughed when she no­ticed and en­cour­aged his feel­ings by telling him that I was “strange for­eigner” and “he’s funny-​​looking isn’t he?”, the end­less “salary” men in their ubiq­ui­tous suits no mat­ter how hot it was, the glar­ing pachinko par­lors and cheap road­side car deal­ers with their floures­cent flags and flash­ing neon lights, the mass-​​produced, de­vel­oper houses at arms-​​breadth from one an­other that tried so hard to be west­ern and all like mind-​​numbingly the same… a huge anger blos­somed in­side me and a deep re­sent­ment at hav­ing to re­turn, plopped right back into every­thing that I want so much to ex­tri­cate my­self from.

Hard­est was re­turn­ing home to this apart­ment. I un­locked the front door, stepped in­side into its tiny con­fines and the muf­fled still­ness of its hu­mid air, turned on a floures­cent light that made all my sad be­long­ings jump out starkly, re­mind­ing me in their si­lence of the months and years of stag­na­tion and just how much un­needed junk I was weigh­ing my­self down with. The door thumped closed be­hind me and there I was, alone again, with no one to talk to, no fam­ily, no friends, no one to even have the pos­si­bil­ity of meet­ing if I de­cided to take a walk around town. It wasn’t that I didn’t have peo­ple who cared about me, but that there was no pos­si­bil­ity of get­ting to­gether with any of them. The con­trast to a month of meet­ing peo­ple every day in Eu­rope hit me hard. No one even called to say hello.

Ex­cept for four days when I had to spend time teach­ing ju­nior high school stu­dents in the south of the pre­fec­ture the next two weeks found me holed up in my apart­ment, grow­ing ever more down and los­ing mo­ti­va­tion even to get up and go to the store to buy food. Just the sight of yet more processed Japan­ese food left me with no ap­petite. Turn­ing on the TV de­pressed me with its child­ish­ness and con­stant, un­healthy fo­cus on young girls and the same, self-​​satisfied celebri­ties. Walk­ing on the streets and con­stantly stand­ing out, never, ever be­ing able to get away from the la­bel of be­ing a for­eigner, had me curs­ing un­der my breath at strangers. Be­ing in Eu­rope al­lowed me for a while to blend in and re­mem­ber what it is like to feel part of a group. And then open­ing my eyes to the apart­ment re­minded me of what I had still to do and hadn’t done. Sleep­ing swept it all away and I could for­get for a while, so I slept in un­til noon and ate ce­real and scanned the in­ter­net for word of re­lease. The lack of ex­er­cise, af­ter a month of con­stant, hard walk­ing, slowly be­gan to raise my blood sugar again and reawaken the prob­lems with di­a­betes, the slug­gish­ness of my blood phys­i­cally bring­ing me even more down.

I knew I couldn’t con­tinue like this. I had to buck up and over­come the sense of dis­lo­ca­tion. But to what? I re­al­ized in Eu­rope, strongly, that Japan is not my cul­ture, that no mat­ter how long I live here, how well I know it, how flu­ently I speak the lan­guage, how much I try to soften my crit­i­cisms, the Japan­ese will never count me as one of them, as they don’t count them­selves as part of the rest of the world. I can strug­gle till I die from hy­per­ten­sion and am in­ca­pac­i­tated from de­pres­sion and yet Japan will never let me be one of its chil­dren. I fit right in in Eu­rope. I’ve strug­gled to fit in here in Japan since I was a boy, even wanted to be­come a Japan­ese be­fore I left to study in the States, and there­fore the idea of leav­ing it be­hind hurts, deeply. It’s like giv­ing up on my iden­tity. The hu­mil­ity and frus­tra­tion of never be­ing ac­cepted by the cul­ture in which I grew up, which has gone so far as to shape the way I think and act, makes the ground feel un­sta­ble. Where is it that I can go to feel that I am fi­nally “home”?

I’m sure other peo­ple also feel this way and that most peo­ple spend their lives won­der­ing what their place is. But when some­one can’t even claim a cer­tain cul­ture as their own, as the tem­plate for their sense of be­long­ing and for how they act and see the world, what do they turn to? When peo­ple ask me, con­stantly ask me, “Where are you from?”, what should I an­swer? Is it im­por­tant? It feels im­por­tant. Or at least the sense of safety and kin­ship feel as if they could re­lieve this fight-​​or-​​flight ten­sion that reis­des in me. I watch other peo­ple so com­fort­able in their clothes as “Japan­ese” or “Amer­i­can” or “Chi­nese”, never re­ally ques­tion­ing it, and lis­ten to their self-​​assured procla­ma­tions, “I am Japan­ese! We are dif­fer­ent from you!” and won­der what they are re­fer­ring to. Does it have some­thing to do with the bonds of a moe­ity? Does the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­tect you from the bad spir­its of the world? Does it make you big­ger than you are as an individual?

The trip to Eu­rope planted seeds for a lot to think about. And to con­sider what my next step is. The con­nec­tion be­tween places be­came ap­par­ent the other day when I was walk­ing back from the su­per­mar­ket. I glanced down at my feet and re­al­ized that I was about to step on a colony of ants at the side of the road. In a flash I saw my­self at the side of a road in France, avoid­ing an­other colony of ants there. I am nei­ther here nor there, and yet in both places at the same time.

I think my next step must take courage, a will­ing­ness to pull up roots once again and seek bet­ter ground. And per­haps that is the fuel of my own flame. I don’t re­ally know yet. But I know this, though. I want the next step to be light and sim­ple, with­out un­nec­es­sary bur­dens. Travel light. And that I am will­ing to take the chance to live more on my own terms.
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I have about 850 pho­tographs to go through so the Eu­rope pho­tos will be a lit­tle while be­fore I can get them cleaned up and up­loaded. I’m de­sign­ing a gallery to go alng with them, so hope­fully they will be worth the effort.