#003 | The Town
I had a dream the other night where Vlad Guerrero Jr, six other composite characters, and myself, were all coworkers, drinking coffee and eating lunch in a break room. Every time our supervisors would walk in, we’d sprawl out into a Battle Royale. The moment they dipped, we’d stop. When they came back, death.
Naturally, that reminded me that I’d completed the No003 playlist, but hadn’t written a post for it yet.
Let’s go back to January 2017. I’m about to permanently leave Japan for the third time in my life. I spent winter break catching up with high school buddies and playing cards with relatives. I thought about hugging the country “goodbye,” but Narita is such a huge airport that I probably would’ve ended up on Japanese Worldstar. I’m sure it’s a thing.
So I just hopped on a plane and headed back to the east coast.
Airports like Narita are the worst, because they go out of their way to make everything Japanese-y available to purchase. Magazines, glassware, chips, chocolate-dipped chips, electric razors, pretty much anything you’d want to get. It’s the country’s way of making you look like a fool for even thinking about leaving it.
Most other airports make an effort to usher you on, advertising their wack restaurants, basic tees, and shot glasses, expecting you to pay 70% more than you should for them. (If you’re in the market for some not-quite-basic tees, I know a place.)
I spent the majority of my childhood there, moving around a couple of times but always going back there somehow. While I learned a lot about my whi-American roots while abroad, I was exposed to the Japanese side of things much more personally.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t know when I’d be back. I made it a goal pre-uni to go back for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, keeping tabs on the event via email, and using it as a loose motivational tool to see through my movie university studies.
But the universe decided to take a rain check on all things cool that year, and they delayed the Olympics to 2021. When they finally put on the show in 2021, they did it without any fans present.
I didn’t even have a long-term plan for my career then, so to have my Olympic dream erased in front of me was super not-chill. I say that, like I was gonna compete in them, but non-pro athletes are allowed to have aspirations too.
It’s been AGES since I’ve had a Lawson bento. Panasonic lenses are so much cheaper in Japan. Quality public transportation, cleanliness, アディダスブランドセンター渋谷、 おもてなし、美味い麺、２８.５cm以上の靴を探すことに対する難しさ。。。Pardon my local-nese, but those are just some of the stuff I’ve been missing out on since.
Seven years is a ridiculously long period. You know how many teams have won the Bundesliga in that time? How many Sultans that Brunei has gone through? Still more than how many seconds I’ve spent in the country since.
There’s this Lolo Zouaï song… where she says a bunch of shit in French, but also somethings in English, like, “Home is where I lay my pillow.” In spite of my wanderlust, never settled mindset, Japan always felt like the base camp I’d always refer back to.
Gold by KAT-TUN was supposed to be on this, but Spotify couldn’t pull through.
