Tokyo Tower
I thought I would feel a rush of emotions at the top of Tokyo Tower, like a geyser would suddenly erupt inside of me. I looked out of the Main Observatory Room’s wide glass walls towards the sprawling metropolis. I could see the irregular shapes of Tokyo’s buildings. Lush, green parks dotted the jagged landscape, tucked between concrete and metal. I turned away from the view and sat down on a bench standing against the wall by the main elevator. I took a moment to unpack what it was I was experiencing and what thoughts were circling in my head. I felt an odd mixture of nostalgia, accomplishment, and longing, along with a dim sense of satisfaction. I finally arrived at a destination I had dreamed of going to for several years, but the reason why I wanted so badly to make it to the top of Tokyo Tower still seemed unclear. I thought the clouds in my head would part and reveal the answer, but the fog remained where it was.
The idea of going to Japan had been a shining beacon to me for nearly 15 years, a goal that I had fantasized about to an outsized degree. I watched anime and read manga throughout middle school and high school. I played Japanese videogames hours at a time as a teenager. My closest friends back then shared my passions. We talked about our favorite series’ at lunchtime. We went to anime conventions and dressed as our favorite characters. I held onto my interests even after changing schools my junior year and making new friends with people uninterested in Japanese culture, though fervor for anime diminished a bit at that point, when I was about 16 years old. I grew more interested in discovering music and reading literature. While I occasionally watched a classic series like Cowboy Bebop or Neon Genesis Evangelion, I no longer tried to devour any and every anime I could find. My fixation with Japanese culture stuck with me as a kind of secondary passion: a minor, but constant interest relegated to the backburner of my hobbies.
I still dreamed of going to Japan, even throughout the 10-or-so-year period in which I wasn’t obsessed with all that was Japanese. Images of “me in Japan” lingered in my mind. I replayed scenes in which I would wander the streets of Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Harajuku. I would eat at ramen shops, sushi bars, and izakayas. I imagined visiting all of the landmarks that I remembered from anime, like Tokyo Tower, which I first saw in an episode of Cardcaptors on VHS. Some childhood fantasies don’t disintegrate over time; they persist and grow stronger as you get older, as possibilities become more and more available.
I sat on that bench and all of those memories and fantasies came rising to the surface of my conscience. I knew how I got to where I was currently sitting, on the first full day of my trip to Japan. I had yearned and dreamed of getting there and I made it happen; those 15 years of interest in Japanese culture culminated into me flying to the country at 25 years old, when the possibility opened itself for me and I had the savings to financially swing the trip. I still didn’t know why. What got me into anime and manga in the first place? Why was I so bent on going to Japan for so long? The answer I told myself, that “I always wanted to,” does not explain why. It underlines the question even more.