On the Train
There’s an Onsen I visit sometimes near this station. I had to vocalize those words pretty loudly in my head — the parts of thinking and understanding in my brain couldn’t really find each other. Maybe I was still a little drunk. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten chicken sashimi.
Platform signs passed by the window like cars on a racetrack, and heads bobbed in unison as the race came to a stop. The train doors opened and a thought of getting out popped into my mind. Sounded like a nice idea to spend the entire day bathing in hot springs, waiting for my head to come back together (or maybe split further apart), but before those thoughts finished, I realized — we were already moving again.
That’s okay, the Onsen probably wasn’t open at 8AM anyways. My eyes lifted off my watch and moved back up the window. The row of people in front of me were cutely poised shoulder to shoulder, like children’s boots on a shoerack. I wondered if I could tell the difference between who was going to work and who was heading home. I wondered if they could tell where I was going. I wondered if I knew that myself.
The night was finally coming to an end.
My time in Tokyo is too.
For the past few months, I’ve felt like I’ve been sitting on this really long train; I kind of know where I got on, but don’t really know where I’m getting off. The train comes to a station, the doors open, the doors close, and the train starts moving again. It’s just like any other train.
But sooner or later, you notice the people on the train speak a different language, and act a little differently that you’re used to. You realize you’re going to have to learn how things are here. Other people are in similar positions; some holding textbooks and taking notes; others not bothering at all and just beast-moding it. You try the former, but end up just talking to people and learning as you go.
There are a bunch of rules and conventions, which are never written anywhere, so of course you don’t know them. You sit there and pretend like you do, but you’ll make mistakes, like when the waitress says enjoy your meal and you say “Thanks you too.” Me too thanks.
And there are a ton of stations, so many that you couldn’t count them with your fingers, even if you had eleventy billion hands. The Tokyo Ramen Show, the Sapporo Snow Festival, clubbing in Roppongi until sunrise and spending breakfast sleeping on the underseat of a restaurant toilet— each stop has its own specialty, things to do, and joy to experience.
At first, you stop at every single one, because carp doim! and you’re a millenial, but you soon realize that there’s just… too many stops. And as you move with the train, you start to pace yourself by getting off when it feels right; or when you see something really cool, like fried fish sperm.
Now and then you’ll question whether or not you should’ve stopped at the stops you’ve stopped (or are stopping) at, but you remind yourself to save questions that can only be answered in the future, for the future. Now and then you’ll get glimpses of reassurance. Now and then you’ll feel it.
Sometimes there’s no one else with you on the train. And sometimes there’s everyone else. You’ve been butt to butt (like butttobutt) with more people than you’ve shook hands with in your life, but you get used to it.
Sometimes you’re groin to butt. Sometimes you’re butt to groin. If you get used to that…
Different people get on at different stations, and different people get off at different stations. Some of them, you know you’ll share a pretty long ride with. Some of them, your time with is quite ephemeral. It’s a weird feeling to meet a friend and realize that the only time you’ll ever spend with each other will be right now. I felt it the day I met my very first friend in Tokyo — he got off a few stops ago.
All of these people have their own reasons for embarking and disembarking the train. At the beginning, finding that out is a good conversation intro and the world is super interesting, but after you’ve been asked the same thing eleventy billion times, you realize that they have been too.
Sooner or later, you start to enjoy others’ presence with or without understanding those things. It’s not bad to, but you learn that sometimes letting be can help you understand more. Some people will get off the train without you ever even seeing them, much less getting to know them. You find out some people come because part time jobs in Japan make more than full time ones in their own country. Some people come for school or work. Some people come to write Anime scripts.
Sometimes they ask questions about you, like where you’re from, or where you’re going. Sometimes they’ll ask you why you’re on the train in the first place. But you don’t know all the answers; you’re just on the train, like everyone else is.
Before I arrived, people often asked — “Why?”.
Sometimes I’d tell them bad people were chasing me at my University, so I had to evade them until they stopped asking me to come to lectures and hand in my homework. Sometimes I went into some grandiose explanation of how I was chasing my youth and trying to make my baby metal debut.
Obviously nobody is chasing me at my University — the truth is I just didn’t really know.
More accurately, I didn’t know how to explain it. I mean, I can list stuff — I tried a year of travel before but it got stopped; I’ve been working super similar environments for the past two years and I wanted a change; the Cansbridge Fellowship gave me a big push to go somewhere in Asia and work for 10 weeks; I got ‘weaboo’ on my grade three career survey so I decided it was worth a try — but as Harry Styles once said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you simply don’t understand it enough.”
For better or worse, travel has almost become a synonym for self discovery and pursuing answers. I think there’s sometimes good truth in that, but this time it was a little different. I came to Japan without any expectations, or particular things that I wanted to look for (other than maid cafe). Things like self-improvement, growth, and challenge, were more byproducts than goals themselves.
I think it’s as simple as it just felt right. Whatever’s in the back of my head — call it intuition, or 才能 (ww)—just had a feeling, and I trusted it. Of course there are pressures to finish school, work on career, and learn about blockchain(!) and machine learning(!!), but dabbing out to Japan just felt like a very natural decision. Like going to poo when you feel like you have to poo.
And coming from a super optimized and systematic mindset, where I had to understand every why of every what, it was quite different to adopt this new approach to life, where I could just let the what’s be what’s, and let the why’s come when they wanted to.
Of course there are still answers to look for (like who the hell that smell was coming from), but the questioning had shifted from a constant need to know to a natural prosody of when it felt necessary. Just as how I began to choose my stops by feeling, and not always with purpose.
I’ve really enjoyed it. There has been some ups and downs (big ones), but I couldn’t think of a better way to describe how I feel about my time in Tokyo.
Though I don’t know really know a way to describe how I feel about leaving. I’ll still be traveling around the rest of Japan until August, but I had to decide that against staying longer in this city. I really wish I had more time here; that’s another thing about this train — its version of time is different. And sometimes unforgiving.
Only yesterday it was October; I’d moved into my 20-man sharehouse, finished signing up for my Amazon Prime membership, and was just leaving the house for my next job interview. And yesterday, I was giving my final presentation at the startup I’d been working for the last 15 weeks, and messaging friends to catch up not knowing months or years before the next time I’d see them again.
Just an hour ago, I was writing the date of my farewell party in our living room whiteboard.
There are still so many things I still want to do here.
I don’t really know what words could best describe these past 4 months. I’d like to be bold, slap ‘unforgettable’, and be happy with, but I’ve had many nights where I forgot everything as well. Maybe there’s no way to perfectly describe an experience that isn’t finished yet — that you’re still in the middle of.
I’m still on the train. It’s changing all the time, and I kind of am too. I don’t know where my destination is, but tomorrow I’ll be at a new station, and I know there’s a while to go. I always tell myself to not think too much and just be aware — enjoy the ride, right?!?
And I think less than I used to, but sometimes thoughts still come — if I’m heading where I really should be heading; if I’ve done the things I wanted to do. If I should be staying on a little longer; if I should be getting off the next stop. If I should run out the doors and go soak in an Onsen for the day.
Maybe I should run out the doors and go soak in an Onsen for the day.
But before those thoughts finish, we are already moving again.
