1st Month in Tokyo
I don’t know if “only” or “already” fits better, but it’s been exactly a month since I stepped foot in Tokyo, and I can’t recall many instances in human history where someone has experienced so much in such a short time (maybe during the American Revolution or something). But considering that I’d booked my AirBnB the day of my flight, I shouldn’t be surprised that I’ve felt a flaming torch under my ass for half of it.
The shared sentiment surrounding Japan is “culture-shock” — when there is so much to take in, but not enough time to. Way of traffic is on the left, there are (almost) no public garbage bins, people are kawaii (xd).
Everything is in military time, trains are always on time, people stare at you sometimes. Vending machines are everywhere on the streets, order-by-vending-machine restaurants are a thing (ubiquitous), panty-dispensing vending machines are also a thing (not ubiquitous — don’t get excited). Don’t ask me how I know that.
And I’m not sure if I’ve just been preoccupied or if I’m just a little… opaque, but I haven’t been able to feel the viscerality of “culture-shock” as much as other people seem to have.
I guess I have been looking for a place to sleep, finding a job, eating stuff (by myself) feeling the loneliness, feeling anxiety, getting stood up at my first interview, enrolling in language school, starting to make friends like back in grade school, eating stuff, discovering floors of anime porn (by accident of course), and walking around Shibuya dressed as a nurse until 5 in the morning, but I still feel like there is a piece of my awareness that has yet been completely tuned to this place.
It’s like I’m right in between two frames of a video, or on the edge of a turning page — it hasn’t fully hit me yet that I’m here.
To be honest, I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. Sometimes I wonder if there’s something missing — something major that I’ve been neglecting, preventing me from letting myself just be here.
It’s not uncommon to fall into a cycle of doing fun and immediate things, and forgetting that there was something important needing to be done (like finding a home, and stuff). Maybe I need to stop browsing so much anime porn and take some time to be more one with the universe. Maybe not.
I don’t know if thinking about this stuff is a good thing. In fact, a part of me doesn’t want to think much at all and just take things as they are; just pay attention and live life freely. Up until now, I’ve always been optimizing for something specific, but this time I want to purposely optimize for unoptimization. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I guess that’s the point.
Oops — it’s 04:00. My first day of work is in 6 hours.
