(Some of my cool & badass-awesome souvenirs. Open in a new tab for middling quality!)

I haven’t been writing out of what I guess is a sense of overwhelm, or of having so many new & different things that I don’t know how to articulate. Feelings, not things, but things too. Everything.

For the most part I’ve been staying in the Japanese suburbs with E. I thought that experiencing everyday life here would temper my desires & my need to get the hell out of my home, maybe it would even disappoint me a bit, but it did the opposite: I need to leave. Life could be different if I let it. I understand that it’s a dangerous way of thinking, fixating on that one thing that you think will fix everything, so I’ve tried my best to avert my eyes, to look down, but God… being here makes me realize how much I hate where I live. Often, a lot of what I do here is punctuated by this sharp melancholy, when I realize that it’s ending and that I will have to go back to my life, which is not this life, is nowhere near this life. You’d think that the reaffirmation of your dreams would make you feel good, but it’s a really heavy feeling, knowing what I want, knowing that I don't have it. I don’t think that I’ve ever felt this way before. Unsureness was a lot more comfortable. And being sure of what I want is not self-assuredness. I think the bad part of the feeling comes from a mismatch: Knowing what I want & not knowing if I can get it. But I will try.

Mostly I have been good. I’ve been struggling with mood swings again, getting close to tears over & over, but not having a quiet place to cry stops me, I think. I am still me, after all: Sad & insecure & frightful as I am. A few days ago I woke up with this tight feeling in my chest, like I was going to be sick, and so I took the bus from the quiet suburbs into the city and it was okay for a bit. I walked around till that feeling got bigger, smaller, tighter, and I felt so sick, like I was going to cry, my breathing heavy & my only comfort to myself was: “I would rather be my horribly flawed self than anyone else.” And I just kept saying it to myself, that this way is best, that being myself is best, even if it’s difficult for no reason. I don’t know why I think that, but I really do, wholeheartedly.

Daiso: Obviously better than the Daisos in the States. Had an entire section dedicated to bug catching.

3 Coins Plus: Refined Daiso for people who only dress & live in the color beige.

American Holic: Nothing distinctly American about the clothes save for a sign that read: “Cotton from the US.”

7-11: Skimped on the fish in the grilled salmon onigiri, but the tuna mayo onigiri was sufficiently fish filled to my American (meat loving) tastes. They sell cups of ice that you then fill at a coffee machine, which are actually pretty good, I think better than the canned stuff depending. Similarly, if you are a clueless gaijin such as myself, without even asking an employee will come to show you how to use the coffee machine.

Be Pop: Sold Snoopy keychains, so obviously very good. I even employed my skillful Japanese & pointed to a case & said “Pokemon Kaado,” because my brother asked for Japanese Pokemon cards.

Uniqlo: Not to sound derisive, but Uniqlo is the epitome of (what seems to be) generic Japanese fashion. Also overpriced, but apparently they tailor your clothes after you buy them, which is perhaps why literally every Japanese person that I’ve come across looks nicer than me.

Don Quijote: An eel in a tank outside, Meiji chocolates, tabi socks, sponges & cleaning supplies, collectible toy cars, Iwako puzzle erasers, flashing lights & jingles, Tom & Jerry merchandise, vibrators, Louis Vuitton: Don Quijote has it all. Truly the land of plenty.

I made it to E’s hometown Friday or Saturday last week, I forget which. It’s hard to think that this is considered a “city,” though I guess “city” to me means “dirty sprawl” or “highway infestation.” There are rice paddies between houses and the roads are small, the cars are small too. Everything is small. No one has a yard but I think it’s better this way. I can walk anywhere. Anywhere that I can’t walk to I could reach by bus. I wonder how much happier I would be if I lived somewhere like this..? I didn’t know how to articulate this to E, but everything here is the same but different. I think a lot of people who want to move away from wherever they’ve been shouldering their lives, people like me who feel a constant clawing even when laying still, it’s easy for them (us) to latch onto this idea that moving, leaving, would fix things, but I would be the same person if I moved here. That’s obvious, I know, and I knew that, but I think what I mean is that a move doesn’t have to be transformative, there doesn’t need to be a big reason, or even a lot of small reasons, wanting is reason enough, an inkling is reason enough. Even though this place is still work and the grocery store and the bus and even if moving wouldn’t radically transform me, that’s okay. I’ve always thought this, but I’ve never been able to explain it. I get asked a lot why I want to travel, why I want to move, and it’s so intrinsic to who/what I am that I don’t have adequate language for it.

Another way that I could explain things is that while Japan is just as full as the mundane as the States, I still like it. I say the word “mundane” a lot, and it has a lot of meanings, even more for me than other people, but let’s not forget what it means: of this world. Everything is mundane. And the mundane is good. All of it is good. While everything here is new & is novel to me, it’s special in the same way that

I woke up at 5 AM this morning, which I should have expected: I went to sleep at about 9 PM, and normally the most I can sleep is eight hours or so. I woke up really hungry & everything was closed, so I got the breakfast of champions: Konbini food. I got a grilled salmon onigiri, a café latte, & a matcha latte. I like that Japanese portion sizes are so small compared to in the States, because I can try a lot of different things at once. If I got an iced coffee in the States, it would be at least an hour or two affair, you know. It was cheap too. All of that for less than $4 USD.

I noticed that people don’t eat while they walk around here, they either stand or sit somewhere out of the way, so I ate my breakfast at Sensō-ji. I got a precursory glance of it yesterday in my wanderings, congested with tourists & Japanese alike, even got a (bad) fortune told, but at 6 AM it was mostly the devout: People praying. The place was completely different then. It had the sort of atmosphere that I would imagine, a holy feeling to it. It was so quiet too. I could hear the clapping as people prayed from afar. I could smell incense.

I didn’t take many photos, only from far away, because many of the spaces nearer to the temple prohibited photography. One of the shrines said not to take photos, because it was a “holy place.” Everyone seemed to disregard that yesterday. I wonder how it would feel to have a mob of tourists breathing photos down my neck as I tried to pray. Most of the people who were praying were either old, or were salarymen. The salarymen look almost anachronistic, but so do the people wearing kimonos. It seems like no one from any time belongs, but the place is still welcoming, especially in the early morning light. My favorite view of it was from further away, through a parking lot, seeing that grand roof framed by telephone wires.

The pigeons here are different. They’re a deeper, richer color. The crows here are different, their caws. The pigeons don’t fear me, but when they hear a crow, they flee.

My favorite part of the temple & its surrounding areas was a small waterfall that fed into a pond of koi fish. I listened to some music this morning as I was walking around after stopping at the konbini, but I saw that the people who walked through the torii gate to one of the shrines would take their hats off & bow, so I took my headphones off & bowed & figured that I would leave them off. I really love koi fish. Somehow, I thought of absolutely nothing as I was watching them. I was just involved in the act of watching & of seeing: The same satisfaction of a kaleidoscope. Some of the koi were in strange colors that I haven’t seen before & looked paint-splattered & cut in half & attached to another fish, Frankenstein-esque. My other favorite part was a statue of the Buddha. A pair of them actually. I don’t know why, but the one depicting mercy almost moved me to tears.

After some time there, I wandered back into this store called Don Quijote, which stands in complete opposition to the temple in every way: It’s like Walmart if Walmart were several stories tall & seizure inducing. I picked up some tchotchkes for my brother & sister & father, nothing Japan themed because every toursity thing is a total rip-off. I got them a few little stickers, Ghibli & Sonic pins, a Poppin’ Cookin set, some of these little cat blind box figures. Oh, & I got my dad a pin set of Tom & Jerry dressed up at Superman, (he loves superheroes). Yesterday after I’d told E that I made it, she asked if Tokyo was how I expected. I don’t really know what I expected, but the fact that I keep seeing Tom & Jerry everywhere is funny to me. I think that’s the only thing to have defied expectations so far.

I have to check out of my hotel at 11 AM, but I’m meeting E at the airport at 4 PM, so I’m going to take a nap. The hotel will hold my luggage at least, so I have no complaints.

Hard to keep my eyes open. Just walked around for hours till my feet hurt. Tokyo is actually pretty easy to navigate. After walking to my hotel once, I didn’t need a map anymore, even after I walked half an hour away to the Tokyo Skytree. I didn’t go up it though. After it got dark, I saw it in the distance & it seemed so beautiful, & so I walked to it. Then I got there & realized I didn’t care much about going up, not enough to wait half an hour to do it at least. We went to New York once as a family & went up the Empire State Building & I was an emotionally unaffected seven year old. I think the Skytree would (have a lack of) feel(ing) similarly.

Can hardly keep my eyes open as I write this.

I can’t tell you exactly where I went or even what I saw, and not just because I can’t read anything. It just didn’t feel like I was walking around for four or five hours. I could only tell when my feet uncharacteristically hurt. I can tell you what I smelled though: You know when you visit someone’s house & you can smell the things from your own house? Like you’re spending the night at a friend’s place & when you smell the clothes you packed, they have a sort of gentle distinctness to them that you don’t normally realize? Not bad, not even good, just… a smell you know. That’s how I felt walking around Tokyo, till I realized it was the soft scent of the ocean, a bit of salt.

Visited some shrines after they “closed,” which means the shops around them closed & the tourists vacated. The most amazing part to me about the shrines was not the architecture or the art or the craftsmanship, dedication, it was how old they were. Not just how old they were, but how new everything around them was. Nothing is juxtaposed either: It just works.

Writing this from the hotel… so tired. Didn’t realize till I sat down. I could fall asleep right now, but I won’t. I genuinely do not, cannot understand the time zone differences, but I have only slept four hours in some indiscriminate period. (A day?) I slept on my flight to the coast, but not on my actual flight to Tokyo.

I don’t understand myself: I somehow, for the first time, did not have a panic attack on either of the planes, waiting for my departure, during my layover, going through customs, getting lost in the Japanese train station(s); (It took me three or four different trains to get here. It was supposed to be a straight shot. Eventually I got frustrated enough to go above ground & voila, my destination was only fifteen minutes away by foot.) I did however, sitting in a small ramen shop run by an older woman, and an even older woman, presumably her mother, have a panic attack. Why? It was empty except for them, me, & an older couple. Not only that, but as I was thinking to myself that I’ll just thank them for the food, tell them it’s delicious but that I’m just not feeling well from the flight, they gave me something else on the house. I don’t know what it was. It was really good, sort of like gyoza, maybe it was gyoza, and I almost threw up in my mouth because I couldn’t stop feeling my heartbeat bounding in my chest & head. But do you know what this old lady told me in her translator app: “This is for free because you came a long way [Insert Very Cute Smiling Kaomoji].” In light of this: I had to make myself eat it. How could I not? Maybe I’m biased because it tasted like kindness but I very much enjoyed (sort of) the meal. I am glad it was my first meal in Japan, even if my mind short circuited for no reason. The old lady even showed me what sauce to use on the (possibly not) gyoza & the powder for my ramen. She was so sweet. I made sure to (try to) tell them as I was paying that the food was very good, that I just don't feel very well.

Probably just going to wander around. Everything is overwhelmingly interesting here, because I have no idea what’s going on at all. I don’t understand what’s being said. I’m not even sure what side of the sidewalk to walk on. I went to a shrine & copied what I saw other people doing. This must be what being a child is like: Complete enjoyment & wonderment in absolute lack of understanding.

I did it, I did it, I did it! I did it. I didn’t even feel nervous. I’m just sitting here, waiting for my plane like a very tired girl and not a very afraid one. I felt fine the entire time. I didn’t get sick. I didn’t throw up into bags or on my feet. Other people asked me for help: A Mexican woman asked me if I spoke Spanish & to help her find her flight & a girl my age but a bit younger asked me how layovers worked.

This state of being right now, of being fine, it was unthinkable to me even yesterday. But I told myself that this time, it could really be different, you could really be different. I believed it too. I let myself be hopeful. I let myself be different this time.

I don’t normally think of myself in these terms, but I win. Even if I get to the airport & immediately crumple over & throw up on my own two feet, I still win. The only thing that matters is those two feet are at the airport or on the plane: I win, I win, I win.