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Time can permanently carve in you the best and worst qualities of man: love, hatred, understanding, fear, compassion, respect, and sadness. If I’ve learned nothing else from my time in Japan, it’s that time is an unstoppable vehicle for change. Can’t stop time, can’t stop change.
I’ve sort of always known of this, but never really knew it to be true in until recently.
Nine months ago, I left a cushy life in America to come live here in Japan–an overwhelming and amorphous puzzle, a confusing maze of only a few colors, and the love of my life since I was 16. My future was the last thing on my mind. My only goal was to get here, find work, and live the next few years in this amazing place. If I could meet myself from last year, I wouldn’t even recognize my own face.
When I arrived, the city of Tokyo swallowed me whole. I vividly remember the first night, staring up at the ceiling, sleeping on a wafer-thin cot in a cockroach-infested guesthouse in northeast Tokyo. I was exhausted, jet-lagged, soaked (a typhoon slammed the city as I trudged through the streets with two immense suitcases), boiling hot (it was early August) and scared. Scared. The fear that first night–I will never forget it (I remember asking myself out loud: “What the hell have I done?”). I woke up the next morning. I looked around my tiny room. I gathered my wits. It hadn’t been 24 hours and already my energy level and optimism were through the roof. Two days later–hired. I was on my way.
Fast forward to today. It’s 9 months later. This country has written in my heart an unbelievable story. Nine months of profound friendships, painful mistakes, failure, and success. I’m living a nice life here: a decent job, nice co-workers, and good friends. However, the fact is that I am not the same person who came here. With these changes in my daily life came some pretty amazing personal change and growth. And so, it’s time to move on.
I will be leaving Japan soon. I’m leaving to start down a new professional path. This new direction will probably involve Japan eventually, but for the time being, it starts with me returning home.
There seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to careers, and in the most general terms, they involve making this simple choice: A. good money/boring job or B. bad money/fun job. Sometimes you can walk the line, but I don’t know how to bar tend or rap.
Anyways, I’ve made both of these choices before. A while back, I basically believed in the notion that if you look like someone who has their life together, you will become someone who has their life together, despite the self-doubt welling up in your chest. It’s a little embarrassing to think how excited I was when I got my first box of business cards. Later, though, I took a job I enjoyed but which sacrificed a decent wage. I can’t tell you how my heart dropped after getting my first paycheck. A rude wake up call.
So at different points in my life, I’ve had my foot in each camp. I have even sort of looked down my nose at people who have held the opposite viewpoint. The kindest, most supportive people in my life, I thought, were foolish. I was wrong. I’ve yet to really forgive myself for acting that way, but chalk it up to being young, scared, and naive. I intend to right my wrongs immediately.
A while back, I started to once again ask myself some questions about work. These are some tough questions. It starts with “What do I want to do? What do I like do to?” These questions inevitably lead to “What makes me happy?” and then finally “What can I offer as an employee? What can I offer as a human being?”
Good grief. All you wanted to do was make a career change and suddenly you find yourself in a mess of existentialism and self-doubt. Your professional self and personal self are all mixed up. These questions ask you examine what you’re capable of and what you have really accomplished in life under the harsh, harsh light of reality. Sometimes, we don’t like the answers to these questions. It’s is no wonder that even the most grounded people start to cower in fear when they start thinking of a career change.
But I sat down, thought about these things deeply, and suddenly found answers to these questions. For many years, there were these two competing philosophies–the aforementioned choices A and B–battling it out, and now I had actually lived them both. It took a long time to do this, and of course with the time came some pretty incredible personal change. Thus, I feel no more anxiety about this issue. There’s just perspective and new middle ground to explore.
And so, as much as I want to stay here and fart around in Asia for another few years, the time has come to move on and explore this new middle ground, which is likely to bring me back here. This next phase begins with returning home. It also means that it is time for WarmSound.net to come to an end. What good is a blog about life in Japan if you don’t live there?
It’s been an interesting run on my first real blog, and when I look back on my work, I’m proud of it. It’s hard to find a decent blog on Japan that doesn’t focus on anime or Tokyo or doesn’t naively and incessantly go on about “how small and futuristic everything is!” Not my perspective, not my style. The photos, the videos, and all 71 posts–I tried to make it as realistic as possible. Now, it’s time to end things. I’m hungry for a new challenge and I have never been so anxious to go home and hug my mother. I can’t wait to get on with it. So that’s it folks. Onward and upward.
Thanks for reading,
Nick
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Big things are in the works. Sit tight, won’t you? Here are some kittens to hold you over.
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There is only one song this week, but it’s so beautiful and epic that it would surely outshine any others I might be tempted to put up here.
Zero 7 – The Road
Zero 7 is a duo of pasty British guys who make beautiful, contemplative downtempo, a genre that is, at this point, so far beyond pigeonholed. The London twosome has made 4 records, the most recent one “Yeah Ghost” being, at first listen, absolutely terrible. Your heart shatters when your favorite group goes in new directions, but over time, you get used to it, and now, I can appreciate a track like “The Road.”And that’s sort of the parable for today. You can greet change with terror and rage, or acceptance and understanding.
I’ve recently made a big life decision. No announcement yet on what that is exactly, but just know that soon things will change for me, and I’ve decided to greet this great unknown with as much optimism and preparedness as I can. Part of that means being centered and focused on the important first steps of this journey. This is the kind of song that helps me do that.
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I was in Tokyo for the day just farting around by myself, after which I met up for a meeting of the Japanese chapter of the alumni association from my college. Met the school’s new president and schmoozed a bit (we’re golf buddies now). Got to hang out with two of the nicest girls I have been around in a long, long time. Not a bad Sunday at all.
It’s no longer morning, but come on, these tunes are killer.
Brazilian Girls – Sweatshop
Brazilian Girls is a German downtempo/pop group who frequently sings in English and French. The first time I heard them, I was in Fukuoka in the far southeast corner of Japan in 2005. It was about a week before Christmas and I was traveling around Japan by myself for a month. It rained the entire time I was in Fukuoka, but this group’s music kept me warm inside. This song has groove to spare.
Gil Scott-Heron – Your Daddy Loves You
Revolutionary singer/songwriter for the past 50 years. This song features him on Fender Rhodes with a flute player in the background. Two simple chords make up the chorus, but the textures on this song–the creamy electric piano, his rough-edged vocal, the soft reverb-soaked flute–take it to another level.
Michael Jackson – I Can’t Help It
Because “Off the Wall”-era Michael is good no matter what time of day it is. This song, with its abundance of major 7th chords, puts me right in Tokyo, amidst the twinkling lights and bustling streets. Absolutely amazing production.
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What I love most, what’s most addicting about living in a foreign country, is that everything that happens to you, bad or good, is somehow made better or worse simply because you’re in a foreign country. Nothing tastes worse than bad food in a strange land. Nothing is better than falling in love when you’re abroad. Nothing is worse than getting sick in a different part of the world. Nothing is better than making new friends in a country not your own.
Surprises, then, are a real treat. When something great happens to you in a foreign country, it’s indeed a wonderful feeling. But when it’s unexpected, it can make for a lifelong memory. Today, I received an unexpected surprise which I will never forget.
It did not come easily, though.
Nathan and I, it seems, are running out of places to go. Every weekend, we have a discussion about where to venture to next–city vs. country, east vs. west, etc. Lately, these conversations have been taking a while. Yet regardless of how long it takes us to decide, we always find ourselves in some interesting place. This being spring break, the pressure was on us to find something truly wonderful. Not wanting to spend a fortune and having already been to the big cities that are popular among foreign travelers in Japan, we decided to keep it simple and keep it local. Sano to Kiryu, 30 minutes. Kiryu to Godo, 1 hour. Simple.
To get to Godo, however, you have to take a train. And not just any train–something that looks from the old west. Upon boarding, I remarked that it resembled the kind of train that at one time probably had to deal with “bandits.” Most trains in Japan are clean, have multiple cars, and run cleanly. This train had rust, burped exhaust, had a staff that had special uniforms, and chugged along like the train in Dumbo.
As we departed Kiryu, a city of roughly 130,000 people, we ambled through the mountains towards Godo at a leisurely pace. The scenery regressed from small towns into smaller and smaller clusters of maybe 10 homes per town with no restaurants or grocery stores in sight. No pachinko parlors, banks, gas stations or amenities of any kind. We slowly let ourselves relax. This was our vacation, after all.
We originally intended to go to Konaka, the stop before Godo, but I protested at the sight of Konaka and because no one else was getting off the train. My gut told me that it would be better to stick with the crowd up here. There were no taxis, no information kiosks, no convenience stores to turn to if we got lost. It was us, our Japanese ability (ha!), and our wits. Nathan protested a little, him being the adventurous and handsome Indian Jones to my chubby but lovable Chunk from The Goonies. Good thing we stayed aboard.
Godo, at first, didn’t appear to offer…anything. It’s a small station at the foot of a big hill and a steep road, the top of which looks like it has even less than the area around the station. There was a bus waiting at the station to take people up the hill to the local art museum, but Nathan and I opted to walk up and find our own way. A couple rights and lefts later, and we ended up on what people around those parts would probably consider the main drag. We took a right. There wasn’t much in these parts. There was a building where a fire was and everything had collapsed in. It didn’t look recent. The owner probably just hasn’t gotten around to cleaning up.
We noticed a path leading to a temple. Up the stairs–CRAZY jagged and unsafe stairs, mind you–we went. The temple was small and quaint. There wasn’t much around, though there were a few burial stones. Most Japanese people aren’t buried, so these stones could theoretically be placed anywhere. The nice headstones, however, are pricey, just like in America. Why must death be so expensive? Is the pain of losing someone not burden enough?
You could see the whole town from the top. It was so peaceful, except about every 45 seconds you would hear a loud explosion like a cannon–charges laid deep within the surrounding mountains to scare away the mountain boars from coming down and eating the vegetables growing there. This was food for the people to eat. They needed these mushrooms and greens, and the boars were a nuisance. Apparently, you can hear these explosions all month, one month out of the year.
We walked down the stairs, carefully, and exited left. For a brief moment, I lobbied to go back the way we came to find some nourishment, then retracted my statement to just “peak around the corner” that lay up ahead. We walked another 50 feet and came within view of a sign for a coffeehouse. Obviously, I was thrilled. On we went, following the signs.
We walked a bit more and came upon, easily, the weirdest thing I have ever seen in this country. Japan is extremely clean, and there is an unbelievable amount of respect for natural things and public spaces. You can imagine our shock when we came upon a steep embankment, littered with hundreds of pieces of trash. Above it were two signs: one was old, stone and mossy and the other was new and yellow, like a street sign. Both read “no dumping!” Obviously, there was a problem with dumping and someone thought another sign would do the trick. Yeah, no. The trash was caked into the embankment. It looked as though the trash came first and the dirt came on top of it, like someone had climbed down and put in the trash by hand. It was shocking.
Another few hundred feet, and we rounded a corner. We looked up.
There she was, a modern looking cabin on a lot all by herself. It was a beautiful sight. We started to walk up the stone steps when the owner opened a door and waved us in. She was a little old lady–probably in her 70’s. She warmly welcomed us to take a seat where we liked. We removed our shoes, walked across the room and took a seat at a table in the sunshine.
She brought us some water and handed us a menu. The floor to ceiling windows allowed us to take in the view. Incredible.
We sat for a little bit, and she came and took our order. I just wanted coffee and Nathan ordered the handmade udon. I was hungry, I just wanted to see what she meant by “country style” vegetable soup. She brought us some pickled vegetables and then Nathan’s soup. It was a big, steaming pot of deliciousness. We both shared. She then surprised us with tempura (vegetables fried in batter). She brought out my coffee, which had a single coffee bean floating in it, an idea so charming and sweet, yet despite having been to hundreds of coffeehouses all over the world, this was the first time I had seen such a thing.
It was, to say the least, a dream of a meal. Everything was prepared with love and care. We sat there, full, basking in the glow of the Saturday afternoon sunshine. We made conversation about nothing, just kind of taking in the moment as friends. This was indeed an unforgettable afternoon. Having been filming all afternoon, I began to plan in my head how my video would be put together, what song would be used, and how I would frame this article. I was so excited at the the thought of being able to share this amazing experience, to try and put into words the immeasurable joy we felt after finding this hidden gem, this sweet surprise that, never to be enjoyed in the same way again.
And now, for the video. The song is “Give It Away” by Zero 7, off my favorite album ever, “Simple Things.” Enjoy.
A Sweet Surprise from WarmSound on Vimeo.
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