RAINICHI 2023 #001 PROLOGUE
August 17, 2024
My first trip to Japan began and ended with me watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in an airport lobby while sending fruitless messages to a soon-to-be-ex girlfriend. The first instance occurred on August 28th, 2015, the second instance on January 24th, 2016. Two different airports and two different girlfriends — and two different episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, for that matter — but it’s hard not to wonder whether we're not just looking at the same moment from two different perspectives.
The first drink I bought from a Japanese vending machine was a bottle of Lipton Apple Tea. The last drink I bought from a Japanese vending machine was also a bottle of Lipton Apple Tea. The first friend I met in Japan was also the last friend I said goodbye to.
There aren’t many things in life that are so perfectly circular. There aren’t many things in life that begin and end with such abruptness. In that respect, a medium-length study-abroad program is a unique type of life experience. As I soon found out, it is a remarkably difficult experience to replicate.
To quote Qian Zhonghshu in Fortress Besieged:
“Returning home after studying abroad was like water on the ground turning to vapour and rising to the sky, then changing again to rain and returning to the earth, while the whole world looked on and talked about it.”
And also,
“His four years abroad were like water running over a lotus leaf leaving no trace behind.”
To quote myself:
“I made it out of the airport and hugged my parents. My mom cried. We got in a car. Suddenly, I had never been to Japan. Suddenly, I was here, again, in a car, and here were my parents, again, in a car with me, and soon I would be there, again, in my home, again, eating and doing and eating and doing the same things I always had, now armed with the knowledge that there was something different: something I would have to wait to go back to; something I may never go back to; something that sits patiently in its own alternate reality until I return to it and it becomes real while this present reality becomes fake. And as we drove, my dad told me about the eagles he had seen sitting on a tree near the highway two weeks ago, and I nodded my head.
All I wanted as a cup of tea and a sandwich made of French bread, and I immediately got them. And as I got them, I realized how much more important the wanting of them was than the getting of them. And I realized that home is more important to me as a place that exists than as a place to be in. And I became very very sad. And over the next few days, I woke up each morning in my two-person bed searching for my friend, not knowing what bed I was in, not knowing what city I was in, not knowing what country I was in, not knowing whether I belonged. And my mom would say, "Wake up, Mike. You're in Vancouver; you're home", and I would look at her, and I would think "What's home", and I would think, "Am I on Earth planet?", and I felt the pain of feeling no pain, because the last five months had been erased, and all I could do was talk about it, and dream about it, and wonder if it was really all okay, after all. And I lost myself for a week, too tired to think, too tired to love, too loving to tire, and when I found myself I was not who I thought I was, and maybe I'm still not.”
In all material senses, nothing had changed at all since I left. I returned home and got back to doing exactly what I had been doing before: mainly, moping around. During my last few weeks in Japan, I had been so excited about experiencing all the comforts of home as if they were new. But they weren’t new. They had just been temporarily abandoned. Very quickly, it became as if I had never left.
I remember not even a week after returning to Vancouver, a friend asked me whether I was going to become one of those people who only ever talks about how they studied abroad. I realized then that I would never be able to communicate to anyone what had happened to me in Japan. After realizing this, I devoted many hours to attempting to communicate what had happened to me in Japan. I wrote page after page about My Japan: about how I had found it and how I had lost it. I had lost it in such a way that I kept imagining that it still existed somewhere, and that I would one day retrieve it.
Often, I returned to My Japan in my dreams. In these dreams, people who had never been to Japan in their life inhabited My Japan. The distance between Japan and Vancouver became null — I often found myself in Vancouver for a weekend, thinking about how I had to return to Mito for school the next day. Often the whole dream would take place in Vancouver, and yet the whole time I knew that I really lived in Japan, although I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually been there.
On my way home from Japan, I flew from Kansai Airport in Osaka to Haneda Airport in Tokyo. Haneda is where I had first landed and, as a frightened and confused young man, muddled my way through several layers of international bureaucracy. After leaving security, I had approached the reception desk of the charter bus company and requested, in a childishly rude and impetuous manner, a bus to Mito. This was the first time I used Japanese in real life, and it felt terrible.
On my second visit to Haneda Airport, I exited the plane and found myself in a long, nondescript hallway. This was a familiar hallway; in fact, it was the self-same hallway that I had walked five months prior. After about a minute of walking, there was a quarantine desk to my left, and behind that, the customs area. Here I was, right back where I had begun my journey. Behind that desk lay My Japan in all its glory; I could see back there, hiding behind those bored and masked individuals, everything that I had left behind: every strange drink I had drunk, every strange friend I had befriended, every strange journey I had undertaken — all that strangeness and discomfort that had somehow become a soothing mundanity. At this moment, it all became strange again. It was at this moment that I ceased to live in that world.
I did not turn left. I continued straight down the hallway to catch my connecting flight. I passed a small counter; the woman waved me past. I went down a pair of escalators. I was in a large, empty room. There were probably 150 chairs in there. I was the only person inside. I wandered around the perimeter. I thought about buying a Lipton Apple Tea from a vending machine I found, but it just didn’t make sense anymore. I bought it anyway.
I drank about three sips of that Lipton Apple Tea while waiting for a shuttle to take me to International Departures. At International Departures, I went through security. They asked me to get rid of my Lipton Apple Tea. I began to chug it. I realized mid-chug that I didn’t even want it. I got them to throw it away.
During my RAINICHI, I didn’t drink a single bottle of Lipton Apple Tea. I entered and exited the country via Narita Airport. Apart from one indulgent day in Mito, I did not make any attempt to recreate experiences from my previous trip. I went to brand new places and created brand new memories. And yet it’s impossible to say that RAINICHI 2023, both at the time and now in my memories, was not haunted by My Japan. The proof lies in the name itself.
As I search for the most appropriate place to begin this work, I keep finding myself travelling further and further into the past. Having left open the possibility of this series reaching up to 999 parts — more, in fact, having immediately set the precedent of negative numbers, decimal points, prologues and addenda — I must consciously acknowledge the entwined dangers of overly minute detail and agonizing digression. We must always keep in mind the example set by Tristram Shandy, in which it takes multiple volumes to reach the narrator’s own birth.
I know that I need to eventually reach the beginning. I do need to eventually write about RAINICHI 2023, because there are some things that went on over there that I bet a few of you might find interesting. But this same thing happened back in 2015 when I was living in Japan — I kept thinking, “I should tell people what living in Japan is like!” and then I would write essays about my history with hallucinations, and how I saw a girl at a flea market eating a hot dog.
We can’t keep going on like this. After much agonized deliberation, I have decided to start at the beginning.
That is, after a brief addendum in the form of an essay I wrote in 2016, on the one-year anniversary of first arriving in Japan.
RAINICHI 2023 #001 PROLOGUE - ADDENDUM
"on being one year removed from the day when i flew very high in the air and landed in tokyo, japan"
08 28 2016
Oh, I’m going to throw up.
Okay, I just threw up. I was trying to think about Japan, and all the people I met there, and all the things I did, and all the ridiculous feelings I felt, and all the sounds I heard and the smells I smelled, and the things I cried about, and the things I sang about, and the things I wrote and the things I said and the things I read and the people I met and the sounds I heard and the streets I walked and the food I ate and the drinks I bought and the buildings I saw and the routines I created and the people I met and the classes I took and the events I attended and the words I spoke and the words I heard and the languages I heard and the person whose hands I held and the person who woke me up every morning and the person I lived with and the person I traveled with and the people I sang with and the people I ate breakfast with and the school I learned at and the school I ate at and the school I taught at and the bus I rode and the trains I rode and the noodles I ate and the sushi I ate and the CDs I bought and the books I bought and the clothes I bought and the people I missed and the food I missed and the people I never wanted to see again and the TV I watched and the essays I wrote and the futures I imagined and the pasts I imagined and the “here I am” feeling I had over and over and over and the way I felt like I was in a place and I was in a position and it was somehow right even though it was all wrong and I remembered that it’s never coming back but it all lives forever and I threw up.
It’s all a ghost now! I knew it would be, I said it would be, and now it is. And it’s almost not as terrible as I imagined, but it’s still sometimes terrible. What a strange life I had! It’s everything to me; it really is. I can’t make it anything less than everything to me. I have no regrets because I knew during every moment that I was doing something important, and I can think of one million times when I stopped and thought, in real English words, “I’m so incredibly Here; Here is exactly where I am”. And Here was not Japan, despite it being Japan. Here was just a feeling; Here was just that I was me, and Here was the knowledge that something was happening. I’m sorry; I know that reading this is so emphatically nothing.
I was not happy all the time. I was unhappy most of the time. It was a mysterious unhappiness. It was an unhappiness that I almost liked. The unhappiness I felt before was so hollow; it was an unhappiness that was empty and meaningless. The unhappiness of Here was full; I could feel it, I could really feel it! I hadn’t felt a feeling in a long time. It was amazing. I cried sometimes. I stayed up all night thinking about subjects that were more or less important than “why bother”. I thought about love. I thought about love a lot. I thought about love in a billion different ways and at some point I found the way that meant I could love myself.
I’m going to say this forever or until I change my name, but I’m still Mike. There were a million things added to me over the past year but I somehow ended up as myself. Now I’m myself with a shadow-world that exists at a place and time that can never be returned to.
I spent a few hours the other night on Google Street View. I went to Mito. I listened to The Blue Hearts’ self-titled debut album. I walked the streets I used to walk. I passed the restaurants, and the convenience stores, and the vending machines. I went to the park where I walked with friends, or walked alone while recording audio diaries. I went to the Matsu-ya, and the Marukuni, and the Book-Off, and the Kasumi. I peeked through the windows of the Welcia. I stopped at the curb where we drank beers and wondered aloud whether we would ever understand Japan. I looked at the entrance of the ugly, grey, concrete building that was our dorm, and I remembered the kitchens and the chopsticks and the tables and the chairs and the drinks and the drunks and the beds and the desks and the frigid air.
Then, I traveled to Osaka. I found the bar where I met Swery. I found the Glico Man and the giant crab and the giant sushi and the giant gyoza. I found the birthplace and resting place of the Wednesday Midday Karaoke Club. I found the hotel parking lot where I last saw the Girl of the Day After Tomorrow, and I followed the path I walked through that night, alone in a large city, until I found the Capsule Hotel where everything fell apart and disintegrated and then tried to come back together.
I went to Kyoto. I found the Bikkuri Donkey, and the Final Karaoke booth that stood next door. I found the Royal Host. I traveled to our tiny hotel near Nichi-jo Castle and I looked at one of the seventh floor windows and I saw myself inside, lying on a shared mini-queen bed watching Sumo and counting the hours until I was in Surrey eating a baguette filled with fresh deli meat and real cheese. I can’t blame myself. I wanted to leave because I knew I had to leave. It ended slowly, and was finished quickly. I woke up at YVR airport two days later and it had all become a dream.
I know all of this is nothing to anyone, but it’s everything to me. These are the most important things I know and they’re not going away. I’m sorry; I know I don’t live in Japan anymore. I definitely know that. I still live with Japan though. I probably live with Japan more now than I ever did while I lived in Japan.
I can still taste the first Lipton Apple Tea I drank. I can still taste the last. I can see the beginning and the ending just as vividly as I can see the words I’m typing right now. I can see the faces of the passengers of every train I rode. I remember every server at every restaurant and the feeling of every coin and every bill at every transaction. I remember every [continued forever]
I can feel it all, right now. How can I lose this? When and why will these go away? I can’t know these things forever. I know I will forget. I’m terrified that I will forget.
I’m still Mike, but how am I Mike and what Mike am I? I’m not the Mike I was 365 days ago.
I have a note in my phone. It’s called “Notes From Japan”. When I was in Japan, it was stored in a different phone, and it was simply called “Notes”. It contains nine phrases that I thought of and wanted to remember. There used to be many more, but they’ve been lost to time in various ways. Individually, I guess none of them are particularly important, and most of them don’t actually make sense, but I think it seems logical that I should end this essay with one, and the one I chose is this:
I stepped in a puddle while I was looking at you.
Next time:
RAINICHI 2023 #001 - The Beginning
Previously:
RAINICHI 2023 #000.5 – An Immediate Digression Concerning the Japanese Language
RAINICHI 2023: