I was last in Japan a couple of months ago, and I visited my old home of Kawamoto, in the remote mountains a couple hours away from Hiroshima.
The first time I ever experienced "returning home" was when I visited home after 6 weeks of college. My mind was blown. I very nearly forgot how to actively navigate my own home town, and I just let my hands do the steering automatically until I got to where I was going. I was like a Roomba: soon as I hit a dead end of something I knew was the wrong way, I picked a direction and turned, and repeated this process again.
That sensation dulled itself during my college career as I got used to being away from places for a long time. In Kawamoto's case, however, everything had just gone so unchanged that it was all still familiar.
There was a lot that had at least an air of newness to it, but that was from bringing my very good friend and old college roommate along for the ride. All the newness was going in his direction - I merely caught a whiff of it as I was left to knowingly smile at the discovery of the incredibly clean air, or the beauty of the natural scenery, or to laugh along with a sake-induced drunkenness.
The real shocker of the familiarity was returning to the school where I taught. Everything was working as normal, but I was removed from this process that used to involve me day in and day out. So removed, in fact, that I was welcomed with the same procedure used for guests ranging from random parents to local politicians.
It would prove impossible to do what I wanted to do: walk into the teachers' room, make rounds, offer American candy to everyone, chat it up with my old team-teacher and my replacement Jeff (who, on an aside, is a pretty cool guy).
What I got instead was a guided tour from a surprisingly hasty vice-principal, who managed my tour around the school with the same looking-over-my-shoulder closeness that visitors to North Korea get from their tour guides. From the door, we went straight past the teachers' room, into the principal's office. The principal, who once made it a point to stop by my desk and chat in an incomprehensible mix of rural Japanese and elementary Korean, spent no more than 60 seconds out of his own desk to quickly down some tea at a table across from me.
Mind you, this is a school so laid-back that teachers often start classes 5 or 10 minutes late. But now that I was no longer a cog in the works, we would not speak of such informality.
From there it was straight to the classrooms. My oldest class had just graduated, to my chagrin, so I was left with two classes of kids I knew. The younger ones had only been my students for about three months, and they were disastrous. So my visit was short-lived, but long enough to disturb the class with my mere entry. Rather than talk to the kids for a few minutes, I was relegated to the back of the room and asked not to interrupt the ongoing class.
I had completely become an outsider in this process. I was a mere observer, not an old friend who had only been gone for eight months.
My favorite kids, who were the youngest when I first started, were now the oldest. Walking into their class was a completely different story.
They screamed. They barely managed to finish the last few minutes of their class, and the instant they were given the closing bow (yes, Japanese schoolkids bow to begin and end each class) they rushed to the back of the room where Adam and I stood.
It was a short conversation, which eats me up inside. Leaving that school last August was one of the more difficult events I've ever put myself through, and to come back from halfway around the world to talk to them for 5 minutes was far too little time. They likely didn't care that I was moving to California, or that this here was my best friend Adam. There wasn't time to tell the girls whether or not I had a girlfriend, nor did the boys get to learn what the latest and greatest American video game was.
I could have conversed with those adorable little buggers for hours on end.
That's the first story. With this next one, I'll offset my emotional squishiness with some extreme geekiness:
Back in Tokyo, Adam and I were exhausted on a Saturday night and just wanted some neighborhood dinner and a couple quiet drinks. That's the kind of place where I feel most comfortable: a local hole in the wall with some very un-Tokyo quietness combined with some half-Japanese half-Western food and a nice selection of whiskey.
We walked into a place that I had liked the look of the day before, and were greeted by the sounds of Crazy Ken Band.
I know about two people anywhere in the world that appreciate CKB, so let me link you to a YouTube video to give you an idea of the sound. It's a Japanese take on funk music. It's 31 flavors of cheesy, and I love it for that. Song after song idolizes Japan's low-brow: cabarets, the Navy town of Yokosuka, muscle cars and the kind of Americana that produces motorcycles with ape-hanger handlebars and American flags. Long story short: the odds that a random 24-year-old American would walk into the bar, recognize the music, and like it are kinda slim. (Personally, I have an old Japanese TA to thank for this completely worthless knowledge.)
As Adam and I were doing the post-game report on the previous evening's festivities, I stopped him mid-sentence. The music had just changed over, and it was the third or fourth CKB song in a row. By the fifth song, it was obvious that this place was all CKB, all the time. I had to know: was this a CKB theme bar? There was a poster of the band on the wall, after all. I asked the waiter, who consulted with the bartender.
"Just for tonight," was the answer.
Huh? (In Japanese: "Ehhhhhhhhhhhh?" in a rising tone of confusion.)
"We pick a band every night and play just their stuff."
The bartender and the waiter were people I don't know and may never see again. But between the lovably cheesy soundtrack, the Japanese comfort food, the delicious whiskey and the pleasure of sharing it with one of my best amigos, I felt more at home there than at my old stomping grounds of Kawamoto Junior High.
A lot of guides introduce Japan as a nation full of such confusions. It's yin and yang at the same time. Nudity is a crime or an expectation, depending on where you are at the moment. Tokyo is the world's loudest, brightest, craziest place and yet you're never more than 40 minutes from the silence of Yoyogi Park, where the trees are thick enough to block out much of the sun.
"Home," in such a land, is a pretty relative thing.
