Some time ago I went to Japan. And then I went there again. And again... This little story is about the last time I went there but before I get to that, let's go back in time a bit. In September 2013 I moved to Japan to study abroad for a year. It was one of the best (if not the best) years of my life and if I could do it again I would. In a heartbeat. But what's gone is gone and the best I can do now is visit my old friends whenever I'm back in Japan. Which is exactly what I did.
It was in mid-May that I packed my bags and headed to Nagoya. A few of my friends from my study abroad year were back in Japan and it was the perfect time to reunite with them. I had just finished my internship and had two weeks off before I had to submit my thesis. Mary (my Hawaiian friend, for those who don't know) had also booked tickets (and a hotel for us) so everything was set: we were going to have a big reunion. People back home kept asking me what I was going to do in Japan, what were my plans. Plans? To hang out with my best friends of course! Nothing else. I wasn't going sightseeing - I'd already seen everything worth seeing in Nagoya. I was just revisiting my past, nothing more, nothing less.
Stepping off the plane was... weird... It didn't feel like I'd entered a foreign country. Sure, everyone around me was Asian, everybody was staring and all the signs were in Japanese but... It felt like I was going home... If home is where the heart is, I guess I left a part of mine in Nagoya. I knew I was a foreigner, I knew I was thousands of miles away from my real home but... I didn't feel out of place. I felt like I'd just taken a long bus ride to my former hometown.
Another strange thing I noticed soon enough was that not much had changed. It had been two years and I'm sure there had been changes but... my old school was still in the same place, all the old shops I used to go to were still there and the same people were still working there. It was like Nagoya had gotten stuck in time. Had I traveled back in time when I was on that plane? All the old hangout spots looked the same and now and again I felt like I was back in the year 2014, going to school there, living in a small apartment in the same building with all the other exchange students. I didn't know how to feel about it. On one hand it was amazing how much at home I felt but on the other hand... I kept getting stuck in the past and waking up in the present only to realize that most of my friends were gone and I was a different person now.
The things that hadn't changed were numerous and the things that had changed were a few... but they were much more noticeable and much more important. It was a bittersweet feeling walking past all the places I used to visit and love. Going back to the school I almost thought all of my friends would be sitting in the international center, just hanging out like we used to do. But the people sitting around the large white tables were strangers to me and I couldn't even recognize most of the people working there. I couldn't get into my old apartment building because you need a key to get into the lobby and even if I could, I wouldn't have been able to enter my apartment. Because it wasn't mine anymore. It was someone else's home now.
Still, me and my friends decided to sneak into our old apartment building and hang out on the roof like we used to. Just for old time's sake. It was one of our greatest hangout spots for when we wanted to talk, snack and have a few drinks without paying a crazy expensive seating charge or having to put up with a bunch of drunk salary-men in the next table. The first time we made it up there thanks to a random exchange student with great timing. She didn't question our intentions, didn't even ask for our names, just let us in and wished us a good time. We got up there, talked about the past and relived a few of our best memories there. Even though it got a bit chilly and windy in the end, we didn't mind. It was great being up there again. Like being home.
Going to the roof was so natural for us that we did it several times, not caring that we were breaking into a private building that we had no right to be at. One time we managed to get into the lobby thanks to someone leaving the building at the same time. The door to the stairwell was still closed though so one of us had to climb through a window and open the door from the inside. Sounds extreme but... well, it pretty much was. But we really wanted to get up there. To be honest, the time I spent on that roof was the time I felt most at ease. Even though it wasn't my home anymore, it sure felt like it and for a few moments I could pretend...
I'm probably making it sound like I consider Japan my home, even more so than Estonia, but that's not really the case. I wasn't really missing Japan - I was missing the people, the atmosphere, that one moment in time: that was my home and that's why it was so good to get back to the apartment. Because that's where most of my best memories were made. I think we broke in at least three times but hey, we didn't actually break anything or mess things up so it was all harmless fun. And it was exactly what I needed from this vacation: just to take a little glimpse into the past. So if anyone wants to know what I saw in Japan I can tell them I saw the past and the present, overlapping in a bittersweet way. Aaaaaand that will probably land me on their list of 'pretentious people who should be avoided'.
The things that hadn't changed were numerous and the things that had changed were a few... but they were much more noticeable and much more important. It was a bittersweet feeling walking past all the places I used to visit and love. Going back to the school I almost thought all of my friends would be sitting in the international center, just hanging out like we used to do. But the people sitting around the large white tables were strangers to me and I couldn't even recognize most of the people working there. I couldn't get into my old apartment building because you need a key to get into the lobby and even if I could, I wouldn't have been able to enter my apartment. Because it wasn't mine anymore. It was someone else's home now.
Going to the roof was so natural for us that we did it several times, not caring that we were breaking into a private building that we had no right to be at. One time we managed to get into the lobby thanks to someone leaving the building at the same time. The door to the stairwell was still closed though so one of us had to climb through a window and open the door from the inside. Sounds extreme but... well, it pretty much was. But we really wanted to get up there. To be honest, the time I spent on that roof was the time I felt most at ease. Even though it wasn't my home anymore, it sure felt like it and for a few moments I could pretend...
I'm probably making it sound like I consider Japan my home, even more so than Estonia, but that's not really the case. I wasn't really missing Japan - I was missing the people, the atmosphere, that one moment in time: that was my home and that's why it was so good to get back to the apartment. Because that's where most of my best memories were made. I think we broke in at least three times but hey, we didn't actually break anything or mess things up so it was all harmless fun. And it was exactly what I needed from this vacation: just to take a little glimpse into the past. So if anyone wants to know what I saw in Japan I can tell them I saw the past and the present, overlapping in a bittersweet way. Aaaaaand that will probably land me on their list of 'pretentious people who should be avoided'.
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