Portals and Passageways

Friday Sept. 13

I honestly was not very excited to be going to Tokyo, knowing it would likely overwhelm the fuck out me, but it seemed like it would be ridiculous to come all the way to Japan and not experience at least a few days of the legendary city.

I was unceremoniously dropped off on the side of road in Kawasaki (suburb of Tokyo) during the beginnings of a typhoon in the early morning, and there was heavy rain and streams of water flooding the streets. I had time to kill before meeting up with my hosts at Motosumiyoshi station, so I wandered around the streets and came across an enclosure with shops and restaurants where people were meandering around still half drunk from the night before. There was garbage strewn around everywhere. Two disheveled looking lovers with dark circles under their eyes were stumbling through the refuse, holding each other up with their arms wrapped around each other, and they looked over at my dopily. Men in business suits walked by me briskly with their heads cast downward and their skin had the waxy look of a long night of excess. It was kind of comforting to see such a mess after feeling out of place in so many heavily manicured settings.

I met up with my hosts, Yoshi and Harumi* and their two children, and I was taken to their small apartment in a dense residential neighbourhood. They had a very interesting life story and were very honest with me about their day to day lives and struggles. They had met after Yoshi's first wife died, and he met Harumi when she was a working girl. They spoke openly about their anger over how America had devastated their country, the horrors of the Fukushima meltdown and current Japanese politics.

Both Yoshi and Harumi had traveled throughout Asia and Europe and they told me that Japan didn't have very many foreign people living there (I had definitely noticed that). Yoshi also told me about working late, coming home drunk - and that it was a normal part of the business culture in Japan that he hated. They seemed to have sincere love for each other and had a young boy who was still a toddler, and were also raising Yoshi's 11 year-old daughter, Suki, from his first marriage.

They tried to give me their master bedroom to sleep in, but I insisted on sleeping on their couch. They were being so over the top friendly and accommodating and I wondered it they wanted to form a relationship with me out of an ulterior motive, as they really wanted to get out of Japan, which I felt a little bit uncomfortable about, because I was such a confused mess at the time, and I didn't feel like I'd be able to offer them any support. It was also uncomfortable to be put up on a pedestal, and I thought that people maybe assumed that my life was something like the characters from Friends or Beverly Hills 90210.

Nonetheless, I really valued being invited into their lives and how real they were. And finally now, as I write this in 2024, I plan to reach out to them, so maybe I'll see them again one day.

**

We stayed inside the apartment the whole first day and night as the typhoon raged around us, and the wind was howling like an animal. And similar to my hosts in the Japanese Alps, everyone seemed adapted to the radical geology.

Apparently 18% of all earthquakes in the world happen in Japan. That coupled with the fact that Mount Fuji, which can be seen in the distance on clear days throughout Tokyo and the outlying districts, could erupt at any moment, created a sense of perpetual unease; like the world was going to end at any moment - because it literally might.

**

The following day my hosts were really excited to take me to an onsen that had black water, and it was a slice of serenity in the frenzied metropolis.

I also continued to find Shinto shrines tucked away in unsuspecting places throughout the jungle of concrete that was Kawasaki.

 

 

Sept. 15

Harumi hated Americans and didn't like to speak English, but she had lived in Germany and spoke German and she was very happy when she learned that I had also lived in Germany and spoke German, so that became our common language. I also spent time hanging out with their daughter Suki, who I had initially connected with when I was in Ise.

After breakfast, I took the train out to Kamakura by myself and visited another giant Buddha, which like the first one I encountered in Nara, brought tears streaming down my face.

 

I had a little guide book of different sites and activities to check out in the region and I saw that there was a Zen meditation class being offered that was open to foreigners (many of them are closed off). It was starting in 45 minutes, and based on the the map it looked like I might be able to make it if I went through a small forest trail. I asked someone at the temple about how long it would take and they took a long time to answer me, finally declaring: 'about 8 hours'. That seemed preposterous to me so I took my chances and bolted into the trees. There was a guy running just ahead of me who also looked very speedy and determined, and it crossed my mind that he might be heading to the same place that I was. And it turned out that he was, and we both made it just in time!

  

 

As I filed in to the clean and serene Zen temple, panting and sweat stained, I was handed a small piece of paper with some English instructions on it. We all sat in two lines facing each other in a sparse room with no adornments on the walls. Two men paced back and forth in front of us, one of them appearing to be the Zen Master and the other his pupil. The Zen Master was elderly, and had bright eyes and perfect posture. I checked him out carefully and noticed that he had the scarred and rugged hands of a person who had worked hard; and I could see in his face that he hadn't lived an easy life, yet wore crisp clean garments and held himself with poise and dignity. It was one of the few times in the many spiritual communities I had explored that I felt truly compelled by someone's presence. He was steadfast and commanded respect, yet didn't come across as arrogant at all.

Part of the Zen practice is to beat people on their backs, which apparently helps train the mind to be focused. If a person bowed while meditating it indicated that they were wanting to receive punishment. I jumped out of my skin the first time the Zen Master smacked a long wooden slat alongside someone's backside, and I spent the rest of the class pretending to meditate while I peripherally observed every detail of what was going on around me through partially closed eyes. Everything became heightened. The swish of the men's feet on the soft flooring. The thickness and impeccable cleanliness of the cotton garments they wore. The quiet, restrained breathing of the people sitting next to me. And periodically someone would bow down in prostration, and I'd hold my breath nervously as the Zen Master slowly walked over and then, WHACK! The large wooden slat would smack alongside the elongated backside of the meditator.

After the class I wandered around the seaside town and came across a ceremony and a beautiful tree grove with a fantastical pond.

  
  
  
  

Sept. 16

My body was rejecting existence and I was experiencing reproductive and digestive issues, bloating, stress, and extreme grieving. I hadn't menstruated in 3 months and I went to the bathroom more often when I was using opiates every day than I did when was in Japan.

I was so lost inside of myself and was going out for walks by myself and crying and crying and crying as I wandered down the streets.. One night I bought a bottle of cheap sake thinking it might help my stomach but it didn't at all and I just ended up power puking into a shrub at the end of a desolate dead end street. Which, it turns out kind of summarized how I felt about my life up until that point. I was crying in the shower, crying myself to sleep, crying when I woke up in the morning and crying on the train. I was a mess but didn't have anywhere to go that felt safe or felt like home. I was off all my meds, felt isolated from everyone I knew, and I didn't know how to heal myself out of the mess I was in.

Being in Japan I was reflecting a lot on culture, and I was facing the reality of how the lands I was born on were colonized. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was documenting the history of the residential school system and the government and church sanctioned policies that made way for European settlement and extensive resource exploitation in so-called Canada.

It wasn't fun coming to terms with the fact that myself and my ancestors are the human equivalent of an invasive weed called scotch broom, which sprouts in the wake of clear-cuts and forest fires, multiplies quickly, and is difficult to get rid of.

**

While with my hosts, and when meeting up with friends, I kept all of my distraught feelings to myself, and I presented myself as easy going and upbeat. Yet as I got to know my hosts more and more I realized that they were also suffering deeply and felt very trapped in Japan, yet they seemed to have little in the way of catharsis.


Wed. Sept 18

The shadow of Fukushima loomed heavy, and I met some activists in the street who were trying to bring awareness to the severity of the situation. They were looking for volunteers to help with cleanup and rebuilding but I knew that I was too fragile, so I had to say no, even though my heart wanted to. I also avoided visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the same reason. I was opening up to the realities of the world all at once and it was overwhelming: mining and genocide in the Congo, ongoing devastation in Afghanistan, Syria, sweat shops in India and Sri Lanka, the genocide of Indigenous peoples globally and ongoing indiscriminate ecocide.

I reflected on where I had been a year before. I was wondering if I was doing any better, and it did feel like I was slightly less fucked up and slightly more grounded. Yet I hadn't yet considered suicide as an option, and now that was something I was considering quite regularly.

I felt like the walking dead, and like there was a sticky translucent film stretched over top of me and I couldn't fully see, touch, hear or feel anything around me. But something inside was screaming to get out, clawing away at my insides.

A year previous I had fallen in love with someone and it seemed like we had a sincere connection with each other. But he was lost in the darkness of alcoholism and was really only available physically. I was so vulnerable when I came out of the hospital and was more and more prone to being used, which was deeply hurtful and confusing.

But each day I kept forcing myself forward, coaxing my invisible wounds; and later on that night I met up with another friend I had met at the guesthouse in Ise. Her name was Misaki and she was a human resources manager at a glass manufacturing company. We met up at Yokohama Station and went for dinner at a really cool restaurant in an old warehouse near the water. She told me a lot about how complex and demanding her work was and about how long the hours were. I asked her how she was able to come and meet me and she told me that she would have to work extra hours on Sunday to make up for it, but that she didn't care, and she seemed really happy to be out having fun. I felt so honoured to be able to spend time with her and she was a creative and sensitive soul who was excited to learn more about my background in art.

Afterwards we walked around the surrounding area, checked out a vintage store and hung out by the water where there was a lot of open space. It was such a great location to meet up at, next to the Yokohama inlet with a bright moon shining down over our heads.

The next day I met up with another person I had met in Ise called Yui in downtown Tokyo and she took me to Harajuku and through a large park. She told me that during her university studies she didn't do much studying but instead joined an indie rock band and used to hang out at Harajuku all of the time. Now she worked very long hours at an office job, and she also had to rearrange her work schedule so she could have a few hours to hang out with me during the afternoon.

After Yui left to go back to work I tried to go to what I thought was an internet cafe (I never ended up activating my cell phone the whole time I was in Japan so I relied on internet to keep in touch with people) but when I went inside I realized that it was a place where men go to masturbate. It was confusing because I knew the characters for internet by then and it said "INTERNET" in big letters outside of the venue.. Ugh.

I decided to spend some time by myself wandering around Harajuku thinking I might see some fashion styles like Gwen Stefani talked about in the lyrics of the title track from her first solo album "Love Angel Music Baby", but that era had since passed, and I just saw one person wearing disheveled baby doll clothes and a pink fan getting drunk with a friend. Bizarrely, at the same moment I saw a group of ancient goths who I recognized from the scene in Vancouver, but didn't know personally, walking down the street towards me.

I wandered around Harajuku some more as the sun started to set and ate some over-the-top waffles with fruit and whipped cream. I also came across some more fake food models, which weren't as common in Tokyo as they were in Osaka.

  

Sept. 19

My last days in Japan were a trudge. I forced myself to check out as much as I could, wandering the streets of downtown Tokyo, experiencing crowded trains, and slamming back jelly drinks and garbage food from convenience stores. I was dissociating a lot and felt like I didn't want to be alone, yet also didn't want to be with others. I was very very lost..

 

  

  ;

 

Even though I was treated like an honoured guest everywhere I went, and was instantly accepted (superficially, at least), I knew that I was just a novelty; and I couldn’t help reflecting on how I would actually exist in Japanese society in the long term. I imagined that I would eventually rebel or be cast aside like the park gypsy moms.


Sept. 20

The hosts I was staying with knew that I liked macrobiotic food, so on my last day in town they took me to a macrobiotic Disneyland with a huge buffet and all kinds of books and pamphlets with intricate details on the harvesting and production of unique plant-based foods. It was so wunderbar! Afterwards, they dropped me off at the train that goes to the airport, and I was off to Australia again.

  

  

Finally, over 10 years later, I'm writing about these experiences! When I first left Japan I was ranting a lot about my time spent there and how difficult it was; and some mega ignorant, entitled and discriminatory aspects of myself came out. 

It was also ignorant and disrespectful for me to assume that I could just show up in a foreign country and have a red carpet rolled out for me, without having put any effort in to learn about the history of the lands, the language, or the social customs. This is a symptom of Western arrogance where we just assume that the rest of the world should conform to our way of doing things, and that the world is our playground.

All that being said, I think that there was a huge amount of value is putting myself through all of that. And even though I was uncomfortable and struggling for most of my time in Japan, I appreciated being able to have the experience and I kept in touch with people I met there for many years afterwards.

Sometimes a smell, a taste, or a song will unearth a flood of memories - or flashes of my experiences in Japan will weave themselves into the tapestry of my subconscious; and my time spent there seems more like a fragmented recurring dream, rather than a tangible experience.

In the end, trying to make sense of Japan is a bit like trying to make sense of quantum physics, or Twin Peaks. For me, it will always be a place of bright colours, tangled wires and endless complexities that lie within the mythologies of my mind.


******** JAPAN SCRAPBOOK *****************


******** COOL STUFF FROM JAPAN **************

Shigera Mizuki: Illustrated Guide to Yokai Monsters

Horror Manga Legend: Kazuo Umezu

Junji Ito: How He Scares Us

The Films of Nobuhiko Obayashi

Woman in Japan Arrested for Distributing 3D Mold of Her Vagina

Meanwhile: Japanese Penis Festival Sigh (band)

Kadenzza (band)

Merzbow

Flower Travellin Band

Mermaid in a Manhole (film)

Ringu (film)

The Cure (film)

Wild Zero (film)

FRAMTID - Osaka punk

Armenia – Tokyo death rock

Alex Kerr: Dogs and Demons


* I changed the names of everyone who I spoke about in this piece of writing to protect their privacy.