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September 16th, 2024

Toyako, Hokkaido, Japan

Sitting with grief has opened me up to invite love as I never have before.  I woke up changed this morning.  In my dream, I imagined myself as an elderly man, reading my journals on my deathbed.  At my life’s twilight, I didn’t care to relive the turmoil of my confused adolescence.  Instead, I searched for sensory notes that could return me to the beauty of my youth.  So, I’ll set the scene of my surroundings, for my future self’s enjoyment.  

Lake Toya is my current home.  From a bird’s eye view, the body of water resembles a nearly perfect circle.  It was created lifetimes ago by volcanic activity.  The area’s mineral hot springs, a natural consequence of volcanoes, entice travelers from all over the world to come soak.  I’ve spent the majority of my time here submerged in the tranquil womb of mother earth’s steaming groundwater.  Between dips in the hot springs, I enjoy sweating in one of Lake Toya’s countless saunas, all of which are equipped with televisions, as is customary across Japan.  Yesterday, as I was channel surfing in one sauna, I stumbled across a broadcast of Why Did You Come to Japan?  I giggled and applauded in delight — confusing the Japanese men in the sauna with me — for I was interviewed by that same program on my first day in this country.  My segment didn’t air, but I instead bore witness to the journey of another American as a camera crew documented his Shibuya shopping spree.   He reminded me of myself. 

The nights here are chilly, though made slightly warmer by the herds of tourists huddled at the lakefront, gazing up into the sky and swooning at the nightly firework show.  The midday weather is delightfully temperate and sunny, a blessing I honor by trekking through dormant craters, thick forests, mountain ridges, and breezy clearings until the sun sets.  A symphony of birdsong perpetually fills the air.  The quietude of these strolls detoxifies my frontal lobes, creating space for silence, for union with forestry.  Looking at fuzzy moss growing on rocks and colorful mushrooms sprouting atop tree roots, I recognize the whole woodland scene as one complex life form, my body merely one of its countless facets.  For how many centuries since the formation of these magma mounds have wanderers explored their peaks and valleys?  My life is but a blip along that patient timeline.  

One hike led me into the eerie ruins of a residential neighborhood, decimated by a volcanic eruption that rocked Toya twenty-four years ago.  Its windows were cracked, its concrete deformed, its metal melted, all in an instant, two years before my birth.  Since then, fragile wildflowers and soft grass have taken over, leaving no surface of these buildings bare, breathing new life into this abandoned dwelling, all during the time that I’ve come of age.  I couldn’t help but imagine the vibrant human activity that once occurred there.  Those ghosts now roam among the overgrown weeds.  

Famished from the carnage, I stumbled into the first restaurant I saw.  Before I could even order the curry bowl that caught my eye on the menu, my server commented on the contour-etched twin Yoshitomo Nara figures tattooed on my hips: “You like Nara?”

I assented, “Yes, he’s one of my favorite artists!  I love the way he paints facial expressions!”

“Did you know that Lake Toya is his vacation spot?  He comes here every year.  I’ve actually met him twice, and he’s been to this cafe!”  

The magic of that divine harmony was a trailhead marking my realignment with God’s rhythm.  Breathing deeply, I took in the serendipity.  A few minutes later, when a waiter served me my curry bowl, the dish was accompanied by a hardcover coffee-table book entitled Nara’s Summer in Toya.  While I ate, I flipped through the compilation of photographs and paintings documenting the artist’s Toyako universe.  One page, containing several Nara sketches depicting the mountains surrounding Lake Toya as personified and expressive beings with human faces, further reinforced my oneness with the nature engulfing me.  

Keeping my fascination aflame as I took my final bite and closed the book’s back cover, my server beckoned me: “Come with me.  I want to show you something.”  She led me next door, into a half-constructed art gallery that her colleague was busy arranging.  Hung up on the walls, in piles on stools, and scattered across the floor were gestural abstract paintings of masterful technique.  Their fluid brushstrokes, even statically dried on paper, evoked dizzying movement.  I hugged the artist tenderly, commending her for her talent.  As a token of appreciation for the motivation I’d given her, she thoughtfully selected a postcard-sized painting from her prolific pile, slipped it into a protective plastic sleeve, and handed it to me, using both hands, head bowed.  The composition she chose was stunning.  It looked to me like a tropical bird aflame, an Icarus blazing with ambition.  

Later that night, I remembered the painting as I watched fireworks burning colors into the night sky.  My hostel mate, an Australian currently living at her grandparents’ house in Nagoya, stood beside me, both of us jubilantly singing Hamilton songs at the top of our lungs, straining our throats to be heard over the booms induced by the rainbow of explosions above.  After the last pop, she led me by the hand to an outdoor lakeside hot spring and kissed me under the full moon.  The lunar rays coated us in silver.  Our toes fluttered in the mineral bath.  Her eyes were huge planets.  Her lips felt softer than mochi.  Her hand grabbed mine.  She led my palm to her chest, whispering, “Can you feel my heart beating?”  

Life is a blessed sequence of enriching expansions.  That begets growing pains, but oxytocin quickly rushes in to fill the confusing ambiguity of my dilating diameter.  I live every day like a tourist, and I’m no longer ashamed of it.  Being a sponge is serving me well.  May I uphold the curiosity, modesty, and vigilance of this beginner’s mindset, even once back in the comfort of my own home.  My hedonism needn’t be punished with asceticism, but it must stay grounded in generous reciprocity.  Curating love in my environment will perpetuate my continued pleasure far more than torturous self-discipline will.  I deserve this life filled with stunning nature, delectable feasts, and lovable companions, for I am an agent of energy transmutation; I’m merely being rewarded for staying dutifully rooted in positivity.  As long as I uphold my grace and kindness, no matter what challenges come my way, I have no reason to question my eligibility for such blessings.  Emerging from the dark valley of perplexed impatience that I trudged through this week, I feel higher than I’ve ever been.  

Why do I call this journey a yogic pilgrimage?  After all, I’m not holed up in an ashram, chanting mantras and disconnecting from society, as most might imagine upon hearing that phrase.  But, isolation is no aspiration.  What kind of a life is one spent high in the clouds, above humanity?  My spirit is leading me back to Earth.  Culture, conversation, and collectivism is my nourishment.  As I see it, the power of yogis lies in our ability to distinguish the frequency of an ecosystem and retune our own vibration to best serve those surroundings, wherever we may find ourselves.  By spawning and respawning in the varying streets of country after country, I’m engaging in a poignant practice of self study.  We only discover who we truly are once we remove ourselves from the context of our regular routine’s habitual distractions.  Every time I displace myself, I invite myself to form new practices and relationships.  Thereby, my problem-solving skills are getting stronger than I ever could’ve imagined.  I trust myself unconditionally to subtly brighten every land I traipse.  

September 17th, 2024

Toyako, Hokkaido, Japan

Every single morning for the past four months, I’ve called my parents and sister.  These transmissions homeward that start my days usually find my dearest loved ones cozied up on the couch, donning pajamas, under quilted blankets, unwinding in preparation for bedtime.  In that way, thirteen hours ahead, I’m able to herald tomorrow’s blessings for my family, inspiring them to transmute my phone camera’s displays of exotic scenery into romanticizations of their own domesticity.  In return, their smiling faces and affirming words ground me in purpose and love before I emerge into the foreign world.  

Today, however, my sister challenged me.  After I announced that I’d abandoned my prized blue yankee hat, resting it atop the stuffed horns of my hostel’s life-sized calf plushie for someone else to claim, she interjected, “What’s the point of buying stuff if you’re just gonna give it away?  I know you’re into non-attachment, but that’s actually pretty wasteful!  If you’re constantly ditching your material possessions just to buy new ones, that’s not minimalism; that’s wannabe minimalism!  Plus, you loved that hat!  How could you make it so disposable?”

Theoretically, her point was intellectually sound, but my gut disagreed with her exaggeration of my practice.  I gave her a rebuttal, defending my actions.  In truth, releasing the weight that sinks my baggage earthward is liberating, for a traveler’s every possession subtly inhibits mobility.  If I remain tethered to every material item of sentimentality, I’ll quickly become a hoarder.  Beyond that, as a lifelong advocate of thrifting and up-cycling, I make sure to rest my pieces where they’ll naturally find new homes, thus adding another link to the chain that gives hand-me-downs their quirky character and sentimental value.  I offered my sister sappy anecdotes, telling her about my donation of Balinese sarongs to an Ubud-obsessed yoga teacher and gifting of green parachute pants to a hostel mate lacking comfy loungewear, but she wouldn’t hear it.  Her insistence on shaming my actions, rather than debating the principles at hand, revealed that her confrontation was a projection of internal strife.  

We’d gotten tangled up in a similar quarrel recently, walking back from a Cretan beach club to our coastal homestay on our first-ever sibling-duo trip.  In response to an offhand comment about my excitement to visit her at college — she was preparing to start her first semester of architecture school — when I get back from Asia, she despairingly mumbled, “Yeah… if you ever even come home.”

Rather than letting friction fester, I decided to vocalize my feelings: “Why don’t you believe me when I say I’m coming home?  When you act like that’s never gonna happen, I can’t help but feel like you don’t trust me.”

“I just miss you!  I see how much fun you’re having, and I’m worried that you’re gonna forget about us back home.”

Understanding her frustration, I leveled my tone: “Of course I’m not gonna forget about you.  I think about home all the time, and, although it may not seem like it now, I’m really looking forward to my return.  But, do you see how when you accuse me of wanting to run away forever, that’s not helping either of us?”

That conversation was a deep turning point.  In its wake, my sister and I developed the language to excitedly daydream about my homecoming, visualizing it to the point of manifestation.  Yet, it didn’t change the fact that we’ll continue to miss each other terribly for the duration of my travels.  If nothing else, we take comfort in the awareness that such longing is merely a temporary state, an unfortunate consequence of her stimulating architecture education and my perception-popping, cross-cultural immersion.  

The tension of this morning’s phone call dissipated when my sister cheekily suggested, “Well, if you have so much stuff, maybe you should just drop it off at home!”  The remark assured me that she only challenged me as a distorted reminder that she misses me, that she’s thinking about me.  I miss her too. 

She’s my best friend on the planet.  As we both edge towards adulthood’s precipice, our age gap shrinks, turning us into twins of maturely creative thought and expression.  Ironically, she has one of the biggest — and most beautiful — vintage clothing collections I’ve ever seen, which inspires me massively.  Her architecture drafts, models, and blueprints leave me speechless at her intersectional artistic talent.  She can make friends more smoothly than anyone I’ve ever met; a party follows her everywhere she goes.  Being in her presence uplifts me immeasurably.  

Indeed, I’m excited to come home and banter with her ad nauseam.  For now, though, I’ll have to settle for squinting at her pixelated face on my phone screen.  

September 20th, 2024

Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan

After a tenure in Hokkaido that tested and transformed me, I’ve returned to Tokyo.  I sat next to a one-year-old infant on the ninety-minute flight from Chitose to Narita.  The whole time, he munched on rice crackers with one hand and petted my hair with the other.  The wondrously unbroken eye contact he gave me was pristinely innocent and curious, unsoiled by biased programming.  

Watching him eat so many rice crackers left me ravenous by the time I arrived at my accommodation in the city center.  Seeking nourishment, I ended up at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant with only one menu item, a hot dashi soup stock served over white rice.  The layered flavors, expertly-sourced ingredients, and pretty presentation of the dish were reminders of the chef’s laser-focused expertise.  

I’ve come to understand that, in Japan, not only will all the best restaurants reliably have limited and specialized menus, but the most successful artisans of any profession will dedicate their life to refining one single product.  At the same time, budget department stores like Don Quijote and Daiso, carrying everything from fresh pineapples to construction tools to house slippers, are always within convenient proximity.  Those two ideologies, devotionally disciplined simplicity and seductively capitalist excess, pit tradition and modernity in opposition.  

Globally, not just in Japan, there’s no question which way the pendulum is swinging.  The instantaneous convenience and global reach encoded within the metastasizing culture of fast food, online shopping, and titanic outlet malls threaten craftsmanship’s identity as a sensible profession.  The artistic work of carpenters, welders, and ceramicists consequently faces dwindling demand, banishing the trade of handiwork into obsolescence.  

I wonder, if this endangered population of tradesmiths was magically liberated from needing to pay bills, would they continue creating the products that fed them?  Or, alternatively, have they erroneously conflated creativity with labor?  Would their creations transform if pressures to appease clients dissipated?  Would that art, constructed in freedom, nourish their soul in a way that their jobs never could?

Looking at my generation, I know I’m not the only one asking these questions.  We all are.  We face anxiety over choosing college majors, fear over suffering at desk jobs, and sincere doubt in our ability to achieve financial freedom without making torturous sacrifices.  We can’t deny the pendulum’s inertia.  To survive, we take refuge in the aspects of our reality we can control: curating intentional outfits, experimenting with provocative makeup, dancing until sunrise, sounding our youthful voices, and posting our personalities online provides a much-needed break from pleading with our creakingly ancient societal institutions to modernize and support us.  I can’t wait to see what unfolds once we inherit the Earth.  

For now, we still grapple with the antagonism projected at us by older generations.  

Walking through Shibuya after my dashi-rice meal, I encountered a subliminally villainous materialization of this cold warfare in the form of a high-pitched drone sound that made my ears ache.  As a musician, I knew that the squealing tone was easily above fifteen-thousand hertz, a note too high for most middle-aged adults to hear.  Indeed, nobody else around me winced at the sound, yet it drove me crazy!  It hurt!  Was I imagining it?  No, it wasn’t tinnitus or hyperacusis.  I was confident in what I was hearing, so I consulted the internet in search of an explanation.  The answer came immediately: “mosquito alarms” are high pitched alarms, audible only to children and young adults, stationed in public spaces to prevent juvenile loitering and uphold orderly conduct.  

I truly hope that the infant from my flight — God bless him and his rice crackers — matures in a world evolved past heinous mosquito alarms, crippling student debts, debilitating social-media-fueled preteen insecurity, and dystopian class inequality.  May his generation earn the right to congregate and create freely.  

Or, will my peers and I grow up to oppress our inferiors, just as our superiors did to us?  How can we possibly break that grim cycle?

Love,

Etai