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September 23, 2024

Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi, Japan

The lights were kept moodily low at The Room, an underground Shibuya disco club, on Friday night.  Shouting over the pulsations of eighties rave rhythms, weaving among swaying dancers to face me, Yuka lamented, “I can’t believe you’re leaving Tokyo tomorrow!”  Blue strobe beams stained her sunken face.  

I couldn’t believe it either.  The intoxicating spell of that final dance party obstructed all visualizations of my plans beyond the metropolis.  New friendships have connected me to this city in an unexpectedly inviting embrace, their affection painting mental projections within, vivid vignettes of the community I could curate here if given ample time.  Taking my foot off the gas, ceasing this sporadic pilgrimage in favor of sedentary solace, would be easy in Tokyo.  Yuka’s eyes screamed at me to stay.  The magnetic ray beam of her gaze was hard to resist, for her inclusive generosity and unconditional friendship injected my Tokyo days with love and excitement.  For a moment, I doubted my impulse to flee.  The high-tempo music coming off our DJ’s turntables suffocated me.  I couldn’t unglue myself from Tokyo’s hypnotic rhythm.  

Yet, the following morning, I unfalteringly boarded a bus mapped to Fujikawaguchiko, a remote lakeside town at the foot of mystical Mount Fuji.  Tokyo is a memory I can no longer touch.  I’ve traded its winding metro lines and blaring mosquito alarms for grounding mountain views and lush floral life.  Yesterday, I spent all day biking around this quaint town, stopping only to smell the marigolds.  

Why did I leave Tokyo?  Because beauty is everywhere.  Being sad to leave a place where beautiful memories were made is entirely different than being scared to venture forth.  That Tokyo love is just more gas in my heart’s tank.  It makes the marigolds’ fragrance extra sweet.  

Now, the new love I feel when I look up at Mount Fuji’s gaping crater, play card games with my hostel mates, taste this town’s finest dim sum, practice my Spanish and Hebrew skills with fellow travelers, or lay down alone in picturesque fields of grass is no lesser than the love I felt bouncing to the bohemian beat of The Room.  I don’t need to seal that love up in my hostel’s padlocked safe like I would expensive jewels or tech.  It can’t be stolen, only shared.  

Nagoya, Aichi, Japan

September 24th, 2024

Two days ago, I laid in the grass at the lip of Lake Kawaguchi.  Lost in the caresses of the gentle breeze tickling my skin, woozy from the warm sun’s hug, my mind floated away from my body, up into the winds, each thought a white seedling wisp scattered in suspension above the dandelion puffball of my physical form, blown out of order by the might of God’s lungs.  From this flurry of mental dispersal, a single seed softly landed on fertile soil, taking root in the sturdy ground.  Once this new plant sprouted, I recognized it as my week-old memory of being tenderly kissed in Lake Toya under a full moon.  Admiring its beauty, I watered the plant by unsheathing my phone and texting the girl who’d shown me affection.  Smitten still, I asked her if she’d like me to join her in Nagoya — her home for the summer — for a day of frolicking.  Since I was gradually making my way down Japan’s eastern coast, I thought stopping in Nagoya would be a perfect way to bisect my journey from Mount Fuji to Kyoto with an intermission of restful passion.  More importantly, I was unquenchably curious about continuing to water my new sprout of love.  When I received a reply of mirrored enthusiasm, I couldn’t stop smiling.  

Saying goodbye to Mount Fuji and Lake Kawaguchi, I hopped on a Nagoya-bound bus that evening.  Four hours later, as it pulled into Meitetsu Station, in Nagoya’s city-center, I notified my crush that I’d arrived.  Her response, between sugar-coated congratulations celebrating my arrival in Nagoya, revealed that bouts of nausea were leaving her sickly and bed-ridden.  She planned on sleeping in all morning, hoping for recovery, and joining me to frolic after lunch.  As consolation for the deflating news, she offered me recommendations for solo morning activities.  

I couldn’t help but wonder, what was causing her illness?  Had she merely eaten something rotten, or was her body viscerally urging her to cancel the rendezvous?  Reading into the message’s subtext led to nothing but delusion and cynicism, so I put my phone down and resignedly sunk under the sheets of my futuristic capsule bed, trusting that everything happens according to God’s flawless plan.  

The following morning, I awoke to zero text notifications.  Undeterred, I hopped into my hotel’s shower, deep-conditioned my curly hair, shaved my face smooth, plucked every last unwelcome hair along my brow line, and brushed my teeth twice.  Only my finest, softest, most colorful garments were allowed out of my duffel bag and onto my squeaky-clean frame.  Still, no text came.  

I walked to Nagoya Castle — a site my crush raved about — alone.  The palace was unspeakably stunning, but my racing mind prevented me from fully enjoying its handcrafted ornamentation.  I simply couldn’t stay present.  In fact, I was getting worried.  An intrusive thought, theorizing that I was being strung along, refused to shake loose.  On top of that, my typical self-confidence was nowhere to be found: I took some selfies with the grand castle in the background, hoping that sending them to my crush would elicit a response and break her silence, but critical hyper-fixations on my gargantuan forehead (thanks a lot, genetics) and yellowish teeth (thanks a lot, turmeric) prevented me from hitting send.  

Usually, I relish exploring new places alone.  Usually, I tell myself I’m beautiful in complete sincerity.  But, at the foot of Nagoya Castle, my inflated expectations dented my morale.  How could I let an external entity interrupt my inner peace?  I exited the palace gates, storming frantically around Nagoya for hours and hours with nowhere to go.  I turned another corner.  I crossed another intersection.  Still, nowhere to go.  Still, no text.  

The text came around five-thirty in the afternoon.  It read, “I have to rain check, I made it to the station and had to go back. Have a brilliant rest of ur stay.”  

I was angrier than I’ve been in months.  I was angry at my crush for disappointing me.  I was angry at myself for seeing this coming a mile away and ignoring my intuition nonetheless.  I was angry at God for stomping all over my delicate little dandelion sprout.  I just wanted to see it live and grow.  I went to a desolate corner of a city park and screamed.  

Hindsight is teaching me that I can never control the avenues of love presented to me.  There’s no use in giving energy to a muse that gobbles it up thanklessly.  Redirecting my focus towards a two-way street of reciprocation is a much wiser practice of affection.  Where will my love resonate the loudest?  I’m still looking.  At least, for now, I know where it doesn’t resonate.  That’s a step in the right direction. 

September 27th, 2024

Nakagyo Ward, Kyoto, Japan

Japan owes its color to its virile and bubbly senior citizens.  While white collar commuters and uniformed school children whizz down crowded streets, I find myself sauntering at pace with the elderly, their haphazard outfits and radiant smiles welcoming my exotic presence of harmonious positivity, their unconscious habits preserving the traditional soul of twentieth century Japan.  

Their characteristically deep capacity for physical activity, from inside wilted bodies, is confoundingly impressive.  I see them loitering with their friends in grocery store parking lots, exercising in city parks at sunrise, and ambling footsteps down pedestrian sidewalks at determined rhythms with steady endurance.  Social interaction, somatic movement, and sense of humor keep them perpetually innocent and young.  They are immortal Peter Pan spirits operating well-loved material vessels.  

It’s as if they’ve been preparing their whole lives for this moment; the reduced responsibility implicit in their prized pensions has enabled them to fully embody the whimsy, presence, and spontaneity that has been lying dormant in the shadows of their careers and families until now.  As I’m a nomadic traveler, nothing ties me down either, so I relate to them.  Although I speak no Japanese, nor do they speak any English, we’re able to exchange a mutual understanding of respect and admiration through body language.  

It seems that senility is a perfect excuse for eccentricity.  They’re the most liberated members of Japan’s rigid society, as far as I can tell.  They’ve done their time, earned their free expression.  

September 28th, 2024

Kurama, Kyoto, Japan

Despite a competitively endearing field of countless contestants, I’ve crowned my king of Japanese retirees.  His name is Yoshi.  

I was standing at the reception desk of Kyoto’s Tamisa Yoga Shala, purchasing a class pass, when he sprung through the door, a smiling ball of bouncy energy.  Yoshi introduced himself to me with arms outstretched, celebrating, “This is predetermined!  God intended for us to meet at Yumi’s Hatha Meditation class this morning!  My, your aura is very strong!  I felt it from outside the door!  You are special!  Wow, I am so glad we met!”  Intense bodily gesticulations underscored each booming word his powerful voice uttered.  His feet refused stagnancy, shuffling and prancing rhythmically as he spoke.  This man, despite clearly being a few decades older than me, was displaying as much frenetic energy and animated restlessness as my six-year-old ukulele students!  His words of affection, coupled with his joyous twitches, felt like the wet love-kisses of a newborn puppy writhing in my lap.  If Yoshi had been a puppy, though, his tail would have been wagging with enough vigor to helicopter his body into space.  

I assumed he was in his mid-fifties.  When he revealed his true age, seventy-one years old, my jaw fell to the floor.  After that revelation, the gray roots of his dyed-black hair, the smile wrinkles decorating his eyes and mouth, and the disheveled yet formal angularity of his baby-boomer fashion sensibilities revealed themselves to me.  But these clues, subtly indicating seven decades of weathering upon Yoshi’s body, were puny and inconsequential in the shadow of his rebelliously youthful strength.  His yoga practice was no more indicative of seniority; he kept up dutifully with our teacher’s demanding sequence.  

After class, he rolled up his mat as quickly as he could and alarmingly bolted over to me, exclaiming, “You are very lucky!  Yes, you are very lucky you met me today!  I’ve just cleared my Mahjong schedule for the next month, so I’m completely free to be your Kyoto tour guide!  Oh, yes, we will have a lot of fun!  I’ll take you to Kurama Temple, a holy site!  The home of Reiki!  The temple where Reiki was invented!  I can’t go tomorrow; tomorrow is a very important day.  Japanese election day.  I had a vision and I know who will win.  So I must watch the broadcast from home.  But, the next day, we will go!  What do you say?  I have a car!  I’ll pick you up in my car and we’ll go there!”  Being unwaveringly fascinated by Reiki’s ancient origins – and, on top of that, captivated by Yoshi’s unique vitality – I couldn’t refuse!  

Two mornings later, I was sitting shotgun in Yoshi’s old, beat-up Toyota, watching him squint at the ancient and perplexing navigation display in his dashboard while every bump in the road forced rattles and creaks to erupt from the outdated vehicle.  The car was showing its age far more transparently than its driver.  As he confidently rounded a sharp turn, Yoshi cried, “This car sucks!  I want a Lexus!”  All the while, his phone rested in a cup holder between our seats, blasting Dua Lipa’s greatest hits.  Every time a new song started, Yoshi proclaimed, as if for the first time in his life, “I love Dua Lipa!”  His hips gyrated against his seat’s ratty upholstery, his fingers tapped dance beats against the steering wheel, and his lips hung wide open to shamelessly belt his favorite lyrics.  He knew every song word for word, beat for beat.

I smirked, “I love her, too!  Did you know she’s a yogi?”

My driver shouted, “Of course!  It’s all predetermined!  We are yogis listening to another yogi!  Wonderful!”

“Yes, it is!”  Changing the topic, I inquired, “By the way, how did the election go yesterday?  Did your prediction come true?”

“No, it did not,” Yoshi sighed.  “It was a very hard day.  A horrible candidate won.  But, today, we will go to the temple and I will think not of politics but of Reiki!  Universal energy is far more powerful than any dirty politician!”

“Don’t worry, we don’t have to talk about it anymore,” I reassured him.  “I’ve been meaning to ask, though, how did you get so good at English?  Most people I’ve met in Japan, especially people around your age, can hardly speak English!”  

I had no idea my simple question would spark such a verbose soliloquy.  

Yoshi began, “I lived in North America for thirty years!  First Montreal for fifteen years, then Chicago for fifteen years!  My two sons still live there.  I was in the trading business.  I worked for a big Japanese construction company buying steel and selling construction equipment.  We were the second largest company in our industry.  I made millions and millions of dollars, but there was a bit of a dark side to it.  In America, I was a Republican.  Because I was dealing in big business, Republican politicians would frequently call me and say things like, ‘We’re about to bomb the Middle East!  The price of oil is about to go up,’ and we would buy accordingly!  So, yes, it was a bit corrupt, a bit dark.  George Bush, the son, was the worst of all.

“During that time, though, I traveled all over the world!  To sixty-six countries!  And I had so many girlfriends!  Sometimes ten at once!  I had one from Ukraine, one from Mongolia, and so many from Japan!  I took them on safaris in Zambia and I took them gambling in Vegas!  I must have lost a million dollars playing Texas Hold Em!  I was living like a king, and my sons were so happy!

“But, one day, I lost everything.  My corrupt business syndicate got taken down and I went from being a multimillionaire to having millions of dollars of debt!  I had to come back to Japan and work as a hotel concierge.  Sometimes, I even did room service and housekeeping, changing the bedsheets!  It was hard work, so eventually I quit and started making money by playing Mahjong.

“Now, one of my sons is a dentist in Montreal and the other is a research scientist in San Diego.  They come to visit me here in Kyoto once a year.  But, my grandson is so fat!  He doesn’t eat any vegetables!  He only eats McDonalds!  And he spends all day in the arcade!  I took him to the arcade once and he wasted three hundred dollars in thirty minutes!  A Japanese child would never do that.  A Japanese child would never be raised to think that’s acceptable!  If he stayed with me for a month, he’d have to eat what I eat every day: miso soup with boiled vegetables!  Then, he’d be healthy.  

“But, I didn’t mind spending three hundred dollars on his arcade splurge.  In the past, when I was very rich, I would have complained and refused and been pissy.  But, now, it’s funny… I realized I’m much happier when I have no money!  Life is so much lighter and easier! 

“And now, since discovering yoga, my life has changed all over again!  Since stretching my inner thighs, I have healthy erections again!  My groin has perfect circulation.  I can please my girlfriends with no problems!”

By the time we’d parked the car and started our three-hour hike up Kurama mountain towards the holy temple, Yoshi’s scatterbrained monologue was still bulldozing ahead with unstoppable force.  At lightning speed, he spat out highly entertaining and completely irreverent anecdotes detailing his colorful life, all the while climbing up the mountain, at a brisk pace, without interrupting his speech to pant, not even breaking a sweat.

Halfway up the trail, I caught Yoshi taking a momentary breath between sentences; seizing my chance, I interjected, “Yoshi, I have a question.”

He perked up with sharp alertness: “Yes?”

“Yesterday,” I divulged, “I tried to use a bathhouse across town, but they said I couldn’t enter because I have tattoos.  I’m not gonna lie, looking around at all the other happy bathers emerging from the locker room made me quite jealous and confused.  Why did they reject me?”

“Ah,” Yoshi intonated.  “The Yakuza are serious Japanese gangsters that cover their whole body in tattoos as a way to pledge allegiance to their gang.  Their tattoos are big and scary.  They cover every inch of their skin in devilish art.  Japanese people are really afraid of the Yakuza, and so nobody wants to bathe with them.  The rule forbidding tattooed people to enter bathhouses was created to protect people from Yakuza.  That’s why they didn’t let you in.

“But, it’s actually really silly and stupid, because clearly you aren’t a Japanese gangster!  Your tattoos are cute and small!  That’s the problem with a lot of people in Japan.  They blindly follow the rules, never questioning whether they’re right or wrong.  They thought they were doing something good by keeping you out of the bathhouse and following their orders, but they were perpetuating unnecessary discrimination!  It’s not fair.  It’s brainless.”

I accepted his logical explanation: “I see.  It’s wrong, but it makes sense.  But, clearly, you don’t care about the rules at all!  I admire that about you, Yoshi.  Thanks for showing me what only an insider of Japan could see.”

“No,” my guide agreed, “I don’t give a damn about the rules.  That’s why I stopped hanging out with people my age!  They tell me, ‘Yoshi, you’re old!  Why do you act so young?  You look crazy!  You should act your age!’  But why should I act how they expect me to?  All they talk about is their health problems and their funeral preparations!  It’s ridiculous.

“Listen, I went to one of the top universities in Japan.  My classmates went on to be revered politicians, doctors, and diplomats.  But, now, when I see them, even though they’re retired, they do nothing but reminisce on the years when they were at their career’s peak!  They act like they’re already dead.  They’ve put themselves in a trophy case.  They refuse to continue growing.  They’re simply not living!  Just remembering the good old days, while you let yourself rot away, is no way to spend your time.”

My face fell: “I’m sorry they put you down, Yoshi.  You shouldn’t hang out with them if they don’t recognize your greatness.”

“Don’t worry,” he chuckled, “I don’t!  I stopped seeing them!  Now, most of my friends are your age!  I play Mahjong against people in their twenties.  I run hundred-meter races against guys in their forties and fifties.  That suits me better!”

I beamed, “That’s incredible!  Communication across generations is so essential for bolstering empathy and passing down oral wisdom.  But, I gotta ask, do you have any friends who are your age?”

“Yes,” Yoshi confessed.  “I have one.  She plays Just Dance 4 and goes to hip hop dance classes.  She says that Dua Lipa can’t dance!  Can you believe that?  A seventy-one-year-old thinks she can dance better than Dua Lipa!  She refuses to show me her moves, but I kind of believe that she really is better.  Anyway, we went to highschool together.  We were both in the English Speakers Club, but she was far more fluent than me because her dad was a very famous diplomat.  He even appeared in our high school textbooks!  This woman was my partner during English Club debates.  She was a very serious student, and I loved to have fun and goof off, so she always carried the weight for both of us.  She always used to scold me, berating me, yelling at me to study!  I always liked her.  But it wasn’t romantic… I saw her as my teacher.  She knew so much more than me and I was just amazed at her brain.

“But when we graduated, we stopped speaking.  For fifty years, I didn’t hear from her.  Then, one day, rather recently, I received a message from her.  She said that she had to speak with me, otherwise she would regret it for the rest of her life.  She said that, in high school, she was in love with me!  Can you believe that?  She wanted to tell me back when we were young, but she was scared of what my high school girlfriend, who later became my first wife, would think.  So she bit her tongue, until now!  When I first reunited with her, she had even kept a photo of me from graduation!  I can’t believe she held onto that photo for so long.  Now, we see each other every week.  She really inspires me.  She’s still very strong, and she exercises a lot!  She is growing her mind.  She’s still improving, even at this age!”

Yoshi blushed as he shared that.  He would’ve surely kept fawning if not for our arrival at our destination, holy Kurama Temple atop the mountain.  Putting on his tour guide hat, Yoshi explained, “So!  Here we are!  Kurama Temple, the home of Reiki!  The legend says that aliens landed on this spot six million years ago.  You can still feel their energy here if you close your eyes and meditate!”

Naturally, we meditated.  Two yogis, one old and one young, sat side by side before a worship hall two-thousand-years older than us.  The buzz of Yoshi’s expressive tales melted into the silence of the cedar forest.  Mountaintop breeze tickled our noses but didn’t bring us to itch or stir.  I looked for the aliens’ frequency, aiming to align with the part of my being that eternally exists outside of time, hoping to hear an extraterrestrial hum.  What still remains of the magic that occurred six million years ago?  Will I ever be able to taste it, or will I be stuck in this flickering timeline forever?  What would it take to ascend from this realm and step into the unchanging?  In that theoretical plane of immaterial uniformity, who would I be?  Would there still be kind old men to walk with me and tell me crazy stories?  If not, then maybe I’d rather stay here. 

Love,

Etai