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September 9th, 2024

Sumida, Tokyo, Japan

Last night, in my dream, Manhattan erupted in flames.  A scorching missile attack, the grim manifestation of merciless warfare, crumbled skyscrapers and bloomed mushroom clouds.  I watched the military fireworks from across the Hudson River.  It wasn’t a scary dream, though.  If anything, the spectacle inspired profound wonder.  

I woke up from the dream in a tranquil state.  No night sweats, tremors, or palpitations disrupted the peace of my last dawn in Tokyo.  I take solace in reminders that I cannot hold myself accountable for the carnage of my fictional dreams.  I cannot control my subconscious activity, nor can I honestly label its mental formations as good or bad.  All I can do is listen neutrally.  

My waking reality, conversely, is a physical canvas upon which I arrange constant brushstrokes of intention and honor.  That’s why I woke up in Tokyo’s temperate breeze, not New York’s sweltering heatwave.  I chose to.  I created this nomadic life.  

Perhaps my dreams are God’s reactions to my assertive curations, forming a critical feedback loop timed to circadian rhythm.  How might seeing my hometown under siege change my experience in this faraway, extensively-bombed land?  Why would the universe force this image upon me?  

If my dreams are provocative peer review, then my current daytime environment is a funhouse mirror.  Assimilating to Japanese culture has skewed and distorted my identity fascinatingly.  Yet, the reflection I’m shown is undeniably me.  Therein lies the value of travel.  We must depart from our habitual normalcy in order to rediscover who we truly are, and I am a New Yorker in Japan.  

My noblest attempts to fall in line with this society’s rules of conduct fail to bury the contrarian concrete-jungle individualist inside me.  Where I come from, I’m embraced in spite of sticking out, even rewarded for it.  My eccentric traits read differently in this foreign context.  In that way, as I wander Tokyo, I am magnetized towards like minds and familiar stories, brief gulps of familiar air.  

I met Rie at Flow Arts Yoga Studio in Shibuya.  She unrolled her mat right next to mine.  We traded introductions and shook hands, never breaking intense eye contact.  She was thirty eight, a vegan pastry chef, and a Kyoto native.  As our dialogue’s content dug below its small-talk surface, the magnets of our hearts’ attraction revealed their invisible hands: Rie lived in Bushwick, just a few blocks from my house, for three years while I was in high school.  She’d been to all my favorite neighborhood spots.  She’d even walked down my street! We had an endless expanse of common ground to discuss, hushing each other only at the booming sound of our yoga instructor’s invitation to chant opening mantras.  After class, she asked if I had any weekend plans.  Of course, I didn’t. 

On Saturday, she paraded me around a Buddhist temple, an immersive digital-art museum, a fancy soba restaurant, and a giant grassfield within a lush city park.  There, we took a picnic; Rie brought a flight of her signature pastry roster, baked the night before.  

Over brownies, I asked her, “What was the biggest culture shock you experienced when you moved to Brooklyn?”

She joked, “When this guy was eating food during my ESL class!  At his desk!  That would never happen in Japan!  

“But, actually, in all seriousness, it was the way individuality is praised and uplifted in New York.  In Japan, you get bullied for being different.  Before I left, people here told me, ‘You’re making a huge mistake leaving your career and your country at thirty years old,’ but I trusted myself.  In New York, even though I was an alien, the people around me helped make sure my unique quirks were shining.  In Japan, I have to mask them.  I even wear different clothes here.

“What about you?  What was your biggest culture shock in Japan?”

My answer came immediately: “No trash cans!  It’s made me so much more aware of my consumption.  I snack and splurge so much less knowing I’ll have to walk around with all this plastic packaging.  I think the whole world would benefit from incorporating Japan’s trash system.  Not just because it brings clean streets and diligent recycling, but because it encourages self control.”

After we licked every last crumb of Rie’s baked-goods tupperware, I led her through a Reiki session.  We sat, facing each other, touching palms.  Energy flowed from my hand into hers, from hers into mine.  Prana ran loops from my heart to hers and back again.  

That night, I met Luna at a jazz bar in the basement of a Shinjuku mall.  We locked eyes as soon as I walked in.  I sat next to her at the bar, breaking the ice by noting that the sax player, who at that moment was ripping a solo, had the same long, curly, dirty blonde hair as mine.  That made her giggle.  She told me that she was on a date with the bass player, pointing to him on stage.  I asked if I’d accidentally taken his seat, but she replied that house musicians aren’t allowed to sit at the bar.  We got to know each other while the band played, our expressive hoots and snorts underscored by their rhythmic accents.  Her dad was from Japan; her mom was from Arizona.  She was also a musician, a singer.  Then, God winked at me: Luna was a week away from addressing the United Nations, on behalf of a Japanese climate activism organization, in New York City.  It was to be her first voyage to my hometown.  Thrilled by the serendipity, I gave her recommendations and contacts.  In reciprocation, she invited me to an open mic where she was billed to perform.  “They have a drum kit for you,” she promised.  “You can play Rolling in the Deep by Adele with me and my friend Momo!”  

I jumped at the offer.  Back home, I used to sit behind a drum kit every single day, whether to practice or perform.  Now, it’s no longer my livelihood, but it remains my undying passion.  I hadn’t seen a drum kit since Bali, and I was itching to bang some beats. 

When, upon arriving at Luna’s gig last night, I laid my eyes upon the cheap beginner’s drum kit I was to play, I thought not of all the nicer kits I’ve played over the years, but of all the places I’ve been recently that utterly lacked any kind of hollow percussive shells, and how lucky I was to be in the presence of such an instrument.  I would’ve been happy playing an upside-down bucket and chopsticks.  As I accompanied Luna and Momo, pounding the iconic breakbeat from Adele’s breakout song, the dive bar hosting our open mic faded away.  All visual stimuli became irrelevant as I felt my every bass drum hit pound in my chest.  Mentally, I was back in my basement, the room where I’d practiced and practiced for years.  

I lingered in that corner of my mind-palace the whole way back to my hostel.  Staring into space on the train, I daydreamed about the band I’d assemble, the recording studio I’d build, and the performances I would rock upon returning home.  That fantasy continued to unfold as I sat in my hostel’s dining area, eating a fruit dinner of kiwis and pears.  What eventually snapped me out of my trance was overhearing the dialogue between two hostel mates I hadn’t met yet: they were talking about how much they missed New York City.  Pining for more connection, I spun around, desperately croaking, “Are y’all from New York?”

They were from Ridgewood, the neighborhood bordering mine.  My dog has probably even peed on their mailbox once or twice.  They introduced themselves as Sully and Maryam, brother and sister.  As New Yorkers do, we exchanged social media usernames.  My page, which outed me as a yogi, made Maryam beam.  She squealed, “You’re a yoga teacher!  I’m about to do my certification when I get home!”  

Magnetism, an inevitable law of physics, cannot be avoided.  When I turned away from my fruit plate to address Maryam, was I exercising any once of free will, or were we both just finger puppets on the same grand hand of God?  

Regardless, I was overjoyed to meet another New York yogi.  I couldn’t stop smiling as we compared our favorite Brooklyn shalas.  “Listen,” Maryam posed, “I know you’re probably busy, but would you want to grab some tea tomorrow morning and discuss this more?  I’m really interested in your perspective on yoga teacher training, and I’m curious if you have any advice for me!”  Despite the jam-packed travel day ahead, I agreed enthusiastically to wake up early and chat with Maryam before departing from Tokyo.

This morning, between sips from her steaming teacup, Maryam asked me, “So, why did you decide to do your teacher training in Nepal?”

I offered, “Honestly, at the time, I was really fed up with America’s bastardization of yoga, and I just wanted to travel as close to the original source as possible.  I was lucky enough to study with teachers from Mysore, and their methods were so different from the ones I’d gotten used to back home!”

“That makes sense,” Maryam affirmed.  “I also really resent the way that New York’s yoga scene is so deprived of spirituality and philosophy.  I feel like we can’t even call it yoga!  For example, I’m reading Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras to prepare for my training.  I mean, he was one of the originators of yoga, and he doesn’t even mention asana or any kind of movement until the third chapter!  It’s chiefly a mental practice!  But you’d never know that if you never studied the original tradition; you’d just think it was all about stretching!”

“Actually,” I challenged, “my perspective on that has changed recently.  Back home, my introduction to the practice was at a power yoga studio, like a proper workout class for white collar alphas.  Like you said, pretty much just stretching.  My teachers there never talked about meditation or breath at all!  Not a word of Sanskrit was spoken.  Yet, just by moving my body, I felt my mind change.  I intuited that there was something deeper to the craft that the teachers weren’t explaining.  That’s what motivated me to go to Nepal and led me to where I am now.  I still got a lot out of those classes, despite being at a studio that some might consider shallow.  So, who are we to decide what yoga is and isn’t?  That word is so loaded with misleading, contradictory connotations that it’s effectively meaningless.  I think it’s up to us, the new generation of yogis, to stretch the definition of yoga.  So many more young people would be intrigued by the practice if it was recontextualized by their peers.  I commend you for taking the leap, committing to teacher training, and joining the cause!”

“And I commend you for your passion,” Maryam offered.  “I think it’s so amazing that yoga led you all the way to Nepal!”

I elaborated, “Don’t get it twisted – yoga led me to Japan, too!  Everywhere I’ve gone in Asia, I’ve found ancient cultural traditions that totally align with the original definition of yoga, which Patanjali denotes simply as ‘union with God.’  Like, I keep going to these Japanese bath houses, where it’s just a bunch of elderly men meditating in hot springs!  That’s totally yoga!  I even got the opportunity to teach a yoga class yesterday morning, to a full room of locals and foreigners at a shala in Shibuya.  When I was up at the front of the room, speaking to them, I wasn’t thinking about how flexible they were.  I was thinking about whether they were giving me smiles or mean mugs!  I was thinking about whether they were breathing in serenity or exasperation.  Everybody needs a slightly different path to get to that yogic place of blissful union.  The job of the teacher is to hold a student’s hand during the first five percent of their journey.  After that, the student is ready to soar and chart their own course.”

“In that case,” Maryam glowed, “I can’t wait to teach!”

“And I can’t wait to take your class once I’m back home!”

All these fateful interactions were dainty golden ribbons, unfurling from New York City to wrap around my ankles, wrists, fingers, and toes here in Tokyo.  They were the path towards union that this city showed me.  Thanks to the Gothamists I’ve met in Japan, the world feels infinitely small, all within my grasp.  I feel much less homesick now, for my tribe’s diasporic footprint will inevitably follow and surprise me everywhere I go.  

Love,

Etai