hairfish

End of the Day; Akasaka, Tokyo, Japan.

Today is the one year anniversary of Operation What the Hades am I doing in Tokyo. Now that I’m a whole year removed from it I can actually answer that question. The explanation will be a bit lengthy and terribly existential, but that’s because those mere five months I spent in Tokyo have proven to be far more than “just” a semester vacation from America and it took me these last nine months to figure that out. To be completely fair, I spent a good deal of my time back in the United States recovering from those five months abroad. Jet lag lasted a full three weeks so my schedule was waking up at three in the morning, falling asleep at six in the evening, press repeat. FOR THREE WEEKS.

Outside of Harold's, Chicago, IL January 2009

Then, I was back on a plane to Chicago and that’s when the real adventure began. Suddenly, I had no sense of my home. I was either scared or tired of riding the trains (or both to be honest) after having spent twenty hours a week for twenty weeks commuting twice a day. I had no sense of direction. Nothing felt safe or familiar. I was completely and utterly confused a majority of the time I was in Chicago. Reverse culture shock hit me worse than I imagined it would, especially since I was so sure it wouldn’t hit me at all. On top of that, I also had to get used to two things, namely being without a job and subsequently, without money. Classes were going terribly — and that’s putting it mildly. I didn’t like the rules that came along with them, rules like having to make photographs when told to, when I’d previously spent five months freely creating photographs when and, most importantly, how I wanted to. Oh yeah, did I mention how COLD it was upon my return? It was disgustingly freezing and my dorm barely had working heat, among a laundry list of problems. Things were sort of grim,  I missed Japan and my host family painfully. I decided had to get myself out of Chicago, so with the little cash I did have, I visited friends in New York City which was much warmer than Chicago at the time and proved to be a nice adventure that included eating food and spending time talking with friends I’d missed so much for years.

Staten Island Ferry, Window #2, New York City, March 2009.

Spring took forever to arrive and somehow that transition made it harder for me to thaw out too but once the first bits of green started to poke out from beneath the snow, all the things that came with Spring started arriving in my life: newness, optimism, love. And it was around that time Chicago began feeling like home again. Of course, the Universe likes depositing grains of sand in my eye to see if I’ll cry or wait it out silently… I did a lot of crying and pitying and being upset about how things started working and then suddenly ground to a halt. I know you’re wondering, really, what does any of this have to do with Tokyo? Well, summer has pretty much come and gone and thankfully, I have come full circle, just in time for this anniversary of sorts. It’s easy to be brave and curious and fearless when you know you’re living a once in a lifetime dream but it isn’t so easy to do when everything around you is familiar and you have so many expectations for where you are in life. Tokyo taught me to not have any expectations, to just jump head first into everything and be happy no matter the outcome. Coming back home I forgot I could apply these lessons to my daily life, thought I didn’t need them cause I was home.

I hadn’t taken any real steps to make Chicago home when I arrived, but that’s a different story now. I’ve also turned twenty-one which, if you didn’t know, is a major existential mess of epiphanies, one after the other. And with that, begins this adventure of being on my own seriously (yeah, that’s right, no more money from mom and dad), working like everyone else, and graduating college. I’m slowly being introduced to “the real world”. I get paid to take photographs and read the news. I get paid to make funny faces at drooling babies. I get a diploma. I’m moving into my first real home. I’m legal. I will applying for graduate school.When all is said and done, I’ll be back in Tokyo next summer to tie up some loose ends (mainly, a shopping spree in Shibuya and consuming disgusting amounts of ramen)

I will have stories to tell and they will be told, so follow me on this journey. Next stop, how to find and move into an apartment in a week!