First Goodbye

Ever since my first week in Japan a year and a half previously I had been friends with Iain from Scotland and Henrik from Sweden. In fact, on the very first day of Japanese school I sat next to Iain quite by chance. That was when we took the test to decide what class we were destined for. As it happened all three of us ended up in the class cruelly named, “Japanese zero.”

Henrik in the early days seemed a bit of a clown; he would sit right at the front on his own, always smartly dressed in colourful shirts. With his bright blonde hair he was hard to ignore and often picked to answer questions. I remember in the early days his complete lack of self consciousness and easy ability to make everyone laugh by playing the fool when he didn’t know the answer. Over time the three of us got to know each other, and soon the rest of the class trickled away back to their own countries, each week another goodbye as the class of 20 turned into a class of five.

Henrik was always the one to organise get togethers; nights at karaoke, evenings watching films at Iain’s apartment in Roppongi, meeting to see festivals or eating countless numbers of meals. Together we visited clubs and bars, ate in some strange and lavish places: the Park Hyatt for my birthday, an Alice in Wonderland themed restaurant for Henrik’s. Through fellow student Deborah we attached ourselves to a large group of French people, eating in Izakiyas and then going out to clubs and spending the early hours waiting for the first trains in Internet cafes.


I remember on one of these adventures Henrik, in his intoxicated state, insisted we go into a sex shop we happened to walk past in Shibuya. This was no problem but I fondly recall Henrik’s insistence at the shop counter to buy the one thing that was not for sale, the cash register. He eventually settled for a leopard skin thong, and phoned me the next day asking why he had woken up in some station at the end of the trainline possessing such a thing.

And the many evenings in karaoke, forever will I hear Iain and Henrik’s voices in my mind singing Oasis, ABBA, that ra ra Rasputin song and the one that goes Linda Linda, Linda Linda Linda, Linda Linda, Linda Linda Linda – a song I actually never want to hear again.

It was on a night such as this that I learnt the power of Hey Jude – truly the best song to go for if you are ever forced to sing a solo with Japanese work colleagues. Even the shyest of English speakers can’t help but sing along to the na, nana, nanana that makes up the last half of the song. Either by chance or great deference to English speakers singing karaoke in Japan, the sound na is part of the Japanese alphabet. It is represented by the symbol な.

Then there were the nights of watching films at Iain’s apartment, always chosen by Henrik and usually god awful. I remember Stallone’s writing efforts in Cobra, “This is where the law stops and I start - sucker!” and our Godzilla night which started with visiting the statue


and ended with losing the will to live after Godzilla vs. Super Megagodzilla.

But such antics were coming to an end. I was the first to leave.

It ended where it started; we ate together for the last time in the tempura restaurant in Kudanshita, about a hundred metres away from the school we’d first met.

Here’s a picture.


Having just returned that day from my epic voyage I had lots to talk about but Henrik was in an odd mood. He kept interrupting with mocking questions and witticisms such as, “Are there many old buildings in the centre of Hiroshima?”

Iain and his brother Colin groaned at these asides but Henrik was undeterred in his gentle mockery.

Our final goodbyes were disguised sadness, we promised to meet up again someday and I think we will.

And thankfully there is the one word passing travellers can say to each other as they jet off to opposite sides of the planet, safe in the knowledge they can find each other again. Facebook.