Epilogue

Having been back from Japan for a week I was wandering around Goodge Street in London before meeting an old friend.

I was reminded of all my wanderings around Japanese cities in the weeks before, but in London the wandering was a depressing experience; something about the grey sky and the miserable looking people having conversations I’d prefer not to understand.

Something about being finally back too. I was missing people, places, a whole life built up and then torn down until there was nothing left but a set of passport stamps, some souvenirs and a mass of stagnant memories.

But in a shopping centre off Oxford Street I found something akin to a ray of light.

It was Uni Qlo, a Japanese clothes shop that I had been to frequently in Tokyo and which only recently opened stores in London. The sign outside was written in English and in Katakana, identical to its appearance in Japan.

I went inside feeling reverse culture shock, the culture I had left being recreated in my home country. The layout was the same, the clothes seemed identical but it all felt profoundly odd. I could stare at a rack of clothes and imagine I was still in Japan, but it just wasn’t the same because I felt different.

The shop assistants appeared to be Japanese to me and I hovered around one of them as they spoke to a customer. His English had the right kind of tinge to it and I wanted to start a conversation in Japanese.

There were different ways of going about this: just say hello in Japanese and see what happened, ask a question about clothes in English and then slip into Japanese, ask them if they were Japanese etc.

Excuse me
Yes
Are you Japanese?

I said this to a female shop assistant folding T-shirts. She nodded and I greeted her in Japanese. She was slightly taken aback but replied in turn. I tried to say that this was the first time I had been to a Uni Qlo in England, and was finding it strange. She clapped twice and smiled saying that my Japanese was good, in the classic way all Japanese people do no matter how awfully you speak their language.

Once we switched to Japanese I felt myself change. My voice became higher in pitch, I began to smile more and feel enthusiastic. She too seemed to be enjoying the conversation and was incredibly friendly. We talked about England and Japan, everything not to do with clothes, I’ve never had a conversation with a shop assistant that was so casual, it may have seemed almost inappropriate in a shared mother tongue. She asked me my name and told me hers, though we were strangers there was suddenly a connection.

She asked me if I wanted to carry on learning Japanese and I said yes but that it was hard because there are not that many Japanese people in England. “There so are,” she said, “there’s a Japanese community in London.”

However, I don’t live in London, I live in a tiny village in Gloucestershire which Japanese explorers have probably still not gotten around to discovering yet. I asked her about the Uni Qlo stores, whether they always employ Japanese people and she said, “Yes, about 30%.” So there was my solution for Japanese practice; I could just find my nearest Uni Qlo, sidle up casually to a shop assistant and use the old, “Excuse me, are you Japanese” line.

A supervisor of hers was walking past and she started folding clothes again. Even though he probably didn’t know what we were talking about he could tell it was not about the clothes. He asked her a question about something, but I think the real meaning was, “Please get back to work.” I took the hint too and said goodbye, she told me to come back again soon.

I walked away smiling.

Being English in Japan is an experience I am familiar with, but being English in England having been to Japan is suddenly new and exciting. Cultures and language are no longer constrained by oceans and borders and in a city as multi-cultural as London I am finding new places and people that I wouldn’t have noticed before.

My grey mood lifted and I began to look around me in a new light. Suddenly I saw Japanese restaurants, Wasabi noodle bars, Samurai sushi shops, Mitsukoshi Department stores etc.

I went to a shop selling bento boxes and sushi. Inside they had onigiri, my staple food during my trip. For the first time in my life I was finally able to understand all of the different flavours, but admittedly at the cost of them being twice the price and half as good.

It is hard to avoid the feeling of loss when leaving a life behind, but that doesn’t have to be the way it is. I have the feeling now that my life in Japan doesn’t have to be dead and gone but can continue in certain ways that I am yet to discover.

But in this paragraph lies the end of this blog. It began two years ago with “So it all began on the 27th of March when I woke up at 4:15AM remembering that I had something to do today.” And now back from my long travels, older, wiser, more bilingual, I wonder what I’ll do tomorrow.

The Surprise

And so dear readers in the last instalment the protagonist, me, was on a plane flying from Japan back to England. Since this blog recounts my time in Japan you might hope that now, finally, with my not being in Japan anymore, this blog would at last come to an end.

But no dear readers, it goes on.

You see, there is another story to tell, one of love, deceit and distances. So hold on to your RSS feeds, here we go again.

As an introduction, because that bit you just read wasn’t the introduction by the way, I must explain that the following post will contain a certain amount of secrecy. Although I have been open and honest with you, dear readers, taking you with me to give urine samples and dress as Santa Claus for example, this story shall contain some hidden details.

For you see I have been in a relationship during my year and a half in Japan. I left my love at Heathrow before I set out and returned to them the day after I got back. For various reasons, though, I cannot name this person, or describe them in any specific way. It’s a kind of Montague/Capulet thing, but hopefully with a better outcome.

So please do not feel snubbed dear readers, it is not you, it’s me, and besides, who needs a name? I shall use a symbol, it worked for Prince, for a while. The chosen symbol is this one (:-) call it what you will.

People say that long distance relationships never work but myself and (:-) can prove otherwise. The secret, dear readers, is good communication, i.e. Skype.

However, even with Skype things were becoming strained between us after a year apart and especially with my decision to stay on even longer, (:-) was starting to feel a little left behind.

(:-) told me, “I know you love me, but this doesn’t feel like a relationship anymore.” And they had a point; all we did was speak on the phone about anything and everything, in a comfortable bond of trust. But you can do that with the Samaritans.

I pleaded for some more time and we got through this difficult patch. I started teaching again in May but decided to cut short the rest of my time in Japan and come home again at the start of August. I missed (:-) and felt that I’d spent enough time in Japan, I had done what I intended to do and it was hard to say exactly what was keeping me there. You see dear readers, I felt that having a good time was just not enough; I needed to feel I was still growing in some way, not just be living day by day but heading in a chosen direction. Like my imaginary grandfather would say, “The Heavens may give you the stars, the ancients may furnish you with maps and the scientists craft the finest compasses; but every man must find his own way.”

I was homeward bound, I hatched a plan to come home in August, but I hatched another plan at the same time. A deceitful plan to surprise (:-) by arriving home a whole month earlier than expected, and turning up on the doorstep.

I had a flight booked for the end of August. Had I been staying then I would have moved the flight later into the year, but as it was I moved it earlier to the start of August. This was before I had done anything else, like even telling my company that I was quitting. “That’s all booked for you sir,” the woman on the phone said definitively. People can talk a lot about the things they will do but when plane tickets are involved, that’s real commitment. I had a lot of work to do.

As you know I finished my school, said my goodbyes, explained away to my colleagues and the kids why I was returning home. All of this was without mentioning (:-) but it was the thought of (:-) that kept me going.

When I had finished teaching and set about my month long trip around Japan, that was when the deceit really started. For you see dear readers, in order for my ploy to work I had to convince (:-) that I was doing things a month later than I really was. To give myself the best chance of carrying this off smoothly, I made up a month of lessons and weekend activities to feed (:-) so that they wouldn’t guess that during July I was really wandering around Japan.

But the plot thickened, dear readers, for you see our method of communication had been over the Internet but when travelling I didn’t want to carry my laptop with me. I had therefore to find a lie for (:-) that would explain my online absence. This I did by explaining how my laptop had broken, Windows had corrupted and it would no longer start up properly. (:-) with great sympathy gave me quite a few suggestions on how I could repair the problem, and I have to say I was quite impressed. Had I really had the problem I was claiming to then I’m fairly sure the solutions would have fixed it. As it was I just had to say, “Yeah I tried that yesterday, didn’t work. Good suggestion though, I was sure it was going to solve it.”

I know what you are thinking dear reader, how was I able to have this conversation if it was not over the Internet. Well, I embraced the world of International Phone Cards. In practice this meant many a morning of waking up at 7AM, and crawling out of my hotel room to slouch over a phonebox.

However, there was one morning when (:-) called me on my mobile phone unexpectedly. This was at a time when I should have been up and ready to go to work, but I was really sleeping in a hotel room. The sudden stress of sounding really awake and ready for my day was so great that it gave me a migraine.

But it worked dear readers, and when I flew from Tokyo to London (:-) was none the wiser.

I arrived back at my parents house and dragging my luggage through the garden on the way to the front door I just could not believe that hours previously Yoko had been carrying that same bag. The place I had just come from seemed so infinitely far away that I could not possibly have travelled between the two in a single day. The guesthouse and my parent’s home barely felt like the same planet.

The next morning I was on a train to London, to surprise (:-)

You might think I would be too tired to make my way to London so soon, but no dear readers, the thing was I was still travelling. I was on home turf but I had not yet stopped, the journey was not over.

I read the safety leaflet sticking out of the pocket of the seat in front of me. “The English is all correct,” I commented to myself. Then I remembered that I was not in Japan anymore, the English should be correct.

When I looked out the window I saw hills and they looked strange to me. And, I couldn’t believe how low the clouds were. All these differences seemed like the fleeting thoughts you get for a few hours after you arrive in a country; before the detail of the old place slips from your mind, you have a little time to compare. I was so impressed with how low the sky was I took some pictures.


I felt strange arriving at Paddington station. It was 11:25AM and I had no idea where (:-) would be. Having come all the way from Tokyo I was most concerned about the final few miles between us, hoping for the best possible outcome for my long planned surprise.

I left the station and found a quiet street from which to call (:-) from. My mum had given me a mobile phone to use, a great help but presented me with a problem. Chances are the number that would appear on (:-)’s phone when I made the call would be very different to when I had been phoning from Japan. I got around this by using the 141 trick to disguise my phone number and I quickly explained that I was using a different phonecard. (:-) said “Yes I didn’t recognise the number.”

I casually asked (:-) about plans for the day: to drive back to home to pick up some more things - (:-) had recently moved into a new flat. “What time are you going to go?” I asked nervously.
“About 2 o’clock” came the reply. That gave me two and a half hours to find the flat, more than enough time.

I told some more lies, well delayed truths. I had worked out what day it would have been had I really started travelling when I told (:-) I did. It would have been the 10th day of my journey, the day that I spent with Yan and Kizuna at Fuji Safari park. Standing in a narrow street in London I told (:-) about my day at Mount Fuji Safari park and how I had just arrived at my hotel in Nagoya city.

A police car drove past loudly. “You are in your hotel?” (:-) asked bemused.
“Yes…but I’ve got the window open” I explained.
“Oh.”

Coming down the road were two people pushing a heavy trolley and that was a noise I couldn’t readily explain away. I started walking up the street to give myself more time before they reached me.

But coming the other way was a man talking on his mobile phone. Perhaps I could have explained away the sound of a phone conversation, but not one in English! “Ah, my parents are calling me, can I phone you back?” I said, another previously prepared line.
“Ok” (:-) said and I hung up.

At Paddington Station underground entrance there were some dead turnstiles covered in out of order signs. People were just walking through them but coming the other way was an Asian woman and her son. “Achira” said the son pointing down the corridor so I knew they were Japanese. I wanted to see if they were ok, I’m not sure why, still a lingering attachment to Japan I suppose.

The woman looked at the turnstiles, then went to an information window which was devoid of anyone to help her. Correctly she decided to carry on walking down the corridor through the turnstiles. Regardless of the fact that they didn’t need my help I told myself that I had to move on from Japan now and concentrate on (:-).

An hour later I arrived at the station nearest to (:-)’s flat. I had the address and a map to the nearest postcode. Opposite the station was a road that sounded suspiciously like the one in the address, but my map was not pointing me in that direction.

I followed the map to a large roundabout, but it felt wrong and going by postcodes alone is unreliable. I turned back and went to the street I had seen before, I didn’t know it then but (:-) was just a hundred metres away.

It’s hard to explain how much time I had spent wondering how to break the surprise. For months I had been going over the possibilities and discussing them with people. Back in May I sat everyday at my desk in school imagining the moment and all the different ways I could play it out. I could, for example, have rung the buzzer and pretended to be a delivery person in order to get (:-) to come downstairs, then I could have jumped out or left some tell tale clue that it had actually been me. There had been hundreds of possibilities depending on where (:-) was, if I could find the flat on my own, whether I had a phone etc etc etc.

As I made my way up the road I realised that the possibility the universe had chosen to become true was a kind one. (:-) had been easy to find on my own and the fact that my mum had spontaneously provided me with a mobile phone made the surprise easier still.

I made my way up the road to the flat, saw (:-)’s car outside. I turned around and walked back to the bottom of the road.

On the train I had written out ideas for what to do in this possible future, but it was now time for me to try and make one possibility become real.

I called (:-)

(:-): Hello
Me: Hi
(:-): You’ve spoken to your parents already?
Me: Yes
(:-): How are they?
Me: Fine.
(:-): Oh.
Me: I miss you.
(:-): I miss you too.
Me: I love you.
(:-): Awww, are you ok?
Me: Yeah but I’ve been here in Japan for too long and I’m sorry.
(:-): That’s ok, you’re coming back soon.
Me: Thank you for being so understanding and patient.
(:-): Aww, what’s brought this on, are you feeling lonely?
Me: Yeah I am, it’s lonely travelling. I’m walking at the moment.
(:-): Walking to get food?
Me: I’m walking from the station past a pub called The Anchor.
(:-): A pub?
Me: Yes, and a Jet petrol station.
(:-): What? You sound like you’re in England.
Me: I’m walking up a road, past a residential home.
(:-): Ok…
Me: Now there’s a road on the left, it’s called…William Crescent.
(:-): Where are you?
Me: Now I am walking to a car, it’s got a parking permit for London SE13
(:-): What!
Me: And there’s a bag in the backseat, See Woo food suppliers.
(:-): Huh? Where are you!
Me: Now I am walking up the road and there’s a building with big windows and red brick walls. Number 87 to 89.

(:-) looked out of the open window and we saw each other for the first time in eight months.

Still talking on phone:

(:-): (laughing) You’re really outside. Why aren’t you in Japan, you’re a month early.
Me: I wanted to surprise you.
(:-): Oh wow, I can’t believe it. I’ll let you in

We smiled at each other and (:-) ducked back inside the room. I waited at the front door and after a moment heard, “Hang on, I can’t find my key,” which sort of ruined the flow of the moment. (:-) came down the stairs and opened the door. Still grinning at each other we hugged affectionately and I followed (:-) into the flat.

(:-): But what about your trip? Why did you come back early?
Me: I’ve been feeding you lies for about two months. Everything I told you happened at least a month ago.

(:-) asked me when I had really finished my job and I struggled to recall the true date myself.

I explained that I’d gotten back to the country yesterday, that I had done my trip around Japan in July.

During this lecture (:-) showed me around the flat and kept saying, “Wow I still can’t believe you’re here” and really neither could I.

“I didn’t twig at all” (:-) said. I felt a bit smug at my fiendish achievement. “You are a very good liar, I’m going to have watch out for this in the future.”

This was an outcome I had no plan for; although my intention to surprise (:-) was born out of love, it might convince them that I’m actually a pathological liar.

I got out my laptop to show some pictures. “Is your laptop better now?” said (:-). I didn’t want to make the scale of lies seem even worse, but if I just lied again and said that my laptop had recovered then that deception would always linger.

I told the truth, that my laptop had never been broken.

(:-) looked at me and shook their head, “You.”

My journey around Japan had sort of been a journey back home and back to (:-). From the moment I had changed the date of my flight I had been on a road home. That road had taken me from Northern to Southern Japan, then back to my parents home in the UK for one night and finally to a small flat in south east London. I had been on buses, trains, planes, cars, trams, cable cars, and boats, stayed in nine hotels and three hostels but finally I was sitting on the carpet next to (:-).

The journey was over. The origami crane I had been given in Lake Toyako, which I had been carrying all the way across Japan and the journey home, finally had somewhere to land.

The Day I Left

I woke up at 5:30AM. My flight was leaving at 11AM and I was heading for the airport at 7:00AM with Yoko, Kosuke and Kizuna.

My problem of 10kg overweight hand luggage had not magically disappeared in the night but the Internet revealed a potential way of avoiding the £40 per kilogram fine. There was a post office at the airport where £40 would let me send at least 10kg home.

Just before seven I said goodbye to my last room in Japan and pushed my two bags into the lift. The others were meeting me at the hotel and when I got out I saw Kosuke and Yoko walking from the station.

I was annoyed at myself that I was not better prepared; the last obstacle had crept up on me but it was my own fault for not reading the luggage restrictions more carefully. Yoko was adamant that I should stop worrying because I already had a solution, but I didn’t feel like worrying was my choice.

Kizuna met us on the train, and Il Heung came too, which was a nice surprise. So, on leaving Japan I had an entourage of four people and a wealth of expertise from three different nationalities.

Our train route required us to change stations by crossing a bridge and going through a shopping mall, all in less than six minutes. I had done the journey before but never with an entourage. I explained the route and the time limit to the others and when the train doors opened we were first out.

Racing down the escalator and to the ticket gates my ticket wouldn’t work. Kosuke snatched my ticket and shoved his wallet containing his travel card into my hand. He ran off while I went through the ticket gate with his wallet. It was a bit like a war film where the injured guy gets saved by the hero who runs off alone to create a diversion.

Outside the station Il Heung, Yoko and Kizuna had gone quite far ahead before realising they were alone. I found them and then looked back to Kosuke, he was running towards us and we regrouped at the bottom of the escalator to the bridge.

While I pushed my big bag Yoko steamed ahead with my hand luggage, through crowds of people coming the opposite way. I barged my way through too, forcing people to give way. I had a big bag to argue my point and I was leaving the continent in a few hours, a licence to be determined.

In the other station I bought a ticket with Il Heung while the others went through with their travel cards. Someone took my case and when I entered the station the others were already on the platform waiting for me, and our train. We had done it, I congratulated them like a proud boss and they mocked me for it. I thought back to an old computer in the library of a school that isn’t standing any more. After asking me lots of questions it made me laugh by telling me that my ideal career was… Army Officer. Then again, maybe it had been right after all.

Our unit divided. Me and Yoko sat dwelling on one side of the train while the others sat opposite playing Indian poker and giggling.


Yoko asked me for some paper and I gave her my notebook, there was a blank page next to a list of my trip’s expenditure. She asked for a pen and started to cross out all the prices. First I thought this was quirky but then I got angry because later I wanted to work out where all my money had gone. “Why are you doing that?” I said, she didn’t answer, “Stop it.” I grabbed the pen from her. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I am annoying,” she said.

At 8:30, two and a half hours before my flight, we got out of the train and into a lift for the departure floor of Narita Airport. The queue to the Virgin desk had only been open for ten minutes but it was already crowded with people. I eyed the luggage of my fellow passengers. There was a man with six different bags piled precariously on his trolley. I found this immensely reassuring until a gaggle of six children joined him.

The woman at the desk looked confused when our group surrounded her but only one passport was handed over. Actually, at that point my entourage was causing me a little stress because this wasn’t a normal flight, I had things to explain and audiences make me nervous. I had changed the date of my flight and still needed to pay a fee of £50. She checked in my bag and then weighed my hand luggage. She seemed pretty surprised when 16kg came up on her screen. I explained how I had been confused by information on the website but she was in no mood for excuses.
“Please can you let me go to the post office and get rid of some of the weight,” I pleaded
“Ok,” she said, “but come back once you do it. You have got an hour and a half before boarding starts.”
Our unit had a new mission.

While they ran off with my luggage to find the post office I had to go to another desk to pay for my flight change. The last cash in my wallet disappeared.

When I found the others again; they had already gone to the post office, bought a box and begun filling it with things from my bag.

An American woman was also at the post office trying to send things home. She wore a long furry black coat, round gold earrings and her hair was the colour of someone’s decision. Her manner was very self-assured but her helplessness was obvious. She was trying to speak only English and this had gotten her as far as a price in Yen for sending her box home. She asked me what that price would be in dollars. Yoko helped me answer but she didn’t like the result. I suggested sending it by ship, which is what I had been doing and she liked that price much more. As I filled in the form for my box, Yoko helped the American lady. God bless the bilingual.

The two heaviest things in my hand luggage were my Xbox and my Laptop. I was taking them as hand luggage because they wouldn’t survive any other way. I knew that the Xbox alone weighed 5.5kg so there combined weight would still be over what was allowed. I had learnt from the Internet that Virgin allows a shoulder bag to be taken on board with the kind of items people use on a flight; books, a CD player etc. Someone suggested I put my laptop in my shoulder bag and sneak it on that way. I didn’t like the idea because I didn’t think I would get away with it, but my laptop fitted perfectly into the shoulder bag so this became the plan.

As we were discussing this, the American woman came over to our group.
“Would you people like these?” she said holding out a clear plastic bag filled with small toiletries. “What we do is we take all these things from the hotels we stay in and then give them to homeless people. There’s everything in here; shampoo, conditioner and even sunscreen.” None of us said anything. In my head I was analysing how charitable it is giving homeless people things they don’t need that you got for free. To be kind, Yoko took the bag and the woman walked away happy.

With 10KG all packed up ready to send home I needed a cash machine to pay for the postage. Yoko and Kizuna went off separately to ask people where such a thing could be found and both came back with the same location. Since we had to go back to the Virgin desk afterwards Kizuna offered to go and stand in the queue for me until I arrived. I turned down her offer because I had suspicions that getting cash would take some time. Yoko and I went off in search of cash machines while the others stayed with all my things.

I’d been having bad luck with cash machines lately. I no longer owned a Japanese bank account worth accessing but I did have my English one that had been working for 80% of my time in Japan. Recently though, every cash machine I had used throughout the land came up with different errors and refused to give me money. I had checked my account online and knew it to be fine, I could use my credit cards in shops with no problems but cash machines were not on my side.

I told Yoko my fears and she became frustrated at my always expecting bad things to happen. We tried several different machines, I tried all my cards and lots of different buttons but my money was refusing to head East. I sighed and sighed and sighed, life was throwing me problems at a rapid rate.

Yoko was not sighing, I think she was enjoying the race against time, the challenges to be faced and the adrenaline they produced. I on the other hand, was miserable. When I am miserable I frown and I sigh and let it out. “Smile,” said Yoko and I wanted to hit her.

I have a problem with people telling others to just, “smile.” To me it means, “I don’t like to see people look sad so please smile so that I feel better.” It doesn’t mean, “I want you to feel better” because getting someone feeling miserable to smile is like covering scars with
make-up or giving homeless people cologne so that they smell better for a day. If you really want to make someone feel better then you say, “Are you ok? What’s wrong?” or you change the subject, provide a solution, make them laugh or just leave them alone.

To me sighing is good because it expresses how you feel but trying to hide it is bad because it is like ignoring a problem. Voicing my expectations of bad things to happen is another of my habits and it comes from an irrational belief that stating my worries makes them less likely to come true.

Yoko has a different philosophy. She believes that everyone has a small atmosphere surrounding them. If you smile, laugh and say positive things then your atmosphere will be positive and good things will happen. To sigh, to worry and to complain creates a bad atmosphere and life becomes harder.

Neither opinion is really true; the world works in various shades of chaos, differing only in their subtlety. All this might sound like waffle but in my last hours in Japan Yoko was making me angry by constantly telling me to “smile” while I was making her cry with my bad atmosphere. I couldn’t understand her; we were both working for the same cause and I wasn’t giving up, I was just miserable with the situation and felt I had every right to be. She couldn’t understand me; I was creating such a bad atmosphere that I was making my own problems worse and dragging everyone down with me, we would find a solution, that was certain, so why not get to it feeling positive.

Yoko lent me the £25 I needed to send the box home and we rejoined the queue for the Virgin desk. It was about 10AM when I got to the desk again, the plane started boarding in ten minutes. I explained about my hand luggage being over weight earlier. My luggage now only contained my Xbox but when we put it on the scale it read, 8KG. “What!” I thought; when I had weighed it that morning it had been two and a half kilos less. A flashback of that moment came to me and I saw my Xbox alone on the scale, not in the bag. The combined weight was still over the limit at a cost of £80.

Yoko stepped in arguing for me in Japanese. I didn’t have any idea what she was saying but the lady listened and then nodded. She put a sticker on my hand luggage and then stepped from her desk and behind me to put a sticker on my shoulder bag. I didn’t know what was going on, I was sure she would feel the weight of my bag which, thanks to the skinny nature of laptops these days, had a deceptively light appearance. But she didn’t, she sat down behind her desk again and Yoko gestured that I could go.

We five stood together, me now smiling, before the entrance to the security area, the real border between Japan and the nowhere between airports. We talked, I apologised, they told me it had been exciting. We took some picture and asked someone for a picture of us.


It was well and truly time to for me to go. I couldn’t stall any longer. We had a group hug, final goodbyes, well wishing and then I joined the queue.

I can remember that moment from different perspectives. I see my hands rolling my bag, slowly following the queue, I see the others standing on the opposite side of the barrier, I feel my wavering expression and the tears welling up in my eyes. Alternatively, I can see myself standing in the queue looking upset, Yoko, Kizuna, Kosuke and Il Heung around me as if I had still been standing among them watching someone else.

I was split then, a thing in pieces. I felt like I was less than I used to be, that people could walk through where I was standing and feel only a whisper against their skin.

My body reached the front of the queue and it took out my laptop to show to the security guards. The metal detector confirmed that I didn’t exist and my hands gathered all of my possessions back together. Walking towards the escalator to the gates I became whole again. My friends came back into view; they had been waiting for me on the other side of the soundproofed glass wall between us.

I touched Yoko’s hand from the other side of the glass and got on the descending escalator. The four familiar faces slid out of the final frame of Japan until their floor became my ceiling.

Japan had ended.

A woman came up to me, she knew my name. “Just you” she said as we began running towards the gate. “Yabai,” I replied, which is informal Japanese for when you are in trouble. She laughed and seemed like the most cheerful woman in any airport in the world.

At the gate I was the last person to go through. My window seat was next to a Japanese lady who politely stood up to let me sit down. I looked out of the window at Japan for the final time.

We flew.

Last day in Japan

On my last day in Japan I had important things still to do. First I had to get my luggage to the right weight for the plane and decide if I needed to send another box home. Then I had to close my bank account and send the money to my English account. Also, I still owed £40 to the guesthouse company so had to go to their office in Shinjuku, which was convenient as I also wanted to go to Shinjuku Park one last time. I also wanted to make a DVD of photos for my friends from the guesthouse, and get some photos printed as a goodbye present for Yoko. Finally, that evening there was to be a sayonara party for me as a final goodbye.

I learnt the word for weighing scale in Japanese that day. I asked at the hotel front desk if they had one and explained that I wanted to weigh my luggage. The lady showed me exactly what I needed. “For your luggage” she confirmed before handing it over, clearly afraid that I would try clambering onto it.

The Virgin Atlantic website said that I could take two bags of 23kg each, as well as hand luggage of 6kg. I got my bags down to 23kg and 16kg respectively. Everything fitted and I didn’t need to post another box home. My luggage for the flight was sorted. Tick.

I dropped off photos to be developed and then took out all the money I could from my bank account. I had over a thousand pounds suddenly to stuff into my wallet; there were so many notes that I couldn’t close it – that’s never happened before. I knew that I should go to the bank and close my account properly but I was reluctant to. Opening the account in the first place was very complicated and no one spoke any English. I expected the problem to be even more difficult trying to close the account and I didn’t have the time.

I know people shouldn’t do this; the world is full of letters sent to addresses that people no longer live at, about accounts they no longer care for. My account is still open now, with 636 yen, and I know that for years to come letters will be sent to my name and my old address. They will pile up, first seen by people who remember me but over time I will be just another forgotten name; a 636 yen echo from the past.

But who knows, maybe one day I will return and close it properly.

When people ask me where my favourite place is in Tokyo, and I feel like replying honestly, I tell them Shinjuku Gyoen. Having said that I haven’t been there many times because it’s very exclusive. Not only does it cost 200 yen to enter but it closes everyday at 4pm.

It lies amongst the skyscrapers and busy streets of Shinjuku, one of the biggest wards in Tokyo. Laden with lawns, trees and lakes it is the kind of place Tokyoites have to go to remind themselves of what the world is supposed to look like. Inevitably it is full of couples walking hand in hand and groups of mothers pushing prams orbited by toddlers. For me I just like to be surrounded by trees and yet also skyscrapers, the sudden peaceful world amongst the chaos. It is a good place for reflection and since it was my last day in Japan I had a lot to reflect on. I ate some sushi while sitting on the grass and then took a walk and some pictures.

One of my favourite buildings in Tokyo is right next to the park.


It reminds me of the Chrysler building in New York but the windows on this building are better, see how they reflect the shape of the tower.


There was a beautiful light on everything and I took pictures of the tree lined pathways.


I thought about my time in Japan, tried to remember if there was anything else I needed to do in the short time I had left. There didn’t seem to be, it was time to move on. I left the park for the last time humming the Next Stage music from one game or another.

Heading down the street I saw this.


The sign belongs to a mall called Oicity, and this is the Men’s department, but metaphorically who knows what it really meant.

After wiring money home at the post office I headed for the office of J and F Plaza, whose accommodation I had been renting for over a year. I had actually moved out a month ago but due to some confusion I still owed them £40.

The thing was, I was leaving the country the next day and that gave me an invincible like status. There was nothing they could threaten me with, whether to pay or not was entirely my own decision.

I had been thinking about this dilemma for a few weeks and my eventual decision to pay up was for these reasons:
- I had the money
- It had been a brilliant place to live
- Japanese society, on the whole, has a negative enough view of foreigners being dishonest as it is that I don’t want to add to it. Actually, I want to actively dispel it in my own little way

I didn’t realise it until I got to the nearest of Shinjuku Station’s sixty exits, that the last time I had been to this part of town was the day after I had first arrived in Japan. Now I was back there the day before leaving.

The streets are very narrow, packed with tall buildings with business on eight floors or more. It’s very hard to find anything without a map or a guide. I stood and waited for the latter.

I was happy to see that my guide to the office was the person who had checked me out back in July. He had been stressed and anxious the last time we had met, having never checked anyone out before he didn’t really know what to do. Actually he had taken £5 from my deposit because I had been one minute late leaving my room, which he later returned to me after growing a sense of morality.

I think I flattered him by remembering his face and approaching him before he reached me. He asked me about my trip, he laughed a lot and told me that he was envious. Once inside the office though he became more serious. I was instructed to sit down at the same table I had sat at more than a year previously. They gave me tea and he and another man started fussing over writing me a receipt.

The other man seemed to want to practice his English, he asked me if I was a student. I explained that I used to be, “I studied Psychology.”
“Oh, you must be very clever,” my guide interrupted, they seemed to be competing for conversation.
“No it wasn’t that hard, it was more boring,” I said modestly, “I just had to stay awake.”
He thought about this for a second and then burst out laughing, the less serious part of his personality having survived from the street outside.

When it was time to say goodbye everyone in the office waved me off in that ridiculously rehearsed way Japanese companies do to try and make you feel like a king. At the travel agents I used to use all the forty or so members of staff are trained to react to the sound of the lift doors opening. Their group response is to yell out, “Goodbye, thank you” to whoever is about to descend. The people with desks nearest to the lift actually stand up and bow to you and the whole thing is so unsettling that it made me want to use the fire escape instead.

Heading out of the office and back to the subway I paused for a moment at the top of the stairs leading to the maze of corridors beneath Shinjuku. I imagined myself walking up those stairs a year and four months ago. At that time I had been early so taken a walk around Shunjuku for a while. I remembered being impressed by the wide streets, the tall buildings and large screens shouting out commercials. I remembered feeling nervous, everything was new and I was alone, I hadn’t even met Yan yet.

Now, having finished my job, taken a long trip around Japan and paid off my final debts I envied my previous self. The difference between us was simple. I had walked up those stairs a year before wondering what would happen, and now, I knew. There was no mystery left anymore, except for what would happen after all the goodbyes. Back then I hadn’t even said hello. It was the opposite journey for me now that contained mystery; back into the subway, back to Narita airport, back to Heathrow, back home and, only then, back into the unknown.

The light was fading on my final day in Japan. I walked for the last time from Minami Gyotoku station to the guesthouse, a journey I had done hundreds of times before. I decided that roads are roads except for the first and last time we walk down them, then, they are something different.

I was not in a sad mood as such, there was too much for me to think about. Leaving is always harder, at first, for the people being left; they are losing something plain and simple. For those doing the leaving there is a whole barrage of things to prepare for and worry about before, finally, in another place, you realise what you’ve lost.

I made my way quietly into the guesthouse and quietly into the living room. My friends were walking around busily, carrying plates of food to the table. It wasn’t a big event and it shouldn’t have been, no music or banners, just food and goodbyes.

The selection of food was tailored towards me; there was no meat at the table, just vegetable sushi, tempura and soba – all my favourites.

There is surprisingly little to say about that. We looked at photos from our escapades together on the big TV and Kizuna, seeing a picture I took of fireworks in Nagasaki, made a joke about mushroom clouds.

Goodbyes were said. Inevitably I didn’t know what to say, given enough preparation I could have found the words but I was lazy and tired and I don’t know; a goodbye is a goodbye no matter how grateful you are to someone, how much you like them and have appreciated them. When you are standing in a group of people gazing at you the words just don’t come.

I got back to my hotel exhausted. My luggage was all unpacked after I had been frantically looking for things earlier in the day. I had weighed everything previously so I just needed to put it all back together in the morning, one bag of 23kg and one of 16kg. I was fine.

On the Internet I read some news and checked my flight details. I checked again the baggage allowance and then my sense of security exploded in my face. The baggage allowance I had previously read (two bags for 23kg and one hand luggage bag of 6kg) was not relevant to my flight; it was only for flights to America. For Asia the allowance was just one bag of 23kg and a 6kg hand luggage bag. My hand luggage bag was 10kg over the weight and guess how much they charge per kilogram? That’s right a fortune: £40 per kg.

It was 1AM, my flight was leaving in 10 hours and my bag was 10kg overweight with a potential cost of £400, or getting rid of a lot of stuff that I wanted to keep.

I didn’t sleep well that night.

Tokyo Disneyland

It’s hard to avoid Tokyo Disneyland, and yet I had been doing precisely that for a year and a half.

It would beckon to me though, from outside the windows of the Tozai subway train; the Tower of Terror looming in the distance.


Then at my school you could see Space Mountain clearly from the top floor, and for a time when I taught in a different school the nearest train station was just outside Disneyland. I would walk between effigies of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck each Thursday morning to get to work.

Yoko had been suggesting we go to Disneyland for months and with only one more full day left in Japan it was now or never. If that wasn’t enough build up already then I’ll point out that I had never been to Disneyland before. All in all that’s about 15 years of waiting from when I first heard of Disneyland to finally walking through its gates.

Yoko was there too, but also Kizuna (friend and manager of guesthouse/ Yan’s girlfriend) and Kosuke (friend and lived in guesthouse too). On the way to the park Kizuna commented on how boring Mickey Mouse really is; all the other characters have got something special about them, but Mickey Mouse is just a gimmick. Also, she proposed that he and Mini Mouse are infertile as they still don’t have any kids of their own despite being a couple since 1928. I still propose that they’re secretly related, I for one would never get into a relationship with someone who looked exactly the same as me except for a dotted red bow.

We were going for the 3000 yen (£15) evening tickets available after 6PM when the park is at its quietest. There was a nice Summer evening light on everything as we walked through the gates and I got my first view of what it’s really like in Disneyland.


It was like a big fibreglass European town square with a large globe standing in the middle.

All in all this was much better than I was expecting, I thought the place would be a corporate brainwashing camp where armies of Mickey Mouses stalk the grounds converting kids to a lifetime of watching cartoons, buying merchandise and procreating in order to bring their own offspring to Disneyland in one big money making cycle.

Speaking of which, Kosuke and I tried on some Disney hats.


First ride was The Tower of Terror, a generic name for a ride that goes up vertically and then down like a falling lift. The thing about Disneyland is that the rides are all quite lame but they look really good. More adult theme parks will have their Tower of Terror just standing exposed for all to see, but Disneyland builds a giant haunted house around it, adds a story and special effects.

The story is something to do with a Japanese explorer stereotype, though he had an English name for some reason. He set out to find an ancient wooden idol belonging to some tribe of voodoo witch doctor stereotypes. Anyway, the idol drove the explorer mad and he locked himself in the tower. What the story doesn’t explain is why the mad explorer built a theme park ride in his house, but I suppose that’s being pernickety.

The queue for the ride takes you through a large ornate room with pillars, candle sticks, cobwebs and a real sense that you’re on a film set. Eventually you’re taken to a room where the door shuts behind you and a voice explains the story while a video plays. You see the mysterious idol sitting on a plinth with a spotlight on it but, right at the end of the story, it disappears.

There’s no flash while a mechanism removes it, there’s no smokescreen, it just fades away and you realise that it was never actually real at all. I don’t know how they do it, but it’s damn impressive.

The ride wasn’t great; the best bit was when you feel yourself going up but don’t know how high until you reach the open air at the top of the tower. Below you can see the rest of the park and views of Tokyo in the distance while the cold wind blows through your hair. Then comes the down, then the up, then down and so on like a yoyo.

The scariest thing about the ride was Yoko’s reaction. She had said many times that she doesn’t like rides but we managed to persuade her onto this one. Once it got going she seemed to curl up into a ball in her seat with her head disappearing inside her body like a tortoise. She stayed like that for the whole duration not making a sound and even when the ride stopped she didn’t move for a few seconds. I was scared that she’d gone into some kind of chrysalis.

We all nudged her and told her it was over and slowly her head emerged from wherever it had been and she smiled.

Another ride we rode was Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, where you sit in a jeep type carriage that goes through underground tunnels. Occasionally the jeep stops and an animatronic Indy Jones acts out a scene from the movie; introducing whatever terrible collision the jeep will narrowly avoid next. The animatronic Indy Jones looked considerably younger than the real one but their acting was about the same.

My favourite ride was the least dramatic, it was an underwater adventure where you sit inside a tiny submarine and stare out the windows. Each window had a torch that you could direct outside to see further into the mysterious depths.

Not really being underwater the ride cheats the effect with water inside the windows and air pumps to produce bubbles. But even with this obvious cheat the journey the submarine took was quite mesmerising.

First there’s your usual rocks, treasure chests and fish, but then you see a strange creature waving some long stick at you. The submarine moves past more of these creatures as you enter their underwater civilisation. Further on an enormous octopus tentacle comes right up to the window like its going to attack. A moment later and you see the rest of the thing, a huge animatronic red monster living in the murky darkness.

The thing about this ride was that it was set in a different sort of world and that somehow made it more convincing. It wasn’t trying to take you through canyons or on the flight of a jet, it was just a gentle journey under the sea and it worked brilliantly.

At about 9PM the fireworks started. Disneyland is well known for having fireworks every night, which must take away the magic of fireworks for the staff. Anyway, at the centre of the park, where the fireworks were going off from, was this.


It’s a dragon, quite a beautiful one at that.

During the fireworks the dramatic music played and the dragon reared up its head and flapped its wings. At certain moments it breathed fire into the air and sparks showered from its wings.


The fireworks and music accompanied the beast as it danced its piece and then faded back into inanimacy. Everyone clapped, including me.

When the park was closing we walked back through the maze of different areas, passing through all the distinctive zones. There were the European town, Egyptian, jungle, marina, scary, volcano, futuristic areas and finally the exit gate. Walking through the park at speed made me appreciate the design of the place; it’s surprisingly well done with no tackiness or Mickey Mouse robots at all.

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.