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Nov. 6th, 2007
The sun is but a morning star
Nov. 6th, 2007 11:02 pm'And so you are going abroad; and when do you return?
But that's a useless question.
You hardly know when you are coming back,
You will find so much to learn.'
T.S. Eliot
"Portrait of a Lady"
Today marks one year since I came to Japan. I've been thinking about how to comment upon this occasional here, as this journal is the only way many people keep up with what I've been doing. Should I say something profound, something funny, something sad? What I will say is that I am happier here than I have been in a very long time. Is that because I'm in Japan, or away from England? I was finishing Thoreau's "Walden" only a few days ago and he says the following:
"... there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousands of miles through cold and storm and cannibals... than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone."
My memories of this first year are mainly sensory ones. It seems too much work to put them into some kind of narrative form so here are the various things I think of with a smile:
The glorious Tokyo cityscape at night from the top of the Tokyo Park Hyatt; the aching cold of my first month here, the loneliness and the confusion of a new home where you can't speak the language. The auditory assault of Gotanda on my jet-lagged first night in Tokyo, and the noise of the izakaya ("SUMIMASEN!!!) my friends Yusuke and Chihoko took me to in Ikebukuro (and wandering round that vast station trying to find each other).
The smell of cedar wood on the air; rice waves rippling across fields in the wind. A humid day in Yokohama, being jostled on the Tokyo subway, being stared at in Ina. The silence and serenity of the temple I stayed at in Koya-san, and the sunlight coming through the trees in the early morning mist. Singing ABBA songs to guitar accompaniment in bars; finding unexpected kindness and generosity; making unlikely friends. Looking at the mountains each day and seeing something different every time.
"There is more day to dawn."
But that's a useless question.
You hardly know when you are coming back,
You will find so much to learn.'
T.S. Eliot
"Portrait of a Lady"
Today marks one year since I came to Japan. I've been thinking about how to comment upon this occasional here, as this journal is the only way many people keep up with what I've been doing. Should I say something profound, something funny, something sad? What I will say is that I am happier here than I have been in a very long time. Is that because I'm in Japan, or away from England? I was finishing Thoreau's "Walden" only a few days ago and he says the following:
"... there are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousands of miles through cold and storm and cannibals... than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone."
My memories of this first year are mainly sensory ones. It seems too much work to put them into some kind of narrative form so here are the various things I think of with a smile:
The glorious Tokyo cityscape at night from the top of the Tokyo Park Hyatt; the aching cold of my first month here, the loneliness and the confusion of a new home where you can't speak the language. The auditory assault of Gotanda on my jet-lagged first night in Tokyo, and the noise of the izakaya ("SUMIMASEN!!!) my friends Yusuke and Chihoko took me to in Ikebukuro (and wandering round that vast station trying to find each other).
The smell of cedar wood on the air; rice waves rippling across fields in the wind. A humid day in Yokohama, being jostled on the Tokyo subway, being stared at in Ina. The silence and serenity of the temple I stayed at in Koya-san, and the sunlight coming through the trees in the early morning mist. Singing ABBA songs to guitar accompaniment in bars; finding unexpected kindness and generosity; making unlikely friends. Looking at the mountains each day and seeing something different every time.
"There is more day to dawn."
