31°08′36″N 121°48′19″E

For thirteen years before I boarded Delta flight DL296 from Shanghai to Narita, the journey lived at the back of my mind. It was always there, calling out to me, thrusting itself into my conscious awareness through any gap it could to color my thoughts with longing.

Some things have an irresistible draw. They put you in a decaying orbit and eventually you go crashing headlong into that very thing. The landing is rough. All of a sudden, you’re tumbling ass over teakettle, wondering what happens next.

Three times before I moved to Japan, I visited. Each visit confirmed what my gut told me: this was where I needed to be.

Gut feeling will often get you going in the right direction. But as great as it is with gist, it seldom delivers the details. Those are up to the individual.

So you go looking for answers. This process can be captivating. A loose thread at which you can’t help but tug, curious to see what happens when you do. So you pull, you get an answer, and you go searching for the next thread.

That flight landed at Narita five years, nine months, and seventeen days ago. Two thousand one hundred nineteen days of looking for answers and sorting through details.

I’m where I need to be, though most days I still feel lost. Which is fine, because I finally understand that it’s not about finding the path to follow, it’s about creating your own.

35°44’2″N 139°36’41.35463″E

Sneakers are a more powerful antidepressant than any drug. When loneliness intensifies or panic attacks cause the walls to close in, I strike out. All I need are my shoes and the knowledge that, as long as I keep moving, the shadows can’t catch up.

April 2015 is an idle month waiting on paperwork and settling into a new home in an endlessly large city. No legal status to work until the paperwork comes through, no income for a month after the work begins. Each day is empty, formless.

My apartment is small in a way I don’t yet know how to work with. Cozy, but perplexing. It’s long and narrow, like someone furnished a hallway. The bed frame squeaks and shifts. The upholstered chair is fraying badly.

I am also fraying badly. I need help. I need answers.

All the time in the world with nothing to do but keep the bad feelings away. Not a spare yen for entertainment, either. But walking is free, and getting intentionally lost is the best way to explore.

I start picking directions and just going out to see what I find, wandering for many hours. In this way, I develop an intimate sense of the city. More than just finding interesting places: understanding them in context.

But best of all is that it brings me joy when very little else does. It reinforces my love of Tokyo and its innumerable little curiosities that can only be found by stumbling upon them.

35°44’5.5464”N, 139°36’49.2912”E

It’s not as if I didn’t know the apartment was small. I had seen the pictures and floor plan. But when I opened the door for the first time, a wave of near-panic washed over me. I’d seen walk-in closets of a similar size.

I had to make a choice: I could let myself slip into pessimism, or I could lean into the experience and get excited about it. I chose the latter.

Yes, it was small, but it was mine. Finally here in Tokyo, in my own place, and less than 24 hours after arrival.

I wouldn’t normally sign a lease before seeing an apartment in person, but I’d made the arrangements before entering the country and had to commit months in advance. It also wasn’t easy to arrange, as I didn’t yet have a job or visa, but I made it happen.

I also decided I wasn’t going to let myself think of it as cramped. Despite its size and proportions, I was going to make it cozy. I kept rearranging it until it felt right.

It’s entirely too easy to let my brain turn the world into a very negative version of itself. I can’t always stop it, but sometimes, putting in deliberate effort prevents that switch from being flipped, and that makes all the difference. It certainly did that day.

Though I’ve since moved elsewhere, I’ll always miss that first apartment. Life there wasn’t always easy during that time, but I always felt at home.

A note to readers

I want to express my appreciation to everyone who’s signed up to the mailing list or is reading this on the blog. I’m excited to see where this goes. And you might think being just 3 posts into 105 for the year would be intimidating, but it’s not…especially.

What’s intimidating is putting out writing twice a week, whether I’m satisfied with it or not. What’s intimidating is knowing that, while I’m sure some of these posts will end up being quite good, some of them will also just not work well at all. That’s just how life is, especially when you’re in the midst of trying to grow a new skill. Gotta get through the bad stuff to get to more of the good stuff.

And this, finally, is one of the reasons I so sincerely appreciate your being here. If it were just me writing and sending it out into the void, it would be a lot harder to carry through with this project. Your presence keeps me accountable and motivated, because I don’t want to disappoint you, and I don’t want to ask you to read bad writing.

So yeah, thanks for being here.

35°44’20.652”N, 139°35’50.226”E

There was a sad-looking plastic bag on the landing in front of my apartment door. The contents were mixed: the tray from a convenience store boxed lunch, an empty cigarette pack, two PET bottles, and several beer cans.

The bag itself was filthy and looked much older than its contents, as if it had been pulled from under a shrub, where it had sat undisturbed for years.

On the outside of the bag was one of the red and white stickers used by the city to tell you you’ve made a mistake with your garbage. If you put recycling out on burnable trash day, for example, or separate your refuse incorrectly, you’ll get such a sticker.

This sticker indicated that the bag’s contents were mixed and could not be accepted as-is.

I didn’t know whose garbage it was, but it wasn’t mine. Someone did, however, go to the trouble of carrying it up to the second floor to leave it on my doorstep, making it my problem.

The next day, with help from a friend, I composed a brief note in Japanese. I wrote it very carefully by hand. With the note taped in place, I returned the bag to the trash area in front of the building.

The note, in essence, read:

Blaming the foreigner is a dick move. This is not mine.

– Apt. 201

I have no idea if the note it was ever read, but the bag disappeared and I felt better. Not my trash, not my problem.

35°40’13.443″N, 139°41’42.99″E

It wasn’t immediately clear that anything strange was happening. We had just walked over the pedestrian walkway from the event plaza to Yoyogi Park on a lovely, early spring day. But as we made our way further into the park itself, the sound of crows took over.

Not just the sound of a few, which is a common enough thing in Tokyo, but the collected cacophony of hundreds, all seemingly determined to demonstrate the maximum volume of sound producible per lungful of air.

They occupied a group of trees that surrounded a vernal pool. Branches densely packed with glistening, black-feathered bodies. Branches sagging under the weight.

In the pool’s ankle-deep water, two crows were fighting. They were already tangling when we arrived, and still with some vigor. Over a short time, however, they visibly tired–first equally, but then one more than the other.

Not long after, one crow stood fully atop the other, forcibly submerging its head. Briefly and weakly, a sopping wing flailed, then stopped.

The noise also stopped. The birds all went silent when the weaker crow succumbed.

Slowly, they began to fly off in various directions. All the nearby humans whispered to one another, gesturing to the dead crow lying still in the water, wondering what they’d just seen.