Thought....

I was just on train coming back from work, and I had what felt like a minor revelation. It just felt really significant to me. I was standing there watching the people get on and off the train and realised that I felt quite at home. The station stops are now familiar to me, I know what stop comes after Kokubunji and Tachikawa, and that after Hino comes Toyoda, which is now a welcoming sign to see. 'Toyoda' now means home. Isn't it strange? Just over four weeks ago I had absolutely no idea about what my life would be like after May 22nd. I could not even visualise the city in any great detail. I didn't even really know of any famous sites I knew I would be seeing in Tokyo. It wasn't like stepping into a Canaletto when you arrive in Venice for the first time - the feeling you have when everything seems so familiar even though you have never seen it before. The only real impression I had of Tokyo was through 'Lost in Translation'. That film actually gave me the best and only real glimpse of life in Tokyo which, according to friends of mine at the time who had been there, it gives a pretty accurate picture. They were right. Anyway, the film was just a film and it only offered a glimpse. Beyond that I had absolutely no mental image of where I would be living or what I would be doing. It was like stepping into a void, as I described in my first blog.

This brings me to my point. I realised this evening that I now know what it is like to be living and working in Tokyo. I have a growing network of friends. The guys in the internet cafe know me now, I know the station stops and I am beginning to get tuned into the language. This place has become my reality. The void was rapidly engulfed by reality. The fact is, most of the time the thing that holds us back is not being able to visualise ourselves in potentially new and different situations. It was a very strange and scary feeling to be getting off that plane, alone, and not knowing what the hell was going to happen or what I would see. In addition, I knew I had signed a contract for a year and this was not going be something I could get out of very promptly if I hated the situation. I asked myself why I was putting myself in this through it? It is a very daunting and at times almost utterly overwhelming sensation. But taking things one moment at a time - literally, I have found it really wasn't so hard. That is the thing. When you are faced with something difficult the only thing you have to deal with is the very thing confronting you at that precise moment in time. If you allow worries about tomorrow flood in, you panic. The amazing thing about people is that they are so adaptable. One's home becomes wherever one sleeps. Even if it is a wafer thin futon in a shoebox room, with yellow nicotine stained walls and trains chundering by every five minutes!

What I concluded in my moments revelation on the train this evening was this: when one is trying to conceive of a future unknown, trying to picture one's self in an alien environment or situation, it is often and inevitably, very difficult to do so. Certainly with any accuracy. For me it was the extreme, it was honestly like a void, a black void. I had no idea. But I have discovered that the void - the darkness is an illusion. All it is, is a black curtain hanging in front of you and all that has to be done is to walk through it. Suddenly you find that there is a whole, undiscovered world going on beyond it, that you had only heard about or seen glimpses of in the movies. I apologise if it sounds like I am stating the obvious here, for in a way I am. But sometimes the most obvious things don't mean anything to one. Cliches are so over-used they become impotent. They lose their impact. One may not even realise why they became cliches in the first place - because within them lay a significant truth about the world. For me, tonight, I discovered something significant within the concept of 'fear lying merely in the unknown'. Things are only unknown to us for as long as we choose not to know them....