Finally, once again, My Shibuya.

Shoto Stripes House

Wrote this last night after work.  I’ve been very busy today, getting ready for my trip, but here ya go, as promised.  A more natural thought, less filtered.

Tonight I went back to a place I know well.  The place I reaffirmed my love of travel and where I first started to visualize a different future for myself.  Countless evenings, I’ve sat forty-floors about My Shibuya, looking down and out what was once the place I called home.  A seed first planted after watching Lost In Translation, I was destined to return to this place that only lived in my memories.  Not once in the years previous had I seen such delightful imagery of the place I lived.  Not once had anyone truly captured the beauty, the isolation, and the loneliness of the city.  But on a rather cool, sobering day in Norwich, England, I hunkered down in the town’s local theatre, not knowing how  my perspective was about to once again shift.

The movie, if you’ve not seen it, deals with two foreigners lost and searching for life’s meaning, after being transplanted to the Tokyo Park Hyatt for the duration.  Epic cityscapes fill the movie with a backdrop no computer or set designer could ever recreate.  Tokyo from the sky has a soul, an unusually active presence, complete with a pulsing heart that beats all across the sky in the form of red strobe lights.  And so me, like the characters of this story found solace while perched among the clouds, detached from the street.  A place where isolationism among the millions can take place, without having to look away.  Tonight, everything changed.  A place that was once a defining characteristic of my Japan, Rounds II and III can now be put to rest.  My perch, so far above the life of the People of Tokyo rendered nonessential.

Nelson Mandela said, 

 “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

It doesn’t take a genius to comprehend his message, but it never really sunk in in a positive manner until tonight.  What was once my refuge, and underlying reason for my return is no longer necessary.  For years, I’ve obsessed by that view, it held onto me and prodded me endlessly.  But I was never any closer to discovering a proper reason for moving 7,000 miles away.  Always living in the past with little vision for the future.  That bar, on floor forty, isolated me, offering observation from a safe distance.  Much like the past ten months.

My plan was to leave the office, dressed to code, enjoy my usual Long Island Ice Tea, and maybe jot down a few notes, smoke a cigar and chat polite Japanese to a fully bilingual bartender.  This was the old routine.  I’ve written about it before, just scroll down and you’ll see.  Instead, I left the lobby and on my way home, while marveling at the sights and sounds of this modern city, I felt a tap.  A coworker who saw me walking by left his bus queue to come say hi.  We talked about travel, we talked about goals and then said bye for now, as I’m on the verge of a one month break from life.

Moving on towards home, I saw the top quarter of someone’s head behind a magazine rack at a convenience store in my neighborhood.  I walked inside, not needing to buy, but to investigate that head.  Turns out that little bit of head belonged to a friend of mine, a Client I’ve now known for about four month, someone I only got to know because of the earthquake in March.  We talked, I apologized for surprising her, and we too, said bye for now.

Two fun, exciting and warm encounters living among the forty million people of the Tokyo Metro area.  I’m now a part of this city, no longer looking down on my life of old.  And had I not moved forward, neither of these encounters would have happened, and I’d be no closer to regaining entry into this community.  I would have sat alone with my drink, wishing for an old life that will never be again.  My life has been filled with many lessons, more so in the recent months.  I’ve seen how God is in my life.  And however scary, I have to make decision and take action for myself, at every turn, not just when convenient.  I’ve said before that moves and changes create an energy that I’m quite fond of.  And after focusing on improving the lives of others, I’ve seen smiling, familiar faces everywhere, even in a city as dynamic and vast as Tokyo.  Until this week, Tokyo was always just a place that I missed.  But finally, once again, it’s about the people.

Peace and Love, Tokyo.  またね、東京。

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