Following a particularly frustrating day at school, a friend and I decided to make our walk from campus to the train station a therapeutic one.
During that 15-minute walk, we started to list aloud the things we will miss about Japan - taking the last train of the night home from downtown Tokyo and walking through the still-bustling, neon-lit streets of the neighborhood next to ours - and the things we won't miss at all - being woken up every weekend morning by the sounds of campaign vans driving around our dorm, blasting messages about what ground-shaking work their candidates have done.
After that walk, I couldn't stop thinking about things that I've enjoyed and the things that I wish I had never been exposed to. I began to worry that I was starting to turn into one of those bitter foreigners in Japan, and I wanted to kick myself for being so arrogant.
It's not everyday that I have the opportunity to live in a place where "bath time" means sitting in a hot tub-like bath with a bunch of your friends, or where you can construct your daily plans according to the subway schedule because it's so dependable.
Even though living in Japan is essentially like being dropped in a different universe, it doesn't mean that our lives here are worse than our lives in the States. It's so easy to fail to keep this in mind because, as Americans, I think we have an involuntary reaction to constantly compare things here with things back in the States - not to mention the perpetual mindset of superiority over the Japanese.
Comparisons can be healthy and a good anthropological exercise, but when they begin to get personal or are stated without any basis of truth, we find ourselves in a sticky situation. No one is happy and we forget the little things here that make us smile - like the way the air in Japan always smells like incense is burning somewhere off in the distance, and how the owner of the fruit stand on our street always rushes outside to greet us good morning on our way to school.
On that note, in this final column I will not tackle some new aspect of Japanese culture and remark on its similarities and differences with our American lifestyles. Instead, this will be a collection of simple pleasures my friends and I have found here - a Valentine of sorts to the people, the places, and the things of Japan.
As impoverished as several nodes of my neighborhood may be, it will be perhaps one of the toughest places to leave behind.
From the crack of dawn, my neighborhood becomes a crowded, Asian marketplace of fruit stands, butchers, weavers and bicycles passing you from all sides.
At first, my friends and I thought it was a headache to navigate through, but now it's probably the one thing that gets us up in the morning because it's simply an exhilarating sight and a reality check for us. Not every Japanese person wears Gucci head to toe, carries a Louis Vuitton bag, has impeccably styled hair and spends their days working in luxurious high-rise offices in Shibuya or window shopping in Ginza.
Instead, they're pushing each other to get in line for the freshest fish of the day and standing outside for hours to get one of the 10 seats in the ramen restaurant that's co-owned by four brothers who have lived in this neighborhood all their lives.
I'll miss the head sushi chef at the local sushi restaurant by our dorm. He's in his 70s, balding except for patches of white hair, and his apron always emphasizes his protruding pot belly. When you enter his restaurant, a small chime goes off to alert him and the hostess that you've arrived.
He lets out a booming "IRASSHYAIMASE!" ("Welcome!") that causes the ceramic tea cups on the shelves shake a bit, and then slams his sushi knife on his cutting board for added effect. He has it down to an art. It's perfection.
I'll miss the late-night walks my friend Hana and I go on every so often, when we've been doing homework for hours and need a break - she'll need to go to the
cigarette vending machine down the street and I'll need some sort of food or drink from the convenience store.
By that time of night, our neighborhood is almost deserted, save for the stray alley cats who dodge out in front of us and the occasional old, drunk man who wants to chat up a storm with us in Japanese. The cigarette and drink vending machines cast a bluish light onto the dark sidewalks, and there's always the sound of a beer can being blown down the street.
I'll miss how all restaurants give you pre-packaged moist towelettes to clean your hands before eating. I'll miss the way the 24-hour "family restaurants" - Denny's, Jonathan's and Royal Host are the big ones - have gigantic photo album-like menus.
I'll miss the way you can ring a bell at your table whenever you need to talk to a waiter or waitress, instead of having to go through the whole awkward process of making eye contact to get their attention. I'll miss the way food always comes in realistic portions and at fairly cheap prices, because there's nothing more annoying than paying for food that you can't even finish most of the time.
That list doesn't even begin to do justice, but it's a start. Thank you, Japan. And thank you to those who have read this over the semester.
