When We Climbed the Stairs

When we climbed the stairs to the top of the shrine and looked out in all directions we decided we were lost. Before that we had been confused. Just before that we had been exploring. We started out looking for the super market. Go figure

We had been to the super market before; we knew where it was. But we came from a different direction, the sun was in our eyes, we just missed it. We found ourselves in a new part of the neighborhood--new to us. While we had missed our mark, we weren’t worried; we had some time to kill. We quickly became trailblazers. Each step brought more to our eyes, more that we had never seen. We tried to keep track of our steps.

“We’re just past the place. You know, the one across the street from the building.”

The two of us. Brian and I. The Brians. We tried to keep track of our steps but we quickly failed. A road curved, we were off the grid, the sun was in our eyes...

We weren't lost at this point. Not yet, at least. We knew that if we just went around one more corner we'd be back. We'd know where we were. We turned the corner and found that everything was still new. Even things we might have seen before seemed new.

When you're exploring, there's so much to see. You can find something new every time you look. As we walked we remembered the map in my backpack. We tried to orientate ourselves but we failed. There was nothing around us to connect to the symbols on the map. There were no street names. I couldn't even remember if our apartment faced East or West. West.

We still weren't lost. We were just at a disadvantage; it's hard to know where to go if you don't know where you are.

When we had finally made it to the top of the shrine we were high above the city. We could see tall buildings. Tall buildings we had never seen before. This was frightening. Why had we not seen these buildings from our apartment? We were just around the corner--we had to be.

We were lost.

As we walked down the hill we saw a man coming up. An older Japanese man walking in running shoes. He might have been going to the temple. He might have just been going. We stopped the man and asked him if he knew where the bus stop was. The one in front of Aichi Gakuin. It’s a big bus stop by an even bigger University.

"Aichi Gakuin no mae basute wa doko ka shitteimasu ka?"

He asked us where we wanted to go, assuming we wanted to get on a bus and we confessed that we really just wanted to go home. After describing to him where home actually was, he was surprised at how far we’d come. We had been walking for more than two hours and despite our confused ramblings had managed to cover a lot of ground. No plan, no direction, yet far from where we started. If you keep moving your legs, you’ll end up somewhere. It may not be where you intended, but you’ll end up somewhere.

That was our problem: we didn’t know what direction we wanted to go. We didn’t know where home was, so how could we get there? We just kept moving.

The man walked us back to the top of the shrine and around a corner. We approached several parked cars and he headed toward them. I know better than to get in a car with a stranger, but I would have done it. At that moment I was desperate enough to ride straight into a makeshift prison in an old Japanese guy’s basement. We passed over the cars and looped back around to where we came from.

Even with this guide, with this native, we were moving in circles. Maybe he was as confused as we were. Maybe he had just planned to walk up there anyway and figured it couldn’t hurt. It didn’t bother me.

We explained that we were foreign exhange students and quickly ran out of things to say. He didn’t seem interested in small talk. He wasn’t unfriendly, but he wasn't eager for conversation. We just walked. It didn’t bother me.

We walked with this man for about thirty minutes. He took us under a bridge, past a baseball field, across streets, by ricefields. It wasn’t the way we came. It took us a long time to lose ourselves. I’m sure we could have gotten lost a lot more quickly if that had been our aim. It usually isn’t.

As we neared a gas station, the man pointed off in the distance and told us to go toward the television screen and turn right up ahead. We saw no screen but understood the pointing. He headed off the other direction--not to where we came from, not to where we were headed, but off into that third kind of unfamiliar. I still don’t understand what that man was doing, where he was going, and why he didn’t go back. He probably doesn’t understand why we were so lost. And so tall. And so blonde. Brians.

It didn’t take us long to realize where we were; he had walked us most of the way home. With tired feet and parched throats we made it back to our apartment building and went to our rooms. We could rest easy. I rested easy.

It’s easy to lose your way. It’s great to get back home.

Cramped Against the Window

Cramped against the window of my tiny Japanese apartment, struggling to maintain an internet connection, I think to myself, Self. How did we get here?

Forgoing the complex spiritual, and equally complex, though stickier, biological question--I'm referring to the conditions that brought me to this Japanese apartment. Less specifically, what brought me to Japan. I remember a trip to Goodwill, the second-hand store, when I was about 12 years old. I found a tattered copy of James Clavell's Shogun and read it cover to cover. Not in the store, and not in a day; but over the course of a year or so I waded through that 1,212 page dramatization of Japanese history and loved it. Is that the answer to the question? Of course not.

Around that same time I tried to teach myself Japanese from a book I found at the library. Futile. However, this gave me a taste for languages. In high school I spent four years studying Spanish. That is, studying with the dedication of a typical high school student. While I didn't devote my life to it, I found delight in the way it tasted; the way new sounds trickle off the tongue.

This continued with my studies at the University of Cincinnati. I began studying the English language in more depth; learning the ways words can be shaped, like music, to change the feel of a piece. Before long, I found myself in a first year Japanese class and rediscovered an old passion. Is that the answer to the question? Is that what brought me here? Certainly not.

Later that year, I crossed paths with a Japanese exchange student, Ikeda Takahiro, and I formed a connection that I believe will last a lifetime; it has at least lasted across oceans. Taka and I became good friends with his eventual moving into my house and becoming "one of the guys." Now I'm studying Japanese at Taka's University just as he studied at mine. So is that what brought me here? I think not.

To quote Sir Elton John, or really Bernie Taupin at his most poignant, "Well, what I really mean" is that our experience here is shaped by every moment. By every experience. By every exchange with another human being. To look for that one moment, for that one time when fate came along, picked me up by shoulders and pointed me in a certain direction is foolish. This sense of self, this identity is formed by every action; by every decision we make, even by decisions we decide not to make.

Rain is falling and it doesn't look much different from the rain I've watched fall my whole life. Cars are driving by and they don't look much different from the cars I've watched drive by my whole life. There's something in this place. There's something in every place if you decide to look.