Notes From Japan

I knew everything when I was young

Jul 12, 2025

[Written in 2017, 25 years old. Edited only for structure and grammar.]

I couldn't fall asleep last night. Maybe it was the cool September air brushing through my window, the light pollution from the high-rise buildings dusting over my room like shadows out on a street corner, or maybe it was my ovulation. Or the feeling that things are changing, the planets are shifting, and new names are entering and exiting my mind, replacing old ones on the shelf.

An older man sat next to me on the train and I watched as the sunlight behind the window poured out onto his hand which sat softly on his knee. He stared at his left as if it were a new foreign object. The greyish-blue veins were embedded in the terrains of his dried skin in the form of several wrinkles. He opened and closed his hand in slow motion. I reflected on his life, his Japanese world. He wore no ring. He moved so gently and softly when he grabbed his bag and exited the train. He was a whisper among the chaos of Tokyo and I would never hear him again.

The police officer was young and very handsome. He had hands covered in dense black hair. Each finger was adorned with thick, long individual strands of raven hair that resembled the eyelashes of camels.

I communicated a whole food order in Japanese today.

Life is a game
up, down, check
mate
The length of each eyelash is
scruff to soft skin
His breath above mine
I am in this space of time
Allowing our bodies to be the
center
of the universe.

Teaching English has its downs but today my student Kanako, who works in IT, told me she'd like to speak English to better communicate with her Indian coworkers (so she could be invited out to lunch with them, to their favorite curry restaurants). Seeing their English goals is enlightening to me and makes me feel grateful that I can help them. Also, Hitoshi told me today that last weekend he attended an international business conference in Korea where he spoke English the whole time. He was beaming as he told me this. He practiced the classic Japanese humility by saying he didn't speak fluently, of course, but I assured him he is doing exceptionally well. It was infectious to witness. And finally, a 20-year-old Hirokazu said his dream is to get married. It was adorable. Today is good.

September 16 — the first cold day. ❣️

Tracy, I remember when five years ago you came over while I was recovering from my back surgery and you explained this feeling to me — the tightness in your throat, the anxiety working.
The way you described it was so captivating to me.
So, this exact memory of you, like how it smelled outside and what you wore, are so vivid in my memory. And this post reminded me of it again. It is such a beautiful , intimate memory.
We were both so vulnerable at that moment. Both emotionally and physically. Anyway, that's what I'm thinking. Sending you love from The States. — Ariella

That's one thing I so deeply love about Japan — in the most random of places, like the curb of a vacant parking lot, there will be small mounds of richly pigmented forest-green moss lining and rounding over the cracks of the space it inhabits. I imagine that they are small microscopic forests where little organisms frolic among them.

A face-to-face collision — two strangers rounding the same corner.

I took a sip of my pumpkin-whipped cream latte the exact moment an older gentleman hacked something up from the depths of his lungs, and in enough time to glance an eye, he swallowed it back down again.

The boy who confused tsu (つ) and shi (し) in my book when writing with permanent ink... where is he now?

On the train in Japan now, I remember sitting at the base of my shower in northern Thailand feeling inexplicably sad. I sang the entire song of Saltwater by Beach House with a beautiful reverberant echo that only a bathroom shower can bring. My Chinese housemates who lived below me commented on it the next day, “Ohhh, your voice. We heard… beautiful!!” all three wide-eyed, nodding in unison.

I am 25 and my mom is 55. In two days, she'll be 56. There's a bit of sadness that comes with having your parents grow older.

The smell of seasons changing — the humidity is dissipating. September 1st.

Every morning it sounds as if I have been sucked into a vacuum of whirling plane engines. They fly directly over my building, but it feels as if they are just above my head. Walking to work an hour early one morning, I heard the vacuum. I looked into the grayish-white sheath of sky and saw nothing, only hearing the vortex of the vacuum. The sky was the perfect shade of pale grey, covering everything overhead, painting everything below two shades of gloom.

In Kamakura, the shoreline recedes in a black slither, coming closer and moving away again. The fading 17:30 light reflects like scales, bit by bit.

Everyone is a farce
a surface level of angst
and useless banter
and the irking stickiness of discomfort.
I like to observe the way people move their bodies
Their small ticks and twitches
with complete unawareness
The scabby cuticles, bitten off from relentless anxiety
The picking or certain parts of skin
Like on the left corner of the chin or pinching behind the right bicep
The way they fiddle with the tuck and fold of the front of their button down
The constant scrolling on a screen, a long fingernail in a single flicking upward motion.
Repeat repeat repeat.
I am sometimes in a bell jar, a bubble, an ocean of faces that blend, the same expressions on all of their faces; Indifference.

"We feel those things too, we just don't need to share them — we don't need to wear our hearts on our sleeves like you.”

I am happy on the train
to take up too much space
to see a local Japanese
smirk ever so slightly
at my gaijin flesh
filling up their empty space—
I smile inside.

Maybe it's in our blood to be explorers, us Americans. It's in the depths of our ancestors who somehow made it from their homeland to the shining seas of North America, a promise of prosperity, purity, and a new leaf. Perhaps by way of force, against their will. Maybe it's in our blood to sail the unknown seas, to trust that what comes next will be worth the darkest tempest sweeping us into the night. On and on we row.

As I was stepping into the locker room of the onsen to change, I felt butterflies in my stomach. I told Phoebe I was nervous, and when I looked past the glass, there were at least 20 naked Japanese women in front of me. I chose a locker, and Phoebe said, “Ok, well, just rip it off!” I was so nervous!

A row of women was sitting on stools, naked and facing the mirrors in front of them, only separated by short stone walls between them. They looked like goddesses out of a Hokusai painting. It was amazing to see and feel the essence of being a woman, sitting elegantly on a stool, lathering and rinsing her naked body in front of a mirror, appreciating God’s good work in the flesh.

The only cigarette packs I've seen littered on the street in Japan have been "Hope” brand. Hope smattered on the ground, the bystanders walking by without noticing, no one willing to pick it up.

In my darkest and saddest moments, I just want my mother to say, "It's okay, I love you." When I'm angry and frustrated and afraid, I just wish she could reach out and say, "I'm sorry — I'm here for you.”

On the 53rd floor I press my hands and body hard against the glass staring out at southern Tokyo below.

I push hard, all my weight against the plexiglass. My heart beats softly, slowly. I feel suspended for a moment above eternity, because I am.