Battle Hymn of the Apartment (4a)

As I move into my 21st home, I take a brief moment to look back at the places I've lived.

So I decided not only to start listening to people's advice but to actually follow it as well. After all, I hadn't exactly guided myself to the promised land. Stop picking apart every suggestion, finding the negative is easy and there are always more reasons not to do something than to do it. I wanted to let go of my argument-counterarguement way of thinking; way of living. My mother suggested I apply to teach English in Japan. My first thought was I don't want to be one of those assholes who goes off to Japan and reads Manga and gets some ugly girl to come back with them and are twits. But really I don't want to be one of those anythings. So where does that leave me? I don't have to be something, I can just do something. I asked my father what I should do and did what he said. Same for my brother and friends. Things were already going better. I got the job.

They asked me where I wanted to live in Japan. I knew only two cities so I said Tokyo or Kyoto. They said Nagasaki. Heard of it. Checked it out on the ol' internet and the thing that struck me was virtually no snow in winter. My brother and I had often discussed, usually in the second or third week of February, what a cruel joke it was that someone had decided to build a city in such a bleak, soul-crushing place as Montreal. Wouldn't it be great to just live one year without this brutal winter? Without taking ten minutes to dress before heading to the corner to get beer? Without the dry, itchy skin, chapped lips, nose rubbed raw from blowing? Without the being deprived of daylight to the point of seriously contemplating ending it all? No snow? Sold.

"Urban Life" Furukawamachi Nagasaki Japan-   Apart from the reoccurring nightmares [I wake up, in my dream, suddenly realizing that I'm still in Japan and years have past without my noticing. I feel like I must rush back home as soon as possible but the usually illogical dream obstacles stand in my way. I am filled with regret as I've let my life pass and there is no way to get the time back. My family and friends have all moved on and I've missed it. I have only recently stopped having this nightmare.] I was glad I had come to Japan. Daily, trivial activities and objects were new and exciting. The air was different. The food was great. The girls were so cute I wanted to cry. 

My apartment was basically a small box meant for sleeping, bathing, and occasionally eating. It was on the sixth floor; the highest I had ever lived. My childhood fear of heights was eventually replaced by my still ongoing love of views from high up. My balcony had a pretty good view because, although not especially tall, the buildings immediately around mine were shorter. To the left was a mountain ( actually the same can be said about any direction you look in Nagasaki, except down). The lower fifth was occupied by a row of temples of various sizes, ages, and designs. They were dwarfed by enormous camphor trees. The next two fifths was cover by graves. Japanese graves are little walled in courtyards with a tall stone pillar at one end. Some were new. Some were older but still maintained by children or maybe grandchildren of the deceased. Others were old and forgotten, no longer being looked after by relatives who had maybe moved to another city or just no longer felt a duty to whoever the distant relative was. Once I am no longer remembered or cared about I sincerely hope my grave falls into a heap of stone and weeds. Of course these ruined old graves were the best to look at. After some trees the top fifth was covered in houses and a few other buildings of unknown use.

My jogging route wound around and ultimately to the top of the mountain and to a small look out spot that allowed you a view of central Nagasaki, the port and ship building yards, and on a clear night (always jog at night unless heat stroke is desired) a view out to the open sea  that eventually hits the shores of Korea. The trip down was via endless stairs of varying heights, widths and states of disrepair that cut a path straight through hundreds and hundreds of densely packed graves. Running past temples, little houses teetering on cliffs, and moss (and snake) covered grave stones never got dull and I made sure I appreciated the journey each and every time.

There was no escape in my tiny room. The familiar places that would provoke all the same feelings of safety, contentment, dissatisfaction and disappointment were no longer a short walk from my front door. The same well worn conversations, had and re-had with close friends, acquaintances and strangers alike were no longer an option that could be counted upon when an effort seemed like too much to ask for. Even half my clothes had been thrown away, some intentionally and some accidentally (the great sweater tragedy of 2001). 30 years old and completely up in the air.

It was like isolating one track on a recording. Suddenly the drums, bass, guitar, dropped out and all I was left with was me. Me without effects or backing tracks. Just me, dry and loud in the earphones, straight into my head. I tried to make some accompanying noise to dull it's harshness. Mostly drinking, smoking, drama, bitching, crushes on girls. But it was hard not to hear myself. I didn't like what I heard and the only thing to do was change because it wasn't going away this time. Either I eventually got used to the tone deaf shouting or I forced it into becoming something I could stand. Which ever it was, I left this place slightly better at living and a little bit happier with the way I am (and with a cute girlfriend).