Transition Realization #3: This is Not the Same Place as I Left it

It’s like leaving my house and then coming back to find my mom had cleaned my room and put things where they’re not supposed to be.  Or an older sibling borrowed something, and I have to go and ask for it back to the response of, “What?  Oh, uhm let me find it” but they never find it, and I feel violated that something of mine was literally taken away and lost.  Then from old habits, when I want that thing whether it’s to use it or look at it, the only remains of that object is the dusted silhouette of where it used to be, and only I know what’s supposed to be there whereas everyone one else would wipe the dust away.

One of my greatest fears of leaving the States was that I would be missing from this life that I was born into and lived through up until I was 23.  I would disappear and then everyone will continue their life without me, the world will keep spinning, and everything with everyone will move on, except I won’t be in it. Some non-tragic scene like that, with a camera looking in through the backseat window while I’m looking outside with a nostalgic look on my face.  I’m going through a place that was familiar to me, and a voice over will say, “Robert Frost once said, “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life ‘It goes on’.” *Add snarky or life realization comment that I can’t think of right now*

You see, time does some very strange things, especially when you’re gone for a few years.  I always have that smile and give polite nods when I didn’t understand a Japanese conversation when I first started living in Japan, and when someone uses the words “ratchet” or “trolling” here I feel that familiar smile and nod.  I’m not old, but I  feel old when I say “hyphy” and have to explain the meaning of it.

“You know, E-40?  Ghost ride the whip?” I tried to explain using names and phrases.
“uh…what?”  M said, and then I realized that he was gone for 4 years as well and missed a chunk of Nor Cal culture.

When I try to “catch up” with people, I realize how weird it is to explain these stories that have made up my life for over 2.5 years.  I have to explain the long way of “this is how it is in Japan” and “this is why this was so amazing” to me, otherwise, they wouldn’t understand the cultures I was submerged in, or the experiences I’ve gone through.  Sometimes they still don’t and have either an awe of “Wow…you were gone for that long outside of California?” or they would have a look of boredom of “Yah, yah, we get it, you were gone from California.”  Every once in a while I’ll see the, “Yah!  I totally get you!  When I was abroad…” and even though we were in completely different places at completely different times, we were able to connect in our experiences.

In reverse, some people would be explaining their stories of that one time in that one place that I know, and do I remember so and so?  Well now he or she is doing this, and it’s so crazy!  Everyone looks generally the same.  Some look a little older, a little rounder, a little smaller, a little more tired.

The way things are supposed to be, the way things are supposed to feel, they’re generally the same, but something is different.  I’m living in a house I grew up in, but the feeling is different.  I went to my college town and the places are where I left it, but the people inside are different, and the stories overlap the life I lived there.  Even the cities I was born and grew up in.  My family left the one bedroom apartment in Echo Park because the city was gang infested.  We left Monterey Park because of the bullies and inadequate teachers at school, and that one time an ambulance came by our next door neighbor’s house.  Los Angeles was still a raw city.  In some ways it still is, but the old things that I remembered either disappeared or grew.  The gang communities turned into hipster communities and art districts.

What is going on?  I’m trying to grasp at things that I remembered, that I once knew, to find some comfort in my transition back.  I’m beginning to feel that there is nothing to grab but old memories and habits, and I have to let those go too.

It’s time for me to wipe the dust.

Transition realization #1: This isn’t Japan

I went to Little Tokyo with the objective to see a Japanese rooftop garden with a view of LA skyscrapers, which was one of my favorite places before I left for Japan.  My nostalgia and homesickness increased in the past week for my Nippon home, and I thought that visiting a familiar place would help lesson the feeling so that I could concentrate on what I have to take care of now.

Even before I set off to see the Japanese garden, I was already feeling old habits rise to the surface.  I arrived at the train station early, only to find a late train.  Not only was it late, the train disappeared.  I waited for the next train, which was supposed to come 30 minutes later, but that train was also late by 10 minutes.  I was thinking in my head, “Arrived early, one missing train, one late train, did someone commit suicide?…oh wait, this isn’t Japan” and kept repeating to myself, “This isn’t Japan” so that my nerves would settle from the untimelyness of the schedule.

I finally got on the train, and was hoping to sleep for the hour train ride, but couldn’t.  I noticed eyes looking at me, but it wasn’t the same look of, “Oh she’s a 外人 (gaijin = foreigner),” and I could rest easy without being disturbed.  It was more of the look of, “Oh…it’s a girl…”  I gripped my handbag on my arm, put my backpack underneath my legs, left my sunglasses on (even though the day was starting to turn to dusk), and faced towards the window so that I would avoid all eye contact from anyone on the train.

I arrived at Union Station, and started to walk to Little Tokyo.  It takes about 15 minutes of walking to get there, which is not a problem for me since it takes about 20 minutes of walking to get to the train station from my old apartment in Japan.  But while I was walking in my short t-shirt/dress, that provocativeness incurs a different type of reaction in the States.  Also the hobos lined up on the streets don’t keep to themselves most of the time.  I always teased my Japanese friends to honk at cute girls they see in Japan (which never happens) since it’s normal in the States, but then actually hearing these honks unsettled my already jagged nerves.  I took safety for granted, and didn’t prepare myself for the reality of where I was, despite the fact that I was walking through a police district.

I finally arrived in LIttle Tokyo and saw familiar streets from the years before I left.  I rushed through a small shopping area in order to get to the Japanese garden, but instead got distracted by the familiar products and foods and Japanese characters (meaning the writing system, but also the cartoon characters), and slowed my pace to absorb it all.  The inside of one store was filled with Rilakuma and Hello Kitty stuffed dolls, and I looked inside to see if they had any Sentinmental Circus items (which they didn’t) and found items I would find in a Daiso or 1oo円  (en = yen = money system in Japan) store (both similar to the 99 cent stores in the States).  The cashier looked like a scruffier version of my old student who is planning on studying in the States this Fall.  I thought to myself that if he had grown up in the States, he would look like him.  He might turn into him in a few months.

An おみやげ (omiyage = souvenir) store was nestled between the beauty and stationary stores, with restaurants spotted all around.  I would think that Japanese tourists would be elsewhere besides Little Tokyo if they were in Southern California, but maybe おみやげ was the actual name of the store.  There was a public karaoke set (if this was in Japan, I doubt anyone would participate) in the middle of a circular stage just outside of a mochi ice cream shop.  A little Asian boy, I would guess about 4 years old, was singing an English song, followed by a white couple singing “Baby it’s cold outside.”  I went inside the mochi store and talked with the Hispanic cashiers, and felt so comfortable just talking that I found that I couldn’t stop talking.  How easy English was to me, and how willing I was to make any kind of comment.  I bought the plum wine and green tea mochi, held the mochi on a styrofoam rectangular platter like a server, and walked out of the store to hear an elderly woman singing an Italian song.  I walked away and her voice faded into the crowd as I was looking for the Japanese Garden.

I got lost.  I was looking at my GPS on my smartphone and followed the street signs.  Oh yah, there’s street signs in the States for every street.  That should be normal, and it should make finding the place easier.  I was still lost.  And ran into another homeless guy.

“Do you have 50 cents to spare?”
“No, I’m sorry”
“Girl, with a voice as sweet and innocent as yours, someone’s gonna snatch out that food from your hand!  Yo food’s gonna be gone! I tell ya that!”
“heh, heh…”

I found my way around and finally found the plaza to the Japanese Garden.  I headed up the stairs and saw Korean restaurants directly across the Japanese restaurants, and the majority of patrons in this plaza were Korean.  I remembered two days before I left Japan there was a rally of Japanese people with hateful signs saying, “We don’t want Koreans here!  Koreans get out!”

I went up the stairs that would get me to a set of doors I would have to get past to finally get to the Japanese rooftop garden (on the 4th floor…buildings in Japan reach higher than that).  There was a man and woman just past the second set of doors, and I tugged on the right door to open the first set.  It was stuck.  I made sure the sign said “PULL” and not “PUSH” and tried again.  It was still stuck.  I tried the left door.  Stuck still.  I asked the Korean workers outside how to get in, and they told me,

“It’s close after 7pm”
“aww…”
“Do you have a code?”
“no..”

I walked away, and moved on.

I somehow knew.  Although I wanted to find a place where I can satisfy my Japanese soul, this place wasn’t Japan.  This place wasn’t even Tokyo.  I wanted to find some slice of life where I wasn’t living through the stories I had to tell, some place where I can still experience even a little bit of Japan, but this wasn’t it.

And I have to accept that.