Ugh, just write it. So I'm not exactly sure what lies I told everyone about this morning, but I can guarantee they were all lies. "I thought everyone was busy" or "I didn't know anyone else was awake" or "I just wanted to play Pokemon on my own." All lies. But I'll get to that in a bit. I was sitting on my bed in the hostel, not sure what to do next, but, besides the hangover poking my brain was this nagging feeling that I missed something from last night that I was supposed to remember. Something important. Restlessness set in and I couldn't stay in bed any longer so I left on my own without telling Ben or Jacob where I was going, because at that point I really didn't know where I was going. I did hope that I'd try to see anyone who was still around later on tonight.
Knowing that wherever I was off to, I would first need to get to the train station, I started toward Shibuya station. I stopped at Moss Burger hoping that a burger was what I needed for the pounding in my head. I used what little Japanese I knew to get myself a meal and sat down on a stool to eat and write. I'd forgotten how good Moss Burger is, but I should've gotten that Melon drink. As I made my way closer to the station, I found out that it was the Beldum Community Day, so I caught a bunch of those though only one shiny Beldum.
With my battery nearly dead and the game not as responsive when my phone charges, I decided to find someplace to just sit around all day, partly to rest my legs from all the walking but also just to find someplace quiet. The thing I left out about last night (and started to recall as I wrote about it in Moss Burger) was as we wandered and stopped at konbinis and hung out on corners drinking and smoking, Jacob and Ben pointing out things ... wrong, no that's too strong of a word... well the things that have been bothering me about my own life that I use a constant barrage of distractions (video games, TV, work, drinking, reading, even writing) to make sure I never deal with them. So at least I finally identified that other nagging voice unrelated to the consumption of last night's alcohol.
With all those issues, I decided a park might be the best place to go: they're free, they're quiet, and best of all people leave you alone there. I'm not exactly sure how I thought of it, but I decided to head to Yoyogi Park, not knowing what it looked like but kind of expecting it would be like other giant parks (several years back I went to New York so my idea of "giant park" is Central Park). Of course, I got lost and instead ended up at Meiji Jingu shrine. I think I was supposed to just walk past it but my brain said, "that looks like the entrance to a park because it's got a lot of trees, let's go there." Apparently there was an event, but my Japanese is shit so I had no idea what was happening. Instead of getting to sit around and rest my legs, I ended up spending the whole day on my feet wandering through the shrine, taking pictures that maybe I'll get to use for stories in the future
 |
| Meiji Jingu, by accident |
Not sure if you can see it, but every one of these bushes had a wooden placard with a different inscription written on them. Sure they might of been the listings of the variety of plant, or it could be the name of someone who made a generous donation. Either way, my imagination took it to those are the names of the person buried under the plant and that particular corpse produces a particular type of strain of the plant. Perhaps it would lead to killing specific people to produce a particular strain of the plant?
Also did do some ... what's the word for it ... reflecting, I guess that's a good word to use. There were several benches along the trail I could sit at, especially when I got lost again. Should I head down this path further and hope it loops back around, or go down the other direction and see what's over there? Why don't you quit your job? I wonder what this line is for (it turned out to lead to a well)? Are you ever going to get a job using your degree?
It was on one of these benches that a little kid ran past me screaming while his parents called back to him to slow down. He ran up the path and behind another bend. His parents turned the corner, smiling, I guess expecting to see their kid but instead found a thirty year old foreigner sitting on a bench. Not wanting to deal with more yelling, I just smiled and pointed in the direction their son was hiding. "Ano," I said as I pointed. I would find out later that the correct word for "Over there" is "Are" as I wanted to say "Are" as in "He's over there." Instead, "Ano" if I remember correctly, is more of a filler word, like "um" or "ah," or, possibly in this particular scenario, "Umm, how about you try watching your fucking kid."
Later that night, I met up with the last group of ... Plume-ers (I'm going to assume that's a word despite the red squiggly line telling me it isn't) still left in Japan for dinner at a cafe. As always, nope don't remember what it was called or even where it was or what I ate.
 |
| I remember these people were there |
The group met up with Ben and Jacob and the last group of us said our goodbyes at Shibuya station since mostly everyone would be leaving Japan the next day, or else had already left. I've never been good with those things - goodbyes. I don't take a lot of things seriously even when I know I should since who knows when I'll ever see this particular group of friends again. I want to say it's because we're all so connected these days, but really it's just that it never dawns on me in that moment that this could be the last time we see each other. And I don't mean that you could die in a horrific accident the next day or something like that (I might, I mean, in more of an embarrassing than tragic way). Just that I always expect there to be another day, so I'm just under the confident assumption that we will all see each other again, even though just getting this much of the group together for this reunion took 10 years, plus a year of group messages (I'm assuming, I'm not taking the time to scroll back through that group chat to find when we first started, it's really long). Maybe it's because growing up, everyone I knew was just an hour drive away at most. But, every other place is really, really far away and you can't just pop-in on your friends in other countries on a whim. So it never occurs to me in the moment that this could be the last time. I mean, I'm hoping it isn't but writing this a year later and older, there's that small, nagging thing in my brain that says it might've been. Or maybe it's a tumor (I'm so much closer to death). Let's just assume it isn't and we'll all get together for a twenty-year reunion and you can all bring your kids so I can overhear conversations like, "That's Uncle Alan, don't go near him, he stopped getting drunk, but now he's just an asshole," just so I can finally end this ridiculously long post on a happy note.
No comments:
Post a Comment