A lot of people dream of living abroad, imagining a life of freedom, wanton abandon and the indulgence of wanderlust.
Yet, in time, even the rowdy all-night drinking sessions become sobering reminders that things have changed. I go out sometimes with the crew I met at the beginning of my stay in Japan and realize there’s just a few of us left. There’s an unsettling feeling in the air, as if everyone is aware to some extent of their self-deception yet is afraid to bring it to the surface.
The scene sometimes reminds me of the Noah Baumbauch movie “Kicking and Screaming,” about a bunch of university graduates who choose to stay on campus and continue the student lifestyle, minus the studying. Conversations about the future always end with “Well, I’ll figure it out later” or words to that effect.
It becomes hard to tell if it’s the world that’s changed or the viewfinder through which I see it. I go back to the same bars in Shibuya that I went to years ago and see all the same faces. The wild and wacky bartender now seems like a faded actor as he keeps up the same shtick night after night. I see a younger version of myself in the fresh-faced young travelers and feel a sense of guilt over what exactly I’m doing here. Tokyo, a city once so full of endless possibilities and connections, seems so isolating and restrictive after a few years.
Weeks and years pass and it becomes easy to lie to myself even when there’s a clear sense that something fundamental is missing. My younger brother visiting put a lot of this into perspective. He was unafraid to call me up on my self-deception and was the first non-expat non-Japanese person I had spent a prolonged period of time with in about five years. He accused me of going sideways rather than forward with my life. I was taken aback.
“I am going forward,” I retorted. “And anyway, I’m still in my early 20s.”
“No you’re not — you’re in your mid-20s,” ...
We need an FG "field trip" to Vietnam
