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fusonzai · 2 years

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あなたのファーストキス

僕のそれはオーストラリアオープンだった。15歳の頃私には好きな人がいた。この人だと思っていた。その夏、試合会場でアルバイトをしているという彼女が、「会いに来て」と私に言った。興味のない相手にそんなことは言わないだろう。いや、本当のところどうなのだろうか。人の言うところの意味が読み取れずに不安になることが多かった。今でもそれは変わらないのだが。

私は会場に行った。彼女が休憩に入るのを待ち、二人は芝生の上でランチを食べながら、ぎこちない会話をした。私が何か雰囲気を台無しにするようなことを言い出す前に、彼女は私にキスをした！初めての経験だった私は、どう反応すればいいかが分からなかった。それでも彼女はリードしてくれた。次の1ヶ月にかけて私たちはあらゆるところで触れ合った。公園でも、映画館でも。異性を抱きしめたこともなかったので、それはとても心地よかった。誰かとこのような親密さをシェアできるのは素敵なことだった。誰にも踏み込めない、二人だけの事だから。

今思えば、私が主導権を握らなかった唯一のファーストキスだったかもしれない。

(18 year old me)

大学1年生になったときはまだ18歳の童貞だった。しかしその時に、「まだ童貞だな」という考え方はなかった。ちょっと遅いかもしれないけど、早くセックスしなければならないとは思っていなかった。一方で私の彼女は私よりも焦っていた。付き合ってからすぐその話が出てきた。

「いつやるの？」

「今やればいいじゃん？」

「次会う時にセックスすると先週も言ったじゃない。」

セックスしたくないわけでなかった、ただ急いでいるわけでもなかった。

ホルモンが猛烈に分泌されていたわけでもなく、ただ、後から振り返ってみると、奇妙な方法で合理化していたのだと思う。セックスとオナニーを分けて考えていて、セックスは本当に大切な人とする特別なもので、オナニーは手段に過ぎないという考えがまだあった。

二人は時間をかけてお互いの体を馴染ませていった。すぐにセックスをしたくなかった。時間をかけて、ある時ついにセックスをした。まだその時に着ていた服とシーツの色を覚えている（ブラックサテン、ラブホみたいな（笑））。あのファーストキスみたいに、親しさと特別さをはっきり感じることができた。二人だけの事だった。そんな無防備な状態を誰かとシェアできることに特権を感じ、自分は特別な存在だと思い、その瞬間はとても信じられないほどユニークなものだと思った。私たち二人はとても無防備で、彼女はそうではないと主張していたにもかかわらず、二人はとても緊張していた。

彼女の裏垢を見つけた時に別れた。

喧嘩の話、セックスライフの話。彼女はなんでもその裏垢にアップしていた。全く知らない人たちが私がいつ初めてセックスしたのかを知っていた。その時私は彼女の気持ちを知ることができなかったのに、彼らは知っていた。別れた時には、そのツイッターが原因だとは言わなかった。ただ一人の夜に戻っただけ。

彼女の内面に踏み込む勇気を出せず、彼女の裏垢をこっそり見ていたのだから、本当に彼女を責めることはできなかった。別れた後もそれを続けた彼女を責めることができない。でも、数カ月後に彼女のツイッターをまた覗いている、同じことを繰り返していた自分を責めることはできる。

彼女と一緒に過ごした瞬間は私だけの物と感じていたし、私たちだけの物だと感じてた。

友達に聞かれれば、「もう童貞じゃないよ」と確かに言ったけれど、詳しいことを自分は彼らに言わなかった。どのようにして言うことができるだろう？この数年にかけてこういうプライベートで複雑な瞬間について書いてきたけれど、一部しか伝わっていないと思う。当然、ツイッターの140字では足りないだろう。

それから、一つの短い仲以外、三年間誰とも付き合わなかった。その三年間を通して、恋人を探さなきゃというプレッシャーを感じることはなかった。私の周りの友達は本当に最高で、一緒に映画をみたり、ゲームしたりすることだけでその時は十分だった。

(23 year old me)

次に誰かと親密な関係になったのは、23歳の時だった。

Honneの『Good Together』という曲を聴くたびに彼女の事を思い出す。私たちはピッタリだった。育ち方と性格は正反対だけど、なんとなくすごくいい関係になっていった。誰かとこんな親しい関係になるのは初めてだった。それは互いが延長線上にあるような感覚。ベッドをシェアする事だけではなくて、些細なことで意見が合うのは幸せだった。料理を作ってあげること、一緒にジムにいくこと、ビジネス英語を教えてあげること、腰を痛めた時に薬を買ってきてくれたこと。全部大好きだった。これを読んでいるあなたは「こういう事は大した事ないよ」と思うかもしれない。でもそれらは私にとってとても大切な事だった。ファーストキスと初めてするセックスみたいに、その特権を改めて感じた。

世界の男の中で私だけが彼女と全てをシェアしていた。私は誰も持つことができないものを持っていた。確かに辛い時もあったけれど、全ての時間は本当に特別なものだった。尊敬すべきもの、大切にすべきもの。

時間が経って、全ては変わってゆく。

次にできた彼女は「タイミングが全て、そしてエリオットのタイミングは最悪だよ」と言った。このセリフはとても混んでいるスターバックスの店内で言われた。私たちは通りを行く見知らぬ人たちの前で別れることになった。その時彼女は涙を流していた。

通りすがりの人たちは私たちの事を何も知らないのに、今まさに別れている事を知られるのが嫌だった。その人たちにとって私はおそらく可愛い女の子を泣かせるひどい彼氏だった。話の一部だけど、少しでも聞かれていたのが気になった。そのシチュエーションに見知らぬ彼らは多少の共感を覚えるだろうけど、理解するのは決してできない。信号待ちのキス、サプライズで会いに行ったこと、会いに来てくれたこと、見慣れた街での長い散歩。それはすべて彼らには知り得ないことだった。それらの瞬間は私たちのものだけど、この公的な場所での別れは、その時、一般的になってしまう。

その別れのあとはメンタルがかなりやられた。別れ方が激しかったから。

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時間を戻して。その人と付き合う前に私はちょっとした冒険をしていた。前の彼女から次の彼女ができるまで、カジュアルな関係を試してみた。しかしなぜ？

『Good Together』の恋愛を終えたとき、18歳の失恋のときにはなかった感覚が、じわじわと襲ってきた。それはできるだけ多くの人と寝なければならないというプレッシャーだった。仕事や付き合いを始めた人たちは、みんなカジュアルな交際をしていた。26歳の私にとって、性体験はすでにコミットメントされた関係に限られていた。ほとんど知らない人と寝たり、誰かと寝てもすぐに違う人と寝るという考えは、僕には卑猥に聞こえた。誰かと親密になって、すぐに他の人と親密になることは私には考えられなかった。

確実にできないと思ったことだが、私はやってみた。前の恋愛でどれだけ苦しかったか、否定したかったのだと思う。それは自分に嘘をつくことだった。「俺は格好よくなるんだ」、「モダンな男子になるんだ」、「そしてセフレみたいな人も絶対できる！」。私の考え方は古いのだろうと思い込むことにした。価値観のせいでこんなに苦しいのだろう。若いうちに価値観を変えればもっと楽しめると思った。確かに、セックスを神聖なものとして扱うのをやめれば、もっと楽しくなるのに、きっと私は真剣に考えすぎていたのだろう。

1ヶ月後に自分は最低になっていた。

(26 year old me)

ほとんど知らない人と寝るなんて奇妙な気持ちだった。それに寝たあとはまた友達として扱われるのはさらに不思議だった。誰かと寝るに至るまでは昔の彼女とのデートナイトとそんなに違わないけど、会って、楽しい事をして、お酒を飲んで、いつのまにか相手の服を脱がせる。しかし今では違っていた。その相手とはまだ親しくなかった。普段、数週間かけてゆっくりやる事を一瞬でやっていた。その大切なモーメントは同じ夜にあった。その時は気持ちよかったが、すぐに私は嫌になった。

僕の考え方には矛盾があった。誰かとセックスしても決して親しいわけではあるまい。肉体関係はあったが、メンタルとか、スピリチュアルには繋がってはいない。いつもその時に考えることから逃げた。「大丈夫、大丈夫」、自分で自分を鼓舞した。頭の中で「これは間違っている」と叫ぶ声を押しとど��ようとした。

いつも起きた時は後悔する。妙な罪悪感があった。セックスしたあとの時間も妙だった。お互いに「これ以上の関係を求めているのか？」と疑い合う。カジュアルな関係から本物の彼氏と彼女になる話も聞いていたから不可能ではないのはわかっていた。ただ、私の場合は絶対そうはならないことはわかっていた。その人たちとは今でも時々会っているが、最初の一回を境にプラトニックな関係以上のものではなくなった。誰かと親しくなることで自分を慰めようとする試みは、いつも僕をより孤独にさせるだけだった。誰かと親しくなることに失敗するたびに、次の人に挑戦した。そしてまた次の人。必ずしも、セックスには至らなかったけれど、結局はいつも自分と自分の状況に失望するという同じところに行き着くのだった。

思い返すと、スターバックスで別れた人と初めて「より深い関係になる」と思った時、二人はゆっくり歩みを進めていた。遠距離のせいで、ほとんど会えなかったから毎週長い電話で色々なことを話した。キスしかしてないのに、会えた時は言葉にできないほど嬉しかった。簡単にいうと、彼女の軌道の中に居たかっただけだ。いろいろな事に関して彼女の意見を聞きたかった。そしてお互いの狭い世界は少しずつ広くなっていく。彼女は「なぜ私と？」と言いながら、なぜ私が「この人だ」と確信したのか、いつもその理由を探ろうとしていた。

この時点に着くまであんなに失敗したから「彼女だ」と確信できたのだと思う。出会い系アプリや共通の友人を通じての浅い親密さの試みは、僕にダメージを与えただけだったけれど、、同時に僕が何を望んでいるかを正確に知ることにつながった。

誰かとセックスしたいと自分に言っても、本当は誰かを身近に感じていたかった。僕にとって、セックスは良い関係の結果だ。逆じゃない。誰かと寝る事だけで親しくなるわけじゃない。相手との関係が深まれば、セックスはより良いものになった。

誰かと親しくなると、本当に親しくなると、カジュアルなセックスのような虚勢は必要なくなる。偽るタイプの態度は必要ない。ありのままの自分でいればいい。私の場合は、全く逆のことを繰り返しているうちに、ありのままでいることが自分にとって有効な方法であることに気づいた。

だけど、自分なりにベストな行動をしても、このスターバックスの店内で、また元いた場所に戻ってしまった。その日以来、彼女と会うことがないのがわかった。残念だけど2年前の私の予想は正しかった。別の人と寝ても楽にならない事も理解した。

そしてしなかった。誰彼構わずセックスをしなかったのは、僕の人生において非常に重要な関係の終わりを処理しようとしているから。しかし、安易な方法が効果的でないことを知っても、それを選ばないことが安易なわけではない。困難な道を選んだ。素晴らしい気分にはなれないが、そうしなかった場合よりもずっと良い気分であることは確かだ。

そして、今の話へ戻ると、あの時から３年が経った。すべてのブログで、何らかの形でそのことを書いてきた。あの恋愛に至るまでの経験も、実際の恋愛自体も、ずっと心に残っている。この３年間は、私の人生を形成するものであり、最近になってようやく、少し距離を置いて、客観的に分析することができるようになった。

素直にいうと今までのブログの主人公は君だった。君のことに関して言いたいことや、言っちゃったことや、そして反省してから言わない方がよかったことも全てこのシリーズに書いた。このブログを書くという作業は、非常にカタルシスを感じることができた。こういう親しい瞬間についてみんなにシェアするのは割とスッキリした。自分で書けば、なんとなく起きた出来事をコントロールすることができるから。見栄を張る必要はなかった。毎回気持ちをこのブログに素直に出して、後悔はしなかった。

これからも過去だけじゃなくて、今の人生に関してブログを書きたい。みんなにシェアしたいし、現在の事を書くと、将来の怖さがもう少し減る気がする。

恋愛も、もちろん大切な人をまた見つけたい。誰かをサポートしたいし、誰かにサポートされたい。自分の彼氏や彼女が自分の一番のサポーターである気持ちは最高だろう。一緒に成長して、長所も短所も活かして、お互いを高め合いたい。また親密な関係になりたい。会話の中で、言葉にするのは難しいけれど、良い方向に変化した何かを実感できるような、そんなディテールをシェアしたい。何事もだけど、時間がかかると思うし、決して簡単な道のりではないけど、続けていきたいと思っている。

(This post, made possible by my 'Kinpatsu-kun, photo circa 2019)

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fusonzai · 2 years

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Gratification & Connection

It’s been a hot minute, friends.

I missed you. I missed me, more specifically the me that writes these posts.

I have always felt connected to nobody and everybody when I’d write these blogs. I was here typing in my room by myself, yet I wrote with the intention of them being read.I felt seen. I felt as though I existed. I guess I felt recognised; people that read my blog would tell me so, they’d say they could relate to some things and I felt that little less lonely in the world.

Whenever I’m not feeling great, it’s often a guessing game between what is my loneliness and what is deteriorating mental health. Fortunately, it’s been the former more recently.

I’ve shut myself off from social media while writing this. It’s far from my first social sabbatical, but I took a less of a hard stance approach this time. I didn’t erase accounts or anything, I just took it all off of my phone.

Nobody was on my little screen everyday anymore. Those reels that would cause me to lose hours of my day were gone. I couldn’t watch everybody’s stories and feel vaguely connected to their life despite not talking to them more than once every few months. Temporarily cutting off these shallow connections left me with my own thoughts even more so than usual. I got to thinking about how it was that I’d been back in Tokyo for 6 months and made no new friends, I’d made no effort to take up any of the hobbies I said I would, I wasn’t thriving so much as just surviving.

After my last post, I spent some weeks trying to process the finality of that which I thought would never end. I thought some things were more infinite than others. I thought wrong.

Then I thought that it was due time that I started doing something different. So I took the advice of those around me and decided ‘it’s time to meet new people’. I’d gotten so comfortable being by myself that the idea of meeting new people felt like an attack on my sense of identity; I didn’t meet people, I stayed at home and did whatever felt familiar for the night, be it getting drunk or writing the next piece, often both.

Application assisted blind dating was a first for me. There were a lot of lost souls, myself included.

You open the app on your phone, press the yellow icon and start swiping until somebody catches your eye (and vice versa). You’re overloaded from the get go with these initial fantasies. This person seems cute, this one has the same hobbies and oh this one you share the same taste in music. Maybe their profile has something witty in it, maybe they lived in your country, so many variables. For a second the world seems so vast and your opportunities seem so endless. My overactive imagination would see me creating fantasies out of photos. The reality of it was more that if you match you often don’t click with them, or they disappear or you go on one date and nothing feels right. If anything it felt like a fast pass back to square one for me.

I’m there trying to be myself and sell myself to the person on the other side of the table. We’re both kind of wading through unfamiliar waters, trying to find some common ground. Nerves and manners aside I didn’t know what I was looking for, not just in a partner but why I was even using the app. Maybe the people on the other side of the table were just trying to get laid and here I was wasting their time with my unnecessary existential dread. Anything casual was never going to work for me, go back here see my thoughts on that.

I thought hey maybe I was looking for somebody to tell me it was going to be alright. Maybe I was looking for somebody that’d make me want to try better, become a better person, help me see a future for myself again. I wrote once about sitting on the sofa in a nice apartment with the love of my life, watching a tv show after dinner but just before bed. The mundanity of it all isn’t lost on me, but it’s my ideal future so don’t be mean.

(This message is 3 years old and still on point)

In hindsight, I just wanted to feel connected to somebody again. I wanted to feel like somebody knew me, I wanted to feel that little less alone.Whether or not they actually got me (I barely get myself) was irrelevant, I wanted to feel like they did. I was always after that feeling.

I was in search of a meaningful connection again. Looking back, the times that I was most depressed were always the times I had the least connections. I know that my friends and family love me, but if I don’t feel like I can connect with them for whatever reason at whatever particular moment, in that instant it can feel like they don’t even exist.

I’ve written briefly about the blank space in my life that was the first 6 months of my life as a 21 year old. Freshly graduated from university and coming off alienating myself from most of my friends. I was driving aimlessly most nights. It’d be 2am and I’d have the’ OK Computer’ CD on loop as I drove around places I’d been a thousand times wanting for something interesting to happen.

Typically, feelings like this were usually preceded by some sort of rejection. I wasn’t enough for whoever I liked romantically and that would lead me down a path of weeks of negative thinking. This time though there was none of that, I felt detached. I’d have long chats with close friends trying to make sense of whatever I was rambling about. Yet I didn’t feel closer to them. Talking didn’t help this time. As though nothing I was saying was getting through anymore. Until then, I always felt as though I could talk things out with those closest to me and I’d feel better, I’d feel heard, understood and above all else like I’d feel I had a connection with someone.

Guess what, like all mental health issues, it didn’t go away after I tried to ignore it for years.

The next time, it hit me like a freight train when I was 26. I was tired of feeling off and alone, and ended a long distance relationship because I thought that’d make things better. I thought my loneliness was because she wasn’t there. I wasn’t quite at the crescendo of realising it wasn’t something that went away and it wasn’t anybody else’s responsibility. I couldn’t outsource work I had to do myself to somebody else.

I entered another relationship and despite the highs I still felt so alone and so awful. I didn’t know what to do or why I felt the way I did. I gave myself six months to sort my shit out. Six months to fix it or end it. A month in, my new relationship ended, after two months my job was in jeopardy and then month three saw me shipped off to an isolated town in the snow with a job I hated. I went from living with a roommate in a big city to living by myself in the middle of nowhere.

I went from being able to get home and just chat to somebody, or go to the gym and talk to people to nothing. Nobody was there when I got home, the house was cold and there was nobody to talk to.

Then around January 2020, something just came along and made every part of me that felt so awful feel so seen. It was almost as if it was peering into every part of my experience of the past 18 months and it just told me that while I was still alone, I wasn’t alone in my loneliness. That something was music, or more specifically it was Mac Miller’s posthumous album ‘Circles’.

Along with it’s sister album ‘Swimming’, this album marked a change in Mac Miller’s usual bravado. There wasn’t as much boasting and less confidence. He didn’t have the girl of his dreams in Ariana Grande (listen to the Divine Feminine for that) and he wasn’t as pleased with wealth and fame as he used to be. Instead, we’re given this grounded, painfully sincere Mac Miller. He doesn’t so much rap as he sings about the pain in his life. Jealousy in seeing former lovers find someone new, apathy towards his fame, attempts at finding some kind of inner solace in the absence of drugs and company.

Two songs really got to me the most. ‘Surf’ and ‘Woods’ feel like two sides of the same coin. Both seem to deal with romance on the rocks.

In Surf, Mac says one of the most beautiful lines on the album, just listing body parts.

Where are you goin'? Can I come too?

The whole world is open, a playground for me and you

And we could be fine, shit, who the hell knows?

It's your eyes and your ears and your mouth and your nose

Head and your shoulders, your knees and your toes

I dream of this moment

Will it come true?

The whole world, they know it

They just waitin' for me and you

And she, just like I

Got her head in the clouds

Don't need to be lower

Before it's all over, I promise we'll figure it out

It’s this beautiful 6 minute track about trying to fix a failing relationship but coming at it with complete positivity. Every relationship is just two people trying to get to know both themselves and one another. “Until we get old, there’s water in the flowers, let's grow”. It always found a way to mellow me out of whatever anxious mood I’d gotten myself into. It emanates feelings of hope, trust and the future being better as it learns from the past.

Woods on the other hand is everything insecurity, jealousy and depression can do to a relationship.

Yeah, things like this ain't built to last

I might just fade like those before me

When will you forget my past?

Got questions, ask, you know the stories

And you need to let me know

When you're leaving, where you go

Can I come?

Mac goes through the song jaded and paranoid that all his mistakes and actions in the past just keep repeating themselves. His experiences up until now are not serving to make him wiser or calmer, only more worried that the pain that he’s felt before, he’ll only feel again and again. There’s an insecurity in his pleas to his lover in this track, he wants her to assure him that she'll stay by him. He doesn’t want to be alone.

(back & forth)

I would oscillate myself between these two states for the next two years, but especially during the early months of this album. I’d feel overjoyed that I’d experienced so much beauty already in my life. I’d felt the actual love of another person who was once a stranger, I had that love from them in return. I watched as we both spurred each other to grow and become so much more than we were when we first met. I’d felt that safety in their presence and that assuredity in our future together. It of course dissipated, but the sheer fact that I even got to experience something like that made me believe in the beauty in the world.

It can’t be all bad if something like that could exist.

Of course the flip side was the finiteness of it all. I had it and it slipped through my fingers, people I loved didn’t want anything to do with me. People that loved me seemed to only keep getting hurt by my own selfish actions. The longer I was here the more pain I’d inevitably cause myself and others. If someone I thought could know me so well ended up seeing me as if I was a stranger, how could I ever really connect with anyone at all?

I came into this album with a major misconception, I thought Mac Miller killed himself. I listened to the album initially and it felt like a man packing things up. He’d had these moments of beauty and bliss in his life but they weren’t there any more. I told myself the narrative that he’d found solace with the loneliness and decided he didn’t want any of it anymore.

However, on learning that his death was an accidental one, I was genuinely so frustrated that such a beautiful soul was gone against his will. I’d relisten and find a more positive message. Whereas before I heard resignation, I now heard someone in the midst of working it all out. Nothing seemed to be going right but if you read between the lines there was a light at the end of the tunnel. It made me wonder, who was I to be frustrated that somebody I didn’t even know was dead? Who was I with my increasingly morose thoughts to be angry that a stranger died? If I could feel such empathy for a stranger, why couldn’t I give myself the same care and respect? Why couldn’t I love myself just as much? This train of thought gradually led to a positive swing. I was still alive and I could still dig myself out of the hole I found myself in.

I was still alive, and I could still attempt to right my wrongs. I realised that I was always going to have these feelings of loneliness sometimes, even with a partner. And that was completely okay.

This thing I thought of as loneliness was never something that I could banish for good, so I should be grateful for the times where it isn’t completely debilitating. I set off and tried to reconcile my mistakes in 2020, I truly did. I built bridges with the people I fought with and contacted friends I hadn’t spoken to in years. I spent as much time as I could with the ones I had around me and cherished the privilege I had of living in the same city as them again. I naively tried to win back someone I’d lost a long time ago. Then 2020 passed and I was off to the snowy mountains again. I wasn’t as upset about it this time though. I knew that with peaks came troughs and it’d work out as long as I was willing to make it so. I knew I was about to be isolated again.

For another 9 months the only people I’d see outside work were the staff at the gym or my physiotherapist. Nobody came to see me and I didn’t expect them to. Those thoughts and feelings from the year before came flying right back as I moved into my old new apartment. It was weirdly ironic that I was in the same room and same place as the year before. That feeling was waiting for me, just like the thin walls and the endless snow. I had to reinforce myself, tell myself the story that I was in a better place than my suicidal state the year before. I had to write this narrative in my head to keep myself on track.

I honed in on me to keep myself occupied and the story I was telling myself consistent. I stuck to a routine of work, study and sleep. I prioritised surviving the next day over any delusions of thriving. I hated near everything about the situation I was in which only made me want to get out of it even more. It was a prison, a hell of my own making no less. Although, I guess almost all hells are personal ones.

I wrote the majority of these posts in that isolation. I became my own best friend again. I remembered what it felt like to actually enjoy doing things alone and the safety net a routine provided. I naively thought that when I moved back to Tokyo I’d be okay because I’d accomplished so much by myself. I came back to this city and I thought now that I loved myself that bit more, I could get that which I’d lost before. I wanted to love someone again the way I’d begun to love myself again and I still do.

Throughout the last 6 months I’ve really gotten a lot better at understanding myself. Understanding the necessity to connect. The music of Mac Miller helped me remember how beautiful art can fill that part of your soul that nothing else can. My connections to not just my partners but to my loved ones and the people that occupy my life aren’t as trivial as I often mistook them. They’ve all contributed to the person writing these posts. Even if going out and looking for new ways to connect with the world and develop myself can more often than not be terrifying, that doesn’t make it any less crucial for growth. Sometimes those attempts of going out into the world have left me hurt and withdrawn, leading me to spend time alone. It’s ultimately helpful to know yourself on a better level than yesterday. Although it can be stagnating, it’s often a necessity.

(Ryan Beatty saying 'bitches' never rolls off right, message on point though)

I’ve reached the consensus that it’s a balancing act between retaining my sense of self and exploring the unknown.

I need my own world, my own space and time to just exist. The days (like the ones I’m writing this) where I talk to myself and nobody else aren’t necessarily bad. Taking time to check in with myself and pushing through the outside noise to see if I’m still alright is vital. Yet I can’t withdraw too much into being alone.I can’t build anything from that.I get so wrapped up in maintaining myself that I neglect and deny everything else. Not talking to my coworkers and denying offers to go out and see the world.

So I’ve been trying to see that world and just be with people more these last couple of months. I’m trying to open myself up to new things while keeping myself grounded. I flew back to Sapporo to spend Christmas with my best friend. We drank and ate and made Merry. I re- explored Sapporo through less cynical eyes and turned a day I dread into a lasting memory. I started going to the cinema every Wednesday. I finally spoke to my neighbour who introduced himself to me when he moved in five months ago. We drank beer on New Year's Eve and we’ve become movie buddies ever since. I stopped making excuses and booked my flight back home. I need to see my family and friends.

I’m going to keep going the way I am. Dealing with myself is a lifelong challenge, just as dealing with the world around me is. I’m going to find solace in that down time by myself while not letting that deter any chance at something new. Cherishing the connections I have, whilst not being afraid of forming new ones.

I think it’s all going to be alright.

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fusonzai · 2 years

Text

STRAIGHT FROM SHIBUYA

I thought I heard the door open just now. Thought you’d changed your mind. Why are our hellos and goodbyes always at doorsteps?

I’ve got a doorstep now, and some walls and a lease telling me I’m here for two years.

I’m actually doing pretty good. I found a job that suited me. I emptied out my canteens just to live in this house that you thought was cool.

A fresh slate, new beginnings. Tokyo round 2 and all that. The disaster that was Tokyo five years ago always looms over me. Being in that crappy house that was always one long, overcrowded crowded train away from anything. And of course a job that made me want to jump infront of that train daily.

This time it’s different though.

I finally created a space that I want to come home to everyday. A place that I wasn’t going to have to leave when the season changed, furniture that I wasn’t going to have to figure out how to throw out after 6 months.

I was so concerned with keeping myself out of chaos that I completely factor in you.

We’ve been at this for what? Five years now? I struggle to picture a life without you in it somewhere. I was once arrogant enough to assume you’d always be around, be there. I don’t think that’s the case these days.

I wanna say goodbye to you the best way I know how. I want what we had to live on in some form and I really just want something I can go back and read whenever I get lonely.

Here goes.

I don’t even remember who I was all that much until I met you. You were the catalyst to me growing up. I saw you crying your eyes out in an alleyway outside your work and for some reason just thought ‘yeah, she’s the one’.

You were everything I wasn’t. You were radiant, positive, opinionated and not willing to dull your glow for anyone. You were beautiful. Olive skin, long dark hair. Tattoos on your tricep and scars on your shoulders. Every part of you just beckoning me. 23 year old me had absolutely no chance of resisting you, time hasn’t made me any more resilient either.

I was obsessed from date one.

You said you had no idea until date three when I reached for your hand outside the Sun Theatre.

You pulled away for a moment there.

Our first kiss outside your apartment, both of us in our twenties, neither of us having the slightest clue of what to do. But hey, we made our way. Two months of some kinda puppy love, I want to take you everywhere, I want you to meet my friends, my mum, even my dad. I want you to be in every possible facet of my life. I’d drive you everywhere, you’d bring me coffee, we’d actually go places. You had this interest in a city I had none in, but if it meant I’d get to see your eyes light up seeing something for the first time, I’d take you anywhere.

I sent you flowers to you before I hopped on my flight, I didn’t know if I was more excited to land in Japan or see your reaction to those flowers.

This country felt like my own fresh start, I didn’t know anybody and there were no connections to back home. I had no obligations to anyone and nobody to look out for me. No friends, no acquaintances. I made new ones though, roughed it out on my own for some time and before I knew it, you were here too on vacation. My friends were now our friends, you were now (finally) my girlfriend and I got to learn the word 遠距離 until it was practically engraved in my brain.

I loved our escapes. You’d fly here to see me and everything would be amazing for two weeks. Stuck to one another, no time for plans with anyone else. We didn’t need anyone else, we were so obsessed with finding out so much about one another. How did you become the person in front of me?

When I came home for those three months it felt like the trial run for the real thing. This was what it was going to feel like when we finally lived in the same country. This was that thing others had found that always escaped me.

This was what it felt like to be loved by another person. This is what it felt like to be cared for. You saw me at my highest, you saw me at my lowest, you heard me crying on the phone when I got fired and you saw my face light up when my visa got accepted. You took time off work to make sure I was okay at my grandma’s funeral, just feeling your hand on mine made me feel all the more stronger.

You were the first person to see all these sides of me and still love me all the same. You were there for it all, and you didn’t want to run from me.

You didn’t want to run away with me either though. Our time together was always in these short bursts. I’d see you for two weeks and then spend the next 3-6 months waiting for next time. Ignoring my present, just waiting for that next time. A series of peaks and troughs, I could never quite ride the highs just right with you, you’d be this two week hurricane, my life in disarray as soon as you left. We’d FaceTime, text, call and do everything to make it feel like we weren’t that far away in the time between. I felt like I wasn’t living so much as I was waiting to start my life with you.

I was stubborn and often inconsolable. I justified to myself that I’d waited long enough and that you should just give up your life there and come with me. When that selfish stance didn’t go well things just began to crumble, despite your best efforts. You tried so hard to keep it together while I just shut down.

I stopped waiting and started living more. We ended when you flew up to surprise me. Radio silence for half a year. I found someone else for a time and you found yourself without me.

I knew you were finally moving here, so I sent something stupid:

“Hey how you been? Let me know if you need any help in Japan”

You could’ve left it there and not replied. I didn’t deserve a response after what I put you through.

“Yeah I’m doing good”

Our reunion had me in sorts. I didn’t know you anymore, but I felt like you could see right through me now. You knew I loved you, you knew I’d do anything and so you took advantage of what you could. In your defence you tried to end it a couple of times but I was too stupid to notice. So we went on for a year, not quite dating but not quite friends either. I felt like I was poisoning the past, ruining something in retrospect. Was it really fair to our younger selves to be doing this half assed attempt at a relationship? You’d only want me so I could pay for things and take you places in secret, hanging out with your ex is embarrassing after all.

A year of this bitterness. Conversations always had an undercurrent of disdain, words had a kind of poison to them as though they were intended to hurt, but not too much. There was still that familiarity in everything, even though a past connection and a mutual reluctance to cut things clean was the only thing holding us together. I didn’t feel loved or cared for anymore, I felt tolerated and I felt like an idiot anytime I explained ‘us’ to anyone else.

I couldn’t blame you for the way you were acting though. I hurt you unlike I’d ever hurt anyone before. I’d hate me too.I was marvelled that you would even want to see my face yet I kept waiting for it to go back to how it was, unconditional love and support. But obviously it never could.

That last trip in the winter felt like it should have been it. You’d let go, I didn’t know your life anymore and I didn’t even know why you were here. Hokkaido is a big place, why would you want to even share a room with me? I drove you to the airport after three long days and I thought it was over, we didn’t need to say anything. I honestly thought I’d never see you again.

I picked up momentum in getting my life back in order. I’d spent 2020 spinning wheels. I started writing these blogs and looking inward. I decided I was moving back to Tokyo, back to where you were. I didn’t plan to contact you and I didn’t think I’d see you. I felt like we’d realised we were done and in lieu of awkward conversations we’d reached some mutual understanding. In hindsight it was the most progress I’d ever made in six months.

Yet the day of my flight, my phone lit up once more.

“Hey how you been? Come visit me if you need any help in Tokyo”

I could have stopped it there, left things as they were. I’d gotten so much better on my own.

“Yeah, I’m doing good”

Back into that rhythm again. I saw you at your cafe first.

Fuck. Breathe.

I had to do a lap and stop myself from having a panic attack. My stomach felt heavy, my whole body jittering. There you were, still here, you didn’t stop existing because we stopped talking.

Before I knew it we were back to hotels with mirror ceilings and the faint smell of tobacco. Before I knew it we were back to you picking out furniture for my new place. Back to homemade dinners and Netflix marathons. But as you told me on end, we were just sleeping together. Nothing more. I didn’t believe you but I couldn’t find myself saying no to any of it either.

I let you back in and you flew in right like a hurricane once more. Pots, plants, half your wardrobe and half your pantry in my apartment. This isn’t what you said it was. Drives out to romantic spots away from anyone you’d know. You’d cup my face while I was driving and then cut my face from any photos you’d put online. Who was I to you right now? Fuck, why aren’t I good enough for you?

I found myself falling back into those patterns. Wanting to get closer again. In the back of my mind I thought we’d both grown up and maybe just maybe it could work again. We were in the same city now after all, I had a place and you were settled here too. Maybe it could be like those three months in Melbourne again?

I kept telling myself that you didn’t mean you only saw us as friends, right up until the night you told me you didn’t love me anymore. That you hadn’t since the break up and everything since was just because familiarity and orgasms both feel equally comforting. You nailed it home three times just to make sure I got the message.

You were braver and better than I could ever be though. Where as I kicked you out over two years ago, you stayed with me because you knew I wasn’t alright. Now we both know what it’s like to let someone down.

I read a line from my friend’s poetry book yesterday

“(Un)fortunately, I’m going to love you for the rest of my life”

Time will pass as it does and who knows how I’ll look back on this post, let alone this whole relationship. These five years of so much change. On my positive days I think about how lucky it was to get to experience what I felt with you. On my less positive days I berate myself for somehow managing to get someone who cared for me as much as you do to do a complete 180. I struggle to accept what everyone tells me. That it’s just run it’s course.

I wish I was big enough to be able to have you in my life as actually ‘just friends’ so I could offset some of this pain of letting go.

But hey, I’ll be fine. You’ll be fine and maybe if we’re lucky one day we’ll be able to reminisce and not regret.

I’m writing this not to celebrate or romanticise the past, but rather to appreciate it for what it was. I know I can’t keep trying to bring something back to life through nostalgia. I used to think it was embarrassing to share such things with strangers (even lovers) until I realised the only way I could move on from something was by putting thoughts in words. So please, take this for what it is. Catharsis.

I’m gonna miss it all, the fights, the make ups, the mattress feeling way too small. The little things, the sheer intimacy of it all.

Most of all I’m going to miss you though.

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fusonzai · 3 years

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Do you remember your first kiss?

Mine was at the Australian Open of all places. I was fifteen, it was summer, and I had a crush. I felt like this one might finally go somewhere. My crush told me she was working at the tennis and to come visit. She wouldn’t ask me to visit her by myself if she wasn’t interested right? Signs were hard to read (they’ve never really gotten any easier either).

So I went. I waited around until she went on break and we sat down on the grass, eating lunch and making awkward small talk. I remember being on the cusp of saying something arbitrary when she just leaned in and kissed me. I’d never been kissed, I didn’t know how to react, how to ‘kiss back’. So she led me through it. We’d spend the next month doing this at parks, cinemas, food courts and anywhere else we could go. I’d never even really been hugged by the opposite sex so this felt especially nice. Someone letting you share such an intimate moment with them, letting you get so close to them. The feeling that this was only for the two of you, a special moment that nobody else could ever have.

Now that I think about it, it was probably the only first kiss that I didn’t initiate.

Flash forward to my first year of university, I was eighteen and a virgin. I didn’t have the thinking pattern that I was STILL a virgin though. I was maybe a little slow, but there wasn’t this urgency to have sex. My first girlfriend was in a little bit more of a hurry however. After we started dating it was immediately a talking point.

“When are we gonna do it?”

“Why don’t we just do it now?”

“You said next time last week”.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, it was more that I wasn’t in a rush. I wasn’t not a raging ball of hormones or anything, I just had a retrospectively strange way of rationalising it all. I’d separated sex and masturbation, sex was still on this pedestal as a special thing that you do with someone you really care about whereas masturbation was just a means to an end.

It was a gradual process of getting used to one another’s bodies. I didn’t want to go straight to sex. We took our time and eventually it happened. I still remember the clothes I was briefly wearing and the colour of the sheets (black satin, don’t judge). Like that first kiss, it felt so intimate, so sacred, something between just the two of us. I felt privileged in that I was allowed to share such a vulnerable state with someone, I thought that I was special, I thought that that moment was so incredibly unique. We were both so vulnerable and despite her insistence that she wasn’t, we were both so nervous.

We broke up when I found her not so private twitter.

Details of our arguments, our dates and our sex life. Strangers knew when I first had sex, they knew what happened and they knew how she felt. I didn’t know how she felt, but anybody reading her twitter sure did. I never brought it up when we cut it off, it just fizzled out and I went back to nights alone. I couldn’t really blame her for sharing details that I didn’t want to ask her about. I can’t blame her for continuing that after we broke up either. I can blame myself for reading her twitter a few months later though and reading more of the same.

I felt like those moments were for us and us only. I told my friends I’d lost my virginity but I sure as hell didn’t tell them the details. How could you? I’ve spent this year trying to write about moments that felt so intimate and I’ve barely been able to convey a sliver of what they felt like. How could 140 characters get the job done?

Bar one short relationship, I didn’t date for three years. During those three years I felt no pressure to, no pressure to sleep with other people to make myself feel better. I had a friendship group that I was really close with, we’d spend our time watching movies, playing games and just generally hanging out. None of us were particularly social. I was perfectly content with where I was and who I spent my time with.

The next time I felt intimate with someone wasn’t until I was 23.

She always comes to mind whenever I hear HONNE’s ’Good Together’ because I felt like we were just that. Two people from completely opposite upbringings, with completely different personalities, who somehow just worked. I’d never let myself be so intimate with someone. We felt like extensions of one another. Not only sharing a bed, it was the little things that really made me feel like we just worked. I liked that I could cook dinner for her every night, I liked that we could go to the gym together, I liked that I could help her write business emails to her boss and she’d get me medicine when I’d hurt my back. Perhaps you’re reading this thinking these things seem trivial, and they might be just that, but to get to a level of comfort where I could do that with my partner took me so long. Much like my first kiss or my first time, I felt that privilege again.

Out of all the people in the world I was the one sharing everything with her. We had this thing that nobody else could ever have and it took time, it was hard work, but it was truly something special. Something to be respected and something to be cherished.

(I basically had this quote in mind throughout writing the whole piece)

Time passed and things changed.

My next girlfriend would tell me that timing was everything, and that I was awful at it. She told me this in a crowded outdoor Starbucks, tears streaming down her face, as we broke up in the most public manner possible. Everyone around us then just knew, they had this little window into our private life where I was the awful boyfriend making a pretty girl cry in public. They only had part of the story (that I’m sure they forgot an hour later) but I didn’t like that they had any of it. They could perhaps relate but never understand everything that led up to that moment. The kissing at stoplights, the surprise visits and long walks through familiar cities. That was all irrelevant. Those moments would stay ours but this public breakup was everybody’s.

I was inconsolable for a long time after that break up, not just because of the intensity of it but because of the journey I had getting to that point. Unlike before, I didn’t just go from one committed relationship to another, I tried to be more casual. But why?

When I left that first relationship, this feeling that I didn’t have when I was 18 began to creep up. I felt pressured to just sleep with as many people as possible. The people I started working and hanging out with were all having these casual relationships. I was 26 and my only sexual experience was from committed relationships. The idea that you could just sleep with people you barely know or sleep with someone and then sleep with a different person shortly after sounded obscene to me. I didn’t think I could just jump between that emotional state of being intimate with somebody only to then share that intimacy with somebody else near immediately.

I didn’t think I could, but I gave it a college try. I was in denial about how much pain I was in from my last relationship. So I lied to myself. I could be cool, I could be modern and I could have casual sex without dating. I thought that maybe my way of thinking was outdated, that it was my principles that were causing me so much pain. Surely I could still try and change them? Surely if I just stopped treating sex as something so sacred that I’d have a lot more fun with it, surely I was taking it too seriously.

After about a month I felt just goddamn awful about myself.

It felt foreign to just sleep with someone and then go back to regarding them as just a friend or an acquaintance, or even to not talk to them ever again. Actually getting to the stage of sleeping with a relative stranger didn’t feel that different from past date nights. You’d meet, do something fun, have some drinks and before you knew it you were taking off one another’s clothes. Except it was different, I’d never developed a familiarity with the person. First times that normally took weeks were happening in seconds: kissing, that nervousness in taking your clothes off and seeing/being seen naked were being rushed through. These moments that always felt like important milestones in my relationships up until now were all happening on the same night. In the heat of the moment it felt fine, then uncomfortable and then cheap.

There was a contradiction in my way of thinking. Having sex with someone didn’t necessarily mean I was being intimate with them. Sure, I was as physically close to them as possible but that didn’t mean we were close mentally or spiritually. I could be in my head telling myself this was alright, trying to shout down the voice in my head screaming that this was wrong.

I’d always wake up regretting it. This strange guilt would hang over me. There’d be this passage of time where I’d wait to see if they wanted something more while they waited for the same. Both of us just testing the waters. I knew great relationships could start as casual flings, I also knew that none of mine ever would. I’d still see these people occasionally but it was never anything more than platonic after that first time. This attempt to make myself feel better by being closer to someone always just made me feel more alone. Every time I failed to get closer to someone I just tried with the next person. And the next. It didn’t always lead to sex but it always ended up in the same place of disappointment in myself and my situation.

So when my Starbucks bound relationship began to seem like something, I took my time. Distance meant we’d spend hours on the phone every week, talking about anything and everything. We’d done nothing more than kiss yet I felt so at home whenever we could meet. The desire was there, but more than that, I just simply wanted to be near her. Pick her brain about life and just expand one another’s worlds. Of course I never told her about the time before we started dating. She’d always say something like ‘Why me?’ as she was trying to figure out just why I was so sure that I knew she was the right person for me.

I was so sure because I’d fucked up so much getting to this point. So many shallow attempts at intimacy through dating apps and mutual friends had taken their toll on me, but they’d also led me to know exactly what I wanted. Even though I initially told myself I wanted sex,I really wanted to feel close to someone else. For me, the sex was always meant to be a by-product of the connection and not the other way around. I wouldn’t immediately be close to someone just because I slept with them. I could get close to someone and when we eventually decided to have sex it felt all the more special.

When you get close with someone, truly close with someone, you don’t need any of the false bravado that comes with casual sex. You don’t need the ‘fake it till you make it’ type attitude. You can just be as you are. It took a sequence of doing exactly the opposite to realise that was how it worked for me.

And even though I did it the way I knew was right for me, here I was in this crowded Starbucks back at square one. I knew I’d never get to see her again after that day, it sucks that I was right. I also knew that sleeping with just about anyone wouldn’t help me at all, so I didn’t. No flings, no attempts to convince myself I was deprived of sex and not just trying to process the end of a very important relationship in my life. Knowing that the easy way out was ineffective didn’t make not taking it any more bearable though. I took the hard way, and although I don’t feel amazing I sure feel a lot better than I would have had I done otherwise.

(All I have is a topless selfie from that day 😩)

So here we are. It’s been right on two years since that moment. I wrote about it in some form or another in every blog bar my most recent. That whole experience leading up to that relationship and the actual relationship itself have lingered. They’ve moulded the last two years of my life and it hasn’t been until recently that I’ve managed to get some distance and analyse them a bit less subjectively.

Because in essence, that’s what this series of blogs has been about. They were almost always about you, things I wanted to say, things I said and things I wish I hadn’t. I’ve found the process of writing these blogs from January to be incredibly cathartic. I’ve found that sharing some of these more intimate moments with friends and strangers to not be as awful as it was when I didn’t have control over it. Much like sharing a bed with someone you feel truly knows you, I don’t feel the need to put on that false bravado with these posts. I’ve put my feelings on the table here time and time again and always felt the better for it.

I looked back on my posts up until this point and decided: I’m not writing about the past that way anymore, all that can be said has been. I got what I wanted by reliving some of the best and worst moments in my life. I understand those events now far better than I did when I started this blog and I’m all the more content with my experiences. I’ve really enjoyed sharing my view here and hearing people contact me saying they’ve read the blog. I want to write more about my present in hopes of clarifying my future. I want to keep sharing these pieces with you.

I also know that I want to find someone to share with again. I want someone to be that support, I want to be somebody’s support. I want us to grow together and use our strengths and our weaknesses to improve one another. I want to be intimate again, sharing those details in conversations where you can’t quite put a word to it but you know something has changed for the best. Like almost everything I’m sure it will take time, and it is never an easy route (root?) but like everything all I can, and will do is persevere.

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fusonzai · 3 years

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I think I'm talking about confidence, I'm not too sure.

I was fifteen when I first saw Great Teacher Onizuka. My friend had lent me the DVD set (as you did when it was 2008) and I was about to spend the day watching it, feigning some illness to get out of school for the day. I needed some time alone, to process everything that had been going on around me.

For context, my parents were in the middle of a divorce. My mum, the most amazing person in the world to me, was not having a good time and I was not at all possessed with the skills to help her cope. Processing the concept of divorce, while trying to mediate the two adults going through it, wasn’t something I could handle. I didn’t know what I was doing. I needed a whole day away from friends and away from parents. While everyone was at their day job, I could think about everything and nothing, uninterrupted.

My attempt at getting out of school worked, however it came with a caveat. Mum had decided she’d take the day off with me. Feeling defeated but still stubborn, I insisted that if she was going to stay home too that we were watching GTO. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

GTO begins with our protagonist, Eikuchi Onizuka, squatting down by a payphone, trying to stare up the skirts of some high school girls coming down the nearby escalator. That’s a bold open. Two delinquents notice this and attempt to then extort him for cash. He promptly beats them up, forcing them to use all the money they have to buy him some food from the nearby convenience store. This scene establishes a few things straight off the bat: Onizuka is, first and foremost, a pervert and he’s physically strong but not to the point of unfairly asserting dominance over others. Onizuka dreams of being a teacher of all things. He wants to be the teacher he never had, being there for students outside the classroom as well as in. The series showcases Onizuka using his ex-biker gang leader skills and sheer determination to change the attitude of the antagonist students in his class. Each week he solves the reason behind their resistance toward him and they join his team until eventually he really is the Great Teacher, Onizuka.

The first delinquent problem Onizuka solves is that of Mizuki Nanako. Her parents aren’t divorced but they’re not exactly doing well. Ever since her father’s company started doing well and they moved into a mansion, she feels as though her parents just aren’t seeing eye to eye anymore. She blames it on a simple wall separating her parents’ private rooms. Before it got put up, her parents would talk and laugh together, sharing in their joys but also their defeats. Then before she knew it, they put a wall up and stopped sharing anything at all.

So, Onizuka arrives at her house. He’s got a bandana tied around his head, his abs gleaming as he’s smoking a cigarette. More importantly, he’s holding a sledgehammer, ready to demolish that wall. With her parents yelling at him threatening to call the police, Onizuka ascends the staircase and begins to take down that wall. Every powerful swing, shaking the wall and cracking the foundation.

(What a man what a man what a man what a might good man)

It felt cruel watching this scene with my mum. Here we were, two people still trying to process a big life event, opting to spend the day away from the problem. Here Onizuka was, just smashing through the problem with nothing but conviction, stupidity and sheer confidence. I couldn’t quite conceptualise the thought just yet but I think I envied that confidence. I wanted to be able to take a sledgehammer to this invisible problem and fix it. I didn’t know what an actual sledgehammer would solve nor was I even able to figure out what my situational sledgehammer would be, I just knew I wanted to be more like that. I wanted that confidence; I just didn’t know what it was yet.

Confidence. A complete assuredness in your actions. You may not have any idea of the outcome of said actions but you’re certain in the choice you made taking them. Maybe that’s just one definition. I struggle to this day with how to define confidence, I’ve been confident at different times in my life for different reasons. Mainly it’s been something I’ve found as I’ve gotten older though.

I struggled a lot with it when I was younger. I’d struggle to find it and when I did there was someone there trying to take it from me almost immediately. Pink polos were gay, skinny jeans were gay, being interested in anything outside the norm was gay as well. I wasn’t bullied by any means but there was always somebody around to tell you what they thought. I’d fold under that kind of pressure. I remember when I was 10 and we were in music class, I sang a little too loud and the popular girls behind me started pointing and laughing, clipping me before I got too sure of myself.

I got older and I thought I’d found confidence through weight training, but it was just arrogance. I genuinely thought I was better than other people in my creative writing class because I picked heavy things up and put them down. Of course, this had a drawback, whenever I’d meet someone bigger than me, I’d feel pathetic, jealous and inferior. I thought I’d rid myself of this arrogance when I started studying Japanese. My initial study was diligent and excessive. I’d have two Japanese classes a week and spend the rest of my time after work revising. Looking back now it was necessarily efficient studying, but in terms of time put in the hours were there. I believed I was working hard, which led to this arrogance in my abilities. An arrogance that was swiftly cut down whenever I met somebody better than me.

So, I always arrived at this juncture where I’d learn a new skill or hobby and wonder how to be confident in myself without comparing myself to others. I didn’t quite know how to praise myself for doing well at the gym or learning something new in Japanese without immediately comparing myself to others. It meant that I’d occasionally have these emotional highs when I achieved something only to be brought down to earth when I saw that somebody could do it better. I didn’t know how to make my achievements my own. The confidence I had was too fickle, it didn’t come from within and it often led to feeling superior to others based off of a single quantifier.

I was still uncomfortable with myself. I wanted outside validation which led to comparison, boasting and arrogance. I didn’t realise that I couldn’t get any of that from anyone else, it all had to come from within.

It’s taken me 14 years, but Onizuka finally made sense to me. I was watching the incredibly famous (in Japan) live action version of GTO one night, which turned into a nostalgia trip as all the episodes were almost identical to their anime equivalent. As I was watching I was wondering why I still hold this fictional character in such high regard, of all the powerful charismatic anime protagonists I watched in my teenage years, why does Onizuka persevere?

It’s because he’s kind of a dork.

(Get you a man that can do both)

Along with the confidence and strength that being a protagonist in a medium geared towards young boys affords you, Onizuka also has some very human flaws and vulnerabilities. The intense scenes like surprise renovating Nanako’s house or rescuing a whole bunch of kids from a gang are always juxtaposed with him being absolutely wayward in so many other aspects of life. He lives at the school because he can’t afford rent, he’s 26 and never had a girlfriend and his only friends are his students. We are always shown that his confidence isn’t intrinsically linked to how well his life is going, it’s just his feeling and determination in the moment. For all that bravado we see, we’re also shown the more human, relatable aspects. He’s amazing, brave and confident, but at the same time he’s still vulnerable and human.

Yet here’s the thing, I thought confidence meant a lack of vulnerability. I thought one couldn’t be both confident and vulnerable. This isn’t some segue into Boys Don’t Cry or a delve into masculinity. I didn’t believe that vulnerability wasn’t masculine, I just thought that vulnerability meant you had a long way to go before you were allowed to be confident.

(These lines go from bravado to insecurity in an instant, but I still think Tyler is confident as fuck)

I show what I feel to be the pretty vulnerable content on this blog. I write about my doubts and insecurities, the events that shaped me and the times in my life where I really felt at my lowest. I document the struggle I find myself in now, trying to carve something for myself and come to terms with the changes that keep happening around me. I don’t think anybody reading this would have an image of me as an outgoing, confident person. There’s rays of positivity sprinkled in occasionally but it’s generally content that I struggle to tell people in person.

Before starting this blog, I would have imagined that if I wanted to become this confident idealised version of myself, I’d need to erase any form of vulnerability. Delete the Instagram posts with moody lyrics, delete the couple shots and stop caring. I’d need to kill part of myself to become someone different. I couldn’t consciously accept that they were two signs of the same coin, even if I knew it in the back of my mind. The more I’ve been writing the better I’ve been feeling. These fears and insecurities being out in the open don’t make me any weaker, they actually feel like progress. My weaknesses will exist regardless of whether or not I tell people about them, my insecurities won’t disappear overnight. I’ll never be someone I’m not. What I can do is take these things that used to terrify me and put them out in the open. In my last piece I waxed on about making my words my own, by verbalising and bringing these thoughts into the open I feel like they become my own. They’re not completely stripped of power but they don’t hold the same sway over me that they once did.

So that leaves me with confidence. I can air my vulnerabilities and doubts but then where does my confidence come from? How do I then stop it from becoming arrogance?

Let me tell you about Charisma Man.

You know how when Superman goes back to Krypton he’s just a regular person, but on Earth he’s basically a God? Charisma Man is a joke (turned comic) about how Western Men often believe themselves to be Superman on Earth when they move to Japan. Why? You’re basically bombarded with compliments from the get-go. You get told your Japanese is amazing (when it’s not), that you’re so tall (when you’re short back home) and that you’re such a handsome man (when all experiences up until now have led you to believe the opposite). Thus, you create a kind of false confidence for yourself. Or do the people around you do it for you? You yourself haven’t changed but the people around you have, and they’re whispering sweet nothings in your ear.

(Honestly didn't know it was a comic, initially heard of it on a subreddit making fun of other expats in Japan)

Hell, maybe I am good looking? I studied Japanese for a year back home, maybe I am just really good at it? Maybe those people around me back home were just obnoxiously tall and mean. Maybe I am the shit. You begin to formulate this new identity for yourself. You are Charisma Man now. You’ll be making heaps of money, have girls on standby and be loved by everybody in no time.

Except that never happens.

The reality of Charisma Man isn’t so bright. You’re probably an English teacher living somewhere far away from the big city. Your apartment is probably small and old and your salary is half as much as you were making back home. Despite being told about how good your Japanese is, you still can’t turn on the TV and watch a program. You still can’t go to the bank and open an account with your bilingual Japanese friend. You’re still single and you’re probably getting fatter off convenience store fried chicken, if anything.

It’s fake confidence with no merit, built on nothing. You haven’t put yourself out there or done anything to earn that confidence so it always feels foreign to you. There isn’t some feat you perform or some hurdle you cross to get that kind of confidence. You’re not smashing walls with your sledgehammer or confronting your fears and growing. You just get fed compliments until your confidence balloon bursts.

I felt like I was Charisma Man for a hot minute. Separated from everyone I knew, out drinking every night, being complimented left right and centre. I kept trying and failing to keep my feet on the ground. Back then I thought it was new-found confidence, but I wasn’t really coming out of my shell; I was just being obnoxious. After long the facade faded and I realised I was the exact same Elliot I was back in Australia, just with less money and a nicer haircut.

I began to think about my experience. Why was I so confident? Why did it dissipate so quickly? Why was I not the only one that experienced this little phenomenon?

I came to the conclusion that confidence can come from many places. It can come from other people, but then it’s reliant on the praise of others. It’s shallow, fickle and bound to dissipate sooner rather than later. You’re constantly reliant on the praise of others to affirm who you are as a person, you can fool people into giving you praise but that goes away before you know it as well.

It’s a big enough of a struggle to understand yourself, it’s near impossible to understand strangers. Relying on such an unstable form of validation is essentially just inviting mental trauma in the long run.

On the other hand, confidence can also come from within.

After I distanced myself from all that charisma, I began to realise that I felt my best and my most confident when I actually put the work in. I started properly studying, eating well, and writing down my thoughts. It didn’t matter as much if people didn’t say anything, because I went to bed every night knowing that I put in enough work. Nobody said anything about the change, but I felt like I was becoming my own biggest supporter.

It’s both rewarding and daunting when you switch dopamine suppliers. I used past tense in those last few sentences because that particular fountain hasn’t been flowing so well lately. The flip side of not letting other people’s compliments fuel you anymore is that when you’re not doing right by yourself, that confidence tend to dry up pretty quickly.

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fusonzai · 3 years

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Interlude: GONE GONE/THANK YOU/ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?/SWEET/I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE though

I’m doing good.

I’m eating well, washing my face and getting enough sleep in.

I’m doing good.

付加価値とはどういう意味でしたっけ？

I went back and took that language test I failed years back when we were together. You flew all the way here, wrote practice questions for me and tried your best to help me pass.

I didn’t though. I should’ve felt like I let myself down, but I felt like I’d wasted your time more than anything.

I told myself I was taking the test for myself; to prove that I could actually speak this second language. But I was doing it for you too. I wanted to impress you. I wanted to catch up to you.

I loved the way you used your second language. Your second voice. Your words. You taught me the importance of words, speaking a language that wasn’t your own so concisely. There was no wasted filler or empty lines, just conviction when you spoke. Meanwhile, I had adapted to my second language by mimicking words around me, which often led to misunderstandings and a false bravado. You tore through that pretty quick, telling me to think before I spoke.

I wanted to be more like you. I thought you were amazing. I wanted to speak my second language the way you spoke yours. You wanted the same for me as well. Taking that test, putting myself outside my comfort zone, and ultimately failing felt awful. Letting you down felt worse.

I’d gotten used to feeling bad about myself, often sinking into a mood and writing something flowery:

“We’d hold hands at traffic lights and I’d forget where I was, when I was with you. We’d have these few nights together between plane trips where we’d spend all that time together, trying to figure out every little detail about one another. I wanted to know everything about you that led to the person in front of me. I wanted to know how it was that I could be so lucky, how I could feel the way I was. I could always see that future with you, something that had always been so uncertain. Whereas before I wondered what I would be doing any of it for, now I knew what I was striving for. You & me, seeing the world. Knowing one another. Bringing something good into existence.

Whenever I got to see you I felt so at home. I wanted to hold your hand, touch your hair, fiddle with the buttons on your jacket. I simply wanted to be near you, a part of your orbit, if only for a brief moment. The time between moments was long, so we’d talk. You’d call me after work, landing in some small city or a foreign country, strange hotels and strange experiences. It was nice to only have our words. All we could do was talk, hours upon hours, until hearing your voice felt like home. I felt like we were always going to be okay, comforting each other with phrases in our respective mother tongues. “

There was a time when I’d want to post this for the world to see, just on the off chance that you would too. I’m not saying that thought isn’t still present. I’m still learning. I’m balancing between not romanticising the past and not erasing it entirely.

Time passes, two years in fact. I took that test myself this time, no support or a guiding hand. Without knowing it, I started operating for myself more. I drove to a new city to take the same test, spoke to nobody, and did all the things I like for a weekend. I left the exam feeling confident, and drove home blasting an album by that artist you never could get into.

It all came with a whimper, not a bang. No big resolve to treat myself better, no live laugh love on the whiteboard. Just these small steps, decisions gradually compounding.

So this is where I’m at. I’m doing good.

I just think it’s funny that….

I forgot to tell you I finally quit that job just like I said I would two years ago. I’m finally heading back to Tokyo, back into the unknown again.

I imagined returning feeling more assured. I wanted a new job and more security. I wanted to fly back and move in somewhere nice with you, without our future set and prospects wide open. Instead, I’m heading back with near nothing set in stone.

“Why would you quit then?”

DO you ever feel like you’re backsliding? You let yourself slide into a rut, you let people take advantage of you and, before you know it, you don’t know where you are or what you’re doing anymore? The realization is always sudden but the catalysts are not.

Works been feeling like that. I probably should have quit back when my manager told me they hated me and wanted me deported.

You warned me about them too. I didn’t listen though.

“Nah they’re just in a bad mood” I’d attempt to rationalise.

Nah fuck that though, who says something like that?

Quitting ended up feeling like ‘better late than never’.

And it really was. It feels like a break up where you look back and wonder why you forgave and rationalized so much bad behavior (on both sides) for so long.

So, I’m flying in on Monday.

And I’m doing good.

I feel so much more content with myself. With being alone and being selfish when it comes to my own self care.

I’m nervous as I’ve ever been but I’ve got to have faith in the work I’ve put into myself. I’m excited to experience new things for what feels like the first time in years. Ready to meet new people, make mistakes, continue to prove myself right by doing things I tell myself are impossible.

I can improve.

I’m doing just that.

Check back up on me at the end of the year yeah?

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fusonzai · 3 years

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Salvation through writing 2: Life goals and horny Frank Ocean

There’s a phrase in Japanese called Ikigai, it contains the character for living 生 and the character for worth 甲斐 combining to mean “reason for being’’. There’s a philosophy around it mainly dissected on Youtube about how Japan believes everyone has a job that they’re right for. You know you’re ‘doing Ikigai’ when you find a job nourishes your soul whilst benefiting society. Finding a job that you’re good at, you enjoy doing, something that benefits society and puts food on the table is the path to a fulfilling life.

This concept of Ikigai is applies to everyone. Not everybody wants to be a rich professional entrepreneur/snake oil salesman. Everybody has their own unique skillset, strengths and weaknesses that suit a variety of vocations. Ikigai asserts that some people genuinely enjoy and take satisfaction in performing tasks others might deem menial. Therefore, anybody can find their Ikigai; be it a janitor, bureaucrat or international hip hop artist.

After the decade defining album ‘Blonde’, Frank Ocean graduated from teenage melancholy and angst with a drip feed of more upbeat, confident tracks. In one of these tracks ‘In My Room’ he raps “got this lust for life in me, horny for the game,” and then precedes to wax lyrical about all his achievements and bravado. These post Blonde tracks have this maturity and confidence to them. If he was reminiscing about uncertainty and the teenage experience in Blonde, he was well and truly growing up now. Forging deeper connections and leaving deeper scars.

(In My Room cover art, I tried to recreate this shot and failed)

Frank Ocean writes music, he seems to enjoy it and he’s damn well good at it too. He profits from it and, if the amount of times Blonde appears on Best Album of the decade lists is any indication, his music is well received by society.

So, if Frank Ocean’s Ikigai is being horny for the game? What’s mine?

In 2014 I went through what is still up until this day the lowest point in my life. To begin with I’d graduated university with a useless degree and was having a very hard time finding any work relating to it all. My casual job had dried up,I wasn’t only wayward but poor now too. The final blow was realising I was romantically interested in my best friend’s sister, only to then be rejected and see them both fade from my life in quick succession.

I was alone, I was embarrassed, and I actively hated waking up every day. I dreaded consciousness itself. I didn’t want to think about anyone or anything. I’d dull myself with junk food and video games. Holed up in my room for 14 hours a day, trying to get to the gym or even take my dog for a walk was a challenge. I got to the point where I tried to make a schedule for myself. Really small goals like going for a walk or going to the gym. The hardest thing I had to do was watch an arthouse movie a day, and I couldn’t even manage that.

I was in this state and I felt I had nobody I could turn to. I didn’t know how to explain it to my friends my own age and I didn’t want my parents to worry any more than they were. Then I remembered a mature age student from university, who would always have this way of making me feel alright about life when we chatted. I still had his number from months prior and when I felt I was at breaking point, I called. He listened to my ramblings and even gave me part time work at his cafe. He then sincerely said to me that I should seek some professional help, be that counselling or psychiatry. I truly valued his opinion in that hearing this didn’t feel like something I could blow off. It felt like a shockwave. He was genuinely worried for my wellbeing. I owed it not only to myself but also to him to seek help. So I did exactly that.

I visited the doctor’s office I’d been going to for years (often with embarrassing issues) yet talking about my mental health felt leagues more difficult. He asked if I wanted to see someone that could prescribe me drugs or if I just wanted to see a psychologist. I recall jokingly saying something like ‘it wasn’t real depression so a psychologist would be fine.’ He didn’t smile or laugh and just gave me a referral.

I drove to Sunshine and attended my first session of five free counselling sessions.

Throughout these sessions, it was honestly hard to gauge if I got anywhere. After all, you’re just talking and it’s really your actions outside the room that facilitate the change. As we talked, the psychologist suggested that the cause of almost all my issues was not having a steady job and if I just got one of them, then I’d be fine. If I just filled my time with work, I’d be too busy to really think about everything else that mattered. He believed it was the joblessness that was causing all this; I needed to get out of the muck immediately. However, I was on the other end of the spectrum, I wanted to go down as far as I could. I had romanticised reaching some sort of true rock bottom because I thought then, and only then, could I build myself back up. The five free sessions ended and I was convinced I wasn’t ‘really depressed’ and stopped going after that. What I got out of it was that I needed to work.

While not knowing the full brunt of what was going on with me, my friends and family also encouraged finding some kind of permanent job. After some failed attempts and Centrelink lines, I struck gold. Through sheer luck I landed a full-time job at a pretty nice cafe. This wasn’t a career or some sort of path forward, it was a plug to stop the depression. I told myself if I’m working, then nearly all my problems would go away. I never stopped and asked myself why at the time though. Why am I working? Am I working towards something or just working?

(Blonded)

I’d hole myself up at the cafe for the next 2 years of my life. Those two years were pure autopilot. I didn’t have any goals, I was working five days a week, seeing my friends on my days off, rinse and repeat. The only thing I remember about this time was the vague goal of moving to Japan for a year; which eventually became a reality.

The word ‘brave’ got thrown around a lot when I told people I was leaving. I liked the compliment, but it didn’t sit right with me. By the time I was about to move, I’d spent the previous 3 years working almost exclusively with people who weren’t from Australia originally, or people who were here on working holiday visas. I was just doing the same as they were. Another language and a completely different culture didn’t make me brave all of a sudden. I wasn’t entering a new country with rose coloured glasses or illusions about what I was doing there.

(Back when study was a lot easier)

So I set off and spent a year bumbling around in Tokyo, being poor, having little breakdowns and locking myself away when it got too tough occasionally. This didn’t feel brave. I’d work in cafes and restaurants in the upper class areas of Tokyo, my bosses would tell me x person was famous for this and y person was famous for that. I’d see these excessive bills and displays of wealth every day and every night. I’d then ride the shabby elevator down to the staff room and get changed out of my uniform as I tried to figure out if I had enough cash to get a snack from the convenience store. I was doing the exact same thing as I was in Australia just with a different background, I wasn’t improving. There was no job trajectory. Another loop of nothing. Killing more time, I could have done this forever and fool myself into thinking it was alright because it had a different coat of paint.

So I left Tokyo.

I went North to Hokkaido, hoping to find something better, and for a time I did. It was a barista job like the others, but with opportunities to do more. I went from just making coffee to modelling, translating (badly), interpreting (also badly) and eventually roasting coffee. I felt on the up. I was getting pretty damn good at my job: bringing in people from overseas, helping my company forge new friendships and leave a mark on the Japanese coffee scene. After 18 months of hard work and study I finally had a working visa, a semblance of normalcy and a direction.

I began to envision myself in the future with an even better job and a better grasp of the language. I’d made friends and I could even see myself living in Japan permanently. Also, I was in love. Boy, was I convinced I was in love. This feeling just gripped me, overwhelmed my senses and completely rearranged my priorities. Up until now, such feelings had always been one-sided or unreciprocated. Although this time the feelings flowed both ways. I’d light up to see her name on my phone; we’d talk about the future for hours on end as I’d envision us growing old together. I’d imagine our families meeting for the first time, moving in together, getting engaged, getting married, having kids. Things that felt so foreign, now seemed obvious with her. I felt like I had at least figured out one aspect of my life by now; I had someone beside myself to strive for. I wanted to make a future not only for myself, but for us.

My life finally felt balanced, I was doing a job that I was good at it, I was making a living abroad and my personal life finally felt at peace.

Yet here’s the thing, I began to realise I wasn’t doing any of it right. I wasn’t as satisfied as I was tricking myself into thinking I was. To begin with, I couldn’t see myself doing this job for the rest of my life. The merit of it being a stepping stone onto something better also seemed farfetched now. I’d never get fully out of coffee while still being in coffee.

Once I realised how much this job wasn’t right for me anymore, I began to notice the red flags. The days felt more repetitive and repetitive, my higher ups got verbally abusive, and I didn’t stand up for myself. I was demoted and sent to work far off in a ski resort nobody else wanted to go to. Back to serving the people rich enough to be in a such a resort reminded me of how little I’d really done. I felt like I was back in Tokyo spinning my wheels. The distance of the resort also meant I went from seeing my friends almost every day to about once every couple of months. The isolation began to kick in.

At least I still had my relationship, right? Well, those feelings I wrote about; I fought myself in an attempt not to show them. I spent all of my energy trying to fight them at the time because I thought it was too much. I’d not reply to messages, be vague and try to pretend our relationship wasn’t all I thought about it. I had all of this inside me, wanting to show the world and my partner how I felt. Yet I never matured to that point; I never had the confidence to just say how I felt in the present.

Relationships can’t live on lies for long and before I knew it mine had slipped through my fingers as well.

(Shaved my head and flew to Tokyo for a $500 cup of coffee)

It was now the end of 2019: work was awful, I’d self-sabotaged a real relationship, and I was stuck in this ski resort doing nothing. I felt like I had done all this work only to end up back to where I’d started; I was looping. I seriously contemplated ending that loop. Unlike the way I was in 2014, I felt like I’d actually tried this time. I’d gotten out there, found work, found meaning, found substance. Yet it felt so moot. I felt like I’d done nothing for anyone around me except, at the least, inconvenience them, and at worst, hurt them. I was making the same mistakes, wasting my own time and everyone else’s. For the first time in years, I broke down crying on the phone to my close friend, just despairing over the futility of it all.

That spiral continued on through all of 2020. I made more mistakes. I revisited places I shouldn’t have and before I knew it, it was snowing, and I was back in the same damn ski resort. I knew something had to change, yet I was doing absolutely nothing about it. This mediocrity was crushing me spiritually, but I was safe inside the familiarity. I could do that job until I died.

I was back to being scolded from superiors, being disconnected from my friends (again) and most of all being dishonest to myself. People often say of life changing moments, things like ‘I knew at that moment what I had to do’ or ‘I decided then and there’. I’ve always stumbled in and out of life changing events, never quite prepared and never sure things are going to be as definitive as they become. This time though it felt different. I sat down with my boss and heard about his ideal future for me. I realised I wanted nothing to do with it. So I told him as much and fortunately, he understood.

Now, for the first time since leaving university I’m about to become unemployed.

Here’s what surprises me upon reflection. I’m not nervous about it at all. That huge sense of dread that accompanied me when I finished university isn’t here. Leaving on my own terms feels good. It feels empowering and often overwhelming, yet knowing I put myself into this situation makes me believe that it’s all going to be alright. There’s nobody nudging me to quit, I just know I’m done with this part of my life. I need to do more; I can do more. It’s imperative for my own health and for those around me that I do more. I know what my own hell looks like because I’ve been there for the last 18 months. It stands to reason that to get out of it I need to do the opposite of what I’ve been doing. There isn’t a blueprint to follow so much as there’s pages of journal entries guiding me on what not to do. I have one page in my diary that is just ‘I HAVE GIFTS AND I SQUANDER THEM’ written until the page ends.

Yet there’s something still lingering. A question I ask myself more and more often. Why though? Why do I need to do more? What am I working towards? What am I doing it for?

Self-help books, Instagram influencers and Jordan Peterson lectures talk about envisioning a future and then aiming for that, using an ideal future as something to strive for. Take a second, imagine what you would want if there was nothing stopping you (within reason), then make a plan, and strive for that. You can then categorise whatever you do on a daily basis as things that either help or hinder that ideal future. My problem with this is that I can’t write up an ideal future because I honestly don’t know what I want for myself. I’ve sat myself down on occasion and tried asking myself. I’ve been writing these pieces as a way to flesh thoughts out in an attempt to strike gold. There are things I’m interested in, but not all that good at, when I go to study them or get better, I don’t see an endgame to it. If I’ve got enough media, friends and a work life balance it seems I can keep sailing by, but I really want to know what is the point of heading any direction?

I can’t envision a future with me in it, let alone an ideal one where I’m ‘living my best life’. It is almost as if I have replaced my fear and anxiety about the future with ambivalence. Whereas I used to think about the future and break down, I now just think about it and refuse to believe it will ever happen. I don’t associate negative emotion with these thoughts, I just think it’s useful to observe them. Barring a miracle, I don’t think I’m going to wake up one day and never think these thoughts again. I oscillate between the above nihilism and this belief that I can do more, be better and improve myself. I’m writing in an attempt to reconcile such a contradiction.

We arrive back at Frank Ocean, his lust for life and Ikigai. While Frank seems to have taken time to work something out with himself, I’m still not quite there. I haven’t found my passion (horny for the game, in other words) yet given time I know I’ll be lusting for life, too. It’s a selfish journey for now, but it’s one that’s arguably made progress. I look back at 20-year-old me, slumped down on the kitchen floor bawling my eyes out, my dog trying to nudge her way into my face to see what’s wrong. I realise now that I was at that rock bottom I wanted to reach. I had zero clue about what to do with myself then and really no forward trajectory. Now I at least have some sense of where to go, obtained through mistakes, courage, and self-inquiry. It’s not the inspiring 180 that people like to read, but it’s an improvement nonetheless. I’m still figuring it out as I go. I can be certain of one thing, I’ll keep making mistakes. I can take those mistakes and turn them into progress. Little by little that progress may one day account for something amazing.

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fusonzai · 3 years

Text

Reconciliation through writing 1: Chuck Norris, my dad, me.

I was ten and it was a Saturday night at my Grandma’s house. My dad, my grandma and I were gathered around the TV killing time. We’d been living at my grandma’s for a while now as our new house was being built. Mum had gone to bed and I was waiting for my Dad to remember my bedtime. An ad came on for this average looking cop show, however the lead; a bearded All American looking man, sure knew how to fight. Being a kid and not wanting to go bed, any tv show seemed appealing, round house kicks or not.

My Dad also seemed to know a lot about this actor. We waited for the show to start as my dad told me all about how this was the toughest guy in Hollywood. He’d always beat up the bad guy and save the day, your 80’s ‘women wanted him, men wanted to be him’ archetype. This man would many years later spawn one of the earlier internet memes, but for now the internet was relatively dormant. The man was Chuck Norris, the show was ‘Walker, Texas Ranger’, and it was the catalyst of one of my fondest memories of time with my Dad.

(I reckon this movie still holds up)

I don’t know how to state this in any other way but, looking back on it all, my dad probably didn’t want to have a child. He had a not so conventional childhood and had never met his biological parents. I have these childhood memories of simply just not seeing him much. I remember missed birthdays and business trips. It would feel weird to see him home on a weeknight or before I went to school in the morning. He wasn’t absent per se but he was never quite there. Even when he was, it often felt forced, not straight out rejection but just relative reluctance.

What do you do when someone pulls away? You try even harder to bring them back. I wanted desperately to find a common thread with my Dad. My friends all seemed to get on much better with theirs. Why? Why not me? A child searching for shared interests with their parent seems crazy because it is. I’m entirely sure my Dad was also trying, in his own way to find those interests with me. I was my Mum’s child, I didn’t like sports and I had few friends. I could see how forming a relationship with a boy so attached to the other parent could be hard. So, what did we do? We played Mario Kart on the Nintendo 64. He was DK and I was Bowser. This game gave me a really nice couple of years with Dad, we’d play together a couple of nights a week when he was home. Then when he wasn’t, I’d try and get the fastest laps on all of the courses, and he’d wait till I was asleep to then in turn beat all my records. I remember one day when Mum and I went out on the weekend and I came home to see that Dad held the record on every single lap of every single course in the game.

It went on like this until the N64 reached its life cycle and my dad didn’t quite have the time or ability to master the new Gamecube version of MarioKart. I think this is why a few years later, watching Walker on the couch that night was so important.

One episode was all it took, I was hooked on this show. So was Dad. He tracked down the first season on DVD and we immediately went through all of it. Then began the Chuck Norris pilgrimage. Chuck Norris starred in a long string of films from the 70’s to the 90’s. Attempting to capitalise on the Bruce Lee pioneered martial arts film genre, American moviemakers had set their eyes on Norris. He was the villain in Bruce Lee’s ‘Way Of The Dragon’ and he was going to be their new star, bringing martial arts films to the West. These movies were comfort viewing, you knew what was going to happen, they all involved him beating up bad guys. There was never a plot twist or a disappointing ending. Chuck always got his guy, and got the girl. It felt as though my Dad was showing me this action star from when he was my age and sharing some of his experiences growing up. While at the same time, we were often watching movies neither of us had ever seen, having new experiences together.

Finding old Chuck Norris movies wasn’t as simple as it is now. Blockbuster still existed and DVD’s were in mass production. We’d search for rentals, then at JB Hifi and then online for international sellers. It felt like I had a purpose (however small it was) accompanying my dad to to JB Hifi, searching through every section for films we hadn’t seen, and then politely asking the staff to see if other stores nearby had any. Then whenever we got our hands on a new one, be that a lucky find or an online parcel being delivered months later, we’d watch it on a Saturday night. I got to spend time with my Dad, I felt like he wanted to spend time with me and I was frankly over the moon when he’d make that time.

(The adrenaline rush from just watching the roundhouse is amazing)

Eventually though, we ran out of movies.

I began high school, started distancing myself from my parents and by the time they divorced when I was 15, I had fooled myself into thinking I didn’t care. The first time I saw my Dad after he moved out, we went and saw an action film. It felt fine, he made me feel like divorce was this normal adult thing that happens and that everything would go back to normal. Of course, that wasn’t really the case. Two adults who had spent the better part of 20 years together ending a relationship isn’t something trivial. Having a child who is right in the middle of high school doesn’t make it any less trivial. It turned out that saying everything was fine, when it wasn’t, would only lead to problems later down the line.

Post-divorce, I was unconsciously looking for father figures. I’d want approval and praise from male teachers, I’d try extra hard in those classes to get good marks, to try and impress. Being at an all boys school, it seemed I wasn’t the only one searching for a substitute. The male sports teachers always had this flock of boys around them during yard duty, talking about fantasy football or whatever the running joke was at the time. I don’t want to say we were lacking father figures, maybe we were just lacking more examples of how to act as men. Having your father as a guide helps, but ultimately, you’re an amalgamation of everything around you, watching how others act and mimicking their behaviour.

In my early twenties I thought I finally understood the divorce and had decided at that time that I despised my dad for what had happened. Maybe I thought it was cool? In reality it was easier than accepting the fact that he was a flawed human, just like everyone else. That adoration I’d had as a child morphed into bottled resentment. I couldn’t condone his actions and I also couldn’t relate or understand them. During this time, I was afraid of two things, one: becoming just like him, and two: how I could not relate to this man even though I shared half my DNA with him. I just couldn’t comprehend what had happened with the divorce and how I was related to the man I saw as the aggravator of it.

I went from seeing him once a week, to once a month, to about once a year. He’d try. He’d try as best he could. I’d ignore emails for months because I could. Sometimes he’d call and I’d make up some sorry excuse.

It went on like this for a few years. Fortunately, I grew up a bit more and we’d get lunch. My girlfriend encouraged me to make the most of my time with him. She came with me to dinners and gave me the strength I needed to get over my own insecurities when it came to visiting. I’d have dinner with him, my uncles and his new partner. It could feel a bit forced but the good intentions were there and I’m grateful for it. However, they never felt like the kinds of interactions you should have with one of your parents. There was a familiarity in our conversations but they were always very surface level. We’d reminiscence and circle around familiar topics as opposed to having meaningful conversations. I still couldn’t reconcile what had happened and I still couldn’t relate. It turns out the first two years living abroad would really help me with this.

I’d always held the ideology that if two people loved each other they could always make it work. If one party didn’t want to make it work, then they clearly didn’t love the other. A naive ideology, but I was 25 and in the first serious relationship of my life. A relationship that had spent almost 2 years with an ocean between it. Flights back and forth started making the pain of the distance between visits only more evident. I loved this person but I didn’t want to keep dating like this. It’s hard to say what you want when you know how bad it will hurt the other person. Months of hesitation, failed attempts, and pondering if I should just endure through it helped me understand my Dad a bit better. I understood on a minor level how two people who love each other could end something. I also understood how easy (albeit cowardly) it was to do nothing about such a thing. Just hoping it would work itself out.

(Some translations: 浮気 is infidelity and 遠距離 is long distance, also Im in the green)

The break-up, the gaping space where the other person was and the struggle to find your individuality after being together so long. Experiences felt by all, experiences felt by me, experiences felt by my Dad. The shared experience of building yourself back up gave me an unexpected link to my Dad. I understood his actions post-divorce more clearly and began to realise that we were more similar than we were different. Just because I didn’t initially realise them when I was younger, didn’t mean that the similarities weren’t there. Throughout these six months or so of hardship, solitude and self-improvement, I reconciled long held grudges and found empathy where I once thought there was none. Even though I did this all alone, thousands of kilometres away, I was finally in a good place with my dad.

Then, in 2019 I saw my Dad get married for the second time in his life.

He booked me a flight home for the event. My life is going incredibly well. My job feels more grown up and, for the first time, I can see my career laid out in front of me. I had also found a partner who I was completely enamoured with. I’m excited to tell my dad how well it’s all going and he’s happy to hear it. We have lunch before the wedding, and everything feels like it’s come together. We’re both on cloud nine in our own way, him with his new wife to be and upcoming honeymoon, me with my dream job and finally a partner I could see my future with.

(My girlfriend said she preferred the vest)

The wedding day arrives and even now it still feels surreal. I can count my Dad’s family on one hand, including me. His wife on the other hand had more family than I’ve ever known, and I’d met approximately none of them up until this day. At the reception guests would ask “and what’s your relationship to the couple?”

“I’m his son.”

“Are you the groom’s nephew?”

“I’m his son.”

Unfamiliar faces cement the realisation that my Dad had found a new family, one that I’m understandably not a part of. There was a brief moment of shock but I came to accept it. Just as I had created a new life for myself as I got older and the people around me came and went, my dad had done exactly the same. Life isn’t meant to be stagnant and I can’t be angry at my Dad for trying to find a place to belong when I was doing the exact same thing he was. We were both still figuring it out as we went. I was truly happy for him; he had found someone that made him happy, and for the first time in years he actually looked happy too. While it took time to process the whole day, I’m glad I was able to go and be in the right frame of mind to cherish the occasion. It felt like a loop closing. I felt like we had finally reached some mutual understanding where I was able to go to his wedding and be okay. I couldn’t write this piece from anywhere other than a place of love and contentment.

Being there not only for the peaks but also for the troughs; that’s what family is for, right?

After the wedding we began keeping better contact, I spoke to him more about life events and we stayed better connected than we ever had before.

I emailed him just the other day. I’m currently quitting my job and the pandemic means I don’t know if I can get home with the price of flights. I sent him a chaotic jumble of words disguised as a sentence. He just replied:

“You are only an email and an online transaction away,“ with a smiley face emoticon of all things.

Suddenly it feels like it’s all going to be okay.

I am safe, I am supported, I am loved. He’s never stopped me from falling but he’s always helped me get back up afterwards.

I spent so many years expecting him to live up to an ideal I had created from what I saw around me. While it was understandable as a child, even as an adult I still saw him as that ideal as opposed to a person. It was only when I was able to accept him as that and not some impossible standard that I think our relationship improved. He only ever needed to be what he could be, he wasn’t anybody else’s father and I wasn’t anybody else’s son. He knows that I feel safe calling on him when I need advice and I know that he’ll listen and support me no matter what.

And that’s just it. Having that makes up for everything else. Knowing that someone is there in that capacity, knowing that that someone is my father, is more than enough. I’m looking forward to a time where we can watch Chuck Norris movies together again.

(The Big Day, 2019)

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fusonzai · 3 years

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Salvation through writing #1

I was fourteen when I first realised I had a body.

As with most things in my life, it was a girl I liked who brought me to this realisation. Her name was Kirby (yes, like the Nintendo character) and I was on my very first date. I thought she was cute, she thought I was chubby and had no reservations in telling me. I’ll never forget that moment. I was suddenly aware that I was being perceived. By both the at the time kind view of myself, but the less positive view of those around me.

It didn’t feel nice.

I had been taught that fat was bad, fat was unattractive, fat was unhealthy. Other people didn’t treat fat people very nicely. In fact, calling someone fat was a sure fire way to win a primary school argument (probably even high school ones). I had an obese family member but I never really registered an opinion on him. Some people were fat; he was one of them. I didn’t really care, not because it wasn’t my own body, but because I hadn’t learnt that social cue yet.

Did you guess that things didn’t go too well with that first date? You guessed right.

However once Kirby told me what she thought, the concept of fat and skinny had begun to cement itself. It’d take me on a rollercoaster throughout the next 14 years. A rollercoaster I’m not sure I’ve gotten off yet. After the date, I was left with this new sense of self identity. I didn’t really know I was viewed by other people as chubby until then. The thoughts stung, so I pushed them aside as best I could. It was summer holidays and I had online friends to play games with. Then puberty hit.

During that summer break I shot up some 10 centimetres. There was no change in my lifestyle or diet, I just got taller. I also got very skinny as that 50kg frame was now stretched out.

Walking down the stairs of my best friend’s house, his very frank older sister exclaimed something like “Elliot you’ve gotten so skinny!”. I had forgotten Kirby’s comments from about 6 months earlier and asked, “Wait I was fat?”

Of course, as soon as I said those words, the thought from six months ago had sprouted into a full fledged complex about being perceived as fat. I went back to school and received more of the same. Teachers, friends and even family exclaimed at the change.

A constant thought ran through my head. I was skinny now, I wasn’t before but I am now. Judging by people’s reactions, skinny was cool. People liked skinny Elliot more. Alright. That’s me now, that’s me, skinny Elliot.

I formed an identity around this, I was happy to be called skinny. I had just recovered from being fat apparently, and fat was bad. So, the opposite of fat must be good?

(17 years old, whatta time)

A newfound interest in alternative rock and everything that inhabited that genre didn’t help. The Front men of these bands were skinny, the girls around me liked these men, so shouldn’t that be what I need to look like? I didn’t know who I was yet. I didn’t have a sense of self identity. I needed to imitate what was around me to get by.

It started off fine enough, a high metabolism meant I didn’t need to actively do anything to be skinny. It got significantly worse for a period though. In an effort to mimic those Front men, I’d buy these progressively tighter jeans until I was shopping in the women’s section. Something about fitting into these skinny jeans messed me up. I was weighing myself in the morning and at night, feeling disgusted when I weighed more in the evening and then relieved to see it all disappear in the morning. I relished in getting sick once. Losing my appetite meant I was sub 50 kg if only for a few days. For context, nowadays even if I’m at my leanest I’m still at least 70 kg.

The skinny phase came and went fortunately, I found self worth in other things and I wasn’t as obsessed with what my body looked like. At least for a time.

High school ended and after what felt like forever, university began. Everyone was trying their hardest to look cool. What was cool? Apparently it wasn’t skinny anymore, I needed some meat on my shoulders.

I was starting to wonder then what constituted a masculine body. My relationships weren’t going well, I didn’t click with many of my peers and the girls I liked never felt the same. I misconstrued personality flaws, miscommunications and just general incompatibility with physical attraction. My body and my body was to blame. I needed to not be so skinny and I also needed to be so ripped my abs were showing. This physical remedy could solve the spiritual ailment.

It’s easy to see now that I wasn’t wondering about the constitution of masculinity at all, I was just trying to adapt to what was around me once more . I was still unsure of my own place and trying to fill in the blanks with whatever seemed right.

And so, like many a gym rat, the disgust with my own body led me into the gym 7 days a week. Motivation was never a problem, I never had to force myself and still don’t. The reasoning for going may have initially been less than ideal but the enjoyment was real.

At the beginning, it was all positive, I was eating a lot better, I had found this new confidence in myself and found something I could do for myself, by myself. I didn’t tell anyone about going to the gym for the first year or so. I wanted it to be mine but more narcissistically, I wanted everyone to notice.

Results came and gradually everyone did notice, however this once positive direction turned into something more warped. Intense feelings of resentment and shame sprung up. Movie stars and friends of friends looked better than me, why? What were they doing that I wasn’t? Why wasn’t I there yet? How could I fuck this up? Why can’t I do this one thing right? Why can’t I have this one thing I’m good at?

I had these thoughts on the verge of social media (like Instagram) blowing up, so I wasn’t bombarded everyday with comparisons. I worked through it and I’m grateful to this day for that. I wouldn’t have survived the media assault on my insecurities if it had all happened now.

(Friends and birthday crepes helped me through it all)

I’m writing this as a way to both understand and reconcile the actions I’ve taken in the past. Instead of thinking of them as mistakes, treating them as learning curves.

Firstly, this initial obsession with being thin stemmed from my aversion to being labelled fat and the identity I thought I gained from not being so. I found a place in a group, I felt I belonged because I looked the right way. Not because we had similar interests, upbringings and personalities, no it was because we looked so similar. Whilst I was never scared of being rejected by the group, I was afraid of losing my place. It seems ridiculous now, even if it meant the world back then.

The rebound to the opposite end of the body image spectrum was a private one, yet still stemmed from this lack of identity. Being twenty years old trying to piece together what I wanted to show to the world, wanting to alter how I was perceived. I thought that people would like me more if I looked better. Changing my physical appearance for the perceived approval of those around me just felt like a loop of my teenage years. Like all experiences, you glean what you can and discard the rest.

I mentioned how this was a rollercoaster that wasn’t over. I don’t think I’m done figuring out how I want to be perceived because it’s both something uncontrollable and something ever changing. That image can flourish or it can deteriorate, which direction it goes in is about the only thing you can control.

(A lot of time later)

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fusonzai · 3 years

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I feel like I’ve wasted my life.

I feel like I could’ve been in a better place if only I had that stroke of luck , or if things just went my way a little more of the time.

‘What could have been?’ is always exponentially more alluring than what is. It’s more comfortable to daydream about what if than to accept what is.

Dylan Moran (Black Books) once talked about potential.

“You should stay away from your potential…you’ll mess it up, it’s like your bank balance, it’s always less than you think.”

I reread an old letter my friend gave me before I moved here. He told me he thought I had a lot of potential. I reread the first love letter I ever got, she told me the same.

It’s equal parts paralysing and invigorating being the only one that can prove those three right or wrong. I like to think I’m optimistic when I wake up everyday feeling that I can do a little bit better than the day before. Although some days I expect too much and end up self sabotaging, pitying myself for hours on end. Yet it’s that feeling that I’ve got tomorrow to do even better, to try even harder, to turn yesterdays faults into something more. It’s that feeling that keeps me going, the curiosity of what tomorrow may be.

But hey, what if tomorrow never was?

Fresh off 花束みたいな恋をした I was implored by my boss to watch Solanin. Solanin follows Meiko and Taneda, a young couple living together, searching for meaning and a sense of belonging in Japanese society. Meiko works a full time job that she doesn’t enjoy. The harassment, the long hours and most of all, the dullness of it all. Her musician boyfriend Taneda isn’t doing much better, working a dead end part time job while rehearsing with his band. They haven’t played live in years and it seems as though they’re bound to give up.

One day Meiko wakes up and decides to quit her job. At this point , unclear on her own next steps, she puts all her efforts (and savings) into pushing Taneda to try harder with his band. Is it fair to push someone else on their journey if you don’t even know what you want to do in life? How do you tell where their dreams end and your own insecurities and uncertainties begin? Taneda’s band consists of him and his two childhood friends, all three of them are living but they’re not really thriving. The band rehearsals seem to serve as more of a chance to hang out than anything. They help continue the status quo, which Meiko then disrupts when she tells them all she’s quit her job.

There’s some good to be found in the sudden pressure placed upon Taneda. He’s aware that if Meiko continues to be unemployed he might actually have to start providing (it’s heavily implied that they lived on her full time salary) and that time is running out if he wants to pursue music as a career. Spurred on by Taneda’s newly found motivation, the band produces their first EP with the titular track ‘Solanin’.

They send it out to as many record labels as they can think of.

Weeks pass , and they get no responses. Almost as if all their efforts were for nothing. Then finally, they get invited to a famous record label to discuss their EP.

(The movie is based off a manga, I think they nailed casting)

Taneda, one of his band mates and Meiko head to the meeting. Here you wonder what Meiko is even doing there? She lies and says she’s in the band during the meeting, further squeezing herself into Taneda’s world. The three enter the meeting and something isn’t right. Their meeting is with a retired rocker turned pragmatic music executive. Taneda recognises him from an old band he still loves. On the other hand the music exec doesn’t really care too much about the music Haneda’s band is making. He wants to use the band to launch the career of an idol, with her at the forefront and Taneda & co in the background playing. It’s not the dream, but it’s not a bad deal. They’d all be compensated fairly and be able to produce music with some creative control. Taneda and his band mate go mute, they could break out from their respective ruts with the security and opportunity this offer brings them. But it wouldn’t truly be their own. Maybe they’re just not cut out to make it on their own?

Before the two can respond, Meiko refuses for them and the meeting ends. Later on in the mens bathroom, a still startled Taneda asks the music exec why he stopped playing to which he responds “we have to adapt to the times before we’re kicked off the stage”. Here I feel as though we’re presented with the notion that dreams may not take the shape we want them to and that, like a lot of things, we may have to compromise initially in order to pursue what we can further along. The music executive's dream isn’t necessarily dead, he still orbits a place close to his ideal. Haneda hasn’t even had lift off yet.

Chance lost, a dejected Haneda seemingly decides to give up on the band and Meiko. He tells Meiko that they should break up. He’s going to go back to the family farm and help them out whilst supporting himself. Meiko refuses the break up and wants them (him?) to keep trying to pursue their (his?) dream. This puts Taneda in a spin, he disappears, leaving Meiko distraught and wondering if she just got rejected. A week passes and he finally calls, he’s gone back to his old dead end job, apologises to Meiko for even mentioning breaking up and says his passion for the band is renewed. His dream is still alive, he’s fine now, really.

On the drive back to Meiko, Haneda dies in a traffic accident. Just like that.

All that potential, that unknown, those possibilities vanish. We’re left never knowing what could have been.

This is only the films halfway point though and after much grieving, Meiko decides to take up guitar and perform ‘Solanin’ with Taneda’s band. As chance would have it, the music producer from earlier is at the same event. He’s scouting a different band and we’re left wondering about Meiko’s fate post performance. An uplifting performance of the titular song leaves the viewer in good spirits but the open ended nature of the ending leaves us with some important questions. Was Meiko riding off the coattails of Taneda’s dream due to an absence of her own? Can we even be sure of Taneda’s exact dream as we view him through Meiko’s lens?

(Meiko casting, also on point)

Ultimately, what was Taneda really capable of doing anyway? Unfortunately we’ll never know. He never took that first step towards a career in music. Meiko said no before he could respond and he never followed it up. But what right did she have to decide for him? The offer wasn’t ideal but it was a beginning, it was a something as opposed to the dead end jobs and no replies he’d received up until now. To me, it felt like a first step. It felt like the beginning of something. And it was robbed from him. It wasn’t the accidental death that struck me, it was him letting his own fate be decided for him.

Perhaps Taneda was scared of realising his potential? Maybe he wasn’t actually skilled enough to make it on his own. He was obviously afraid of failing and not being able to support Meiko but in all likelihood he was more afraid of taking a look inside himself and realising ‘it’ was insufficient. I’d even argue that he wasn’t that passionate anyway, he and Meiko were sharing a dream that neither of them truly believed in.

We round back into potential then. It’s a beautifully abstract thing in that it’s something you can’t really gauge. It’s truly endless and ultimately decided by you. You may run out of energy or inspiration but you’ve always got the potential to be more. And only you can decide to be more. You might hear someone say ‘I just didn’t have it in me’ when they fail a task, this feels like a half truth. You might have failed this attempt but you have the potential to be better. However , you’ll never be better if you don’t take that first step.

(Me taking a first step, winning an Aeropress competition in Nagoya 4 years ago)

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fusonzai · 3 years

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花束みたいな恋をした

Hantaba mitai na koi wo shita

When I first moved to Japan, to say I had some struggles would be an understatement.

It was my first time living away from home, and in a foreign country where I didn’t speak much of the language. I mismanaged my savings, overestimated how much I’d be getting paid, and greatly underestimated just how bad the dreaded daily train ride was.

I was living in a pretty worn down apartment in a somewhat far area called Chofu. Life there was certainly interesting. The apartment was built at least 100 years prior to me living there and it was located 30 minutes from the station. Even though the rent was cheap I was still living pay check to pay check, misusing my credit card in an attempt to feign normalcy.

(First book store, pretending I could read anything)

Suffice to say five years later, when I stepped into the cinema to watch 花束みたいな恋をした, I was taken aback when the films male lead was also living pay check to pay check in a decrepit apartment in Chofu. Shots of Chofu station and the recently completed shopping mall all made me nostalgic for a time that I feel was incredibly formative for me now, years later.

The two leads are both incredibly talented and popular entertainers in Japan. Suda Masaki (the male lead) has appeared in countless television shows and released acclaimed albums while Arimura Kasumi comes off to me as Japan’s sweetheart; starring in romantic dramas in both television and cinema. Their popularity could be compared to that of Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya. I’m not one to spoil films for people, or re-tell stories already told on the screen, but due to the sheer unlikelihood of this film being translated or released anytime soon; some concessions had to be made.

(Tell me these two aren't adorable)

The film centres around the 5 year relationship between two soon to be university graduates, Mugi (Suda Masaki) and Kinu (Arimura Kasumi), and the highs and lows that they experience as a couple in their twenties, navigating their first adult relationship. Mugi is a creative type, writing short comic strips on commission, not too sure of his own direction post university whilst Kinu describes herself as the type of person whose luck is so bad that whenever she drops toast, it always falls butter side first. Kinu comes off as more earnest and less outgoing than Mugi, however the two are both still on that precipice of adulthood. Not quite sure where their lives will lead, still enjoying that idle time between the end of university and the jump into the working world.

(Mugi & Kinu during that honeymoon phase)

We start in 2020 with both Mugi and Kinu sitting in a cafe with different partners; they’ve clearly broken up and don’t even acknowledge each other when they first notice one another. A chance at rekindled love seems unlikely, this is going to be a how they got to where they are type story. A little less ‘The Notebook’ and a little more’500 Days of Summer’.

We’re then taken back to 2015 and see the two meet at the always busy Meidaimae station. They both fail to catch that last train home and spend a night together in Karaoke Bars, Izakayas and eventually Mugi’s apartment where Kinu falls asleep watching his 3 hour long movie on Gas Tanks. They go on three dates where Mugi (afraid of being relegated to only friends) confesses his feelings towards Kinu, and the two start dating.

These initial encounters are so important in detailing the striking amount of shared interests they have. They read the same books, use movie tickets as bookmarks for said books, like the same music, even wear the same white converse sneakers. Yet they tend to hide their differences from one another. Kinu isn’t all too interested in Mugi’s 3 hour gas tank short film and Mugi wasn’t as interested as Kinu in the Egyptian exhibit they both had tickets for before they met. This hiding of differences only gets worse as time passes.

They both graduate and move in together. We’re shown the harshness of Japan’s shuushoku. This is a practice where everyone applies for career orientated jobs at the same time, but those that fail generally have to wait until next year. Kinu fails initially and works part time jobs. Things don’t go well for Mugi either; his freelance work dries up and he decides to bow to the pressures around him and begin looking for a real job. After an almost honeymoon like two years together, the two eventually begin their ‘adult’ jobs, and we first see the cracks of their relationship start to show.

Throughout the next 3 years, we see two people who have gotten through their relationship solely via common interests, suddenly see those shared hobbies crumble. They’re left with the realisation that they can’t actually communicate that well, and feel helpless in trying to stop the conflict that ensues. Mugi works overtime at the new job that he clearly doesn’t enjoy, because he believes, as a man, that he has to provide and protect the status quo and that the adult thing to do is abandon those things that once brought him enjoyment. Meanwhile Kinu struggles to figure out what she wants to do. She eventually gets a job through shuushoku however it doesn’t seem to suit her at all and she ponders changing to a more fulfilling yet lower paying job. The two both get so caught up in their own situations that they often don’t see each other for days at a time. Their walks home together and time spent playing Zelda on the couch gradually fade until they’re no longer. Their arguments about work and life get worse with neither of them managing to get through to the other, at times wondering how they even ended up together.

This all culminates in them deciding to break up after their friend’s wedding, sharing one last happy day together before going their separate ways.

There’s a lot of scenes in this movie that I’d like to break down but for now I want to talk about the break up scene. This scene felt so reflective of some dated, but still prevalent, ideas about love and marriage in Japan that were often espoused to me here by co workers and friends.

Kinu can’t relate to her boyfriend anymore, they don’t have sex, nearly every conversation ends in a fight and anything she tries to do just seems to push the two further apart. Mugi seems too caught up in his job and the future: he believes it’s natural for two people to grow apart after the love fades, and that marriage and starting a family is key to get over this hurdle.

Foregoing the wedding reception afterparty, the two have their break up at the same chain restaurant where Mugi first confessed his love. They go to sit in their original seats, but they’re already occupied. Something about this stung in some indirect way, almost as if the film maker is forewarning that the two can no longer go back to how they were. After some debate, they both air their grievances. Kinu has fallen out of love but Mugi believes that this is normal and believes marriage is the answer. There’s this beautifully acted monologue from Mugi where he ruminates on a future where he and Kinu get married and have children. He romanticises how nice it’d be to be called Mama and Papa, to go on holiday, to take the kids to Disneyland and to have people say, ‘those two had some issues but they really sorted it all out’. He believes love is a like a raw object and has an expiration date, with marriage being the key to prolonging that expiration.

For almost a second it looks as though Kinu is going to accept this fanciful, but sadly flawed, proposal until a young couple behind them is seated in their old spot. This part is almost too on the nose. The couple displays that same youthful awkwarkdness that Mugi and Kuni once had and goes through the exact same motions they did; swapping books, and talking music interests and of course they’re also wearing white converses.

Their youthful bliss and naivety is piercing to both the audience and the sombre couple. Mugi realises it’s over, Kinu realises it’s over, and judging from the sniffles in the audience everyone watching does too. There are some things you just can’t get back, there isn’t a reset button, and you can’t use marriage and children to fix your issues.

This seems common sense to me, however the interactions I’ve had since moving to Japan suggest that that might not be the norm here.

Marriage and weddings in the west always seemed liked a celebration of two peoples’ relationship up until that point and then the beginning of the next chapter of their life together. I used to work catering at weddings, and it’s strange to think that statistically half of those incredibly stressed, but incredibly joyous, couples will divorce, or already have.

So why do these once happy couples decide to go their separate ways? Extramarital affairs is still one of the top cited reasons in the west. It’s also probably the only thing I don’t think I could ever forgive. From an early age this ideal had been drilled into me that people that were married were in love and if you’re in love why would you cheat? If you didn’t want to be with that person, why would you marry them? I think infidelity is still incredibly strong grounds for divorce in the west. If you’re caught you can apologise and maybe make amends but there’s always a stain on the relationship from the outside, once a cheater always a cheater etc. There’s a strong emphasis on faithfulness above almost all else.

Flash forward a few years to me moving to Japan. Now before the move here, I’d seen the Youtube videos and the stories from friends of friends about rampant infidelity in Japan. One of my favourite entertainment personalities found out his wife was cheating on him for the entirety of their marriage and waited until she got citizenship to tell him. I don’t believe anyone is in a position to make broad claims about the culture of a country based on some internet articles. I believe you need experience to shape your world view but that doesn’t mean your world view is necessarily the correct one.

Whilst being an advanced country in many facets, gender roles in Japan often feel as though they have some catching up to do. Whilst there’s this heavy pressure to get married early (if you’re female, 25 and not seeing someone with the intention to get married, what the hell are you doing?) and a market much like the west promoting incredibly expensive weddings and honeymoons, there isn’t that much to care about after the marriage (provided you’re having children, of course). It’s strange in that I found I admired the whole one unit aspect of marriage here. Financially, it seemed that whilst most of my co workers and friends wives controlled the purse strings, big decisions were made together. There is a coldness to the lack of emotion to some of these decisions, but they were often best in the long run.

However there also seemed to be this separation of marriage and of love. Friends wouldn’t consider it cheating if their partner slept with a sex worker or if it was only because they were drunk. I had friends who were actively cheating on their partner whilst being aware that their partner was actively cheating on them. However there was this weird agreement that as long as neither was too obvious it was alright. I had an old boss who said if he was feeling the urge, he’d just go see a sex worker as that arrangement was better for both him and his wife. It was almost as if being married and being in love weren’t mutually exclusive. Love and sexual attraction were for young people, marriage was about creating a family and supporting that family. Marriage was the next step in a relationship to further your life (married people often get paid more, there are large subsidies for having children etc.) As responsible adults, a couple would get married by 30 or so to have children and protect the status quo. If you didn’t disturb that status quo too much; some cheating was allowed and often expected.

(My boss & I, sunglasses and all)

“Marriage is a result, not a destination” is a line my boss uttered to me. I was dating a girl who shared different views on marriage than I did. Our relationship was expected to end in marriage in a sense; her family knew of me and mine her. I didn’t want to get married but at the same I loved her so much that I thought the only way to show that was marriage. My boss thought there was a flaw in her and a lot of Japan’s way of thinking. He believed that marriage wasn’t something to strive for, but merely the result of a happy relationship. He also thought my love had an expiry date and his estimation wasn’t far off.

I don’t think his line of thinking is all that idealistic, the heavy expectation of marriage at the start of a relationship puts pressure on a base that isn’t that well established. Is there a line we can draw between knowing what you want from a relationship and expecting too much before you even know the other partner? Had Kinu and Mugi discussed their differences earlier on would that have saved them down the track or only led them to a faster break up where they could then move onto more suitable partners?

Looking at Mugi’s proposal from a purely western lens, it seems ludicrous and somewhat insulting. Looking at it from my own experiences, it’s still not romantic, but it has an appealing practicality that I’m sure some older people in the audience may relate to.

(Wise words, to translate it roughly: Young hearts, don't run free)

With all this in mind, the break up scene really is layered with expectations and differing ideologies. What surprised me the most was that after this tear laden break up, the two lived a plutonic and, by all accounts, friendly 3 months together whilst they both sorted out their individual accommodation. They both opt to move out and leave the old apartment and those old memories behind. The idea of living with someone for 3 months post break up seems almost ludicrous. The fact that they live these three months as if they’re in their honeymoon phase again is baffling initially, but once you remove romance and talk to the person you’re with, without the expectations you once had, it isn’t really all that surprising. These two had and still have more in common than they do apart. Whilst initially off putting, it’s charming that these two best friends can live together even though they’ve separated. I look at the countless times people break up; sides are chosen in friendship groups and efforts are made to not invite both people to the same event. Could you live with your ex after you broke up for 3 months? Doesn’t it make more sense for you to still want the person you shared so much of your life with to still be in it regardless of what once was? Regardless of what was, wouldn’t you still want someone you shared so much of your life with to still be around in some way?

Three months pass and we’re back to the cafe again, both Kinu and Mugi with their respective new partners. They leave the cafe at the same time, ride the same long escalator down whilst not acknowledging each other. They split at the end of the escalator, both of them raise their hand waving goodbye, not knowing if the other is waving as well.

There is something sobering and satisfying about such an anti-climactic ending. They didn’t run into each other’s arms, this meeting wasn’t the start of the second act of the film like I suspected it would be. It was simply two people that once were together continuing down a different road. We often watch romantic films to see two people fall in love and learn to live a life together. Depending on the film it can often seem too idyllic or fanciful but it always seems in reach…if you find that right person. Hanataba mitai na koi wo shita presents a more grounded argument. The right person isn’t always enough. Your situation, your beliefs and your respective flaws might get the best of you. Your own happy ever after might not be all you thought it would be, hell it might not even be one at all.

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