I'm getting ready to move out of my guest house at this moment. Procrastinating while the cleaning lady who comes every Friday does her job. In two days time, I'll be back in Chiba with a family I have yet to meet.
This neighborhood I lived in and these past two months feel like a turning point in my experience. I started thinking about it when my friend asked me if I had gotten accustomed to Japanese life. 「東京の生活、慣れた？」This was after I was somehow appointed captain of the University Boxing Club (I believe it's very rare for a foreigner to be given this sort of responsibility) and had to attend a meeting for the Kanto region boxing clubs regarding some upcoming tournament that we won't be participating in. He came along since I don't have the comprehensional abilities to really understand the content of the meeting. Plus, Coach Tanaka told him to anyway...
Thinking back to the days when I first got here I remember the thick summer air, heavy typhoon rain, and all the other exchange students ready to take on Tokyo without abandon. It all seems like a dream back then. Remembering the state of mind I was in, you could say it was awe...
Time went on and I started spending a lot of time in various places. Band practice was always in Shinjuku, every morning I'd change trains at Akihabara, I spent a few late nights wandering around Shibuya until the first train arrived (Karaoke at 7:00am after a long night of revelry is a trial most men cannot endure), and going to campus in Yotsuya. Lots of time spent right smack dab in the middle of Tokyo.
But I feel like my 'awe' has... changed places so to say. Maybe it was that day I saw Buddha sitting on top of the hill while I was running, or maybe just everyday life here in the Tokyo suburbs. To me, the suburbs back at home felt disconnected. With big driveways, wide yards, and tall fences, everyone was effectively hiding themselves from their neighbors. Not only this, but each new development is given it's own name and special borders. It wouldn't be unusual to take a long walk and not see another soul on the road.
No matter what time of day it is here, I'll always see someone else walking somewhere. I see and hear kids playing outside constantly. Every clear day there is laundry hung up on the verandas. Walking through the convoluted streets inbetween houses, I hear someone practicing piano in one house, flute in another. Strange as it seems, you can tell there is life in these homes. I can't remember a time I felt that back in the states.I decided to meet that Buddha today. I walked around the Temple, took some pictures. Typical stuff you do as a foreigner. But what really got me were the houses built around the premises. Imagine everyday you get up for work, walk out the front door, and there it is: a giant Buddha. Always there every day to greet you with your morning coffee or whatever. After a while the surprise wears off, and it becomes a simple fact of life. I think there's some sort of beauty in that. Sometimes I'll walk by strange traditional Japanese structures and pathways and wonder if they're private property. The proximity between these things (be it relic or replica) and the houses of civilians is strange to me. Sometimes I wonder if it's really okay to be stepping where I am. But then I see someone walking with bags of groceries down the same path I am hesitant to cross. I wonder what I'm hesitating for, and remember that I always take a shortcut through a Temple in Shinjuku to get to practice...
In the midst of tall buildings and heavy machinery there remain pieces of a deep and humble past. The beauty is that it lives side by side with modern society, and continues to remain so.
Outside the city, but not quite the country, there are many people living quietly and very closely together. Although they may have different names and live in different houses, I have a feeling they recognize each other and say hello when they pass eachother on the street.

Five hundred and some odd steps

I've just passed the halfway point. A little less than 5 months to go for my scheduled stay in Japan. Right now is the interim break. I live in a guest house located in the suburbs outside of Tokyo, just a few stops from Ikebukuro. It's quite different from my previous location. The suburbs are like a maze, and the elevation varies from block to block as if it were confused. I feel minor earthquakes every so often and can hear my neighbors sneeze from inside their living room. The cramped suburban landscape really does make me feel like I'm another country though. The Tokyo Daibutsu (not very famous large Buddha statue) is also near my house. It was a little startling, during a typical morning run, when I spotted out of the corner of my eye a large Buddha sitting atop a hill. This place still manages to surprise me. At 4:30pm every weekday, a melody plays over all the neighborhoods. At 5:30 another melody plays, and then a short announcement follows, telling all the children playing outside to make sure their parents know where they are and that it's about time to go home for dinner. This would've seemed invasive back in the west, but being here it reminds me that there is a world of people in these buildings built so close together. It works in it's own way, and is reassuring. I am not alone.

Alyosha played it's first two performances at the beginning of February. One in Yokohama, the other in Shinjuku. Japanese venues are a lot more expensive than American. I believe admission for the second show was 2000yen (about $20.20 as of this posting). The sound is fantastic though (this goes for each Japanese venue that I've been to so far). The Yokohama show was all pop punk bands, and we were third to last. Despite being the odd-band out, it was an extremely cathartic and satisfying experience. I had a little difficulty at the Shinjuku show being able to explain to the sound guy what I wanted, so I ended up with a lot of bass and no guitar coming out of my monitor. None of us were too pleased with the outcome of the latter performance. Well, actually I had no idea how it really sounded since I only heard bass... The bands I played with were all very impressive. Compared to the lot of well-known live acts in the US, it's surprising to see 'local' Japanese bands play with the vigor and precision that usually had been reserved for big headliners. Maybe it's the fact that to play music in this country you have to make large sacrifices. You have to pay for each practice, if you don't choose to work as a salaryman directly out of college you cannot simply jump back into the workforce, there are no garages, no basements; even at it's most humble roots its still a significant financial burden. But the bands that do stick it out seem to get some attention overseas. It's a shame most of the west will probably never hear or experience the music that goes on over here. And I've only had just a taste...

Since coming to Tokyo I've begun to feel severe bouts of anxiety. Sometimes I become completely xenophobic. Maybe it's the buildings, the crowds, all the high fashion, advertisements, and solicitors. People yelling on the street "buy this! see this!" Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton everywhere. After a while I started feeling contempt towards these people, covered in these brands, and these stores advertising sales for $500 suits (that's the sale price) as if it were a simple necessity. Some old Japanese authors relate similar feelings during the period of modernization in Japan. It seems they were afraid of growing capitalism and materialism. I wonder how they'd feel now, wandering through the neon lit metropolis seeing people covered in their salaries. Everyone looks like upper middle class, despite Japan being in the middle of recession, with a growing number of people sleeping in parks and train stations. At 5am in Shinjuku on my way home from a long night, the stairs of the station in each of the hundreds of exits and tunnel ways looked like a makeshift hostel. Of course, during the day one sees no evidence of this; maybe just the lonely vagrant slowly shifting through the crowd. For me, it's intimidating. Sometimes I feel so small, so inferior to everything here. I unknowingly wear a scowl and try to fight some crippling self consciousness while walking in as straight a path as I can to whatever destination I may be headed at the time.

This is what I've been dealing with on a daily basis for some time here. I'm not sure when it began, but with the free time I've had in the past few months I've put to use a very valuable gift that only human beings have been granted; the gift of introspection. It's easy to tell yourself "clothes don't matter, it's whats on the inside that counts, etc etc" but to really mold the core of your being; to stabilize the matter that is constantly shaking your foundation has come to be a difficult task. Before I came to Japan I feel like the person I was then was someone much bigger than who I am now. Of course, the circumstances were different. I was in my comfort zone, had a very big adventure to look forward to; the future up to that point, albeit always uncertain, seemed very likely to hold wonderful things for me. I've come to understand that it is me, simply me, that allows this sort of thing to disturb my conscience. When I walk through the street trying to ignore the imaginary eyes constantly watching and judging me, I begin to think things like: What if I were pursuing a Master's in composition at Juilliard? What if I were a World Champion Boxer? Would I feel so afraid of every stranger that walks past me? I imagine feeling like a different person one day.

And maybe that is the simple driving force behind everything I do. The music, the fighting, the language. All of it so that one day I can say "I became the man I wanted to be." Although, when that day comes, what I really hope to say is

"I became better than the man I wanted to be."

I move in with a Japanese family on March 28th in Funabashi-ku, Chiba-ken. Until then, I'll fill these empty days with more reasons why I became better than the man I wanted to be.