I started watching Mary Poppins (1964) and it led me to watch My Fair Lady (1964), Roman Holiday (1953), and Gone With The Wind (1939).
Something about these movies was just timeless and peaceful. I truly enjoy watching them and the beauty it holds. The cinematography, the language, and the story. They’re all so beautiful.
In a way, it reminds me of the time that I never got to live.
Or the time where my Grandma would watch the same classics. It connects me to her.
It’s amazing how these film connects you back to humanity and memories.
“I’m beginning to recognise that real happiness isn’t something large and looming on the horizon ahead but something small, numerous and already here. The smile of someone you love. A decent breakfast. The warm sunset. Your little everyday joys all lined up in a row.”
“I have learned that when sadness comes to visit me, all I can do is say “I see you.” I spend some time with it, get up, and say goodbye. I don’t push it away. I own it. And because I own it, I let it go.”
I feel like I can’t keep up with everything and my life keep increasing its pace. I feel like I’m seeing my life go pass by me, like someone put it on timelapse and I just need time to breath and take it all in.
I don’t think I ever got to acknowledge or at least absorb everything that has been going on in my life.
A lot of times, I still can’t believe that I am now married, have a pet shiba, lived in Japan, and now has immigrated in America.
If someone will tell me all of this will happen 5 years ago, I will absolutely laugh and would not believe any of this.
It’s funny, it’s wonderful, it’s unbelievable but it truly is my reality.
And amidst all of this wonderful things, I still feel pressured. I want to earn more money so we’ll never have to worry about it. For the kids we’re planning to have. So I can spoil myself and my family and friends.
It’s weird feeling accomplished but not just quite.
But I think that’s also unfair. I should be celebrating small victories. That perhaps, despite not exactly feeling like it, I am where I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
I was born in a city where roads can both be impressive and dreadful in construction. I was born where cruelty and greed prevails, but I’ve seen them here too. I saw people live a life that was strange in many ways, but also much the same as anywhere else.
While Japan will always, I think, feel foreign to me, places where I lived here like Misawa and Morioka have been my home. This is where I was able to freely construct my own identity and learn things on my own, things I like and don’t like not only about food, people, seasons, but most importantly, about myself.
I thought to myself, there is truly a beauty in being surrounded by the foreign-seeing things from a new perspective, with new eyes. Things I used to watch in anime and J-dramas, phrases and music I used to hear from a screen but now get to live with every day.
It was a very ordinary day, the day I realized that I don’t have to do anything but trust the process, trust my story and enjoy the journey. It doesn’t really matter who I’ve become by the finish line, the important things are the changes from this morning to when I fall asleep again, and how they happened, and who they happened with. An hour watching the stars or two hours of a dumb movie; a coffee in the morning with someone beautiful and funny; deep and intelligent conversations at 5am while sharing the last cigar. Taking trains to nowhere, walking hand in hand through foreign cities with someone you love. Skylines and mountain view. Contrasts and similarities.
It was all very ordinary until I found my identity appeared. The day I saw the flowers and learned how to turn my daily struggles into the most extraordinary moments. Moments worth writing about. For so long I let my life slip through my fingers, like water. I’m holding on to it now, and I’m not letting go.
When I arrived in 2016 of October, I felt for the first time in years, a deep sadness of exile, knowing that I was alone here, an outsider, and too alert to the ironies, the niceties, the manners, and indeed, the morals to be able to participate.
My 4 years in Japan truly was an amazing experience. I could not be anymore proud of myself and I think I should just take the time to acknowledge that. It was not easy but it was fun and it was worth it. All the people I met, the lessons I learned. All the heartaches I felt. It was all worth it. Even more so when I met the love of my life.
There is one way to understand another culture. Living it. Move into it, ask many questions and to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language. At some point, understanding may come. It will always be wordless. The moment you grasp what is foreign, you will lose the urge to explain it. To explain a phenomenon is to distance yourself from it. When I start talking about Japan, to myself or to others, I again start to lose what has never been truly mine.
“My therapist taught me to interrupt my anxious thinking with thoughts like: “What if things work out” and “What if all my hard work pays off?” So, I’m passing that onto you wherever you are, whatever you’re leaving, or whomever you’re becoming.”
