2 days ago, I saw a friend from my New Jersey era and showed him around various places in Tokyo with a fashion-oriented course, including Shibuya, Harajuku, Shimokitazawa, Akihabara, Roppongi, Daikanyama and Shinjuku for transit. Even though I was the guide for the day, I ended up learning a lot of new aspects of Tokyo I had never seen before because of geographical reasons. Shimokitazawa was an interesting district, filled with reasonably clothing stores and interesting shops, filled with rare goods. And in Daikanyama, I ended up buying this small porch I've always wanted.
Although 5 and a half years had passed since the last time we saw each other in Himeji, we had no problem communicating and we simultaneously talked about numerous subjects throughout the day. With my trip back to the States last week, I was able to experience something most similar to my childhood life with both my American and Japanese best friends in my life. We talked about our high school lives, our college lives, our ambitions, our classmates from our Japanese weekend school we went to, our English skills and so on.
Some, no, a lot of these topics are not discussable with Japanese people, so I guess I was quite vigor when I zealously explained my ideas and thoughts toward him. He had expressed some sympathy towards my ideas and stuff, while he had shown a lot of eagerness to restudy English which he had been unable to do so during his life back in Japan.
Also, in TGI Friday's, where we had our dinner, we discussed the difficulty of expressing our identities as returnees in Japanese public. We discussed how sticky our situation become when we are recognized as "foreigners" by expressing our "foreign" identity. In my opinion, returnees are like hybrids, possessing both Japanese culture and foreign culture of the country of his/her origin. The ratio of that possession differs depending on that person's interest, but I explained how I experienced some hard times in the past and am probably experiencing significantly now because of my personality that leans toward the United States in a great degree.
While my official feeling toward that day was the interestingness of the discoveries we made, mainly in Shimokitazawa and Daikanyama, I was more satisfied and fulfilled by the frank discussions we were able to hold on delicate matters I can't usually talk about with my Japanese friends. For now, I just with we can have another reunion during summer with all the members from our Japanese weekend school in Tokyo, perhaps.
