I just got back from my first trip to Japan since moving out of the country four years ago.
In the 18 months that I lived there, Tokyo became my second home.
A home that I didn’t realize I was looking for when I moved away from Seattle in the summer of 2016 after my divorce.
What made Japan home were the people. People who were expats like me struggling to figure out how to make living in Japan work. From the outside, it was glamorous (“You live in TOKYO! HOW COOL!”) but inside, it was torture.
Until I found my people.
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Going back to Japan and Tokyo was like a homecoming.
I walked around my old neighborhood and went to bars that made Tokyo feel like home. I felt the memories of that year and a half float around me like a dream or a memory that was coming to life directly on top of the experience I was having being back.
I went to a café that is the setting of the next chapter that I’m working on. The chapter that I’ve been stuck on (kind of writer’s block, but kind of not). While I sat there, I expected the ghosts of that memory to come and haunt me. But it didn’t. I felt so detached and separated from it. Like I was watching the movie of my own life that I’m writing into this book play around me.
Almost like I was in the center of my own “behind the scenes” tour at Universal Studios for my book. Each time I went somewhere that’s a scene in my book felt this way – preserved in my mind because they’re preserved in my writing.
On my first night in Tokyo, I had a reunion with my best girlfriends from my time living in Tokyo. Some, like me, have since moved out of Japan and live in other parts of the world like Canada, the Middle East, and Europe. Others still live in Tokyo but haven’t come together in a few years since the pandemic shifted everything. We all met back up together.
During the first round of drinks, one of the girls started telling a story about one of our epic nights out.
I sat and listened to her carve out details that I didn’t remember. And smiled, thinking: Of course, I remember that night, I just finished the chapter about it in my book.
All my friends know that I’m writing a book and that a huge part of it centers on our nights out. All of our nights played out like a movie script. Down to the special, unexpected guests, pacing, climax, fall, and resolution where we all swear, no more tequila shots!
Or maybe that’s how I think about them from spending the past three years writing, revising, and editing them to be told in this way?
Of course, I remember what happened that night.
I kept listening. Trying not to be too obvious as I grabbed hold of the details from the night from her perspective. I felt I was watching this scene from a different camera angle, one that was tucked away in the bonus features.
I zoomed in, seeing how her version of the story overlays with the chapter I just sent to my editor to review.
My book came to life through the memories of my friends.
Even though no one has read my book, they all lived it.
We all lived some version of it together.
It was like no time had passed. Even though so much has in all of our lives and in the city itself. When we came together, it was like no time had passed.
There’s nothing that feels like home to me more than that.
