Anniversaries

[flemmings]

Twenty years ago today I landed in Tokyo and made my slow way into Keisei Ueno on the kakueki train because I didn't know it wasn't the Skyliner, in spite of my many months of anxious preparation for the trip. Twenty years is a quarter of a pretty long lifetime; some things have changed since, though not as many as I'd like. Of course I knew nothing then, and for months was totally freaked out by Tokyo, the city I was completely comfortable in barely a year later. Steep learning curves and all. Wouldn't do it again; wouldn't do something like that again; but rather wish I was someone else who would do that again, and do it differently.

Comments

[unearthly-calm.livejournal.com]

If I may ask, what would you have done differently? And what were the worst and the best parts of the experience?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I'd have to be someone else to start with, basically; but that someone else wouldn't have gone alone. With a partner I'd have been much less anxious about 'OMG where will I *live*????' etc etc since crises for one person are adventures for two. And I'd have been less depressed in Tokyo, because having someone there to vent frustrations to and use for reality checks mitigates the kind of, mhh, what to call them? hysterical thinking patterns so many foreigners, me included, fall into in Japan. I'm not the only person I know who looks back at themselves in Japan and says 'I really wasn't sane.'

[unearthly-calm.livejournal.com]

Huh. Very interesting.
I did notice I got massively depressed at points when I was on holiday there this year, but I ascribed that to a recent breakup + panic over impending life change.