So Tokyo was what I expected it to be--cold, exhausting, expensive, over-crowded, over-indulgent ... but amazing. I love that city. I'm always tired there, maybe because of the ridiculous amounts of people, and ridiculously-overcrowded trains that make you feel like a hyperventilating sardine in a can of squished sardines packed with the sweat of hundreds of Japanese, instead of oil. Sometimes, I can feel the next person's breath on the back of my neck, it's such close quarters. Creepy, super creepy.
After I spent some quality time in Iizuka with my grandparents, parents, and sisters, I hopped over to Tokyo for a week of hanging out, reminiscing, and revisiting. Me and Denny stayed with my old pal, Eugene, squatting on his floor, like a bunch of homeless vagabonds, for a week, sleeping on a futon and a couch in the middle of the living room. Tokyo hasn't changed a bit, but most of my friends aren't there anymore which makes for a much different experience. I saw Eugene, Susan, Jeff, Julian and Mina, which was great, and felt like a sordid reunion of sorts with just a few lonely faces instead of the typical bunch I was used to. I really missed Mia, Steph, Cherylle, Paul, Teresa, David, Sudarshan, Olivia, and my entire old crew that I loved so much in the Tokyo of two years ago. It made me realize that when I think about Tokyo, it was more that I was thinking of them, than the actual city itself. Without them in Tokyo, it just wasn't the city that I loved, and it wasn't the Tokyo that I cherished in my heart as one of the best experiences of my life. It was more of just a beautiful, crowded metropolis with nameless faces and memories of things I used to know. It's like returning to the place of your youth when you are eighty-five, only to realize everyone you knew is now dead. OK, maybe that's a bit over-dramatic but Tokyo has become an urban oasis that looks exactly the same on the outside, but feels entirely different to me now.
Don't get me wrong, I still love this city like I do any that I have had a life-changing experience in--the constant pulse and electric energy of people on the go, the soothing breeze of calmer Shimokitazawa, which transfixes me into vintage-shopping bliss while it's picture-perfect cafes give me time to reflect. It still gives me shivers of excitement, when I get off the train at Shibuya station and see thousands of people trying to cross the notorious street, Tokyo is epitomized in. I still love and envy the uber-stylish and impossibly hip fashionistas in Harajuku with their hair pulled up in a perfect bun, donning hipster boots, and the most perfect makeup I've ever seen. I still love the smell of yakitori and okonomiyaki being grilled at streetside izakayas and I will always miss dancing the night away at a Japanese disco after missing my last train. Tokyo is a city that has everything, but coming back here has truly showed me how much I have changed. I don't think I will yearn for Tokyo the same way that I have the past two years--constantly regretting leaving when I did and feeling pangs of nostalgia and regret in my gut. It's no longer home to me and I think I understand why now. I love it the same as I always did, but I think I finally made peace with the decision I made to leave. Perhaps the only way to get closure is to revisit that place again, and realize in your own time the reasons you left were perhaps, the only way fate could have it.
I went to my old apartment with Julian and we went to my old favorite, neighborhood restaurant--Sushi Ondo. It was nostalgic being there, talking to Julian about our old friends and neighbors. Gossiping about our lives and seeing how much we have and haven't changed in the past two years. I felt pricks of longing being there--revisiting my old apartment and being in the company of an old neighbor. It was that weird feeling where you go back to a place you haven't been to in a long time, like your elementary school, and all of a sudden like a pre-death montage of your life in a movie, a flood of flashbacks engulfs your brain, and emotionally you feel like crying because it's so overwhelming. It's a feeling of yearning, that is hard to typify in words. Most people have felt it before. It's like getting your heart broken by someone and then finding a love letter they wrote you in a shoe box under your bed a year later. No matter how long it's been or how over that person you think you are, that letter will bring back every sweet (or sour) memory.
We are now in Jakarta, Indonesia. After weeks of contemplating whether to go to India or not, we decided not to. I know I haven't touched on the bombings that were happening there, maybe because it's painful for me to write so I've been putting it off. Denny and I were supposed to go to India for the entire month and travel with our friends Zach and Inbal, but while I was in Kyoto with my family, Bombay was getting bombed by terrorists. My precious Taj and Oberoi hotels, which I have had so many childhood memories in--drinking sweet masala milk and icy-cold falooda during sweltering hot December days with my family, are now something of the past and can only be cherished as sweet remembrances. It broke my heart. I watched CNN everyday from Japan, and everyday I felt more heartbroken for my beautiful Bombay and my family. Thank god, my entire family in Bombay is safe. When I heard my aunt's friend was having dinner at the Taj when the bombs went off, and they all died, the gravity of what was happening there really set in. My friend Inbal has been living there for a while now, and was living in the heart of the destruction. She's safe and meeting us in Jakarta tomorrow, but knowing that she was there too, and thinking of what she witnessed, being alone without her famiy, is beyond me.
It was a hard decision not going to India, being a place I've always felt entirely safe and at home in. I know I will return to India soon, but I can hardly imagine the aftermath of Bombay after what has happened. Can a city completely recover after something this big? Or does it just evolve into something stronger? I don't know the answer to that, but I guess we will see how Bombay will grow from this. I love that city so much and to see things of such familiarity burn up in flames, and knowing your family and close friend is there without knowing they are safe, is something I wouldn't wish for my worst enemy. The only way I can really describe it is like heart break.
I guess it's true that you never know what can happen and you never know when your life will be in danger. My biggest fear is that I don't live my life to the fullest. The more I see of the world and the more I travel, the more I comprehend how much there is to explore and that you are only given one life and one chance to live it. I met a guy in Phnom Penh who I spent some time with, and he said something to me that was so simple yet for some reason has stuck with me since that night ... "life is too short to regret anything, you know that." It's something that is so cliche, but at the instant he said that to me, while hanging out in our dingy three-dollar a night hotel, it felt like I finally really got it. I think traveling does that to you ... it makes you think you have these life changing epiphanies, when really you knew it all a long deep inside you, it's just that traveling opens you up and gives you the clarity to really hear it.
So, I've been in Jakarta for the past two days waiting for my friend Inbal to get here from India. We are traveling together for a few weeks and I can't wait. Jakarta is a dirty, smelly, congested city with some of the best fried rice and tea I've had in my entire life. We are staying off a small, lively street called JL Jaksa, teeming with open air cafes that radiate hookah smoke and bars that emanate the late night sounds of karaoke and live bands singing love ballads. I love watching the barristas pour steaming hot chai into warm pots and smelling the street side vendors frying rice and eggs for nasi goreng. Tomorrow Inbal gets here and we may go to Borabodur, which is famous for a temple that is supposed to rival Angkor Wat, if that's even possible. Tonight I'll be content sipping on frothy Indonesian tea at the KL Village cafe while the cacophonous tune of the Indonesian band next door at Memories bar, covers the worst rendition of Wham's Careless Whisper I've ever heard.
