04-17-2025, 11:50 PM
Hi,
back before the pandemic, before masks became a second skin—I finally did it. I touched down in Narita with nothing but a cheap duffel bag, a carefully laminated rail pass, and the kind of giddy, twitchy energy that only a man raised on Rurouni Kenshin, Studio Ghibli, and subtitled bootlegs of Evangelion could know.
I went to Japan looking for something. Maybe peace. Maybe meaning. Maybe just a vending machine that sold hot corn soup in a can (which, by the way, exists and is absolutely god-tier). But I also went, if I’m being honest, because I’d built the country up in my head like some spiritual homeland. A sacred anime monastery where, if I bowed deep enough and pronounced arigatou gozaimasu just right, I’d be allowed to ascend into cultural harmony.
Spoiler: That’s not how it works.
I stayed in a capsule hotel in Akihabara my first night. Not because it was cheap (though it was), but because I'd romanticized the idea of cramming my six-foot-two frame into a human storage drawer and calling it “authentic.” The front desk lady looked at me like I was a confused refrigerator with a passport. I said "hajimemashite" (nice to meet you) with my best anime inflection. She smiled like she’d heard it from ten thousand other gaijin before me, and handed me my locker key.
I hit up all the spots. Comiket. Nakano Broadway. A maid café where the girl called me “Master” and I momentarily forgot the crushing weight of the modern world. I visited the Kyoto International Manga Museum and actually wept in front of a first-edition volume of Berserk. I bought a sugoi little figure of Rei Ayanami and carried it around in my bag like some sacred totem.
But it wasn’t just otaku tourism. I read Bashō in the gardens behind the Ginkaku-ji temple. I meditated in silence in a ryokan near Mt. Koya where the monks served me shōjin ryōri—Buddhist vegan meals that tasted like the breath of the forest. I tried to chase mono no aware—that deep, aching awareness of impermanence the Japanese speak of. And for a moment, I felt it. Sitting in a park in Ueno as sakura petals drifted down like snow that forgot how to fall.
As Yukio Mishima once said, "In Japan, the gap between the spiritual and the physical is so narrow it is almost impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins." I felt that. But also—I bought three body pillows.
I’m aware of the cognitive dissonance. One moment I’m quoting Dazai Osamu’s "No Longer Human" and writing haiku in my travel journal, the next I’m spending ¥7,000 on a full-body dakimakura of a girl who doesn’t exist and never will. Watashi wa hen na gaijin desu. (私は変な外人です。) I am a strange foreigner.
I guess the point of all this is: Japan didn’t change me in the way I thought it would. I didn’t become a monk. I didn’t become an anime character. I didn’t even become fluent in the language. But I did leave something of myself there, and I brought something back too. Something I’m still trying to name.
Also, I lost my Rei figure on the flight home and I still think about her.
—Redsun
back before the pandemic, before masks became a second skin—I finally did it. I touched down in Narita with nothing but a cheap duffel bag, a carefully laminated rail pass, and the kind of giddy, twitchy energy that only a man raised on Rurouni Kenshin, Studio Ghibli, and subtitled bootlegs of Evangelion could know.
I went to Japan looking for something. Maybe peace. Maybe meaning. Maybe just a vending machine that sold hot corn soup in a can (which, by the way, exists and is absolutely god-tier). But I also went, if I’m being honest, because I’d built the country up in my head like some spiritual homeland. A sacred anime monastery where, if I bowed deep enough and pronounced arigatou gozaimasu just right, I’d be allowed to ascend into cultural harmony.
Spoiler: That’s not how it works.
I stayed in a capsule hotel in Akihabara my first night. Not because it was cheap (though it was), but because I'd romanticized the idea of cramming my six-foot-two frame into a human storage drawer and calling it “authentic.” The front desk lady looked at me like I was a confused refrigerator with a passport. I said "hajimemashite" (nice to meet you) with my best anime inflection. She smiled like she’d heard it from ten thousand other gaijin before me, and handed me my locker key.
I hit up all the spots. Comiket. Nakano Broadway. A maid café where the girl called me “Master” and I momentarily forgot the crushing weight of the modern world. I visited the Kyoto International Manga Museum and actually wept in front of a first-edition volume of Berserk. I bought a sugoi little figure of Rei Ayanami and carried it around in my bag like some sacred totem.
But it wasn’t just otaku tourism. I read Bashō in the gardens behind the Ginkaku-ji temple. I meditated in silence in a ryokan near Mt. Koya where the monks served me shōjin ryōri—Buddhist vegan meals that tasted like the breath of the forest. I tried to chase mono no aware—that deep, aching awareness of impermanence the Japanese speak of. And for a moment, I felt it. Sitting in a park in Ueno as sakura petals drifted down like snow that forgot how to fall.
As Yukio Mishima once said, "In Japan, the gap between the spiritual and the physical is so narrow it is almost impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins." I felt that. But also—I bought three body pillows.
I’m aware of the cognitive dissonance. One moment I’m quoting Dazai Osamu’s "No Longer Human" and writing haiku in my travel journal, the next I’m spending ¥7,000 on a full-body dakimakura of a girl who doesn’t exist and never will. Watashi wa hen na gaijin desu. (私は変な外人です。) I am a strange foreigner.
I guess the point of all this is: Japan didn’t change me in the way I thought it would. I didn’t become a monk. I didn’t become an anime character. I didn’t even become fluent in the language. But I did leave something of myself there, and I brought something back too. Something I’m still trying to name.
Also, I lost my Rei figure on the flight home and I still think about her.
—Redsun
