Coming back to Tokyo felt like returning to a dream I’d already woken from. But something’s shifted—subtly, invisibly. Maybe the city hasn’t changed. Maybe I have.
They say you can’t go home again, but I didn’t believe it until now. You can retrace every step, find the same ramen shop, walk the same narrow streets—but the feeling doesn’t return. What once shimmered with newness now feels distant.
It’s not sadness exactly—it’s something quieter. A recognition that time moves in only one direction, and the places that once felt like home remain suspended in a version of the past that no longer exists.
So I walk the same streets again, but this time as a ghost—half here, half somewhere that can’t be reached anymore. Tokyo is still beautiful. It’s just not mine in the same way it was before.
November 2025
Sometimes, because of the specific experiences in our lives that we had, returning to that place we’d already been, felt at home before, it’s just, no longer the same, and we may feel that need to settle down, but we can’t, so we, drift, on…until we find that place we feel comfortable in, and call that new place, home.
So true.
I understand what you’re saying. The time spent away is between your past and present.
Yes.