Japan is more like a collective psyche than a country. A mood, a rhythm, a wavelength you either fall into or orbit around. And twenty-two years ago, I fell straight into it. I lived here, walked these streets, memorized the turns and alleys like they were part of my body. I thought coming back would be like slipping into a familiar dream—the kind where everything feels exactly as it was left.
But memory lies. Or maybe it softens the edges so much that when you return, the real thing feels almost unrecognizable.
Back then, I remember walking out of the station into quiet streets. A 7-Eleven on the left as I headed home. A few small, unassuming izakayas tucked into dark corners. A Jamaican jerk chicken place trying so hard to make it in “up and coming” Ebisu that its entire existence felt like an underdog story. I remember believing I knew this place intimately. I knew the walk to Shibuya. I knew the route to the pool at the local rec center. I knew how to get to Lindsey and Rob’s apartment without thinking.
And now?
Nothing is familiar.
I can’t tell where one street starts and another disappears. The landmarks I carried in my soul—the bookstore on the second floor where I first read Capote’s “In Cold Blood,” and “The Life of Pi,” by Yann Martel, the place where I found stacks of strange little paperbacks—gone. No trace. Just new storefronts, new lives, new versions of Tokyo that never included me.
It’s as if the city molted while I was gone, shedding every version of the past I thought I still belonged to.
Maybe that’s the true danger of returning to a place you once loved: you expect it to wait for you. You imagine it paused at the moment you left, still warm with your presence. But cities don’t wait. They reinvent. They fold and unfold. They make new memories with new people. And when you come back, you’re just another outsider walking through a life someone else is living now.
I used to think returning would reconnect me. Instead, it reminded me how far I’ve moved, and how far Tokyo has moved without me.
I guess if you’re going to leave a place, you should never expect to return to the same version of it—or the same version of yourself.
November 2025
