2016 was rough. It was so memorable that I considered tattooing the age in roman numerals on my wrist as a reminder that I had entered the 36 chambers of age, and survived.
“Oh, little did he know…”
You’re worst yet, is always surpassed by your best yet, you know? - Adya
And so goes it with your best yet being leapt over by a new worst yet.
Such is the cycle.
I survived 2016, and found a best yet in 2017, and a worst yet in 2020, with a best yet in 2022, and a worst yet in 2023. All with uniquely different twists of life.
But in between, in 2016, I visited Japan for the first time.
billboard outside Harajuku Station in dec ‘23 / fuji x100f
I stayed in Taito City, an area of Tokyo that is close to the busy electric, animated vibes of Akihabara, so close that Akihabara Station was the main hub I frequented as I took the Yamanote line to explore the vastness of the city, a place so easy to get, feel, and be lost in.
In the Airbnb where I stayed, there was a little old woman who swept the walkway outside every morning. She looked a bit like my Okinawan Gran’ma Edie, and was just as sweet, stopping from her sweeping to smile and wave as I did the same.
Each day, I’d leave to go explore, journal and sketchbook in hands, I spent some time in meditation on what was I doing with my life. There was a lot to process with where my then relationship was not going, liking the kind of work I was doing but wondering if there was a better fit out there.
Simultaneous to that, there was also this feeling of being at peace with the overall sense of “I am lost” in the chapter, and that moment within it. The experience of being lost, yet free, not in the sense where I felt so free, but freedom in the form of embracing where I was, and laying back into the palm of the Unknown Hand.
As I observed the busy city, foreign yet oddly familiar due to my cultural experiences in Hawai‘i and ancestry, I began to gaze deeper and noticed the reflection of my Inner ‘Ohana of characters:
Children - both bouncing about, happy and enjoying the world around, balanced by the ever so serious children on their way to school in the morning, navigating an immensely populous place.
Adults - from tired salarymen and career women rushing about their day in the morning, laughing after drinking or asleep on the train after work, to all the free-spirited, eccentric creatives and the expressions of fashion in both the youth and adults.
For whatever reason, the pieces of the puzzle that I had acquired in all the steps prior just made some sense.That boggled my mind as here I was, in the world’s largest mega-city, finding a sense of peace that I had forgotten due to the challenges of recent life, and that season of worst yet.
And here I am, once more, seven years and some change later, doing the same thing. People often say “older, wiser” but I’m not sure that combination fits. Definitely older as it’s been seven years, but wisdom, well that my friends is still LOADING.
For now I’ll go with “seasoned” as the seasons have come and gone, and if I’m lucky, so will many more.
A hui hou.