LAST EVENING
September 7th 2009 04:18
“Dean, you’ll get used to it, alright - just press the button!” I remembered Natalie screaming at me when I told her that I didn’t like using the bidets in Japan, that I much rather preferred using toilet paper and leaving it at that. “Your arse feels so much cleaner," she said before looking away rather shyly, "and it breaks up all that solidified shit.”
I was with my host family, in my host home, sitting by their host dinner table, feeling rather gloomy. It was my last evening in Japan. My host mother bought expensive sushi for all of us. Before eating, my host sister gave me a present (cookies from Universal Studios Japan), my host brother gave me a hug and (in secret) a dirty magazine about school girls, my host father gave me a calendar of a baseball team, my host mother gave me a tea cup and said, “I’ll miss you.” Natalie’s host mother visited earlier and gave me a piece of cake and a key ring of a miniaturised croc shoe. She hugged me, cried, told me to say hi to Natalie, and drove away on her scooter without looking back. I was drunk on sake.
“You’ve changed,” my brother told me, smiling.
“Like shit I have.”
They all ignored me and kept eating. Afterwards they brought me to a shopping mall and took sticker photos with me. If you’ve never seen a Japanese sticker photo machine, what they have are these special pens that let you digitally vandalise your photos before they get printed. My sister made sure to draw all over my face. I’d never seen them laugh so hard.
After they were developed, my brother cut the photos up and divided them amongst all of us. We left the shopping centre…
My home in Japan looked different that evening. It looked much warmer than when I’d first seen it. Their dog, whatever its name was, came out and I scratched the back of its ears. I looked at it, at its happy eyes, at its teeth; I remembered Jude in Brisbane. I straightened from my hunch and looked at the house again. I once told myself that although there are surface shifts in our appearances and in what we say, what we have inside, what we have in our core or our soul or whatever, will never – and simply cannot – change. Everything in the neighbourhood was sadly quiet. I stared at the house, at its sliding doors, at the dim lights coming from behind the curtains behind the windows; my luggage was packed, it was ready; the things I’d wanted left behind were sleeping, patient. The dog leant against me and whimpered. I’d only lived there a month but I’d never felt more at home.
Dear Dean,
I hope you actually find this letter. I’m planning to hide it in your jacket, and I’m HOPING your mother doesn’t wash it, or worse, find THIS and READ it. Unlike you, I’m no writer, so this will be brief. I know I haven’t spoken to you since that day, we, ahem, and I know you enough to know that you’ll understand why. I’d fallen in love with you. Remember how we had that long talk about how people were never meant to live this long? Love can last a hundred years, but love can also last for four years, it can last a month, it can last a second. We can fall in love, we can dismiss it, we can deny it, we can live we can go on we can fall in love all over again. We have people waiting for us at home, people we loved first. I won’t forget the first time I met you, how you hated me so much. Anyway I don’t know where I’m getting at, and I don’t know if we will see each other again. Please don't try to find me. I hope you like the present. I just hope you have a safe trip home.
xxx
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Comment by Jason King
Sydney Table
Salty Popcorn
Total Randomness
I can't stand it when holidays come to an ending.
I hope it all ended well emotionally for you and you had a safe trip back to Oz
Comment by Always Eighteen
Always Eighteen
Glad to have you reading them. Yeah, I stayed in Japan for only a month, but I wanted to write my journey there for this length of time because that's how long it felt like. Can't wait to update the world on my life in Brisbane.
Comment by Jason King
Sydney Table
Salty Popcorn
Total Randomness
You are a good writer and you did keep me interested. Nice emotional experiences.
How is Brizzy - I am assuming much warmer than Sydney at the moment.