I'm going away on business on Tuesday, and I must think the plane is going to go down or something because I was overtaken yesterday by a need to look back on my life and visit some old haunts. I went to see my former home in Zama, about an hour and a half by train from the centre of Tokyo. I lived here when I was studying Japanese and paying for my studies with English teaching. This feels like a world away from my life now. It certainly was a poorer time back then, but oh for the holidays. Being in Zama again brought back lots of happy memories.The town is a rural suburb, with lots of rice fields and small holdings, but it's still on the commuter belt for Tokyo, and it's also home to a major US air force base. All this combines to give it a pretty distinctive atmosphere. I mean, it must be a special place if you can find a Godzilla tombstone next to a vegetable patch as above!
I hadn't been back in over two years and nothing was any different. Well, apart from the fact that my beloved neighborhood karaoke-izakaya has changed hands. Peace out, warawara! The town centre is made up of a small train station and about 10 shops, and my video below captures most of them.
Anyone who visited me in Zama will recognize the sound in the background (though you might need to really turn up the volume, as it's just a crappy phone video). The bloody level crossing (fumikiri 踏切) was the soundtrack to my life as I lived right beside one. It got to the stage living there where I only noticed the sound when it was gone, like on the rare occasions the train service got stopped for a typhoon or something.
On the topic of noise, I got to take a walk in the nature reserve that is located just a few minutes from the station. I took this short video at the entrance to the park of the sound that will forever be Japanese summer to me: insects doing their nut.
This is a sound you just don't hear in Ireland's glacial summers. The park was such a great resource to have nearby. I used to walk here a few times a week and sucking up all those negative ions probably helped me be a happier person than I am now. That and the doing stuff for other people, I guess: back in the day, I used to volunteer at this old folk's home.
I certainly haven't been charitable like that for a long time. The journey down memory lane was a lot if fun, but it also helped me to take stock and figure out how I need to recalibrate my life.
Major tangent, but one final bonus of going back to Zama was being able to shop at my old supermarket and stock up on the world's best wet wipes!!!
I know it might not seem like a normal cause for excitement, but these wipes are individually wrapped, keep in a crazy amount of water and will get anything clean. Only a few people who know me extremely well can understand why this purchase made me so happy: these wipes have come to my rescue in some odd situations, most notably the time I was accosted by a deranged man far from any source of water and soap who was intent on shaking my hands with what could only be described as the filthiest hands I have ever had the misfortune to squeeze. You can't buy the wipes for love nor money in Tokyo, and I ended up clearing the supermarket of its stock minus one box, in order to be a little considerate of others. You see, I'm already recalibrating towards a sunnier more charitable disposition.
