WHY DO I live in Tokyo? I often wonder what the fuck I’m doing here. I get caught up looking for a reason, thinking there needs to be one. Does there?

Does there need to be a reason clear and cut as diamond to go where we’re called?

Maybe not.

Living in Tokyo was once a far-fetched dream, something I remind myself of every day; but life is life, and living in a foreign country — just existing here — gives me a run for my money.

But I came for the challenge.

Living in a foreign country alters your perspective of how things are supposed to be.

It makes you think: maybe where I’m from is not the center of the universe. You’ll question what matters, because what matters varies from culture to culture.

With this insight, you realize what matters to you.

I’m a writer.

I moved here to write, not necessarily about the experiences reserved for the bold, the rich, the few. I moved here to explore the day-to-day motion of another world, for there’s profound meaning in these everyday moments, witnessing the way life turns beneath the sun as the outsider.

The convenient store’s my theater.

The laundromat’s a five-star hotel worth reviewing.

And while it’s cool to appreciate how our cultures vary, perhaps the most important thing you’ll discover when away from home is that we’re not so different.

I create not because I have to, but because my soul longs to speak. I see shots, film, narratives in winding roads. The solitude helps me better understand my story.

Still, sometimes it’s just beyond me.

So I wander, and in the steps from home I grow, sometimes in the day, cherishing the warmth of the sun on my skin; sometimes in the night, where I ask what I may make of the darkness which periodically and inevitably overcomes.

In that question I find who I am, for, in the words of psychoanalyst Dr. James Hollis, “I am not what has happened to me, but what is wanting to be expressed in my life through me.”

No matter how dark it seems, I know the light is there, and I will let it shine in whatever ways I can.

How come this path has chosen me? Surely life would be easier in a country where I could at least speak the language fluently; but I don’t think I could bear the regret of not going where my heart told me to go.

That’s Japan.

I’m not here because I know exactly what I want from life, but because not knowing what you want from life can be an adventure.

And that’s precisely what my spirit craves.

A fucking adventure.

I’m afraid of things not working out, but I don’t want to know where my path will lead, for what is fear if we build our life upon facing it? Merely a signpost that says go.

What is darkness if we travel with an inner light, the only thing we ever truly own? Merely a reason to shine.

There’s much I can’t comprehend. That leads me to the page. That’s lead me here, after all, into the great unknown.

It started to rain.

It’s numinous to me, spiritual in a way, listening to the sound of rain; it moves me like music, has since I was a kid, and since arriving in Japan when times have felt tough, the rain has made sense of things.

I left to capture what I could of the night, and perhaps, to find what I could of myself after feeling lost for a while.

With my camera and my words, I’m an explorer.

That’s when everything clicks — I came to Japan to hear the sound of rain.

Lost in a sea of souls, I stood outside Shibuya Station. Flashing lights, people from all walks of life, consumed by the aura of a present which celebrates the future and the past.

That mystery of now sparks the fire of my soul. And what is now? In the words of psychoanalyst Carl Jung:

“Life is a luminous pause between two mysteries. Where we come from we know not, where we go we do not know.”

We spend our lives — this beautiful, terrible pause — seeking our reason.

Well, I found my reason for leaving, and arriving, and staying.

Just to be here.

To say I don’t know why, but I lived in Tokyo. I spent days and nights often alone, but also with new friends. Best friends. On their journeys, too.

Sometimes I would stand on street corners and watch the world go by, both in the outskirts of the city and in the beating heart.

I would struggle, laugh, and often cry.

I would seek shrines tucked within the maze of alleyways and lights, climbing stairs, looking for angles, rising high and ducking low, trying to stay dry on a scavenger hunt of my own making, made of sunny days and rainy nights.

And I was happy.