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Tokyo: my 2nd home

By on May 27, 2010

Photo © Elena Derevtsova

 

I live in Tokyo, and I have never met Jackie Chan. I do not eat sushi for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I don’t have any close personal friends who happen to be ninjas, and I do in fact speak English. Though I’m sure that you are quite aware that living in Tokyo does not go hand-in-hand with the circumstances I denied above, you’d be surprised just how many times I have had to answer questions from peers in my native United States with those statements. I then have to inform them that Tokyo, Japan is about 1,774 miles away from Jackie Chan’s native city of Hong Kong, China. 

 

I first understood just how fascinating it was to live in a foreign nation when I was eleven years old and attending Camp Lookout in Frankfort, Michigan. Very few of the other kids at camp lived further than a few hours away, let alone thirteen hours on a Boeing 747 in addition to a two-hour car ride to the airport and a 47-second walk from the front door to the car. Needless to say, not many people knew me around there. I received constant questioning from the other campers, I was almost shocked when somebody wasn’t asking me about my home, and I even fielded musings from the counselors. These were people twice my age who seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. 

 

And to think I had considered taxis with automatic doors to be run-of-the-mill vehicles. During these Camp Lookout years, I myself wasn’t too impressed with my life in Tokyo: I rarely got to enjoy Gatorade or other US staple foods and was deeply upset by the fact that movies entered theaters months later than their American release dates. To be honest, I had a hard time not going up to every individual at the camp and asking them what it was like to live in the States or if they had ever met Will Smith.

 

Over time, I began to get over the fact that I would often go months without a refreshing Gatorade or that I would get home from the movie theater only to find out the film I had just seen was being released as a 10th Anniversary Special Edition DVD in the States. I became proud of my life in Japan and was glad that I got the chance to experience something a majority of Americans didn’t get the chance to feel: knowing that you can consort with two different countries with two separate cultures is extremely comforting. I stopped going to Camp Lookout when I was fifteen but I still enjoyed talking to my relatives and their friends about how much I loved my adopted home. 

 

I cherish all the time I’ve had in Tokyo and know that it will be difficult to leave the city when I enter the next chapter of my life. But, until I step onto the next Boeing 747 and head back to my country of origin, I will soak up every last part of this city—and keep my eyes peeled for Jackie Chan.

 

Sam Griffen is a former student of the American School in Japan.

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