Home

Home: for the past two months this has been a continual question for me.

Is there some point at which Tokyo will suddenly become home, I thought? A moment when I will suddenly get it and I will cease to feel like a perpetual foreigner, lost, I won't say in translation, but atleast overwhelmed and spluttering for words and self expression. Deep down I know that until I can understand japanese this place will never be a home like the states and Britain can be. But it's not just language that makes a place home. It's some ethireal and almost spiritual thing. Last week a tourist asked me for directions and I knew the way. 6 weeks ago I received my first bill. Four weeks ago I held my first, albeit basic, dinner party. A month ago I realised I was bowing to the other british students on my program if I wanted to say thank you or sorry, two weeks ago it felt utterly bizarre to eat a meal with a fork and I eventually got out my chopsticks again because it felt wrong to eat rice with anything other than chopsticks. Yesterday I bought a cheap second hand kimono from a bizarre.

But today, well, today I just spent the day with my friend, my flatmate's mum, my landlady, her husband, my flatmates and their dog. It's almsot the first weekend I've spent in Tokyo, instead of going off travelling. We went to a university festival, we ate japanese junk food (don't even ask - as even if I knew the names - I could never translate the collection of wierd items into understandable english - I just smile, bow and eat whatever is put before me), drank beer and sake, went shopping for gloves for winter and finally knelt round an enormous steaming bowl of fishcakes, green tea, pickles and bean sweets to eat.

And throughout the evening my adopted japanese family figured out the kanji (chinese characters) for my name. Names are really important in Japan. They are chosen not only by how they sound and what they mean but also by what they look like. Your given name should reflect your family name, even if it is only as simply as ensuring that it has the same number of kanji (chinese characters in it), and it should be able to be adapted later in your life, particuarly for when you get married (if you are a woman) and when you die. How a name sounds and the number of kanji all hold superstittions around them - certain numbers or sounds are luckier than others. When you die the Buddhist priest gives you a new name. It will be made up of one of the characters or sounds from your old name and will be with you for the next part of your journey, in the next world. If only I could write the kanji for my name here I would. It is beautiful.

If there really is such a thing as a 'moment' when you feel 'home' I think I just felt it.