Coming back to America was pretty confusing. Getting off the plane, depending on what ethnicity you resembled, the flight attendants would either say thank you or some Japanese pleasantry, and when they said "thank you" to me I thought to myself "oh you think I can't understand you because I'm a foreigner?" until I realized "wait... I live here and this is my native language." However, I would like to point out that at the airport bathroom they had a Dyson airblade, or something similarly named, which was about as amazing in the realm of hand drying as Dysons are in vacuum cleaners. It was pretty much what it sounds like - a blade of air that seems viscerally to slice through any wetness it comes into contact with. It was actually better than Japanese hand dryers, and those things are pretty awesome.
Let's see... when I went and gave the first dude my passport he asked me how long I was in Japan, and I told him, and then he asked what I was doing there and I said "a lot of traveling," and he said in what I perceived to be kind of an angry tone "no I asked what you were DOING there" and I was really confused. I thought maybe I had said something weird because it had been so long since I used English. My English is undoubtedly different and not as eloquent as before I left, or at least it was then. It's hard to resist the urge to think in Japanese, or plan what I'm going to say in Japanese, even though I'm not even that good at it. For instance, once when I was in a cafe with Susan (on the walls were painted graphic scenes of bondage and other sexual acts, but there was free wi-fi and people making leather trinkets at one of the table) I got up to go ask where the milk was. I started considering how I would make the person at the counter understand what I wanted to know, because I always had to plan out my questions to Japanese people. Then I realized that I speak English really well and it doesn't require any planning for me to go intuitively communicate with other Americans. Back at the airport the customs people seemed really surprised and confused that all I had was a backpack and kept asking me where my luggage was.
I took the BART train to downtown San Francisco to meet Susan, and waited there for a little while. There were surveillance cameras on the train, which was weird, and outside the station there were black people, which was weird, and I could understand what people were saying, which was weird. I have scarcely been as confused in my life. But it was a very entertaining confusion.
At some point I located Susan and seeing her again made me very happy. She seemed excited that I hadn't brought much, because as I would find out we were in for quite the homeless walking adventure experience. At first it was hard not to talk about Japan all the time. We walked over to a mall to sit and talk for awhile, then over to a movie theater where you can get free wi-fi. I basically had to live the 23rd twice in one "day," and I hadn't gotten much sleep on the plane, so I was pretty tired. It was initially very hard for me to figure out what I should be taking pictures of, because a lot of stuff that I assume would have surprised me at another time was seemingly commonplace after having come from Japan. We walked around a street that was mostly dedicated to sexuality in various respects - leather daddy stuff, cafe with bondage art, gay thrift store, sex shops, etc. Around random streets on the less nice side of downtown I guess. At the time I didn't really have any concept of the layout of the city so there was no context to the things I was seeing.
Eventually we went to Berkeley where our first couch-surfing host lived. We shared a vegan Ethiopian food platter, an event which at the time caused me some internal distress because the stuff I wanted to get there was expensive and I figured I would not as thoroughly enjoy the vegan platter Susan wanted, but at the same time Susan really obviously wanted Ethiopian food and I didn't want to take that away. In the end I chalk it up mostly to sleep-and-food-deprived grumpiness than anything. It wasn't a big deal anyway. Then we walked over to Andrei's place. I think he lived in two small cabin sort of things, one with the kitchen and couch we were sleeping on (and shower) and another one which was his bedroom, across a small courtyard. He was studying for the GRE, which he was taking the next day, but was more or less done when we got there at night. He offered that we drink some wine, so we all shared a bottle and talked a lot about traveling and other countries and JET and whatnot. Then I went out to offer him a Japanese cigarette, and Susan came out, and we had a discussion about... alternative modes of interaction with people? I think? It was kind of an initial glimpse of Susan's interest in connection and emotion. But also a discussion about the fundamental kinds of rules in communities of people, and about actually trying to discover what those are or what occurs when a particular set is implemented. I slept on the floor and Susan on the couch. I woke up 23.
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