Ghosts.

Past, present and future.

Half a lifetime ago, between my 2nd and 3rd extended stays in Japan, I met the exchange student from the Japanese university I was preparing to attend as my school’s exchange student. We quickly became language exchange partners and then started dating.

Due to the differences in the school year start and end dates between the two countries, I retuned to Japan before she did. She, through her family, was a great help when the school put me up in a dorm that amounted to a minimum security prison with a school release program. She had her brother send me her TV. Much appreciated that was.

After she returned, our relationship grew more serious and we eventually engaged to get married. I stayed as long as I could before my visa expired and I returned to the home campus to graduate and return to Japan, leaving with her much of what I brought over as it was my intent to return. To speed up the process, I changed majors. After a while, she suddenly broke off our engagement, and did so with an email.

For a while, I no longer wanted to study anything related to Japan, and I didn’t. Feeling sorry for myself, I planned to change my major again and cease any and all activities that would remind me of my failed engagement.

Thankfully, that did not last long. I reminded myself that my ex fiancé was not the reason for my interest in Japan and the Japanese language. These interests predated meeting her by several years, so why should I give them up over her?, I asked myself. That does not mean that I was “over” her yet, just that I decided not to allow her the power to derail whatever I planned and hoped for in the future.

After graduating from college I worked as a season ranger for the U.S. Park Service before flying back to Japan for the teaching job I was hired for already. While working at the park, I met a lovely young lady who decided to follow me to Japan, landing a job with the same company that hired me on the promise that we would work near each other. Ecstatic, I looked forward to showing her around Tokyo and us learning Japanese together. I had the jump on her with the language and local knowledge but I was far from fluent and she fluent in two other languages.

I returned to Japan high on life, thinking of my future which seemed almost shade requiring bright. Then a strange affliction began to over take me. The first time was at night on a footbridge over the road. Suddenly, my knees weakened. Energy drained as if water from a ruptured tank. Immobilized for a while, I was in quite the state of shock. The effects lingered, though eventually I could move. Then, under completely different circumstances, I was struck again. And again. What in the world, I asked myself. Eventually, I realized that this sensation overwhelmed me at spots where my ex fiancé and I spent time together; joked as we climbed over the foot bridge, for example. It was if, a ghost was tugging at my life force, my soul, as I tread upon steps I made in the company of my ex. Even with my mind on the future, the past still had power over me.

I did not avoid places I spent with her but did not go out of my way to revisit such venues either. The sensation quickly lessoned but remains as a bit of a shadow even today, 30 years later.

Only had one class, one billable hour of work yesterday. Finishing at 2 pm and not having a “home” to return to, I decided to walk from my worksite to a station some distance away. By train, the two are 4K apart but the route I took was at least 5km and possibly closer to 6. I have made this walk a few times in the past, especially in the early days of the panic. Yesterday was my first time since injuring my knee last August. No cane and no problem, not even with stairs. Even got caught in the middle of a cross walk across a wide street and had to trot to cross before the cars started into the intersection. Knee, I pronounce you healed!

As I made my way through Ueno park, the ghosts of my past made their presence known, tugging at my spirit. My history with the park goes back to my earliest days in Japan when I was a MM 2 in the navy. Spent a lot of time in this park in college and during this current trip, my longest time in Japan. Have taken a number of women here on dates, parties with friends, shopping at outdoor antique markets are among the memories haunting the grounds of this park. The best were those with my kids.

Though I am still in the house, there will be no more such memories made here. Even if we were to go to this park again, the quality of the newly minted memories would not be of those from the past. We have hiked through the park, visiting points of interest during two Eki Kara hikes. As a family, we have visited the zoo several times. At least once I took the oldest down to the zoo, just the two of us. My route yesterday took me through other areas our hikes had directed us through. Shops we visited and others we wished we had time to visit, vowing that we would next time. Others in the area are places friends from substack introduced me to and that I had hoped to enjoy with the family. None of these are now to be.

Walking through these avenues of my past, I realized that I am not living my life. I am living as a father and a husband, neither of which I currently am. I am a single man in need of much more work than I have but cannot seek it for I am still living this other person’s life. I am now the ghost, haunting places important to me but no longer wanted by those who made them important.

If I do stay in the Tokyo area, and at the moment, it looks like I may be able to, I will not be staying near where my pre ex family resides. I am looking at places to hang my hat on the opposite side of Tokyo, free from most of my ghosts.