There are a few shared experiences that bring us together as a generation. For my generation, things that come to mind include: wearing scrunchies in the eighties, the Clinton sex scandal, and downloading music for free. As a rather technology proficient individual who watches, shall we say, generous amounts of TV, I'm usually right in the middle of these sorts of things. But there's one classic experience of my generation that I for some reason completely missed out on: being forced to read The Catcher in the Rye.

I don't really know what happened; some of my friends and classmates have, in the course of their education, been forced to read it two or three times. But for some reason it was always the "other" English class that was reading it. I would see them walking around with their small off-white books, and got used to seeing the band of colored stripes in the corner of it. But I never even cracked it open, and had no idea what it was about or why it was supposed to be so great. Actually, that happened to me a lot. Other classics I missed out on include Of Mice and Men and The Outsiders.

Well, I saw it at a used bookstore in Takadanobaba a few months ago, and started reading it last week. I really, really like it. Since it's written in a colloquial style, the usual hijacking of my brain that tends to happen when I'm reading isn't as noticable. Usually my speech and writing tend to mimic what I've been reading- not consciously mind you- and this habit has now simply manifested itself in my excessive use of "I'm not kidding" and "it just kills me." I don't think anyone has noticed, and it could be worse. When I'm reading Austen or Dickens I can get really insufferable.

Its a convenient book to read on the train; it fits in my purse even with my wallet and umbrella already in it, and I can shove it in my jacket pocket should the need arise. Small books are big in Japan; I haven't seen any books in Japan bigger than a hand or thicker than a wallet, unless they're picture books or manga. I don't know if its that Japanese is inherently a more concise language, or that authors know Japanese people only have time to read on the train, and War and Peace just ain't gonna fly.

Sometimes when people start rushing into the train at Ueno I have to hold my book up in readiness, because once the train gets really packed my arms don't have room to come up if they're down, or go down if they're up. When it gets really bad, I don't have enough room to hold the book at a reasonable distance from my face, and I have to either push back and fight for a few inches, or rest the book on somebody's shoulder and hope they don't mind too much. Whatever I have to do to keep from going all cross-eyed, or getting lipgloss all over the pages.

I want to move into my own place, but I don't want to live in the boondocks, pay any key money or more than 8.5 man in rent. I want to go somewhere for goldenweek but dont want to pay too much for flights or accomodations, and dont really know where to go.

It all involves a lot of research on the net, a lot of open windows, a lot of hassle, and everything has a deadline.

I could either end up with a wonderful vacation and a lifestyle change, or just a bunch of favorited websites that mean nothing, and my life will stay the same.

Back when I took yoga, my instructor once asked us to concentrate on our breath, and describe it in terms of being hot, cold, wet, or dry. Hot and cold weren't much of a problem, but as a resident of California I realized I wasn't used to thinking of air as being wet or dry. If someone told me it was really wet out, I would just assume it was raining.

But alas, humidity was one of the many surprises waiting for me upon my arrival in a place that actually has seasons. Humitidy that hit me like a brick wall when I stepped off the airplane, humidity that sat on my face like a wet mattress, humidity that wrapped around my limbs and made sweating futile.

But those days are gone now. Now it is winter, and all the moisture has been sucked from the air. Dandruff and itchy skin have appeared on the absolutely oblivious salarymen on the trains. I'm having enough trouble keeping my own skin under control; I've been obsessively applying handcream during work hours between typing- and I hate lotion. When I take off my jacket I hear the loud crackle of static electricity as the lining rips itself from my shirt. And breathing all night is painful- I wake up with my roughened throat stuck fast to itself and I must grope for water in the dark.

Too much blogging has irrevocably split my public and private selves, so that sometimes even I don't know my thoughts until I find them posted on xanga, for the world to see.

The past few days I have been quietly depressed for seemingly no reason, besides the obvious one that the time to go back has come sooner than I expected, and my mind is stressed with both the mental and practical preparation that requires. But my mind rejects simple, common solutions, and has been scrabbling against all kinds of other analyses, finding a toehold in none.

In the past few weeks I have made my tour of central California. I have been as close as Tres Pinos and as far as Frisco. I have been stomping around San Jose and meandering through the blank hills with only the cows for company. I have seen old and new friends, wasted time, drunk too much and eaten too much American food. I have taken no pictures.

I was jet lagged, then sick, now sleepy. If I've had a normal night of sleep it doesn't feel like it, and if I've ever been fully awake I don't remember it. I've hardly been alone.

Hollister is a place for forced introspection, where your friends who know you like to tell you who you are. They give advice definitively, to your face eventually (once a consensus has been reached).

I feel guilty for not seeing everyone I could have, for as long as I could have. I feel guilty I haven't bought any souvenirs yet and haven't put any thought into them. I feel bad for leaving so soon. I feel bad for leaving at all.

An abstract concept, an abstract goal. We know where not to look for it now.

Oh, somebody give me a plan and a direction and show me the right way to live. Oh, somebody show me how to balance Life and love, Adventure and friendship, Confidence and Humility, sweetness and rugged Independence. Tell me what to do so that it all works out the way it was supposed to.

In two weeks I have discovered cold-eze, my favourite placebo, I have connected and re-connected, I happily shut-off Japan until nihonmachi in Frisco shoved it in my face again. I have found my English voice again, grown rusty as it has with little use. I finally saw at least part of Taladaga nights, and saw my best friend again. I've touched the dead grass hills that surround my hometown and kissed the freezing wind in from the bay and laid down mile after mile on Highway 101, which goes through civilization and back more than once. I've heard the faint murmurings of desire and new half- formed plans have begun fluttering around my head. I got to "hard" on Guitar Hero, even though those orange ones mess me up pretty bad.

Oh, if only we knew exactly how to deal with things as they came flying at us- just a colored button and a strum later and it could be on to the next thing. But we humans have more complicated problems, and an awful sense of rhythm. So, see you soon Japan; I'm coming home.

I notice that fewer people every year put out Christmas lights. On Christmas eve my friends and I drove back from church looking for Severenson street- a small street of fairly expensive houses where the residents still take Christmas seriously. We rolled through slowly, taking in the floodlit nativity scenes, the glowing Santas perched on rooftops, the glittering animals grazing in front lawns, and the overwhelming amount of Christmas lights lining the rooftops, edging the windows, draped over bushes, and twirled around trees. We weren't the only ones either; the traffic was practically bumper-to-bumper, and there were plenty of pedestrians on the sidewalk, many with dogs or kids in tow. This street has always been popular, but I've never seen it so crowded. But, the sad fact is: the rest of the town is mostly dark.

I don't know what it is. It could be the energy crisis, or the war, or it could be that there aren't as many kids in Hollister pushing for it like they used to. Maybe it's the end of a tradition.

Another year has passed, which is always awkward for an obsessive memory-collector like myself. Time continues to roll along unheeded, my friends and I get older, cities get larger, and everything seems to change. It's overwhelming sometimes, and though I dig my fingers into the silt as I pass by, I still end up getting swept out by the tide, floating in the ocean with dirty fingernails.

We spent New Year's in San Jose, trying to find the party. Of course, we were the party, and we roamed the sidewalks wishing people a happy New Year and enjoyed the feeling of people being friendly to strangers. All piled in our hotel room again, we watched Saved By the Bell, a bit of nostalgia still somehow stuck on the television.

The next day the sky was wide and blue the way a central Californian sky is. It's the kind of endless, frightening blue you see above the clouds from an airplane, but stretched from horizon to horizon, bare hills to low cityscapes on either side of the highway. We drove south from city to country, staring out the window. I saw a Christmas tree farm near an exit. Their season had ended a week ago, and now their season was just beginning; the lot was filled with triangular knee-high baby trees, even as their older siblings now were thrown unceremoniously in front lawns, tinsel still clinging to their dry branches.

And so winter comes just as it came last year, and so the latest in a long string of new years. There is nothing new under the blank California sun, or under its vast sky either. And that's comforting, in its way.

The Past cannot be salvaged, and what exits now cannot be packaged up and saved for the Future. Faces can be memorized and pictures can be taken, and moments can be obsessively cataloged, but the REALITY of a person, a place, or a feeling will fade when it is over. I have tried to hold onto the reality after it was over, and it tortured me. The only way to move on is to let go of one reality and dive totally into the new one. But moving on, responsibly and unemotionally, is to me the saddest part of all.

We drove around today in the wind, a Hollister wind. I call it the wind of change, but it is resisted here. From the safety of the window and the warmth of the house, I watch the world being divided into movable things and unmovable things; the wind whips the plants and the smaller branches, but the fence and the trunks are totally inert. The lawn chairs find themselves pushed all over our backyard, but the table has its legs planted firmly into the cement. There is wild motion, and there is utter stillness.

We experience the wind in brief intervals, between front doors and cars, between cars and businesses. We watch the wind through the car windows, and hear it whistling through air vents. Trees furl around themselves and leaves blow across the roads. Some of the weaker stop signs bounce up and down a little and lawn ornaments fall over. A single spray of rain is spattered against the windshield, and then the rain moves on, while a giant inflatable santa in somebody’s front yard gesticulates wildly in the direction of the road like a hitchhiker, leaning heavily but anchored down firmly by weights in his red boots.

We watch the wind in awe, and freely admit our fear of it. We are afraid of it as Movable people, even though we feel only the soft heat on our fingers through the vents. And so we go on, even as the world turns to chaos around us, safe and shut up inside. But I can see in the flashing eyes of my companions the windwhipped trees and the possibility of a larger world.

This Hollister wind descends upon a small town, and blows upon us things rooted here. But it comes not in defiance or in entreaty but in the complete indifference of nature, and is all the more powerful for it.

Sweet champagne in a crystal glass feels romantic, and downing it obsessively all the more so. I want to feel like a violently depressed wealthy dowager, alone with her cats and her pearls, constantly drunk on expensive wines she can no longer really afford.

Everything that was important three days ago isn’t important anymore. Everything that worried me is no longer relevant, and everything I was preparing for has already happened. The culture and the world that has surrounded me for 11 months has become completely insignificant, and I don’t miss it.

Jet lag is worse coming to America than to Japan. The flight is shorter, too short to sleep, and the body never really feels like adjusting. I get tired. I’m always tired, but sometimes I get suddenly, violently tired, at times that don’t make sense either here or there. At those times my eyes start to close, and then my brother usually punches me in the arm.

I want to be a beat writer in the 50’s, and abandon myself to whisky and drawn-out similes. I picture myself in an unfurnished loft in frisco with a windowed wall, sitting at a piano with a glass and scribbling on notepaper.

But I don’t hate myself enough to abandon my body to it’s whims, to become addicted to a drink or even chocolate; I always stop myself before it goes too far- not with will, but simple disinterest or common- sense, and my stomach always fills before my heart.

But I’m just here on vacation. Nothing is over, and nothing is beginning. I packed up all my emotional baggage and left it in my tiny apartment. My psyche is neat and unperturbed; I’m dead inside.

I put away my dishes in the sink the same way I have since I was a kid and realized that I wasn’t actually doing it. I was in Japan two weeks later, remembering me doing it. And it all seemed like some crazy dream.

I'm kind of addicted to musical performances on TV shows.

This is one of the best I've ever seen.

I got home 2 days ago.

Merry Christmas.

Walking home from the station one day, I had the strange feeling that something wonderful and interesting was about to happen. Walking down the sidewalk, hungering for an onigiri, I suddenly smelled something evocative and nostalgic, a soft smell, like baby powder, sandalwood, and sand.I looked up and saw two large men walking in front of me. They were wearing identical tan jackets, baggy jeans, and… their hair was done in a topknot. They were sumo wrestlers, and the source of that smell.

The reason the smell is familiar to me is that I live near a Sumo practice room and have gone to see them in the morning a few times. I like watching all their different exercises, and I like to watch them practice on each other. I like to watch the older ones bully the younger ones, and I like to watch the big and important guy in his black shirt and slacks sit on the sidelines and clip his nails importantly, occasionally rousing himself long enough to growl at someone who's made a mistake.

 The room is full of that smell. As it is full of the sound of bare feet on a sanded floor, of flesh slapping against flesh, and the whooshing "osssss" of their morning greeting, so it is full of the soft scent of their hair. That scent fills the practice room and hovers around it, even outside. It stays on the skin and lingers in the nostrils.

Rather than pass the two wrestlers who were walking in front of me, I trailed behind them and closed my eyes, remembering the times I went to the practice room and trying to hear what kind of things they say to each other. One of them noticed me and pulled his companion to the side to let me pass. I said a muffled "sumimasen" to them as I did and nearly burst out laughing.

I went to the conbini to get an onigiri and found that they had followed me inside. They grabbed something quickly and left, although their scent still hovered around the register. As I paid my one hundred and twenty yen, I contemplated making some kind of comment to the cashier. You have tounderstand that for me, small talk with strangers usually doesn't go well. If I try and say something funny, it either doesn't translate or I say it wrong. And even if I say something perfectly, the shock of hearing it coming out of my mouth usually diffuses the joke in the first place. I think I'm still traumatized from the time I saw a man in my apartment complex wearing a Cal hat and when I told him I went to that school he just looked at me like Iwas crazy and kept walking. Later of course I realized that he probably had no idea where that hat had come from or what it meant.

By the time I was getting my change I finally worked up the nerve to say "Sumo wrestlers smell good don't they?" As I said it, I looked at the cashier in the face for the first time. He was just a boy, and he broke out into a crooked smile that revealed his age. "Sou desu ne. It's the oil in their hair." he responded. I smiled and left the store.

I walked home elated, and not just because I had a successful conversation with someone who doesn't work in my office.

My friends make jokes, but sometimes I really think they imagine me walking through some mystical land of wooden bridges and cherry trees, side by side with geisha and ninja and sumo wrestlers. Not to say that traditional things don't exist anywhere, but when you do finally find them they tend to be either tourist traps or such anachronisms that you tend to get bitter about them. But if you can manage to find the real thing somewhere, fitting into real life, like the mochi cakes in the market before new years, or the kumade markets in November where merchants go to purchase luck, or the Sumo Wrestlers walking down your street in gangster jeans, it is a pure pleasure, one of the few left in Tokyo.