I feel lonely sometimes, and not only when I’m alone. It’s just the reality of what my mom told me once: that we’re all born alone and we all die alone. Despite the strongest of connections, no one can help you the entire way through life. There are some feelings and situations that only you can navigate.

What does that have to do with Corey & my trip to Japan? Despite its having 126 million people, the novelty of Japan and its culture made us feel rather isolated at first.

Take the language barrier, for example. I’d reviewed a couple key phrases such as Sumimasen and O-genki desu ka, but when it came time to actually apply them in conversation, they slipped my mind. The phrase we ended up using most liberally was Arigatō, though we’d often forget to append the “gozaimasu” that would lend the phrase the appropriate air of formality with strangers. I joked with Corey that she used Arigatō as a catch-all word regardless of the situation — for hello, goodbye, and ok, in addition to its native meaning of thank you. A fair number of locals didn’t speak much English (though many did), and a combination of Google Translate and body language — especially bows and smiles! — served us best in communicating with them.

*Kon'nichiwa. Nani tabetara ī to omoimasu ka?* In the moment, walking in and speaking a phrase like this felt impossibly out of reach

For those first few days, Corey & I had little contact with familiarity outside of each other and our phones. The latter kept us in some sync both with western pop culture — q.v. footage of Harry Styles kissing Emily Ratajkowski on the streets of Tokyo while we slept jetlagged in our hotel — and with my classmates — many of whom had planned pre-trips such as skiing in Hokkaido and temple-hopping in Taipei. Corey & I didn’t have time for much of a pre-trip, and that plus the fact that I hadn’t made many concrete plans outside of the pre-planned group trek events combined to make me feel a bit of FOMO.

When the MBA program started a year-and-a-half before, thanks no classes on Friday and a slow-to-ramp-up courseload, it felt like all I did was meet people and party. (Side note: I might recommend a different graduate degree if you’re an extreme introvert). While I made many connections, as a classmate remarked later on this Japan trip, “you’re friendly with a lot of people but you aren’t super close with a lot of people.” Perhaps that’s because there are so many people and most are both interesting and busy. The social scene got progressively cliquier over the two years, yet thankfully never shed that “come one come all” atmosphere that had made it so fun in the first place. I never quite found my clique, but I suppose that by doing my best to remain open to new people and experiences I still found my niche.

Corey & I joined up with the group in Tokyo by way of a few lines: first while waiting to check bags in the hotel lobby and second while waiting for breakfast the next morning. I got seated in a group of 7 in the breakfast hall’s only private room, and more people joined as we ate. I felt both happy to re-integrate with my class and relieved to interact with westerners again.

Even in big groups, though, I sometimes felt disconnected. Take Hakone for example, when in down moments within a group of 50-100 I felt unsure of where to stand or what to say to whom. Foregoing lunch beers surely hadn’t helped. On our bus ride back to Tokyo, I felt even more anxious. Rather than having made proactive dinner plans, I’d been invited to an izakaya tour with a more-or-less random assortment of people, and while this rather reactive planning approach had worked well in the past for me as a solo traveler, it suddenly made less sense for our group of two.

“Do I know anyone in this group?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Do you know anyone in this group?”

“Yeah I know one of the guys.”

“Well what are we doing after? We’ll never have another opportunity to party like this with a big group abroad. And I want to spend time with the people we know.”

“Well I don’t know how late the izakaya tour will go, especially since this traffic keeps getting worse and worse, and I don’t like texting people to make plans only to not show up.”

This exchange plunged me into fugue, and I sat staring straight ahead for a while before snapping-to and shooting out a few texts. Our izakaya tour ended up going too late and far afield for us to meet up with anyone afterwards anyways.

The next day, Corey & I explored such places as Ueno Park, and she — being keen on acquiring one herself — asked a few fashionable women about their trench coats.

“Oh I love your coat! Where did you get it?”

Some would confer with the man they’re with before smiling and nodding and rushing off (Corey suspected those thought she was hitting on them). Others would stop to communicate via Google Translate. Still others would understand right away and respond with the name of the store, all of which, to Corey’s disappointment, were too far away. She did try shopping in the Ginza, but to her consternation just could not find the right coat.

From the Ginza we walked to Asashio Canal Pier where the underlying sense of anxiety I’d been feeling throughout the day had scarcely dissipated when we found a long line of classmates standing by the water in anticipation of our yakatabune dinner cruise. We walked to the end of the line but didn’t know anyone down there, prompting us to cut into the middle where I found Kushal talking animatedly amongst others, and a few sips from his hip flask later I felt ready to rock.

On the boat, however, I got separated from my friends because the vegans & vegetarians had been assigned specific seats and I didn’t want to leave Corey alone. While seated with strangers, I at least had it better than one friend of mine, who, after walking on the boat and taking one look at the food, said “nah,” turned around, and walked right off.

Rather than second-year full-time MBAs like me, our table was full of first-years and fully-employed MBAs. While I didn’t know any of them, it turned out that Corey did…

“Juhie!?”

“Corey!!”

“Oh my god. How are you!?”

“I’m good! How are you?”

“Good! So crazy we’ve been trying to meet up in LA all this time and had to come all the way to Tokyo in order to make it happen.”

Corey had written an article for Healthline a few years back and Juhie had been her editor, though they’d never met in-person. Juhie looked vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite place her, until it hit me that she’d recently been elected the new student body president.

In no time, Corey made friends with our whole — mostly female — section of the table. I soaked in the vibes and sipped my sake, riding on the coattails of the girl across from me who kept ordering double carafes.

As the dinner portion wrapped up, Gus walked by our table, squeezing me on the shoulder as he passed. Corey asked if I ought to go sit with my friends, and I thought I rather should, so I left her with her new friends and we both had a far better time for it. Dinner and sightseeing having been done away with, the boat concentrated its collective attention on drinking, and the party peaked with a group rendition of Mamma Mia.

It being only 10pm, we set the need to wake up early for tomorrow’s bullet train out of mind and decided to flock to the nightclub TK Shibuya. It wasn’t open yet though, so we cabbed to Shibuya with Kushal & Kevin and there bided our time by exploring the one, the only, the MEGA DONKI.

What on earth is a MEGA DONKI, you might ask? It’s the flagship location of the pervasive Japanese discount store Don Quijote that’s open 24 hours a day. It has 9 floors and virtually every sort of product you could imagine: clothing, makeup, ramen noodles, flavored shots, sakura-themed papel picado, and an 18+ section full of products that I’ll leave to your imagination.

Even after exploring the MEGA, though, the club still wasn’t ready for us, so we stopped by the Church. No, not a real church. A church bar. We got some whiskey highballs from the youth minister bartender and before sitting in one of the pews to take in the pastor’s sermon DJ’s set list.

Soon enough we felt ready and walked over to the club, outside of which we met a couple more classmates before descending to its interior. Not long after we’d gotten our first drinks and started bopping a bit to the music, Kevin waved me over to where he stood with Jackson and a few of the club promoters.

“They want us up at that table [full of Asian women] and said we can drink whatever we want”

“Oh!??”

“Yeah if there’s anything you guys want that they don’t have up there, let us know and we’ll get it for you. Trust me, they can afford it.”

The Dom Pérignon Luminous and Clase Azul Reposado that they had on hand were quite good enough for my liking. Most of the women seemed a little shy to talk at first, though they quickly brought Jackson into their game of Liar’s Dice. Some were as old as their 40s, but the main woman — Yvette — was about our age, and if she wasn’t their leader, she was at least the most talkative of the bunch. She told me & Kevin that they were all MBAs from Singapore, on spring break just like us.

She and Kevin got to talking pretty intently, and she even gave him her phone number for when he’s ever in Singapore. Being engaged, I was just there for the booze and the novelty. When Corey walked over and asked to come up to the table with us, and I told her that that wouldn’t be possible, I immediately registered the shock in her eyes. For once, I’d gotten the sort of benefit she’s been used to getting at clubs for years. She walked off with Sarah and spent the rest of the night dancing up close to the DJ, taking with her some satisfaction at the look of disappointment she’d seen in the eyes of the women at my table when they’d learned I’m taken.

The only dancing at my table came in the form of a couple club girls in lingerie who twerked while holding $1k yen bills in their mouths. They’d come to help entertain the table’s newcomers — a couple Japanese guys in suits — who, upon apprehending the situation at our table, googled Yvette’s net worth and showed it to Kevin, who related to me that “there were a lot of zeros.” I felt like I’d been dropped into Crazy Rich Asians, with Yvette as Gemma Chan’s character post-divorce.

Eventually, the dice game having broke and the rich women being in good hands, I left with Corey to get some rest. A few hours later, our entire trek group of over 200 people gathered in the hotel lobby to await instructions regarding our day’s travel to Kyoto. I reunited with friends I hadn’t yet seen this trip, such as Matt Bell whom I wished a happy golden birthday.

“Thanks man. What’s a golden birthday?”

“It’s when the age you’re turning matches the date. So how you’re turning 29 on the 29th.”

“Ahh, I’d never heard of that.”

“It only happens once! Some people have them when they’re toddlers, so you’re lucky you get to remember yours.”

Exactly how much would he remember though? Well before the trip had started, Matt had sent out invites for his birthday party, and it would be at a nightclub.

As we walked to the train, waited on the platform, boarded, sat in our seats, watched the landscape pass by, debarked, walked to the bus, and explored two temples, I felt on cloud nine, with each step I took feeling as light as if on air. The relief of having such mindless fun the prior night and the associated release of my pent-up anxiety overpowered any vestige of a hangover.

That night we walked three floors up a metal staircase right off the street in downtown Kyoto that led into what looked like an abandoned building but was in fact the Kitsune Nightclub. Things got off to a relatively tame start as people trickled in and congregated by the tables that Matt and a few others had gotten. I tried to get drunk on mixed drinks, but they were pretty weak. One of the few places in Japan where I didn’t get a bang for my buck.

A few more Hennessy x Red Bulls later, I started to notice how good the DJ was, and once out on the dance floor the the beat dropped and I didn’t look back.

Perhaps inspired by the girls dancing on stage to Madonna, a few classmates of mine successfully danced on stage in front of the DJ booth before being sent off by security. Not long after, the guy DJ switched out for a girl, who played J-pop followed by some electro bop.

I’d periodically leave the dance floor to get a drink, and one of those times Corey came with me to go to the bathroom. When she came out she was laughing in disbelief and pulled me aside:

“I have to tell you what just happened in there. I was by myself in the bathroom with these three Japanese girls and they were looking at me and giggling. I asked them why and they looked at each other before slowly saying in English, ‘your face is so small; it’s so beautiful’ and I replied ‘oh, thank you!’ to which they said ‘can we touch your nose?’ and I’m like ‘my nose??’ and they’re like ‘yes, your nose, it’s so pretty, can we touch it?’ So I said ok and they each took turns touching my nose and squealing, Lyle, squealing as they did so.”

By now I was feeling it, watered-down drinks or not, and soon after the above exchange I asked Corey if she wanted to leave. She declined, so I said that in that case I’d get another drink, and she stopped me: “you’ve had enough.” Unfortunately for her, Gui had just come back with a couple of Asahis and passed me one, which I popped only for the entire top to come off.

That is how they’re designed, by the way 🤷

By the time we made it home, we had few hours to sleep before it was time to break our fast and set out for a few tours. That was the night that we ended up at the Gion Corner variety show. The group we went with congealed naturally over the course of the day, centered around Kushal, who at the least gives the prior day’s birthday boy a run for his money as one of the most social people in the program. As for the group, it’s another benefit of the program that after nearly two years I could still meet people I’d never heard of as well as talk in-depth to people with whom I’d never before gone beyond small talk.

From time to time throughout the trek we’d encounter classmates on explorations of their own. In Tokyo, we’d waved to Caroline and Caroline [sic] from across a Ginza crosswalk. We’d bumped into two guys from the izakaya tour the morning after while at a Ueno Park food stand. On our last day in Kyoto, we passed acquaintances both on the way up to and the way down from the Arashiyama Monkey Park. Leaving Nishiki Market, we watched James and Katie and a few others whiz by on bikes before we stopped to make our final visit to 7/11, picking up the bottle of sake with which we’d commence celebrating our final night in Japan.

We reached the Kamo River, crossed to its eastern bank, and walked north until we found our group congregated along the hill. Most drank beers. Corey & I passed our bottle back and forth — “Kanpai!” — and downed it before the sun hit the horizon. Tonight was the final party, an Enkai banquet.

For said banquet, they sat everyone from our hotel — the traditional ryokan — in one room with floor-level tables and tatami mats. We did a bit of nibbling before it became a free-for-all near the bar area, after which the trek leaders funneled us into the room that those staying in the western-style hotel had eaten in. Their room had wooden floors and dinner tables with chairs. We stood near the back to watch the drum performance that signaled an end to the official portion of the trek.

Yet we had one last bit of business to attend to before leaving Kyoto: we returned to Kitsune for a final club night. Again we got tables, again we danced into the morning hours. After a short night’s sleep — fully clothed and with the lights on — Corey & I made our mad dash to the airport, and only after reaching the terminal did Corey realize she still had her club bracelet on.

On that trip back — which thanks to the international date line was (at least tied for) the longest day of my life — I had plenty of time to reflect on the days prior.

I write this having already graduated and thus with a slight bit of distance from the past two years. I wonder at the blur that it all was. It felt at times like all these things just happened to me, like I barely had a second to exercise volition.

FOMO is uncomfortable because it makes you aware of your limitations. I’ve expressed this frustration before, but while you can’t do it all, though the aggregatory power of social media you can feel like you saw other people do it all. Yet that’s just an illusion; as a friend recently related to me, every decision you make both opens up new possibilities and imposes limitations. It’s up to us to embrace the power that comes with both.

Corey was right; we may never again party with so many people while traveling abroad. But on those future trips when we explore the world, Corey & I will always have each other. Now, I don’t know exactly how or when those trips will happen. I only just accepted a job offer and have to weave that into my life first. But wherever I go, whatever I do, I’ll do it with her.

Right before takeoff, we kissed. “Last kiss in Asia!” For now…

Thank you for reading! That concludes my five-part Japan series, which covered one week in March.

Club Kitsune

Edo Experiences