Ongoing: Going Home

My friend once called me "the Olympics" because I visit Japan, my home country, only once in four years.

When I do, though, I wander around the streets to take it all in. The lights, the noise, a smell of food and people's voices: all so familiar, yet so distant they are becoming after many years of living abroad.

I used to visit these streets to feel a sense of anonymity. Getting lost in the crowd somehow calmed me down. Now I search for something different, a sense of belonging perhaps. But that hardly comes to you when the strangers in front of you look merely strange.

An old Turkish man I met in the U.S. told me that he left his country when he was 22, the same age when I left Japan 18 years ago. I asked whether he misses his home.

"I think about it everyday," he replied with a distant look.