Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
The first time Jonathan visited Japan, he thought he would stay a bit longer than his friends.
Stay and find something – a soulmate, or just himself.
He loved the city – the people – the absence of litter.
The order and tidiness opened up something in his heart that hadn’t been there before travel.
He only felt ugly now whenever he’d run into other Aussies on the Metro, so he started avoiding places where those sleek, loud Hipsters would hang out.
This new philosophy took him to lost laneways and hidden paths that only locals knew about.
Jonathan began dying his faded, blonde hair black. Now, he wouldn’t immediately stand out as a visitor.
This night he lay on his hotel bed reaching for his Metro Pass, long neglected on the bedside table. Maybe this hadn’t been the best investment of his Yen.
“I can’t find it…” he moaned to himself. “I can’t find the right path.”
“Hang on, Mate!” His little brother would have said, “Can’t you just go with the flow?”
And so, with his brother’s words in his head, Jonathan edged off the bed and out of his slowed-down tourist brain and headed for the neon wisdom of Tokyo.
The black of his hair gave him a solemness and weighed down his skull and his thoughts.
He didn’t feel Japanese and yet his Australian thoughts were slipping from him each day.
Jonathan navigated towards his favourite restaurant where he felt welcome and safe.
He slipped off his shoes at the entrance and waited to be seated.
The staff remembered him even with his new black roots.
The food came fast and its aroma smelled of future hope, but its colours reminded him of something he’d lost years ago.
A love. A life. A youth.
He was surprized when tears sprung from underneath his eyelids as he ran for the door.
“Where are my shoes?” he asked no one as he fumbled onto the stairwell without them.
Next minute, a pink girl straddling a pink motor scooter crashed around the laneway, missing Jonathan’s bare toes by just this much.
Above the beep of her scooter horn, the pink girl screamed, “Watch out!”
She slammed on the brakes, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“You tell me – I don’t know” Jonathan answered into the air between them.
She took off her helmet and softened her face, “Are you okay?”
“It’s music. Life is like music” Jonathan almost sobbed. “It can strengthen you but it can also take your heartbeat away with its grief!”
He didn’t really know what he was saying.
The pink girl kicked down the stand on her scooter. “Maybe stand over here?”
She led him off the lane to the curb. “You seem to be having some kind of Tokyo, touristy crisis.”
A small gasp squeezed from Jonathan’s mouth as he looked into the pink girl’s eyes.
Her eyes took in his dyed black hair and foreign sadness and she was surprized that she wanted to know more about this stranger who she’d nearly run over.
“Why don’t you tell me all about the music in your life over a drink?”
.