new (temporary) home

Firework smoke curls from the tenebrous ocean up the wall and over the deadlock of cars. A tunnel of red splattered with white and bluish smoke that violently coils over me as I cycle through it. In the distance fireworks and festival drums beat in tandem with my tired body. Harbingers of change. 

I met Souta through a friend. The spitting image of me. If I were Japanese I would be Souta, and vice versa. So I was told, and I recognized the resemblance at once. Not only that of appearance. Souta falls asleep to American heavy metal, he sleeps on his belly holding a pillow to his heart and one under his head. In the fetal position, shirtless, a comfort evoked by looking at his mother's face. We woke up in the same position. 

As I cycle through Enoshima festival crowds I think of what awaits me in my new home. We walk the empty streets of Enoshima. From away the island shines akin to a warship in the black vastness of the moonlight sky. White haze over it - a specter in the dark. What lurks in the unreachable peaks where no paths lead. Over the cliffs and looming houses over vast ravines. The waves that splatter at the rocks would crush your skull before you knew you had fallen. 

Souta cuts pizza with scissors and sleeps on a camp bed. No one thinks much of it. There is love in this house that surpasses common ideas of love in Japan. Love that I have not yet felt with other Japanese families. In a way for this is not a typical one. They lead their lives inspired by Scandinavian traditions and therefore I feel familiarity in their conduct and sense of being. There is a human relationship here that is born out of spontaneity, out of mere being human. No pretense. No reserve. No rigorous rules and artifice as to what "enriching lives through human connection" should be. Only genuineness. Needless to say, this is not the only such family. 

Souta walks through the merry crowd of the festival not bothered by the noise and happiness. His agenda is to be a thorn in the eye of the stereotypes. He splatters his shaved ice with myriad of tastes. We drift away from the crowd and towards a local store that has a bottle wending machine. American inspired. Japan is too narrow for Souta. His outlook is that of a wanderer. 

I look at him from across the room tinkering at his gargantuan bicycle. A free spirit.