The train ride into Euston station felt like coming home. You relax when you are a place you know well doing something you have done before. All of this part of London makes perfect sense to me.
This year, I will have been in England longer than I was in Japan, even though Japan still feels like the place I really belong in some way, like I should go back there for some reason or another. The Japanese call this place that you come from, your home, ふるさと furusato. I am only thinking about this because I met a man who had been living in Japan for a long time and he referred to Southport, here in England as his furusato. He used that word even, in the midst of an English conversation. I could hear myself saying that same word to someone that would understand it, I could hear myself using the whole phrase as a matter of fact, but it occurred to me that I can't ever remember hearing a Japanese person say it. I'm sure I have. I must have.
Another conversation had me thinking again about how drawn back I feel at times, but how inevitable it is that I will likely stay hear for a while. There is no reason to go back beyond these false feelings of warmth. False only in that I know they don't represent every day life in a genuine way. The same could be said of Euston and London. All these false feelings of warmth. Of course, it's not actually like this, of course it rains in London. These clear blue skies are a lie.
And then another moment today as I was walking back from taking the kids to school and smelled something that reminded me of the ocean in Fukuoka, of coming on my bike around a rocky bend into Imajuku. There it was again, the feeling like there was one point that things changed and the narrative took a clearly different path.