13 years old and I was getting a free trip to Japan. Having a friend whose father works for United definitely has its perks. Like so many preteens, we were in the height of our anime obsession, and our nine days abroad felt like a hajj. Somehow, I was appointed translator, even though I only had the ability to say ‘I don’t speak much Japanese’ and ‘Do you speak English?’ We sounded out letters slowly and labouriously, decoding what we could in menus and train station signs.
Despite the wilted and faded brown February fields which we watched whizz past train windows, we were completely enraptured. Everything was a slant different. Sideview mirrors were placed on the hoods of cars, not on the doors. Businessmen greated each other with deep bows, not handshakes. Kiosks featured a healthy stock of porn magazines at which there always seemed to be four men standing, side by side but never exchanging a glance. We stood a head taller than people on the street, and were openly stared at by mildly curious bystanders. The attention was disconcerting at first, but slowly we found that our absolute ‘otherness’ allowed a kind of freedom you just don’t get in a world where you are familiar. We were real displacements, unconfined by the rules which governed everyone around us. Somehow, in this land on the other side of the mirror, we’d become untethered. We were free in a place we didn’t belong.
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