Though mankind has constructed numerous innovations throughout history, it seems we have failed at inventing a contraption to successfully carry out one of the most fundamental concepts of human behavior. Indeed, it appears that the same species that brought us flight, warm toilet seats, and the toaster oven has one damning aspect in its otherwise impeccable curriculum vitae: the ability to be at two places at once. 

Even the mythical Dokodemo Doa - the door that leads to anywhere -  a product of mere human (though perhaps more accurately, magical Japanese) imagination, falls short of catering to our desire. But if there is anything that I’ve learned from sporadically watching two minute segments of various mind numbing Disney sitcoms, it’s that a solution to this predicament would present many sticky situations in of itself. So I return back to the topic of flight, the closest thing we have to that elusive Dokodemo Doa.

This summer I flew from Tokyo, Japan to Columbia, South Carolina - a trip that I’ve made countless times. But this trip was different. For the first time ever in my life, I was leaving Japan with a one way ticket. As the nose of the plane pointed up towards the sky and the wheels lifted off the hallowed ground of Narita Airport, my heart fought the plane’s blatant defiance of gravity in favor of sinking heavily back towards the ground instead. My body was taking off, my heart was not. Unlike many of my classmates, I didn’t know when I would be able to return to Japanese soil.

But in a span of almost exactly twenty-four hours, I was transported from the comforts of my Japanese home in Tokyo to the kitchen of my grandparents’ house in Blythewood, South Carolina. It was disorientating, for sure. And when I really think about it, it’s almost scary. In a matter of one day, my entire environment was drastically remodeled. Yesterday I was towered over by skyscrapers, biking on pavement, buying lunch with friends at Lawson, and was thinking about radiation. Today I am surrounded by trees, trapped with no mode of independent transportation, eating strange bread for lunch, and acutely aware of the fact that none of the people in “these neck of the woods” even know Tohoku exists. 

That’s the surreal dichotomy I live in. The one that seems so fake it must be a dream. It feels ephemeral. But something deep inside me knows it’s not. It began with the cancellation of my Japanese residence visa (which means I have to stand in the long line of those weird gaijin next time I return) and is reiterated every time I think about the big question mark, instead of a tangible date, that’s circled on my calendar symbolizing my first return home.

I live in two worlds at once, one is somatic, the other insomniac, and my mind gallivants between these two planets indiscernibly. One moment I wake up in the pitch blackness of my room in Japan. The next, I’m getting ready for my first day of art school, and I see in the mirror behind me my six foot black roommate (with a giant mohawk) getting ready to go to class with me. One moment I’m playing basketball with my friends on the green and red surface of the CAJ tennis courts, the next I’m playing catch with the neighbor’s fetch-addicted dog in the endless front yard of “my” new house. One moment I’m navigating the train system of downtown Tokyo late at night after spending a day out with friends, the next I’m learning how to drive at 45 miles per hour in a small, golden Toyota Corolla on country backroads. 

These differences are the equivalent of at first being dunked in ice cold water, followed by submergence into scalding hot water. Only repeated so many times, your body is no longer aware if it is being frozen or burned. 

That’s not to say that these life adjustments have all been painful, although many have, and it doesn’t mean that I am now so confused I no long possess any kind of identity. It’s just to say that my mind is trapped in limbo, capable of being in only one world when I wish I was in two. That is not particularly a huge problem either, the problem is that I live in a world where my identity in the other is unknown and irrelevant. No one here knows where I came from, or for that matter particularly cares. Shaped by an enigma, I am a myth with no origin. 

But I am not lost. I’m not bitter. I’m not cold, angry, or confused. I simply just lust after that Dokodemo Doa. To be able to seamlessly transition between two worlds that have little knowledge of the importance, let alone the existence of the alternate, but know full well the existence and importance of me. A place where I don’t need to explain the other.

What a journey I have embarked upon. And you know what, I’m actually fine without that Dokodemo Doa. Doraemon can keep it. I’ll stick with God instead.