On my plate: caesar salad and half-pizza with broccoli rabe, zucchini, mushroom, sun-dried tomatoe, yellow bell pepper, and goat’s cheese

Personally I’ve had an incredibly stressful few weeks, enough so that I’ve developed an omnipresent sort of buzz in my head, resulting in a semi-permanent stress headache. Tired of being incapacitated by my own life, I decided to go out with friends yesterday. We spent the evening relaxing in Little Tokyo: sharing a few cocktails and appetisers at Yebisu Tavern, wandering the Tokyo Plaza for trinkets and Japanese sweets, and discussing the end of the world, plasma balls from the sun, and 2012 over authentic ramen from Daikokuya. As we crunched our edamame and planned fantasy international excursions into east Asia, I felt my headache slowly lift for the first time in days, and for a few glorious moments recounting Japan, I felt like myself again. I think it’s high time I really looked at why I fell in love with Japan, and why I should consider going back.

1) I was working. I might be the only person I know who’s looking forward to working 40-hour work weeks again like I did in Japan, but I simply adored having that separation between work and life. Not only was I throwing my all into the full-time internship I had, which was satisfying in and of itself, but I was also giving everything else 100%, which I hadn’t been able to do in a long time. I’m an all or nothing kind of person, and juggling 400 things as I am now means I only get to give any one of them about 12% of my energy, so everything feels shortchanged. In Japan, I was working the hardest of my life, but I was playing the hardest of my life too, and I loved every minute of it.

2) I was constantly learning. When you’re in a foreign culture, especially one as vast as Japanese culture, you’re never really done learning things: customs, phrases, politics, social issues, ideology, menus, history, the list just goes on an on. Add to that infinite wealth of things to learn a massive, frenetic city that isn’t just the largest in the world, but also the most 24/7 of any metropolis (yes, Tokyo even beats New York). There was so much to explore physically and culturally that it was damn near impossible to be bored. I was always stumbling into new gems, and meeting new people who showed me new sides of Tokyo every week.

3) I was incredibly inspired. In the same vein, Japan has so much energy, and so much art, so much beauty, so much history, so many subcultures, so many places to go, in short, the country has so much cool stuff going on that around every corner I was inspired to do more, to learn more. I’d see a poster and be moved by the graphic design, or I’d hear a coworker talk about their trip to Hokkaido and I’d be touched by the tale, or I’d hear a band and gain some incredible insight that I just had to take home and do something with. I’ve never been so enthusiastic or sparked in my entire life.

4) I was doing what I loved every second of the day because of that as well. I was travelling, photographic copious pictures, assembling videos on everything I could think of, jotting down ideas left and right, reading voraciously, and writing my thoughts on a near daily basis. I was able to strike the perfect balance between life and self; I had enough going on to stimulate me, but enough free time to put my plans into motion, and enough left over to socialise with anyone who would have a conversation with me. Essentially in Japan I was the person I want to always be.

5) I was free in Japan. I mean this in many ways. My worries were zilch, and not having to fret over time and money is one of the most liberating feelings ever. I knew I could take care of myself. I also felt infinitely safer in Japan than I did in California or Texas, and I felt I could wander freely and live my life on my own time rather than having to worry about subways closing or neighbourhoods I couldn’t go into. Tokyo afforded me tons of agency too, and with a 500¥ coin I could hop on a subway and go anywhere my heart desired. I could take a shinkansen to anywhere in the country or a short plane ride to anywhere in the region. There are always events going on and trips to take. I miss that freedom, the ability to explore freely and fully in a place as engaging and Japan.

Of course it helps that I am so head over heels for Japanese culture and fashion and music and history that just thinking about my time in Tokyo brings a huge smile to my face, and the prospect of returning makes me more excited than I’ve been in months. I was able to discuss the subject with a number of colleagues while in Japan, and overall the conclusion I drew was that the foreigners who live in Japan are there because they want to be. It’s not an easy thing to be a gaijin in any country, especially one as closed-off as Japan, but there are hundreds of expats who think it’s worth it. It’s food for thought for me, since I really did fall in love with the city while I was there. Sure one experience may not make a maxim, but it was one hell of an experience.

On my plate: Kashi Cinnamon Harvest shredded wheat cereal with fresh strawberries and golden rasperries. I’m so excited spring has come to California and our fruit is once again abundant and affordable!

On my plate: thin crust pizza with mushrooms, spinach, diced tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and a garlic-parmesan sauce

After years of long-distance driving, even I can’t deny the incredible lure of the wind in your hair and miles stretching before you. There’s nothing like the tally of an odometer or the weight of a fully-packed boot to give you a freedom-flooded open-road high. It’s one of life’s little pleasures, a leftover instinct our pioneering forefathers genetically passed onto us that makes us want to roll down our windows and head west, or in my case, north.

With a week of spring break and a consequently blissfully unoccupied calendar, my mates and I just couldn’t let the whole of the week toil away in front of a television screen or be given over completely to late-afternoon lie-ins, so we did what any adventurous and resourceful soon to be college grads would do: we embarked on a road trip. All it took was a few hours packing and a single AAA map to fill our proverbial sails and lead us into the great unknown of the pacific northwest. The plan? Drive. Preferably as far as possible and as fast as can legally be allowed.

Stop one: Morro bay. Were there sealions? No. Was it worth it? Yes.

Stop two: Berkeley. Delicious late-night Thai noodles and a midnight hike up a mountain for a breathtaking view of the bay area.

Stop three: San Francisco. Touring around Chinatown, North Beach, Fisherman’s Warf, and Union Square.

Stop four: More San Francisco. We pass the day hanging around the beautiful and foggy Golden Gate Park and spend the evening celebrating St. Patrick’s day by bar hopping all over the Haight, Mission, and Castro areas. An incredible Italian meal with excellent wine ensues.

Stop five: Portland. For dinner.

Stop six: Seattle. We are fed lots of food, allowed to sleep as late as we like, and spend the rest of our hours perusing Pike’s Place, drinking original Starbuck’s, losing hours inside the Elliott Bay Book Co., and finally seeing Watchmen.

Stop seven: Home.

Berkeley made me question my choices in university, but only for the few brief moments that transported me to another place entirely: the spanning and sparkling vistas of the city at night, the hours-long multi-course French breakfast, the fog rolling off the hills each morning, and the gaudy post-teen fads of trashy-cum-hipster neighbourhood pockets. A few engaging conversations about maths, SETI, and zombie movies later, I filled myself with mango-ginger smoothie from a Brazilian shack and said goodbye to a decidedly enviable but certainly egotistical region of the north bay. I had incredible amounts of fun in proportions round enough to make us stay an extra day.

San Francisco is pretentious but in a way well-deserved. Ambling the streets of Chinatown and Little Italy make you forget you’re in the city at all, and Golden Gate Park one-ups both Hyde and Central Park’s over-hyped designs with its Japanese tea garden and bath houses and Academy of Sciences. The many districts award you a freedom to wander and explore, and the many San Franciscans are all too happy to strike up the kind of conversations usually reserved for close friends and philosophical discussion classes. Yet in many ways the pastels of the bay area tickled but didn’t sell me, and while San Francisco was an adventure well worth having and a city I plan to holiday in again, it’s a touch too self conscious for me to seriously rally for.

Seattle on the other hand was an unexpected pleasure. A thick-blooded southerner who for all intents and purposes grew up in a swamp, I thought the damp chill of a city so far north would get the better of me in a few days time. I hadn’t expected the lush green and visceral soundscapes to appeal to my better natures, or the downtown’s posh design yet colloquial clientele to forage an affinity. Instead Seattle took me by complete surprise and charmed me into fandom. Our last day in Washington was the highlight of the trip for me, where I finally grasped the scope of the city, saw the Eastern side’s rolling streets, and spent more time in parks and bookshops than I could hope for. The glassblowing company could keep me occupied for days, and the rapidly shifting weather would never leave me bored. I’ll be the first to admit I was sad to leave Seattle behind with such rapidity.

I took a class in Australian national cinema while at UQ, and by far the most interesting lecture covered the road movie. Made infamous by aficionados like Quentin Tarantino, Australians know how to film a car chase and film it right (please direct all counter-arguments here). In American road movies, the goal is to cross a finish line of sorts; if only our two outlaws can make it to the state line or the border to Mexico, where freedom awaits, or more often, impending death by machine gun. On the road, anything goes. In Australian road movies, the characters are doomed from the get go, because the land down under is, after all, nothing but an oversized island free of borders and thus also escape. But the Australians don’t need escape, for they indulge in the expression of life through the climb of the speedometer and the chase for the sake of chase more than our metal-pedal-pounders ever do. On the other side of the world we don’t just hitch up and ride, but instead we drive with a purpose, maybe because we know there’s an end. One day we know we’ll either make it home or die trying, and we know terminal velocity can only be achieved in perfect driving zen, and we know the road home is always far longer, far emptier, but far more important than the one with the most mile markers and the highest speed limits. And that’s why we drive. That’s why I drive.

On my plate: szechwan-style string beans, sweet and spicy eggplant with onions and peppers, crispy tofu and bok choy, BBQ pork rib, beef stir-fry, and rice with hot tea in Seattle, Washington’s Chinatown

On my plate: bilberry bagel with cream cheese and peach preserves, orange juice, and a navel orange

On my plate: crepe with jack cheese, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach, and mushrooms and crepe with apples, cinnamon, and honey dusted in confectioner’s sugar from Crepes A Go-Go in Berkeley, California.

On my plate: breakfast of cafe au lait and toasted french baguette with goat’s cheese, basil, and sweet roasted red bell peppers from La Note in Berkley, CA

KSCR: Late Night Sessions with DJ Nosh

11 March 2009 22:00 PST

’90s-era bristol throwback, electronica-edged arena rock, and Japanese-style blip pop

Every Wednesday night at 10pm I host a 2-hour DJ set live on the air called “Late Night Sessions” featuring after-hours grooves and all sorts of genre fusions. Above you’ll find the audio for this week’s show. Feel free to tune in live to the show next week at kscr.org. In the meantime, enjoy.