21st November 2006. Arrived at Heathrow Airport.
When someone asks me to trace back to my first memories, that’s what I remember.
But I know that’s not true!
Hazy memories of going to pre-pre-school as a baby (that’s not a typo). Crying because I got frustrated at my own lack of skills at a silly family painting class. Tie-dying t-shirts in the woods somewhere. A childhood friend telling me I wouldn’t understand Pokemon because I’m a girl. A frenemy from ballet class stealing a Love & Berry collectible card from me. Making incoherent objects with toiler paper rolls and cardboard. Walking to school with a few classmates that lived close and my dad making jokes at them as I left. Learning how to ride a bicycle on the same road outside.
Eating Osechi on New Year’s. Going to the hot springs with my family. Being proud of getting trusted to fan the smoke from the fish grill at a camp site. Losing a balloon to the skies along the coast. Pouring rain on the beach.
Grandad taking me to the book store. Grandma watching me colour in a colouring book. Parents letting me drink red bull for the first time at a bar on the last family gathering before we left.
It sounds like a made-up story, but I saw a triple rainbow on the day I arrived in London, just outside the seemingly never-ending concourse after you get off of a flight. My parents are firm witnesses.
No, I didn’t know a lick of English when I arrived. But my dad’s Beatles CDs probably played a key role in me learning so fast. My favourite was Sgt. Pepper’s, which I still think shows that I have great taste.
A completely personal opinion, but I think brains are quite simple. You usually put one thing in and another comes out. I forgot how to ride bicycles. I had to relearn it when I was about 18 on a Boris Bike. I’ve thankfully been able to keep my Japanese fluent, but I think it would’ve been easier if I could’ve forgotten. That language takes up a lot of space.
At some point during the last few months of secondary school in North London, a classmate came to me and asked me if I remember confidently trying to befriend her at the start of Year 7. I didn’t.
And then she smirked while explaining how I was “so sure that I was going to be good friends with her”. We both knew that I was very, very wrong.
I also vaguely remember my mum telling me that it’s stupid to let your peers and your small social circles ruin school life for you, because it’s all about how high your grades are when you get out of there. Why care so much about what comes before your real life?
She had a good point, but that says a lot about how clearly insecure I was back then.
It’s always much more complicated than what it sounds like, but the move from Japan to the UK a few years before a financial crisis ran both my parent’s savings and apparently, their love dry.
As an only child with an empty and emotionally chaotic house, all I basically had to do was draw, draw and draw. Maybe surf the internet. My dad gave me a Pelham Blue Les Paul Junior when I was about 11, and taught me how to play ‘Day Tripper’. He left for work while I practiced and he came home to me still practicing. Now that I remember that was about the year my mum left.
I still remember the childminders that took care of me for a few years before it was legal for me to stay at home alone. One lady was a very cheerful goth painter with an affinity with Japanese art. I remember going to the library with her and borrowing English copies of manga. She’d let us do crafts with her. I wanted to be like her when I grew up.
I really like Serial Experiments Lain. When someone asks me why, I don’t really have much of an explanation. It’s just that, the visceral feeling of that anime is exactly how I felt throughout most of my childhood. When I try to remember what happened, I can feel that buzzy noise detaching my body from my mind.
But when it came to my drawings and the imaginary worlds I built up in my head, with a full soundtrack and everything, I was so sure of myself. I still find it hard to explain when someone asks me what I mean, but I literally mean that I have many different worlds in my head. Any time I choose to, I can just sit there and think about another reality I’ve carefully constructed, with all of its residents and their complicated relationships, their theme songs, their outfits.
And when I choose to externalise those worlds through the different creative mediums, I finally start to be able to analyse my own mind.
I’m quite baffled myself. I don’t know why I need to filter through my feelings like this instead of just actually feeling it.
Call it what you want.