Jeepney Press November-December 2022 / Alma Reyes

TRAFFIC by Alma Reyes

Rendezvous with Home

After two to three years of feeling trapped in Japan like a prisoner, I finally realized my rendezvous with home last October. It seemed a rightful occasion timed before Japan’s official opening of its borders to tourists, and with the laxity of airport protocols. In the decades I have lived in this country, normally, I would exit at least once a year; thus, not being able to do so for the last couple of years certainly repressed my freedom and travel desires.

This notion dawned on me with the return of excitement as I boarded the airport limousine bus, stepped inside Narita airport once more, and carried that silly sensation of anticipation during the flight. Contrary to my tiny bit of uneasiness, no hassles were experienced at both airports. NAIA fairly looked the same. While observing the street surroundings of EDSA inside my pick-up service car, the familiar Manila aura rushed back to me—in fact, so familiar I hardly noticed any radical change, except perhaps, the new bicycle/motorbike lanes, which (a la Filipino style) were sometimes ignored by many riders. Filipino life, as we would say.

That same endearing Filipino smile, laughter, greeting and innate mannerisms were surely welcoming. Yet, as the days passed while walking along some of the unpaved streets of jaywalkers, loud car horns, reckless driving, and glimpses of drooping electrical wires, I somehow couldn’t grapple with what I was feeling—either frail discomfort or affinity, and I couldn’t make up my mind which prevailed over the other. But, why would these “natural” local scenes strike me like a new trailer for a movie? Shouldn’t they be nothing more neighborly than our everyday pandesal and tapsilog?

I thought perhaps, this must be the same feeling Japanese bear when they travel abroad. Their local ways and civic behavior are so ingrained inside them that not being able to see those habits in a foreign land makes them move like a lost lamb.

This phenomenon I call “displacement” becomes more and more mind-blowing the longer we live in Japan (or abroad). We are all aware of the disparate conditions of life in Japan and the Philippines, which admittedly, urges some Filipinos to seek “betterment” in a foreign land. Despite this universal tendency, many choose to return finally to “home-sweet-home” after lengthy years of some kind of deprivation of what true HOME essentially means. There are moments this displaced feeling confuses our personal identity and mixes up our mental and emotional disposition when in Japan and another country.

It may be that aging changes the flavor of the day. Things we regarded as important before leaving our country gradually turned sour with the flow of the current. Alternately, in the course of time, we may have added new fragments of comfort and security that now become almost indispensable. Above all, the Philippines is Family and Culture. Nonetheless, for some, these two huge influential factors for setting the path of one’s future can weigh less than other personal priorities. With the lingering pandemic, my rendezvous with home somehow made me ponder more deeply on the appropriate (instead of ideal) direction of my remaining not-very-long road ahead. Life is so fleeting and choices sometimes illuminate or disillusion us. At least, the only one thing I can certify to myself is that leaving Japan once or several times a year helps to clear the clouds in my mind and the seemingly displaced mood I crawl into during each trip back home. Could other foreigners living in Japan be feeling the same way? Or, maybe it’s just the melancholy of Christmas in the air.

Sweet Holidays to All!

© Alma Reyes (Text & Photos)

Alma Reyes

Jeepney Press