My own private limbo

Last night I went to watch Inception. I quite liked it. Before last night, I was feeling a bit sceptical about the film. Is it just me, or so many action/fantasy films from Hollywood lately are remakes of The Matrix, Mission: Impossible or something of the sort? There is so much creativity (or lack thereof) spawning from the trunk of inspiration that goes from The Matrix to Blade Runner, all the way through Dark City and Ghost in the Shell. Bullet-time, martial arts, alternative realities and simulations are cool. Those representations are also rich in suggestive images of urban decay and dark hypertrophied cities. I'm all for that, you know. But aren't we overdoing it? There's a bit of that in Inception, too. Fortunately, in this particular case Christopher Nolan has managed to write a story that is both entertaining and provocative. And the intense soundtrack by Hans Zimmer fits very nicely.

I write about Inception first as an excuse. Truth is that, at the risk of becoming definitely a bore to my family and friends, this post is about Japan and my appetite for Japan. Again. My emotions about Japan are difficult to explain. Even before I visited the country for the first time (and long before I told anyone close to me about this interest) I felt strangely attracted by it. In some sense it is only logical in my case, for I get easily bored with the environment I live in, and in Europe Japan (still) represents one of the most extremely exotic, yet reachable, places in the world. Today it dawned on my that my image of Japan, and Tokyo, isn't but an imagined, personal place that is utterly unattainable. My own particular vision of that part of the world is at risk of becoming a sort of personal “limbo” (in the Inception meaning of the term): an unreality that grows the more sophisticated and tempting the more you indulge in it… and one that can destroy you if you aren't able to tell reality from dreams. Japan is to me a perfect land of material progress, urban development, money, rules and the future. Of course not. I'm lying. I am well aware of the imperfection of anything that exists, by definition. Italy wasn't my panacea eight or nine years ago, London didn't make me happy either, and so far I don't feel as comfortable as I would wish living in Madrid.

At times I find myself on the streets of Madrid, idly watching people talking and walking around me, when suddenly that particular smell I found in some hidden residential area of Kobe hits me out of the blue. There is a little girl skipping happy ten meters from me and I can't help swapping the setting, so now she's in a pier in Yokohama at dusk. There are wild colours in the sky all across the bay and silent old people on bicycles gently pass me by as they ride home. Or maybe it's raining like hell. It doesn't matter, because it's beautiful and different and surprising anyway. Why do I keep on seeing Japan all around, like Dominic Cobb sees his dead wife in every corner? It is also a permanent contradiction for me: I'm pretty sure I could be in Japan by now if I had started working hard on it three or four years ago. I long for it, but I don't seem to be able to commit to it. I'm procrastinating and writing posts like this one instead of directing my efforts towards that goal. That contradiction is the more annoying at times when I'm confronted with alternatives and need to make bold decisions. Did I mention I just became 30? I won't deny the influence of such a symbolic date in this post (it's such an stereotype), but I think there is more than that. That contradiction of mine is another hint telling me that that Japan is not real, is not what I want. As if somewhere very deep I knew that it's just an imagined alternative reality. As if I knew it will be disappointing at the end. Or maybe I'm just scared of trying.