Seeds

As I was saying, Erik arrived in Japan in January 1994 to teach English at the school where my wife Keiko worked. He'd graduated the previous year from Antioch College (motto: Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity) in Yellow Springs, Ohio. According to Wikipedia, the college was a hotbed of student radicalism even before Erik enrolled, particularly in the 1960s, when it had strong links to the New Left, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and to a lesser extent the Black Power movement. The town of Yellow Springs was founded in 1825 by followers of the Welsh utopian socialist Robert Owen, and developed a reputation as an island of liberal and racial tolerance in southern Ohio.

Erik and I started meeting for coffee after I heard through Keiko that Erik was an admirer of Emma Goldman, and we became good friends. Erik would often come over to our apartment in Mishima after work and the two of us would stay up all night drinking, drawing and painting, watching videos, playing racing games on my Sega Mega Drive, and watching late-night Japanese TV, before heading down early in the morning to nearby Hirokoji Station for coffee and donuts. He was full of youthful energy, and I found it hard to keep up at times. Sometimes some of the other teachers would also come over for drawing parties. We also did at least one hike together. Looking back, 1994 was not only one of the most enjoyable years of my life; it was also the year in which the seeds of the Nakasendo walk/art project project were sown.

Keiko and I returned to New Zealand in November 1994. The following year I went back to Canterbury University and continued my studies. Then in April 1996 I returned to Japan, this time without Keiko, to do some research at Keio University in Tokyo. I was still in touch with Erik, who'd left Japan and was in China, where he'd been teaching English at a university in Nanjing. He was considering going to Kuwait, but I talked him out of this and persuaded him to come to Tokyo instead. He arrived in June, and after spending a week living on the floor of my tiny one-room apartment, he moved into a "gaijin house", and then into an old wooden apartment in Nishi-Sugamo.

The year that followed was a difficult one for me in many respects. I found it hard being away from Keiko, and things at Keio weren't going as I'd intended (I'd originally wanted to do an M.A., but soon found out this was going to take a lot longer than I anticipated, and I was also doubting my suitability for an academic career). The one bright spot, and possibly the thing that kept me sane, was my burgeoning friendship with Erik.

(To be continued…)

Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since blog began: 32.9km