Home; Nevertheless (My Narrative)

    Before moving to the northern part of Tokyo, I lived in the southern region. I have lived on the 5th floor of an apartment for 12 years. There was a decorative gate in front of some houses in the apartment building. Since I have no siblings, I often went out to play with others. I went to see my childhood friends. When I leave the gate, I walk through a sleek, long apartment hallway with an embossed gray floor made of polyurethane and vinyl, which is perfect for practicing unicycling. Then I go down the stairs to the 4th floor where one of my childhood friends, William, lives. 

    In front of the door of his family's house, there was no gate, and his soccer ball, spike shoes, and his sister's kickboard were lined up in a mess in the space in front of the door. He was a small soccer player, mischievous but always kind to me. We were always together. His mother was a good friend of my mother, so we were close as a family. We would have dinner at one of our homes every week and beg our mothers to let us stay over. When we stayed at Will's house, I would stay at his house, and my mother would return to mine. In other words, every Friday night was always a sleepover party. The fathers worked for companies in both families, and the mothers were stay-at-home moms, but William's mother also worked part-time.

    Our elementary school takes 15 minutes to walk from my home. It was a public school. When I went from kindergarten to elementary school, my parents told me I could choose to go to a private or public school. I chose the public school because it would allow me to attend with Will. That elementary school was a challenging place for me at the time. I was a withdrawn child then, and public elementary school was a lively jungle place. The elementary school is about 100 years old, and its appearance is not very sophisticated. The exterior walls are cream-colored. A sizeable sandy schoolyard with a jungle gym, iron bars, and climbing bars is in the corner. Inside the building are many square classrooms with blackboards in front and behind the classrooms. The floors of the classrooms are wooden. 

    We were unaware of it at the time, but the area around the school was, in many ways, a position of significant disparity. What beautiful creatures children were. Status, prestige, economic power, and trivial things do not exist in a child's world. In the classroom, children were not conscious of the apparent differences in family environments lived among them. We were just having a good time. When I look at photos from those days and reminisce about my friends, I see that one died by suicide, one is working in a bar, one is doing something delinquent, and so on. We don't have a chance to keep in touch now, but as long as they do what they want to do in their way and have moments when they feel happy, I think that's all that matters.

    After I graduated my Elementary school, I left this town. No particular reason, but I gradually became somehow estranged from William's family. We both became teenagers and faced essential things such as our home environment and uncertainty about the future. In retrospect, that town was nostalgic and sweet but somehow sharp, with invisible walls between the people. There were luxury apartments, traditional houses, small apartments, and homeless people. It was a diverse environment in many ways, both good and bad, that was bustling and noisy but also had a certain truth behind it. I heard many rumors and learned things that I did not know then, now that I am an adult. But no matter what anyone says, that place is home to me. It is dazzling, shadowy, warm, and real. It was graphic.