Tokyo Decadence

When I said as much, he smiled and said, “Yui, there’s no point in worrying about that now. There’s an entrance exam and an interview process, and you won’t even begin that till next year. So why not worry about costs later?”

I don’t know how many times, after seeing the movie, I thought about searching the Internet to find this same kind of information. But then I’d get nervous just thinking about it, and in the end I never did anything. I was afraid to take the idea too seriously, I guess.

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to decide anything. You don’t even have to think about it being the first time.”

I’m sipping my tea in my own little world, without paying much attention to anyone else. When you’re surrounded by beautiful things you can forget the unpleasant stuff in life

My friends all said I was lucky when I told them about winning this trip, and I surprised myself for a minute by thinking maybe they were right.
I got the news one evening just a week ago, after spending the whole day thinking about suicide.

He was very close to blubbering now. I remembered something Kimiko had once said: “I hate people who break down crying when you’re trying to talk about something important. Men and women both. You can’t trust weepy people. They think they’re the center of the world, and that their tears can absolve them of anything.” I had to agree with her. Thankfully, Wada didn’t cry.
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” I told him. “You don’t know what sort of talent you have or haven’t got till you’ve tried. We’re only twenty-two, man.”
Wada thought this over, then grinned.
“Nobody ever told me anything like that before,” he said. “It sounds crazy, but it sounds right too. You know, all the people I’ve hung out with till now, everybody acts like it’s not really cool to do anything, it’s cooler just to give up. Remember that painter who lived way out in the sticks up north and said he was going to become another van Gogh? Imagine a kid in school saying something like that nowadays, eh? People would think he’s an idiot, or insane. It seems like whoever you turn to—your parents, teachers, TV, magazines—they’re all just telling you to give up.”
Inside the tent it was hot and muggy; outside, angry mosquitoes buzzed and swarmed. I made a big bonfire to keep them away, and we drank warm beer and listened to the waves.
“You don’t need to announce what you’re up to,” I told him. “Even the guy who said he was going to be van Gogh, he didn’t go around telling all his friends that, did he? All you have to do is know it inside yourself.”

I wanted to tell Yoko all this, but it felt like the wrong thing to do. When I didn’t say anything, she asked me why I’d come to her place. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, I told her. This was the only place I could think of.
“Nowhere to go,” I mumbled again.
And Yoko started talking about films.
“Since you stopped spending weekends here, I’ve been going to see a lot of movies,” she said. “I started reading a lot too. Before, I used to wonder what movies and books were good for, what purpose they served. You know what I mean?”
Sure, I said. I wasn’t really listening, but just to have her lying beside me seemed to make it easier to breathe.
“I never liked to just absorb something somebody else created. I’m too self-conscious, and too critical, I guess, and it always felt like I was wasting time. But after you went away... well, it started to feel like time was wasting me. Every tick of the second hand was like a needle in my skin. Tick, tick, tick...”
The phrase “time was wasting me” penetrated my frazzled brain and body like a vibrator. I thought of all the hours I’d spent waiting for Kimiko to return from the club. Yoko had translated that feeling for me.
“It was hard to just sit around doing nothing—I mean, well, I was lonely—so I started reading novels and going to movies. And that’s when I finally realized what’s so good about films. They’re good for when you feel the way I was feeling. Did you see The Wild Angels?”
Of course, I said.
“I liked it even better than Easy Rider. Remember the last scene?”
Of course, I said again. I was beginning to see what she was getting at. At the end of Wild Angels, Peter Fonda, who plays a character named Blues, a leader of the Hells Angels, is holding a funeral for one of his fallen comrades, and the cops show up. His woman, Nancy Sinatra, says, “We gotta get outta here, Blues. Let’s go.” Blues sprinkles some dirt on the grave and mutters: “There’s nowhere to go.”
“I love that scene,” Yoko said. “I must’ve been to a hundred movies, but I think that’s my favorite last scene of all. Look. Isn’t it true that nobody has anywhere to go? You’ve got to find something that allows you not to think about going anywhere. Having somewhere to go—for most people that just means having an errand to run. Somebody’s ordering them around. I think that’s true for everybody, from the lowliest grunt to the president. I’ve thought about this ever since you’ve been gone. I don’t know if you’ve got any particular talents or not, but I know you’re a person who needs to live life without running errands. Find something that, when you’re doing it, makes you feel like you don’t have anywhere to go. If you don’t find it, you’ll end up having to go somewhere you don’t want to.”

He’s a real artist. He’s mostly known as a singer-songwriter, but he also makes movies and paints pictures and things, and even writes novels sometimes

You know how people often talk about being their own worst enemy? Well, that’s literally true. If a professional golfer blows a big lead and loses a tournament, it can make him feel like a loser in every aspect of his life. That’s what fear can do, you see. You become accustomed to failure. You start hearing this shadowy little voice, the voice of resignation, telling you there’s no need to win, that if you don’t give it your best effort, then it won’t hurt so much if you lose—because it won’t be the real you who has lost, you see.

People nowadays think almost any woman who wears nice clothes and knows how to put on makeup is attractive.