I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine via e-mail. We grew up together in Chicago, but he now lives in New York and I’m out here. He was telling me about how he feels frustrated at how difficult it’s become to meet up with friends. Responsibilities of adulthood (and for some, parenthood) make things much more complicated than they once were to simply get together and hang out.
He asked me about how friends are fitting into my life at this point and his question triggered an epiphany of sorts; it gave me the missing piece of a puzzle that’s been in my head without me even being aware of it. Despite all of the cool people I have the privilege of knowing here in Tokyo, the fact is that this city makes it difficult to get close to them.
In a lot of ways, Tokyo is just like any other major metropolis: busy, crowded and sprawling. You face the same difficulties of coordinating schedules and dealing with long drives/train rides to see someone that you would deal with anywhere else. But what sets Tokyo apart from the others are the possibilities for what you can do once you and your friends finally meet…
When I lived in Chicago, many times I’d spend the day chilling at my friend’s place, half-heartedly playing something on X-Box, surfing the web or watching a DVD over some pizza. Usually, we did this to occupy ourselves while we tried to come up with something better to do. Of course, we rarely ever did, which meant we often spent the whole day doing our ‘in the meantime’ activity. From time to time, this would really frustrate me, but the truth is that doing “nothing” was, in fact, “something” if your good friends were around. The trash talk, jokes and all the friendly banter that only comes when you’re with real peeps was the glue that held all the ‘nothing’ we were doing together and created something genuine and fun.
But there’s a crucial ingredient that, more times than not, you’d need for situations like this to unfold:
Space.
Space is not something Tokyo has a lot of. In fact, it’s kinda famous for NOT having it. It’s certainly been my experience and I’m guessing it’s the same for most people: when you meet your friends, you’re meeting at a restaurant or a bar/club or in the park or in front of such-and-such train station. Almost never at someone’s home.
Because land is so scarce here, most modest apartments give you the basics- enough room for you to live and do your daily stuff, but not much more. Some people just barely have enough space for *themselves* in their apartment. So when it comes to hanging with friends, going elsewhere is automatic. And unfortunately, that crucial space deficiency makes it difficult for friendships to cross a certain point. The same point I had reached when I was lounging on my friend’s futon, munching on french fries. When you’ve got someone in your crib, relaxing as if they were in their own home, your friendship has a type of ‘warmness’ to it (for lack of a better word). It’s something like family. And because it’s so less likely to visit someone’s home here, that warmness/closeness is missing. And up until my friend in NY asked me for my thoughts, I didn’t realize that that’s a big reason why I feel lonely even tho I have a lot of great friends here.
I miss doing nothing.
