the mad hatter's funki kyotoness: Time travelling to 2010 on the Love Express

Happy New Year everyone !

Last week was amazing ... hear me out.

On Sunday, two new friends arrived thru CouchSurfing, for which I signed up recently and have been hosting people regularly. Though not always, quite often the surfers end up being very interesting people, and talking to them for a night sure beats many other ways to spend an evening. Anyway, I'd been looking forward to last Sunday's surfers, because I canceled my Singapore/Malaysia trip due to lack of money and had no particular plans for the end of the year, but I was determined to have more fun than last year in Tokyo, which was so low-key it was the biggest culture shock of my life. I was hoping that with a bit of luck they would turn out to be great people.

What happened felt like nothing short of time travel! One of the two surfers (can't say too much about her --> privacy) and I had a great energy going from the start, and were attracted to each other for various reasons. The week following was packed full of events (awesome year-end party @ my place, partying in Osaka on the Eve, enjoying hot springs on the top of a mountain where the falling snow made everything very romantic, much sightseeing in and around Kyoto), and we were together all throughout, having a ton of fun while at the same time going the old head-over-heels route. The time travel part consisted mostly of two things: (1) the amount of time that had passed for either of us since we last felt like this (for me, I was very much reminded of a particular episode of my life during which I had a similar experience with my now good-but-too-far-away friend L from Germany), and (2) our desire to enjoy each other's company for as much as possible in the 6 days we had been given, which resulted in sleeping less and later every day, starting with 5 - 11 am on Monday and ending with 10:30-11:30 am yesterday. Grand total for the last 4 days was 10 hours, so our sense of time took a quite interesting form.

Though our looks might make you think otherwise and even to our own surprise , we had a lot in common (speaking of looks, we were told by various strangers that we made a very interesting couple). Among many other things, a certain level of internationalness, experience with many of the same cultures, education, rational way of thinking, relationship to our parents, fondness and knowledge of technology, love of interaction with all kinds of people, genuine interest in everything, and most importantly extreme positivity (when I first read that she was that kind of person on her CouchSurfing profile, I thought it could end up both ways, because knowledge about "positivity workshops" and that kind of shit has made me a bit skeptical of using that word especially in writing). So half of the time was spent in deep conversation, and we had a mutual understanding that overwhelmed me, because it had been so long since I had felt such a connection with another person, and recently I've been feeling more and more that it's very difficult to have a deep connection with most Japanese people; even with my closest Japanese friends, there's just so much difference in our background that we are unable to completely embrace each other (of course, my newest challenge is therefore to create deeply meaningful relationships regardless of that handicap).

To the extent that a mere four days after we'd met, neither of us could remember how we ended up where we were, it was all so natural. It felt like the purest form of 'going with the flow', and it was simply euphoric to ride this flow together and witness it being the strongest source of life energy; we never felt tired, though at some point she lost her voice to the point of having to whisper for almost two days.

The emotions involved resembled those of teenagers first in love, but because we had so much to talk about and so much common life experience, it also felt deeper than that. The talking part, yeah ... I've almost never had such an endless stream of conversation going, with both people so wanting to hear more while at the same time overflowing with all kinds of stories themselves, culminating in an explosion of fondness, grinning ear-to-ear and falling back into each other's arms, all the while completely unaware of the existence of time.

Now she's gone, and the most meaningful week of the past many years is over. Of course I miss her, but because we knew our time limit from the start (though we managed to stretch it a couple of times..again contributing to time this week feeling different from usual) and are both quite strong rational thinkers, I think (hope) it won't become a serious obstacle for either of us in the next weeks. Considering her circumstances at home (plus her home being on the other side of the world), it's very unlikely that there will be another meeting anytime soon, which simplifies things (though my past experiences with love show that I was never one to care for physical distance, these days I think I've become a little bit more realistic...or even better, somewhere in the middle, where the balance is perfect). But it's certain that we affected each other's lives in a long-term way, and knowing the kind of people we are, I think it will turn out to be a beautiful energy source for a long time, hopefully at least until our next meeting.

Last night, I slept for 13 hours straight, and clocks seem to be resynchronizing. But something indescribably beautiful has been born inside me, and inside I will continue to cherish and nurture it, as I continue riding this purest of waves.

PS. If you want more details and/or pics, drop me something.
PPS. The soundtrack to my life at times like this is: