A kind of home

Now all the brouhaha and excitement has died down after Helene and Matt got married and I've been back a week and a half or so, I felt like taking stock.

It feels strange to be back. No, that's not true, that's not exactly it. It feels strange knowing that I won't be going back to Japan.

Some things have changed around here. You can now self-scan and pay for sundry goods at Tesco, eliminating the need for any human contact in your grocery shopping. Around the house, new coffee mugs and serviettes, the odd painting I don't recognize, or a space where one I once did once lived. Boris, deaf as one of those new mugs.

Some things haven't changed. Mum, the horse and that little squit of a pony can't even barely poke his head out above the box he's so short. I'm still no better in Dad's garden than his shadow with a stick, ready to hit anything or poke any dead-tree stump that might well be a wasps' nest for all the wasps flying in and out of it.

Some things have been glorious to rediscover - the smell of greengages mashed into the dirt by hoof or boot off the Cole Green Way; crisp autumn evenings with their own peculiar, clean smell; white-spotted brown apples fermenting in copses. The taste of water that comes out of the tap here. Match of the Day.

Houses fit me ill. I surprised Beverley jumped right out of her skin not expecting me there by the computer in her study as she walked through from the kitchen. I slipped down the stairs, not having walked on carpet in a long time and certainly not having walked on carpet in socks in a long time and nor will I again for a long time.

Some things I've only realised about my life in Japan in retrospect. Almost every one of the friends I made works in a creative capacity, either as writer, photographer, designer, architect... I should stp short there or else the rose-tint will skew my eyes forever.

Hels and Matt get hitched

American Numbers

Number of states visited: 16

Number of pictures taken: 1,211

Number of pairs of underwear packed from Japan for 45 days of traveling: 6

Miles driven: 8,300 some

Number of times Champ infracted upon the in-car fart ban (ICFB): 2

Distance from final destination (NYC) to final final destination (LDN): 3,471

Number of road-side dialogues with officers of the law of the United States of America: 3

Number of burgers, burritos, pizzas consumed between July 28th and September 10th: countless

Number of north american grizzly bear, brown bear, polar bear, teddy bear spotted in all national parks visited: 0

Number of tickets administered us by officers of the law for infractions of the automobile speed limit: 1

Number of home-cooked meals consumed between July 28th and September 10th: 4

Number of outstanding tickets administered us for infractions of the automobile speed limit: 1

Number of occasions commando dress worn when aforementioned underwear supply had been exhausted and not yet laundered: undisclosed

Approximate number of legumes consumed between July 28th and September 10th [not including garnishings of aforementioned burgers, potatoes prepared in the French manner nor tomatoes pureed according to the recipe of Mr Heinz]: under 14

NYC

New York was all too brief for Champ, a day and a half in one of the biggest cities in the world and one of those places that tops those lists compiled by Timeout or Lonely Planet or those kind of people. Work awaited back in London. For me, it was a lot longer than anywhere else we’d stayed in the States and because of that and the sheer variety and depth to the city, it felt like a holiday within a holiday, a little greedy even.

We stayed with Nat in Lower Manhatten and toasted the sunset and the skyline from his rooftop and ate oblong pizza the width of the table.

Then I stayed with Laci and Zooey from the Bronx with her big ole ears prick up something batlike for a dog in hipster Williamsburg, where alternative has become a norm in itself like when the avant garde becomes the accepted and is begging to be undone by the post-avant garde, but just for a night there.

Next, further south Brooklyn in Prospect Heights with Mike and his touchstone, the zeitgeist, and dependability to pick the places that are justifiably most popular. Though we didn’t go, he knew the pizza place run by a grumpy old salt who handled each base dough himself where the smoke thickens the room and seeps into the pores of a 2 hour queue for a taste of all the fuss. He knew the restaurant burger restaurant and where the best karaoke deal was at, where the best coffee was and the second best at Second Stop where he knew the $10,000 Clover coffee machine, written off than no better than by his own fair hand with an Aeropress.

After that I stayed with Julia who is on food stamps working rough neighbourhoods flyering doing community organisation, and who met Michelle Obama the day I left. We talked old and new news and mollycoddled Momo-chan the cat sick with cold and ear infection. Why is it cats get sick so rarely?

Finally, I left NYC. I was more than ready to come back home and cut my teeth on something to matter to me for a long time, to plunge into London and see what I can surface clutching or whether I’ll sink ankles shackled to shuffle never run down amongst the nearest town to my own.

DC

For the first time in a few weeks we found ourselves in a city with conspicuous bustle and activity, the capital, DC. It was reassuring, it expunged that feeling that there is a heart somewhere out there that we hadn't found yet, as was the case in other cities. DC felt broad and important, bristling with hard talk and brilliant in the crisp sunshine.

It's been easy to tell which attractions around the US have most affected and compelled Champ. He asks for his picture to be taken rarely, but always in front of what are highlights for him. The Lincoln Memorial and the Mall were 2.

We met up with Geoff from Japan now in back in the States. Together we climbed the Washington Monument on a gloriously sunny day and had a taste of the Smithsonian Institute collection of museums. Inside, the original American Flag, C-3PO and an audio recording of 5 callers on NPR's 'Car Talk', in reverse order of just exactly how I liked them.

Later we wandered Georgetown University and saw many many young pretty things in skirts and money dripping off their wrists and necks with polo shirts and pastel colours and an on-campus bookstore full of Georgetown merchandise and mused about student life with rose-tinted glasses before remembering that pressing feeling that came at the end of college or university or whatever you want to call it, of getting out into the world and actually trying to prove yourself beyond the books and the tests and put some money in your pocket. Lately that feeling's been coming back.

New Orleans

Contrary to a lot of what we'd heard, the Big Easy was exactly that and no thieving were we subject to, except the Highway Robbery variety for parking Shasta the Nissan Sentra at the Hilton. The room itself, all twin queen, riverside view, big tv and nifty coffee maker and four walls of it came cheap, online and at the last minute. Apparently New Orleans isn't a popular destination for rich nor hoi polloi in late August.

One of our first experiences after parking up was Bourbon Street on Friday night. Filthy smells hung in the air and bits of boa feather stuck on the street. Everybody seemed to be wearing beads. And everybody seemed to be taking advantage of the lax open container regulations that permit street-drinking.

We got a little drunk, saw some great live music, an older gent playing trumpet complimented me on my roadside garage $20 hat and I got all excited when the house band in one joint took a breather and I got a chance to ask the drummer if she was Japanese. I fluffed my lines in a torrid muddle of Japanese and English, she seemed about as interested in me as the dogs the stinking grey puddles here there on Bourbon Street and I got a taste of things to come. In spite of any amount of enthusiasm, perhaps proportionately, not every Japanese person I approach will want to talk to me. Just like I didn't want to talk to every Japanese person approaching me in Japan to practice their English.

We took a look around the grand maisons of the Garden District and pavements laid waste to by tree roots bursting through the concrete, before Champ was overcome by the heat and swooned, spending much of the remainder of the day recovering at the Hilton. I indulged in beignets, gumbo, etouffee. We had a few hours out at a creole plantation. I hunted down a previous residence of William Faulkner, now a bookshop, and the place he wrote his debut novel, 'Soldier's Pay'. Earlier I'd stumbled upon a grand concert with military band in honour of what an incredibly talented singer/song-writer guitarist later described only as the 'unmentionable', the 4 year anniversary of Katrina's visit to New Orleans, instead (the bearded singer/song-writer guitarist) preferring to focus on the anniversary of Michael Jackson's birth and his drummer's 30th birthday.

We bid a hasty adieu to Shasta, some 8,300 miles, several scratches along the front near-side and an ink stain on the upholstery later and took an earl flight up to DC. The road trip, now over, the trip still with some legs.

Memphis

And so the finishing line drew closer, as we completed the most mammothonian of driving double legs, zipping from Denver down, round and up to Memphis.

Downtown was eerily quiet but Beale Street was alive with bars competing with each other for everyone casually strolling down the middle of the street. Blues rang out. Bike night, dozens of Harley's tore up any last remaining quiet corners, revving simply to rev, lined up along the street the riders sitting watching revving. Weird little midges look like ash flakes plagued the night. Cicadas here had a different cadence to their song than their Japanese cousins.

We had great barbeque in Memphis. We did the tourist route, visiting the Civil Rights Museum (and also sight of the slaying of Dr Martin Luther King), Sun Studio and Graceland, in that order. At the museum, we saw an English couple who'd sat near our table the night before at the (guidebook recommended) barbeque joint. The guide had said Memphis was a small place, chances are you'd see the same people around town.

A day or so in, calamity struck again. Champ realised he had misplaced his bank card somewhere, maybe in Denver. Frantic calls to Barclay's back home followed. Talk of emergency transfers of funds was soon put to bed as first a Tennessean bank, then larger and more banks refused the service. From here on out, it was all to be charged to the credit card(s) for Champ.

New Mexico, Texas

We left Denver and choking traffic and embarked on the longest and most ill-prepared leg of the journey. Unscheduled and shunted into our plans on a whim and a friend’s urge, we shot down to Albuquerque, then onto El Paso, over to Fort Worth and finally up to Memphis and back with our original plans.

We stopped at White Sands deep in southern New Mexico, a couple hundred square kilometres of gypsum dunes next to a missile testing site. Signs for trails warned of dehydration and unexploded ballistics parts. Thanks to a terrific storm that squatted over the mountains nearby we were saved the glare of the sun kicking up too much from the sand so white it looked to be snow at first. When it did finally emerge, the sun blasted down and from beneath, reflecting from the sand so that I did not know whether to shield my eyes or cup them with the backs of my hands.

Every single creature that scuttles, slithers or darts across the soft white sand dunes seems to have blanched to an albino strain to fit the white, white blanket beneath. Yucca grow up and up to escape the piles of sand that gather as dunes shift and threaten to engulf the plants wholesale. As the dunes move on, the plants is too tall to support itself and wilts, bends and dies after all the fight.

That evening we stopped in The Most Wretched City on Earth, also known as El Paso. Straddling the borders of New Mexico, Texas and Mexico, helicopters fly over a ghost town downtown in pairs by night, searchlights ready. We walked 7 blocks or so to find someplace to eat, retired to an old hotel that breathed with giant air con gills clutching the ceilings and got a ticket for speeding the fuck out of there early the next morning.

Across Texas, oil pumps bobbed like mechanical birds pecking the ground and toothpicks lay in gas station restroom sink swill...we ate great steak too. That’s about it for Texas.