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I had cried for the past eleven hours on that flight from Sydney to Tokyo. I was heartbroken. The only image left on my mind was of him leaving me in the airport ressonating with his voice saying “this, us, won’t work out”. As I stepped a foot in the land of the rising sun, I felt the wind and cold going through my bones. I felt my heart much more exposed than my naked hands or the freckles on my face looking for some sun amidst the japanese winter. There is a funny thing about the far east. There, silence can be so loud you feel yourself overwhelmed by it. Like it’s consuming you. I remember being trapped in that silence for many hours, until I finally sat in that lounge area in a hostel trapped in Nishiarai, northern Tokyo. First, I mumbled words of greetings. Next, I was finally able to recriate movements in my face. I smiled. Words were being fired from every side between this newly gathered travelers, like children carrying water weapons in a hot summer. As I feel my stomach claiming for fuel, I invited one of them to join me for dinner. His blond locks and light blue eyes eluded me to some naive yet smart personality, carrying me to a carefree and fun stage for company. After all, he was younger than me and seemed way curious to experience life. I needed distraction and laughter. And we just clicked. As we started walking, so did the rain appear. We choose to get the last train downtown, aware that – apart from the idea that Tokyo never stops to sleep, the train does that quite good – we will only manage to get back to our beds by morning. As tempting it is to get lost on all those neon lights and crossings around central Tokyo, we choose to dive a bit more into the unknown japanese emblems. We stop a few stations south of where we left our belongings, Kita Senju. As we walk away from the station, we get lost between alleys. Drunken men sipping another drink, older women wrapped in warm coats making their way home, skinny girls sitting inside windows announcing “how to speak to women”, young people taking their work breaks to indulge in some one hundred yen miso soup. We walked inside this local restaurant, a small room filled with music, crowded with resilient smokers and chatty friends. First, we abide to the call of slurping 101. Then, we do what we must do: order some sake. And that goes all night, as we spit our past, dreams, frustations, desires and expectations to each other. No one understands us and we can’t understand anyone. The joy to order your drink through a screen without any miscommunication. The joy to be somewhere you don’t know a soul. No one knows where we are. No one can find us. Yet we find ourselves there. It is almost five in the morning. The stations are deserted and we are freezing. The alcohol sets in our minds and moods as we start to dance, laughing at our own lack of coordination to move and follow some rhythm in order to feel warmer and wait for the next train. Shy glimpses of the early birds passing by us as we contradict the implicit rule of quietness. Again, contradicting the logic and tiredness, we decided to head even further south. We stop by Ginza, making our way through the streets of imposing buildings and wide streets. It feels like a whole new place. As we admire the moment, we get strucked by this life, which travel often brings, where movement and permanency resides in one action. Soon we find ourselves sharing a beer while watching passengers making their destiny at a car overpass at Showa-dori Avenue. We are connected yet we hold no second intentions within ourselves. There, we dwell in the most beautiful sound, the silence, which once felt excrutiacing. Then, we contemplate the unexpected that brought us there, knowing that all works out, before departing once again, as the sun rises in the horizon.