I recently reunited with a close friend after about three years. This will run long.
Close friend — though he's older than me, more like an older brother. Still, I think of him as a close friend.
I think his way of thinking has influenced me a lot.
Our thinking patterns aren't that similar, but especially on how to be with people — how you should treat others — the impact has been huge.
When I'm making a decision or wrestling with a way of thinking, there are a few people I ask myself "what would they think?" — and he's one of them.
Let me write how we met.
About ten years ago I studied abroad, and I met a Japanese friend there.
We went to the same language school.
I went back to Japan first, but there was a stretch when we literally spent almost every day together.
Looking back: lounging on the balcony in the sun, buying cheap frozen food at Walmart, going to amusement parks with other friends — really good days.
The study-abroad period itself was precious for me; I learned a lot.
There was plenty of hard stuff, and not every hour was fun — but when I recall the happy memories, he's usually in them.
I was eighteen when I went abroad.
Plenty of people came from Japan; there was a Japanese community.
At eighteen I was usually the youngest in any group (including at the language school with foreigners).
At least two or three years younger than most people. (Median age felt around twenty-four.)
I was the youngest brat in the room.
I hadn't been in clubs in middle or high school, so I wasn't used to older/younger communities, and I was a cocky kid — so I took a lot of hits.
Plenty of people talk down to younger ones; I remember thinking I never wanted to become like that.
Even now I dislike people who get unnecessarily superior with younger folks — it feels low-class.
After coming home, and as a working adult, I've tried to keep respect for younger people too. That experience still lives in me.
That said, the world isn't only bad people.
Plenty of decent ones too, and he was one of them — a very decent person.
The first time we met at language school, he was wearing clothes too chic and fashionable for the place and speaking fluent English. I said in clumsy English something like "I wish I could be like you," and he casually answered, "Nah, you'll get better than that." I still remember how cool that was.
He felt hard to approach at school, but once we ended up at the same party among friends and talked in Japanese for the first time, I saw how charming he was. The next day we went to an amusement park with another friend and got close.
He was a university student, already driven, talking about wanting to become a PR planner, with Japanese PR books on his shelf.
(He also had the latest volume of One Piece in Japanese. He loves One Piece — once when a new volume arrived from Japan he politely declined hanging out: "One Piece came. I need to focus on One Piece today.")
We clicked — this charming, serious guy. Besides goofing around, we'd watch TED Talks and swap opinions, or talk through the kind of daily musings I write on this blog.
As I said, I left first.
Before leaving I wrote letters to friends who'd looked after me.
I'd never really written letters to people before, but a roommate at the share house shortly before I left had given me a thank-you letter, and that experience made me want to send some when I went home.
Letters are a bit embarrassing, but they're a genuinely good way to put feelings and words across.
I gave him a letter too. After I was back in Japan, I checked my phone and found a thank-you message from him.
Along with his own gratitude, what stuck with me was: "As we got closer I thought, wow this guy has a lot of friends — but I was confident I was the closest one."
It moved me, and he was right. That's why I opened with "close friend." I've never said it to his face, but I think he is.
Next: seeing him after I came home.
We met a few times after I returned — when I was in university and he still was, and later when we were both working.
He followed his original path and became a PR planner at one of Japan's top PR firms.
Around then our ways of thinking started to diverge a little. Not good or bad — just different.
At the time, other friends also said I was "pretty sharp-edged," so the fault was mostly mine.
I threw a lot of wild debates at him, sometimes with a provocative edge. (Writing this, the regret hits hard. At this point it's clearly all on me.)
He seemed a bit irritated by it.
What I remember most is when, in the middle of one of those wild debates, he suddenly said something like:
"I've been talking a bit annoyed, wondering why you keep attacking — but I just realized you were simply asking out of curiosity."
And I really had been asking without malice. So I'd been puzzled by his irritation. I remember going home that day reflecting that my way of asking had been rude.
We met a few more times after that, then fell out of touch.
I hadn't come to dislike him; I was just going through a rough, tangled period myself.
Years later, after more experience and a steadier head, I thought it was time to meet again and messaged him on Facebook.
I learned later that after solid years at the PR firm, he now handles PR at a well-known IT company.
We messaged, and met the next day.
We walked from midday, then bar-hopped a couple of places.
It was really, really fun.
Even after so long, I quickly felt a deep relief and gratitude: "He hasn't changed."
Ten years already since we first met. His goodness hasn't changed, and he still holds the same axis.
I'd always wanted a place to spread my thinking — that's why I made this blog — and I have more friends and work colleagues to bounce ideas with than before.
Still, meeting him again, I feel we connect at the deepest layer.
It reminded me of going home to Osaka after starting university in Tokyo. I'd been having a decently fun student life, then saw high school friends again and thought, "This is too fun. I haven't had a time this fun lately" — that same feeling of gratitude.
We've already met several times since reuniting.
Not only drinking — we meet at lunch, walk for a couple of hours, and talk through each other's thinking.
He's a bundle of curiosity; he treats my ideas with researcher-like delight every time. I can feel deep respect in that, so talking with him feels good.
Related to that: when people talk, almost everyone unconsciously runs an auto-reply — "Ah, this is what they mean, so I'll answer like this."
With him, though, I wait until they're finished, then answer from whatever thought actually landed.
I think that's an important awareness in dialogue.
When auto-reply kicks in, it shuts down thoughts other than the one you prepared — and real dialogue can die.
Incidentally, this insight is the "thinking about dialogue" that Keizo Kuramoto — someone I've mentioned a few times on this blog — talks about. The first time I heard it, it hit me.
When talking with a partner, instead of listening while planning your comeback, you speak from the feeling you have after they finish — dialogue often goes better that way.
Stretching it a bit: people unconsciously pattern their thinking and build linear cause-and-effect stories.
Having an important axis (life philosophy, motto, etc.) helps you make sense of many things — but it also risks discarding other ways of thinking.
Both my friend and I share a root sense that discarding like that would be sad, so we keep expanding topics and deliberately avoid collapsing everything into one conclusion.
Back to the reunion: when we first met again we clicked fast, but I also sensed he was a little reserved with me.
Partly just needing time after so long — but later I learned the answer.
He'd been worried: "Now that you've gone independent, when we meet again, maybe you've become the kind of person who hits my ideas with logical correct answers and advice."
Connecting to what I said above — I'm neither grand enough to take that position with him, nor that skewed toward logical correct-answer thinking in the first place.
So we could talk deeply, and it was truly fun.
The other day he said something like: "Just from meeting and talking these past few times, I've been influenced by you a lot. My thinking changed. From your side, do you feel any change in me?"
Meeting him had shifted my values too, and I said: "Talking with you changed my values again. But from when we first met ten years ago until now — I think both of us are still the same."
We both agreed. It was a conversation that made me strongly reaffirm that the parts that shouldn't change — the parts worth keeping — haven't.
This turned into something like a youth novel, but I'll stop here for now. I notice a lot when we talk. I'll write again about things we discuss when we meet.
p.s. Ah, blogging really is good. Writing matters. Especially things this important to me — they have to be left in words. Essential.
I shared this blog with him when we reunited, and I'll send this when it's done.
To that friend: Did I praise you a bit too much? Tell me what you think next time we meet.
© 2023 ZUUHE