DO NOT CROSS

In High School, I went through a clutter-aesthetic phase.

I kept everything; photos, postcards, movie tickets, bookmarks, Dove chocolate wrappers with cutesy platitudes, mini-posters of bands and movies, party streamers and paper lanterns, cork-board collages and novelty crafts, and absolutely anything that made me think of Japan. It all went up on the walls in the most disastrously kawaii patchwork quilt of fascination, sentiment, and comforting chaos.

Did it kind of look like someone super-glued the contents of a preschool wastebasket all over my bedroom walls and ceiling? Yes, and I loved it. I was into everything, unclear and unbothered about what was really “me”, and there was too much to enjoy for me to pick favorites.

The world was my rainbow and I wanted to wear the whole thing all the time.

I don’t really do the cluttered-look anymore and my taste has become much more organized chaos and clean space over the years. But I still lowkey just like everything, on some level.

Fun is a gift, excitement is a blessing, and I don’t take joy for granted anymore, not after 2020. The Psalms tell me to “delight (myself) in the Lord” for, “at (his) right hand, there are pleasures forevermore.”

Happiness is a good thing.

When you connect the gift with the Giver, your heart overflows — that’s just how it works. Joy is one of the many attributes of God which shows us a little more of who he is and how he loves. Recognizing that he’s loving me by bestowing his own joy in my heart is like discovering a new color.

I stepped off a bullet train and fell into a toybox.

The sky-high buildings are restaurants and karaoke dens on top of more restaurants, and pooling between them like an upended preschool wastebasket are cafes, omiyage stores, cellphone-case kiosks, takoyaki carts, and shops for every notch on the extreme-fashion-spectrum you can think of.

The narrow sidewalks are so crammed with people, the only reason you can still move is that the Japanese will strictly adhere to two-way pedestrian foot-traffic flow etiquette, even in Osaka.

Not much of the other etiquette I learned for Tokyo seems to apply here, though; people are laughing and calling to each other, loud over the street-catch announcements about specialty pastries, trendy meat-on-stick offerings, and today-only sales. There’s a haze of cigarette smoke down one street and the next dead-ends in a busking performance. Half this city seems to be in queuing up — for what, I do not know. Do they? Maybe they’re just having fun in lines.

There’s music coming from everywhere, pouring from the underground shops, pumping through the meeting squares from jumbotron billboards, and shrieking in tinny noise-reduction from the chunky headphones lazing coolly around the necks of every teenager I pass.

Everything smells just faintly of frying oil.

There’s a catchphrase in Osaka, kuidaore, which literally means “eat yourself dead”. It marries nicely with its overseas counterpart “shop ’til you drop”, and I don’t know if that one is regionally associated in the USA, but if it had been a Japanese saying, it would probably would have originated in Osaka, too.

The spilled paint bucket streams of alleys flow out into the main highways, colors turning from pop-bazar primary to metropolitan pastel with the flourishing logos of luxury brands and Michelin status. But it’s still eateries and shopping arcades as far as the eye can see; all that changed are the price-tags.

The consumer utopia you see between the skyscraper office complexes is truly only the half of it; go down any subway station escalator and find an entire mirror-image of Osaka underground; thousands of mall plazas, boutique grocery centers, convenience stores, and of course, every cafe and restaurant you could wish for, just a half-dozen meters below the surface.

Down here, everything smells just faintly of Chanel No. 5 and rail brakes.

I find my way to a wide courtyard shaded by tall trees and much taller retail complexes, wondering why there are so many American flags everywhere.

I later find out this area is called Amemura (America Village), which explains all the Chicago-gangster-meets-Seattle-thrift-store-dumpster-dive fashion around me, as well as the Vegas-sized Statue of Liberty peering down at me from the top of the building nearest. She seems as confused by her presence here as I am by mine.

A group of students splashed in bright red Supreme logos are practicing their kickflips in the courtyard, and I marvel at these Japanese kids, boldly risking the unthinkable; being told by an officer of the law to “move along.” When it happens, they wait until he’s gone and then go back to their kickflips.

Incredible. What a rebellious display.

There sure are a lot of pigeons here. And if I’m not mistaken, there’s a hunk of congealed okonomiyaki stuck to the bottom of my shoe.

I am completely in love with Osaka.

Every people group is unique. What we all have in common is the God who created us; we’re his children, his “image-bearers”, and we naturally take after him. But we’re each like him in different ways, both as individuals and as people groups.

The Japanese are like their Creator in some ways that are similar to how we Americans are like him, and in many ways that are totally different. Over the cumulative year-or-so I have now lived in Kansai, I’ve even found that Osakans are like him in different ways compared to Tokyoites.

Like most Japanese people, they’re hardworking, courteous, creative, and enthusiastic. But they’re also a little extra daring and outgoing, equal parts friendly and awkward, boisterous and unbothered, a quirky kind of shy, a charming kind of edgy, interested in everything, holding back nothing, curious, chaotic, and kind. The world is their rainbow.

Happiness is a good thing. But.

On that first stay in Osaka, I went to the Umeda Sky Building: twin 40-story towers with a floating observatory between. As the 19th tallest building in Osaka, it offers a fully panoramic view of the sprawling city’s heart, Umeda.

This high above the city, everything is perfectly quiet. I walk around and around the observatory deck, taking pictures until I finally give up on capturing the feeling.

There are over 2.6 million people in Osaka, the same as Chicago, and she’s the third largest city in Japan after Tokyo and neighboring Yokohama.

I feel like I can hear them all. It’s so still and silent up between these two towers, but after seeing their faces and colors, after hearing their voices and headphone music, brushing elbows and backpacks in the thick of the streets below, I feel like I can catch an echo of every heartbeat in Osaka and I don’t know what to do.

Because I haven’t been here long, but I’ve already seen the dark side of fun and pleasure apart from the One who created both. Like the mirror-image of material paradise down in the subway plazas, there’s a flip-side to Osaka lying not-so-far beneath the surface.

I will go on to spend 4 more 3-month stays in Osaka after this. Each time, I find more shadows cast by these tall, shiny buildings; deeper ones trailing after the kids on the streets.

It’s not all good, clean fun. One man’s happiness is another’s hurt, the price of enjoyment is ignorance and disassociation, and the messes left behind get hard to hide under happiness that’s 86 square miles wide and 1 inch deep.

The hearts I hear are breaking.

 And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Matthew 9:35-38

There is so much delight and pleasure, so much joy and life in Osaka. But if you disconnect the gift from the Giver, your heart becomes empty; that’s just how it works.

I fell head-over-heels for this colorful city, whose heart reminded me of my own, and simultaneously, my heart broke for it because she’s missing her most crucial piece and that poisons everything else that is so good.

My heart is stuck there now. I’ve never managed to pull it loose from those packed, vibrant, slightly smelly streets. I will later become quite taken with Kobe, and with Nara, and I still enjoy the occasional trip to Kyoto or even Tokyo.

But Osaka…

Osaka, my weird, sweet second home, my favorite disaster-area of too much fun and food, filled with good laughter and bad laughter, both belonging and homelessness, luxury and neglect, affection and abuse, hostels, host-clubs, temporary highs and empty happiness…

Osaka, my beloved friend, I just don’t think I can leave until you know where real joy comes from, until you’ve met the One who loves you — loves you so, so much.

Ugh, I just want you to know it. I want you to know him so bad….

It’s been 10 years since I was standing on that observatory deck and I’m still trying to figure out how to get back to that city and stay there. As I’m writing this, I’m about to take my 6th trip to Japan and return to Osaka for the first time in 4 years. It still kills me that I’ve had to be away so long.

But my heart never left.