“Why did you come to Japan” is a question. If you are not Japanese, and you came to Japan to live, it may be a question that you are accustomed to hearing.

I have my answers to this question. My favorite answer is the one that gets us off the question as soon as possible. It’s usually a light question to what is really a heavy answer, and I don’t want to get into how my friends took a gap year to go to Thailand and New Zealand while I struggled on with university, or how while I wasn’t really into video games anymore (believe it or not), that my affinity for them as a kid made me want to go to Japan, or that perhaps darker area of the soul where I was scared of going to a “third-world country” because I’m was sheltered suburban boy. I’m not sure how true any of all that is, but it all makes sense. However, I usually just stick with “I wanted to travel a year before entering the workforce in Canada, and I loved it here”. No follow up questions needed. Why wouldn’t you love it here after coming for a year? It’s obvious.

One of my many weird meaningless beliefs is these pretty tied together answers that we can arrive to in hindsight, or even foresight are not the only things in action creating motivations to do things. I’m not talking about a deep conspiracy, or different colored pills for people who need metaphors from overrated 90’s movies, but for me in this example, I’m talking about the final episode of Blossom.

In solidarity with students of the essay, I will make clear my thesis statement at this point: The final episode of Blossom was a strong motivator for me to go to Japan.

I don’t even know if people know the show Blossom anymore. I think it was a show in the late eighties and early 90s. Joey Lawrence was a male heartthrob. Shows in those days were filmed before a live studio audience, and whenever Joey came on the screen, the women in the audience I am assuming could just not control themselves, and needed to hoot and holler. Either that or there was a sign to hoot and holler. It could have all been a sham.

Anyways, Joey Lawrence wasn’t the reason I moved to Japan. It was his TV brother. I’m not ready to go there yet though.

Blossom was played what who I think is a famous actress. She was in the Big Bang Theory, which I think is generally hated, but it has the Barenaked Ladies doing the theme song, so you know, it’s always nice when BNL get a little more exposure below the 49th if you know what I mean. She also was a Jeopardy host after Trebek died. Her and Ken did it. I am not writing her name because I’m not 100% sure of it. Mayam? I don’t know Ken’s last name, Jennings? Trebek is not Alex, but Alec? I’m not sure. Anyways, it doesn’t matter.

I think the actress is not liked by people for some reasons. I will take this point to make a tangent and say that I do not dislike her in the least. However, I also don’t like her in the least. Another one of my weird meaningless opinions is that having an opinion on celebrities is foul. I mean, I have as much of an opinion on her ideas, as I do on the ideas that your best friend (I’m talking about you the reader) at age 10 has now. Maybe they have really really shitty ideas. I honestly don’t care. I’m not going to retweet about your best friend when you were 10 and call them out.

To further diverge, if you were to ask me why I got into punk, one of the reasons that I would have said was that I hated the idea of celebrity. Punk musicians at the time weren’t put on weird pedestals I thought and were just people like you and me. They broke down the idea of false idol worship, or having opinions on celebrities as a sort of trading card that you can show your friends at the playground. Or something like that. Of course punk rock bands I liked in the 90’s are living in mansions, have been on reality shows, and are milking it because punk rock doesn’t give you a retirement fund, and all that.

You don’t hate them for that, that’s life. There’s a need to exist, and really going into these pre-determined paths is how to do it easily. This isn’t true if you’re Ian MacKaye, but like, we’re not sadly. As another tangent, while I am all against celebrity, and idolizing people and all that, I am really glad that Ian never turned out to be a shithead.

Anyways, Blossom, and Mayam. (I couldn’t take it anymore, and I looked up her name, and it is Mayim. I apologize.)

Blossom was about a family, and there was no mom I think. The dad was doing it all. There was Blossom, and her two older brothers, Joey, the heartthrob, and the other guy, who was normal. There was also Six, who was Blossom’s friend. As a young boy, I thought she was quite hot in the later seasons. Probably why I watched the show honestly. Little boys do things like that. I think near the end of the show, the dad was remarrying, and maybe to a British woman with a little boy. The last episode was when the house was being sold maybe, and everyone was going on their way. Maybe the house wasn’t being sold, but it was definitely a goodbye of sorts.

And finally, I will get to the Goddamn point of the story.

The older brother was getting married. The wife may have been pregnant. They may have already been married. Maybe the kid was already born. It honestly doesn’t matter in relation to what I am saying. Anyways, they were moving away. They were moving to Rhode Island to set up a new life.

The dad here says something like they don’t need to move away, and the dad can help them out, and would be more than happy to introduce connections, etc., and then there was a very TV dramatic moment.

The son didn’t want to just be known as his father’s son. He wanted to go somewhere where nobody knew him, and make a name for himself.

And that’s it.

This wasn’t something that I consciously looked back on from time to time, it is something that swam in my head in the background without me really focusing on it. Make a name for myself. Make a name for myself. Make a name for myself. Not just my father’s son.

And so when my friends went to Thailand to find themselves, and I was still working hard at university studying classical Marxism and phenomenology, I didn’t consciously think I had to leave home or leave Vancouver, or even think that I would be moving to Japan permanently, but that seed was one of a hundred (a random number) little things swimming around in the shadows.

So the concluding statement would be that while the main reason I came to Japan was not because of the final episode of Blossom, it was one thing that planted the idea of making it on my own away from home was something of merit, and therefore when I came to forks in the road in life, when making decisions, that value stuck with me, and perhaps influenced the million (another random number) “micro-decisions” I made to let me get to where I am today.

This is all a bit long to answer someone’s question as to why I came to Japan though. And really, because Japan is nice is the only answer you need, especially if it is like one of the opening moves in chess or go where you just wanna get a few things out there, and not focus on it until you’ve gotten a little bit more into the nitty gritty.

The consideration for further research bit would be that people may often think about their influence on others, and try to be conscious to be a good influence, and while all that is very important, I find it interesting that there may be these seemingly insignificant events that fuse things together in the mind. People may assume that “nurture” means something that we can ultimately control, but I don’t think it has that meaning at all. What events plant seeds in minds, and how those seeds blossom is at least still beyond our understanding now, and in my opinion can be considered nurture. (I use weak wording here because there are people who can see it all as nature, posit there is no free will, and everything can be pre-determined if we knew all the variables. All I will say is that I do not recommend sitting beside these people at dinner parties. While to them it is likely out of their hands, they will likely steer the conversation the entire night, and think they are doing everyone a favor.)