I am about to return to Japan. I write this in London, but by coincidence it will be printed on the morning of my arrival at Narita airport.

For 2 1/2 years, until the spring of last year, I lived in Kamakura and Yokohama; this will be my first visit since.

It has not really been very long -- 15 months -- but I look forward with extraordinary eagerness to coming back. I am almost as keen as when I came to Japan for the first time, when I did not know what to expect, and could give my imagination free rein.

My image of the country was then formed largely from old films and older paintings, and the Japan I arrived in was not the Japan I thought I knew. But I was not really disappointed, because I found that it still had its surprises and its mysteries.

No doubt it will seem different to come back, since things that once surprised me will be familiar. The heat and humidity of Tokyo, so startling in my first summer there, will be an expected irritation. The once-bewildering medley of lights, cables, steel and glass now feels as much like "home" as the suburbs of London. Meiji Jingu is no more exotic than Hyde Park in London, and the clock tower of Wako in Ginza is a landmark I take as much for granted as Big Ben, the great clock that stands on the bank of the River Thames.

But I hope that these things will still surprise me a little. It would be pleasant to feel the shock of discovery, or rediscovery, in the ordinary.

And in one way, certainly, it will be very different, because I will be here to do something that I want to do. I had spent 2 1/2 years teaching English in a private language school -- the inevitable route for foreigners whose priority is to be able to live in Japan, as opposed to those whose skills or career aims take them to the country. And I had left because I could see no way of escaping the classroom.

Now I am coming back to research and write a book: an ambition that I am still astonished to find fulfilled. I will be in Tokyo for 10 weeks -- longer than a holiday, but not long enough to grow comfortable. I plan to be in Japan again next year, for a whole 12 months of research and study.

I do not think I intend to settle here permanently, but I find it difficult to imagine myself settled in Britain. I wonder if I will spend my life journeying back and forth, between the one island and the other. Ideally, I would spend half of each year in each country.

They would both be "home," which is as much as to say that neither would be.

It is a pleasant dream, though, like most dreams, it is impractical. I try to imagine a way of arriving at that fortunate combination of personal, professional and financial circumstances which would allow me the luxury of living neither here nor there.

I would travel east and west with the seasons. I would avoid the fierce heat of Japan, preferring the milder warmth of the British summer; I would spend Christmas in a country where Christmas has some instinctive cultural meaning, even if I personally do not believe in the religion that inspired it. I would arrive in Tokyo with the plum blossoms, stay for the cherry, and leave as the June rains started. But I would be back for the autumn, to see the leaves turn and fall.

It is strange that I think instinctively of the seasonal cliches, when I am hoping to escape the ordinary. But tourists tend to seek out cliches, and perhaps I prefer being a tourist to being a citizen. That way, I imagine I might avoid the tedious commitments and daily banalities that most people have no choice but to accept, if they decide to remain in one place. That way, both my country of birth and my country of adoption could stay strange -- could seem forever to be that other side where the grass is always greener.

Alexander Jacoby is a British film critic and writer who lived in Japan from 2002 to 2005. He is currently writing a handbook of Japanese film directors and preparing for doctorate studies.

The Japan Times Weekly: July 22, 2006
(C) All rights reserved