Sons of Loki

There’s this part early on in Neon Genesis Evangelion – it’s a beautiful scene where our hero Shinji, having just saved the day (…sort of), is taken by his guardian Misato to a hillside overlooking the city of Tokyo-3 (located in real-life Hakone). Shinji watches, astounded, as skyscrapers rise from the ground, glittering in the light of the sunset. “This is Tokyo-3,” says Misato. “Our city. And the city you protected.” It’s a rather beautiful scene, in more ways than one.

Cities are more than ordinary places. They have character, more so than those mere imposters, the towns; and don’t get me started on villages. Cities have history and culture and they belong to people. In a way I can look at Norwich, like Misato looks at Tokyo-3, and think “Yeah, this is my city.” It sort of belongs to me, as it does to anybody who has a connection to the place, whether you live here or work here or just happened to pass through a year or two ago and kind of liked it.

I went all the way down to the other end of Leeds a couple of weeks ago, past the station and over the river to meet a guy to fix the headphone jack on my iPod (who comes recommended). As he ran back inside after repairing it, and as it began to piss it down, I started the walk back into Leeds city centre. And, passing by rainscreen-clad monoliths and office blocks and cute little restaurants and people struggling with inside-out umbrellas, I found myself thinking about whether I was yet a citizen of Leeds. Technically, I’d lived there nearly seven months; I’d visited its clubs and bars and shopping malls and cinemas; I’d even registered to vote there. Most of the people I know are (or were) in Leeds. All my stuff is here.

But I don’t really feel like I live there. I don’t go into Leeds proper much, seeing as most of my immediate needs are served by the area just by campus and towards Headingley. It’s not like I’ve found any awesome little indie shops or clubs or bars that I can call my own (in a sense). To me, Leeds is just TK Maxx and the cinema in the Light and Morrisons. It has no meaning other than a bunch of shops. This is somewhat depressing.

Maybe it’s a result of the chainification of the high street which Bill Bryson is always on about. Maybe you really only start discovering a city in your second year, when you get a house and a chance to settle into a community, rather than living in halls. Maybe I need to go away … before I can come back.

That happened with Tokyo. I can’t honestly say I ever felt like a citizen of Tokyo: just a tourist who happened to be eeking out a tiny life in a cockroach-ridden concrete block.  But when I came back to Tokyo after two weeks travelling round the rest of Japan, I realised that Tokyo had this personality all its own. Having seen more of Japan, and having something to compare Tokyo with, I now realised that it wasn’t quite the same as the rest: there’s something different about its size and sprawl and even being slightly more cosmopolitan (though to say Tokyo is as diverse as New York or London is nuts: 98% of the population are ethnic Japanese).

I imagine I just need time away from Leeds to realise what it means to me. What with the summer and my year in Japan, I won’t be back in Leeds for 15 months. I’m sure that’ll be enough.