What did you see today?

It was still dark and very loud inside the club, but you could tell that morning has broken; that he trains were back on again and the day has already begun. You could tell because people moved differently.

Some moved with more purpose—how quickly they shuffled out the door, how impatiently they waited for their change, how desperately men rammed up their game; they wanted to bring home the girls they’d been seducing all night long.

Others moved more languidly, a night’s worth of alcohol freely flowing through their systems, bloodshot eyes and slurred speech giving them away.

I was in Rock-Rock Club, a joint dedicated to rock music quietly tucked in a backstreet in Osaka, Japan. I had a difficult time finding it the night before—it was dark, and I didn’t speak Japanese and the locals I asked directions for didn’t speak English.

After a very expensive two-minute cab ride, I found it right under my nose. I laughed at myself. Rookie mistake, I thought, shaking my head.

It was my first time to travel by myself, after all. It was my first time, too, in Japan. And I had just seen, for the very first time, my most favorite band in the world, the raison d’etre: Radiohead. I thought, why not celebrate the triple of firsts? So after the concert, I decided to screw my hostel’s curfew and screw the train schedule, and stay out all night.

By morning, it all felt like a dream. Snapping me back to reality was the goofy realization that Rock-Rock was actually very easy to find. All you had to do was walk a few blocks, turn the corner, and there was the main road.

I walked the few blocks, turned the corner, found the city’s main artery and felt Osaka, quiet and empty, was all mine for the taking. The soft 6am light illuminated the beige blocks of buildings, turning them to gold. There were only clear blue skies above us.
I closed my eyes, said a prayer, and I breathed in the crisp morning air. In those few precious minutes, before it turned the way it always does, it felt as though the world was mine and mine alone.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t spend the entire night awake. It wasn’t as if I didn’t just see Radiohead play that night. It wasn’t as if, between hearing the band in full volume and standing in the quiet Osaka morning, I didn’t just experience my first kiss.

I was wide awake, and it was morning.