Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play

by Danny Wallace

  “This his office,” said Kyohei.

  “Here?” I said, and Kyohei nodded.

  I listened at the door. There was someone in there! Akira Matsui was in there! And before I could gather my thoughts, Kyohei had knocked on the door. A voice said something in Japanese. Kyohei opened the door wide. A man sat in a chair.

  “Akira!” I said. “It’s me! Daniel Wallace!”

  He looked absolutely stunned to see me. Absolutely stunned. Well, wouldn’t you be? A friend you haven’t seen in twenty years—a friend you barely recognize—standing in your office in the middle of the countryside after flying thousands of miles to see you?

  “I’ve got your face on my T-shirt!” I shouted, proudly.

  And the man muttered something, which was probably about how happy he was to see me, and how much I had also changed over the years.

  And then Kyohei quietly shut the door.

  “That was not him,” he said, and we all tiptoed away, very quickly indeed.

  “So where could he be?” I asked, increasingly worried that we were running out of time. “Is he definitely here?”

  “I do not know,” said Kyohei. “Perhaps he is in the laboratory.”

  We walked down a flight of stairs and through some more double doors. In one of the laboratories, several men were chatting quietly over a microscope. Kyohei approached them and spoke to them softly while Bob and I hung back.

  “I’m worried, Bob,” I whispered. “None of them is Akira Matsui. He’s not in his office. We’ve checked the staffroom… what time’s the last train to Tokyo?”

  “We’ve got about an hour if we don’t want to get stuck in the countryside,” said Bob. “We’ve got to get that slow train, then the train to Yamanashi, and then the train to Tokyo…”

  We looked back at Kyohei, who was approaching us.

  “They told me they have not seen him. Perhaps he is in conference. Conference finishes only in two hours.”

  I looked at my watch.

  “That’s too late… can we interrupt it?” I said.

  Kyohei looked appalled.

  “No—absolute no. Only when it finish can we see who is inside. But also—one of these men says he has not seen Matsui sensei today. Perhaps he has holiday.”

  “What?” I said. “He might be on holiday? He’s just been! He went to a gastroenteritis convention, or something!”

  Bob looked as distraught as I felt. But then he had an idea.

  “His house!” said Bob. “He must live around here! Maybe he even lives on campus!”

  Of course! This place was miles from anywhere. If someone worked out here, chances are they’d have to live out here as well…

  “Kyohei—how could we find his home?” I asked. “How could we find Akira’s house?”

  Kyohei said, “Hmmm.”

  “This is it!” I said. “This is the street!”

  Kyohei had piled me and Bob into his tiny red car and driven us a couple of miles away to a street which a man with a clipboard had assured us was Akira’s. Kyohei now seemed as excited at the prospect of meeting Akira as Bob and I did.

  “Second house,” said Kyohei. “Black door.”

  “Okay, let’s do this…”

  The three of us, looking like the strangest gang in the world, stepped out of the car and approached the door.

  “Definitely this one?” I asked, and Kyohei said, “Yes. Definitely.”

  I took a deep breath and knocked twice, hard, on the door.

  I looked at Bob. Bob looked at me. We both looked at Kyohei, whose eyes darted between us. We all looked at the door.

  Nothing.

  “Maybe he’s asleep,” I said, and then banged on the door, louder this time.

  I pressed my ear to the door. I flipped open the letterbox and peered in. It was dark in there. Curtains drawn. No noise whatsoever.

  I stood up and shook my head.

  And then I banged on the door again. Three times. And then I paused for a second and a second only and I banged again.

  “I’m not sure he’s in…” said Bob, but I didn’t hear the rest of the sentence because I was banging again. I kept banging, and I tried banging the letterbox, and I caught sight of a concerned Kyohei, and then there was a hand on my shoulder and Bob was saying, “Let it go…”

  “I can’t let it go,” I said, stopping, and turning to him.

  “He’s not there…” said Bob. “He’s gone…”

  And in that moment, I knew he had.

  It was no good. I would not be meeting Akira today. Maybe, I realized, I would never meet him again.

  We sat in silence in Kyohei’s little red car and drove down a smooth, stark street. Kyohei had offered to drive us back to the station, and anything was better than giving Bob a map.

  And then his phone rang. He took the call while Bob tried to make me feel better.

  “Well, at least you tried,” said Bob. “That’s something. Who needed all twelve anyway? You’ve done very well indeed.”

  I sighed. I supposed he was right.

  And then Kyohei stopped the car.

  I looked at Bob. What was going on?

  Kyohei put the car in reverse, backed into someone’s drive and turned the car round.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Conference about to have break,” said Kyohei. “We drive fast, we get there…”

  Kyohei sped into the car park, stopped the car at an awkward angle and all three of us got out and ran.

  “Into elevator!” yelled Kyohei, who I now loved more than any Japanese medical student I have ever met before.

  The three of us jammed ourselves in and Kyohei pressed 5.

  We rode in nervous silence, and when the doors finally pinged open, we could hear talking. Chitter-chatter. Voices, dozens of them, and all coming from behind one door…

  We pushed it open.

  Inside, various doctors and delegates were holding small cups of coffee and juice, and nibbling on foreign biscuits.

  “Do you see him?” asked Bob.

  “I don’t know—hang on…”

  My eyes scoured the room. He had to be here. Dr. Akira Matsui had to be here…

  “I can’t see him…” I said. “I can’t…”

  And then my eyes came to rest on someone. Someone whose eyes had come to rest on me.

  It wasn’t Akira.

  It was a short, jolly woman, who was now smiling at me, with a curious expression.

  She was pointing at me, now, and telling someone else to look.

  I smiled and raised my hand in a friendly wave.

  And then she pointed at my T-shirt, and she said…

  “Akira?”

  My eyes widened and my heart leapt.

  The T-shirt had worked.

  The T-shirt had bloody worked!

  “Yes!” I said. “Akira! Akira Matsui!”

  This seemed to delight her, and she called for someone else to take a look at my shirt, and he found it as curious as she did.

  “Kyohei—can you explain?”

  And Kyohei did his best.

  “What are they saying?” I asked Bob.

  “Something about Akira… something about you traveling a long way to find him… something about his house…”

  “Do they know him, then? Do they know where he is?”

  “Hang on…”

  And then, with no warning whatsoever, the small, jolly woman jabbed her finger in the air and shouted, “Ah!” And then she turned on her heel and ran away.

  “What’s happened?” I said, mildly panicked. “Where’s that small jolly woman going?”

  She returned a moment or two later with something orange in her hand. A phone. She found a number. Pressed Dial. And then handed me the phone.

  “Is this… ?” I said. “Kyohei, is this… ?”

  Kyohei nodded. Bob gave me another double thumbs-up.

  I put the phone to my ear.

  It was ringing.

  A male voice answer
ed.

  “… Akira?” I tried.

  “Hai,” said the voice.

  “Akira Matsui?”

  “…”

  “This is… Daniel Wallace, from Loughborough… I knew you when you were little…”

  “… Daniel?” he said.

  “Yes! Me! I’ve come all the way from England to say hello! And then I couldn’t find you and I’d been looking for everyone else and I’d found lots of them and then I was in Australia and then I came to find you and I was in Tokyo and I came here but couldn’t find you and then this lady gave me the phone how are you?”

  And then I realized that all of that had come out in pretty much two seconds, and I decided to start again.

  “Akira. Where are you?”

  “… I… am… with my mother and father… in Tokyo…”

  He was struggling to find his words. Struggling to speak English again after all these years.

  “I… am…”

  He trailed off. It was okay. I knew what I had to say next.

  “Akira. I have come a long way to see you. Will you meet with me?”

  And then there was a pause.

  And Akira collected his thoughts.

  And he weighed up what I’d said. And he made his decision. And he said…

  “Daniel. I am very sorry… I can not meet with you…”

  Huh?

  I looked up to see my small crowd of friends new and old. Bob smiling. Kyohei genuinely excited. The small jolly woman positively beaming. And I didn’t know what to say. Had he really said that? Why?

  “Sorry, did you…”

  “I am sorry, Daniel…”

  This was too much. This was not acceptable. This was just not acceptable.

  “Akira, I’ve traveled from London. From London, Akira. All the way just to say hello to you. For the past few months I’ve been doing it a lot. I’ve been back to Loughborough, where we met. I’ve been to Berlin, and to LA, and to Melbourne. And now I’m here in Japan—and it’s all for you! Please, you have to meet with me…”

  A silence.

  An uncomfortable silence.

  Was this really so weird? For me, turning up and saying hi wherever an old friend might be had just become natural. Normal. But for Akira, oblivious to my actions of the past few months and just trying to get on with his life, this would be strange. Why should he meet up with me? The fact that I’d traveled so far just added to the pressure. For me it was a reason he should meet me. For him, it could very well be a reason not to.

  Part of me had always hoped I could rely on the past to help secure the future. That I could remind people how close we had been. Hoped that that would be enough to convince them that reconnecting would be okay.

  But people move on. They grow up. They don’t need their past.

  Tom, for example. Tom who didn’t want to meet. Didn’t need to meet. Thought meeting would be weird.

  Was that what Akira was thinking right now?

  And, more importantly, could I let that change things? Could I allow him not to meet up? Could I let a fear of awkwardness spoil an experience which, in its own small way—and for me, at least—had become something of a small but rich beauty?

  No.

  I had a decision to make.

  The people around me had realized something was up. I’d been silent too long. Staring, sad-eyed, too long. The jolly woman looked less jolly. Kyohei and Bob had let their smiles drift.

  I knew what to do.

  I spoke swiftly and confidently.

  “Akira, I’m coming back to Tokyo now. I’m going to get on the next train from Joieu and I’ll be at Shinjuku station by nine p.m. You have to meet me there. I will see you at Shinjuku station at nine p.m.”

  And I hung up the phone.

  Kyohei stopped the car with a slight skid. He’d gone miles out of his way, driving me and Bob all the way to Kofu to save time.

  “Good luck!” he said, and I shook his hand, warmly and firmly.

  “You don’t know what this means to me,” I said, but, actually, I think he did.

  “We should make the 7:15 train,” said Bob, studying a schedule Kyohei had found in his glovebox. We ran up the stairs and tried to find our platform. “It’ll get us there after nine, though…”

  “Here it is…” I said.

  It was a long and nervy journey.

  On the one hand, I was pleased. I’d talked to Akira. We’d made contact. Maybe, if he wasn’t there, waiting for me on the platform, this might still be the start of something. Maybe it was an ice-breaker. Maybe he’d be more open to the idea of meeting up in the future. But I knew how busy he was. I knew how unlikely it was he’d ever make his way to London. This was where his life was. And I knew how unlikely it was I’d make it back to Japan anytime soon.

  On the other hand, I was sad. Sad he’d said no to meeting. Sad he hadn’t jumped at the chance. Bob knew how I felt. He kept quiet on the train, as nervous as I was, but as full of hope as I dared to let myself be. I felt full of warmth for my friend. Glad that he’d been willing to share in this. Grateful that he’d thrown himself into it, when really what he’d been expecting was a day of sightseeing and photos. If I didn’t get Akira, getting to know Bob again was a brilliant by-product.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said, suddenly. “I’m going to get in touch with a few old friends. You know? See how they’re doing. It’s weird how we say we ‘used to’ know people. Why ‘used to’? There was never any agreement to stop. It just happened. So maybe starting again can be just as easy… friendship is kind of what it’s all about, really, isn’t it?”

  I smiled.

  I’d discovered that very same thing, in a roundabout way. This had started because I’d been uncomfortable with the way my life was changing. But actually, life changes all the time. It doesn’t change once you hit thirty, or once you start feeling like a grown-up. It doesn’t change because of any one thing you do. It changes constantly, sometimes in small ways, and sometimes in seismic shifts. And the way you feel depends entirely on the way you deal with those changes.

  Friends are a marker of time. And the friendships you make are a marker of life. We’re proud of our friends. We’re proud of the unwritten contract—we’ve chosen them, and they’ve chosen us. No one had to. We all wanted to. Friends define us, and we walk or trip or stumble through life just as they do. When a good friendship ends… maybe it wasn’t a good friendship. Or maybe it can be started up again just as easily.

  I reached into my backpack and pulled out my address book. Whatever was to happen next, I could at least do this. I could at least update it.

  “We’re here,” said Bob, and I looked up to see the bright lights of Tokyo, streetlights whizzing by the window, trailing like shooting stars.

  The train slowed to a halt and Bob and I stood up.

  “Well, here we go…” I said.

  The platform was half empty as we stepped off the train. I glanced nervously around. I couldn’t see Akira. I looked at my watch. It was nine twenty-eight. It had been more or less twelve full hours and Bob and I were at the same place we’d started our journey.

  “He might be on a different platform,” said Bob. “I’m sure he’d have waited.”

  I turned to check what other platforms I could make out. A lone man sat on a bench, reading a newspaper and sipping something. Closer, a young couple were giggling about something. He was tickling her, playfully, and she was batting him away. In the distance, a station guard was pointing out the toilets to an elderly lady in a hat.

  Our train moved off, signaling, somehow, the end of something.

  “He’s not here,” I said, and Bob didn’t know what to say.

  We stood in silence for a moment.

  “Unless…” said Bob.

  “What?”

  “Unless we call him?”

  “I don’t have his number,” I said. “I didn’t know how to ask the jolly woman for it… shit, I should have asked for his number…”
r />   “I’ve got his number.”

  “Eh?”

  “Kyohei got it off the woman. He wrote it down and slipped it to me when we were running to the car. Let’s call him…”

  He handed me his phone. The number was already in there, ready to go.

  Thank God for Bob. Thank God for Kyohei.

  I hit Dial.

  It rang.

  A pause. Then…

  “Hello?”

  “Akira?”

  “Daniel! Where are you?”

  “I’m at Shinjuku station. I’m on platform four! Where are you?”

  “I am here too!”

  “Where?”

  But I didn’t need to ask. I turned round and there, the man who’d been reading his paper and sipping something stood up and waved.

  It was Akira Matsui.

  Instantly, all weirdness had vanished.

  Akira was delighted that I’d been standing outside his house that afternoon. Delighted that I’d been wandering around his workplace, seeing his office, bothering his colleagues. He even seemed delighted I was wearing his face on my T-shirt.

  His En glish had lapsed slightly, but Bob and I took him off for a Coke in the nearest hotel bar. There we sat, the three of us, forty floors up and admiring the view. Tokyo’s urban lightshow and vast towers. The people far down below, each one of them off on an adventure of their own. Each one off to see a friend, or have some fun, or who knows what. It seemed, suddenly, like a city in which anything could happen.

  And we talked. And we caught up. And I told him about how important it was that he’d met me. How I’d been tracking people down and making sense of life. How to look forward you sometimes have to look back. How friends are the very definition of your life. How the people who’ve seen you grow up are the people who sometimes know you best. And he nodded, and he understood, and by the end, we were fine and fixed old friends again. He told me of his ambitions, of his hopes. He told me about turning thirty, and how it had made him think about life too. He told me things I’d forgotten about growing up. The things we’d done, the places we’d gone. I apologized on behalf of Michael Amodio for the day he’d done the crane kick from The Karate Kid on Akira’s head. Akira laughed, and said he remembered that, and he’d thought everyone in Britain was a karate master. And Bob made him promise to give Kyohei very good marks in everything he did from now on.