My life totally changed when I got married on Christmas Eve in 1988. In 1989, we took a trip to Japan for three weeks. We had a marriage ceremony or reception in Moji-ko, on the island of Kyushu, and then mostly spent our time in Tokyo. When we came back from this trip, we almost immediately went back to Japan due to an illness in the family on the Japanese side. My wife went first, and then a few weeks later, I had to join her. Basically, I had to drop everything in my life to be with her in Japan to deal with this medical crisis. And also, there were vista issues where we couldn't come back to America. So, I was exiled from America and living in Japan. Like most of my life, nothing was planned. I arranged for someone to take care of our apartment, which included my library and record collection. I remember I brought for the trip Roland Barthes "Empire of the Senses," his book on Japan, and a few Mishima novels. Other than that, I pretty much abandoned everything, or my life in America was on hold. Once in Japan (again), I avoided Western music, except for Tin Machine (die-hard Bowie fan) and Roy Orbison's "Mystery Girl." My new discoveries on my exile were Harumi Hosono's "Omni Sight Seeing," Ryuchi Sakamoto's "Beauty," and the best of all, Jun Togawa's "Tokyo No Yaban," a compilation of her older work.
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