Background music in Japanese restaurants come in one of two flavors: modern or American. Never both.

I’ve frankly not known what “the kids” have been listening to since my iPod liberated me from the radio in high school, so I’m fine with the musical selection lagging behind a few years. In fact, I can think of nothing I’d rather listen to than music straight out of my nostalgia zone: the late 90′s. I’ll argue that there’s no mood that can’t be elevated further by throwing Oasis’ Don’t Look Back in Anger into the mix. The genre options in this country, however, seem to be strictly limited to pop. In particular, I’ve noticed that eating at my favorite curry restaurant feels like being at a sleepover with Scrunchie-wearing tweens giggling to themselves about Corey and Topanga. Nothing ruins the feeling of romantic mystery about The Orient quite like Aqua’s Barbie Girl.

So when Alphaville’s Forever Young began oozing through the speakers of Yoshinoya, it was hardly beyond the scope of my expectations. What I didn’t expect was to find myself getting emotionally involved in this 80′s pop song. No matter how unaffected one attempts to act, it’s difficult to hear a song like that without getting caught up in an abstract nostalgic haze. It’s like an anthem for last summers, equally celebratory and mocking. The salarymen frown into their rice as the chorus fills the room like a gas, and the teenagers look around soberly. “Forever Young. I want to be forever young.” My own mind goes to a sepia-tinted memory comprised of forests, cars and summer nights. It’s always summer nights in memories! Ah, things were so nice then.

I soon realize that these memories may not have actually been mine, per say, and there was perhaps as much influence from Elvis movies as from my own experience. But then again, what else is nostalgia?

As the short trip through an imaginary youth fades with the synthesizer into the fluorescent-lit restaurant, a sense of urgency rushes to replace it. What exactly is youth, and at what point does it end? Have I, gulp, passed it?

Being part of the class 0f 2010, I’ve already heard my share of “real world” comments. Adults playfully jab at the sudden importance of responsibility and grin sadistically at the impending relevance of insurance premiums, pensions, and other boring words. The graduate understands this, and saw it coming. Perhaps only in the detached way one hears about a natural disaster on the other side of the world, but there is still a recognition that graduation represents the end of something good and the beginning of something worse. And yet, things initially feel so similar. So, the graduate attempts to adapt the world of summer jobs to this purgatorial world of unstimulating workdays that never end. No longer is time measured in semesters, is progress expected and enforced, is performance graded on a universal scale without dire consequences. The world around the graduate becomes vacation photos. All the places recognizable, nothing missing, but a little flatter. Less vibrant.

Nobody ever decides to grow up. You take on more responsibility, but you still expect to be the same person coming out the other side. And besides, as long as you don’t participate in whatever “old person” archetype that resonates the strongest for you, you’re still just a sprightly post grad. But due to whatever factor that you justify to be temporary, the weeks become months, the will to explore your options fade, and suddenly your average job is your career. Your dreams become bitter reminders of a potential unfulfilled, your routine becomes comfortable, and the idea of being “forever young” beings to feel like misguided wistfulness.

I came across the rare opportunity, while riding the subway from Asakusa to Akasaka-mitsuke, to actually take a seat. Since my commute times are close to rush hour, I consider being able to stand with my legs wide enough that I don’t have to hold onto a handle to be a small blessing. The bliss of my plantar warts was soon interrupted by a congregation of old women piling onto my subway car. I did what any decent young person should do, I immediately stood up so they could take a seat, and insistently said dozo, dozo until the prototypically modest women took a seat. As I returned to my book, a voice called out to me. “Seki ga aiteimasu yo!” There’s a seat open. I looked up to see one of the old women motioning me over, gesturing at me and the space as if to say “Look. See? Here it is. Like I said.” With about twelve more stops to go before I could go to work, I obliged and sat down.

One of the first questions she asked is how many years I had been in Japan. People tend to assume that it takes at least three years of full immersion in order to speak at the somewhat-coherent level that I do. “Three days” I respond and the conversation takes off. She asks my age, to which I reply twenty-two. “Mada mada, desu ne!” Still so young! Even in those brief moments where my age is mentioned in this light, there is an antsiness about it. Standing face to face with a human who is actively reflecting on youth, you being a young person staring back, it makes you conscious of the decisions you’re making. Am I doing this right? Will I one day look regretfully on the way I chose to spend my youth? The woman now talks to me with vicarious glee. Have you travelled much? Oh you have? Have you seen this place and this place and this one? Not that one? Well you have to see that one!

She listens to me talk about my time in the language school. What kind of friends did I make? Well, I spent the most time with two Malaysian students and a Chinese. Oh, how nice! Kids from all over the world getting together and becoming friends! The world is alive with possibilities, isn’t it?

The initial response may be to laugh at the naivety of such a comment, but I caught myself. Because by golly it is alive with possibilities. I’m currently spending time in one of the biggest cities in the world because I chose to. I can be there as long as I want and then go wherever I please. I go to work every day and create, then come back home and create some more. And everywhere I go, I carry my camera bag. There are no real barriers, except for in my own mind. The trick is to look out for when routine becomes easy, and stepping out of a comfort zone becomes unnecessary. There will be moments when you can decide to “learn your lesson” and easily prevent undesirable emotions from happening in the future. And you can probably sleep well knowing that your routine is not the result of settling down, but because you’ve experienced a lot and decided on the best thing to do everyday.

This to me, is the antithesis of youth. The role of chance in life is assaulted on all fronts. The expectation of better things diminish. There is only the familiar world and the undesirable world. What you wake up to do every day is no longer a variable that could potentially equal fulfillment, but a necessary evil. You convince yourself that you will pursue passions when you’re not working, but then you come home from the office and collapse in your chair, too tired to do anything more strenuous than check a few websites.

The true value of youth, of life, is in having the audacity to follow dreams and hobbies. In viewing life as a blank piece of paper, on which anything can be drawn. When you are no longer young by default, you must choose to be young as this woman did. Although she had wrinkles too prominent to hide, leaned in when I spoke to aid her bad ears, and needed glasses to read a pamphlet, in talking to a gaijin she did what millions of Japanese people do not do every day: braved a potentially awkward situation because she wanted to speak with someone from another culture. It is I who should be saying “Mada mada, desu ne?” because in my experience the assumption that a western-looking gaijin doesn’t speak very good Japanese is a safe one, and yet here she was grinning from ear to ear while riding on the very symbol of mundane routine — a subway car.

I planned out my life meticulously. I began thinking about my 20s while I was barely a teenager. I did this not to sabotage my youth, but to extend it. I was blessed to understand what I loved doing back in junior high, and the passion has stayed strong no matter how hard I pursued it. For a lot of people, this understanding doesn’t come until the middle of college, sometimes not even then. Without knowing what truly satisfies you at a deep level, you don’t even know how to pursue a lifestyle that keeps you young. But to me, there’s nothing more important then seeking out that idiosyncratic joy in life that can make your heart race with excitement. Design, archeology, performance, missions work. If you can pursue it as a hobby, great. If you can pursue it as a career, even better.

In the long summer before I left, I tried to talk to my friends about their future plans. Someday I will return to my hometown, and as selfishly as I would like my friends to all be where I left them, that’s not what I actually want for them. Because almost all of my close friends hold some sort of goal for their life. In fact, it’s one of the things that attracts me to these people in the first place. The pursuit of these dreams will certainly take them out of Nampa, Idaho, as it did for me, but it is within their grasp; all of them. The last thing I want to do is return home and be confronted with a crowd of adults.

There will be a day when I hear Forever Young and agree that it no longer applies to me. But it is not today. I pay my 530 yen, pick up my camera bag, and walk into the warm summer night.