(#022) Tokyo9 Act II (revised)
THIS POST IS A WORK IN PROGRESS, THE CANVAS I AM WORKING ON WHERE I THROW IDEAS, MEMORIES, DOCUMENTS, VIDEOS, IMAGES, ETC.
I DECIDED TO PUT IT ONLINE WHILE STILL RAW, UNFINISHED, AND UNEDITED, PURELY FOR MY OWN PROCESS: TO BE ABLE TO READ IT AT WILL, AND PONDER ON THE NEXT CHAPTERS AND IDEAS…
DISCLAIMER: This is one of two articles that were originally published as a single piece titled #003 Tokyo9, Act II: A bridge across.
That article covered the second of my nine trips to Tokyo as part of my Tokyo9 project, which I took in 2024.
Given how life-changing 2024 has been for me — and how pivotal my trip to Tokyo was in this transformation — the original piece naturally evolved into a story of self-renewal.
Later, I took the advice of my dear friend ‘K’ (the same most influential friend I often mention in my articles) and decided to split it into two standalone, yet deeply interconnected, parts: one focused on my personal cycle of self-renewal (now published as #003 A bridge across), and another centered on my days in Tokyo — an extension and revision of the original article.
The latter, is the one you are reading.
Preparation
My Tokyo9 project was originally conceived as “a nine-year exploration of Tokyo’s inspirations, interwoven with my new quest for a life renewed. It was going to encompass and symbolize everything meaningful I am lucky to have — and be — dedicated to the woman I fell in love with and married in 2018.” (Verbatim from my account of the first trip last year.)
That first trip felt less like the beginning of a meditative exploration and more like a particle accelerator, spinning me close to 299,792,457 meters per second before jerking the trajectory into a head-on collision.
So yes, I had reason to be anxious this year.
What if I panicked again? This project was supposed to keep me tethered to Asia — to the world I discovered in 2004, the one that led me to everything I’m proud of: my confidence in crossing the globe and setting up a new life, connecting meaningfully with people and places, being a force of creation — building realities from visions.
What if all of that had been compromised? What if I’d lost the ability to travel — and my mojo to connect? What if, when I left China, I also left behind the ‘me’ I was proud to be, and the life I had painstakingly learned to navigate?
What if, when I left Asia, I left the adventure behind?
Luckily, the craving to stay connected was stronger than the fear of failure. So I started planning early in the year — even before I finished writing the story of my first trip (which you can find here, but wear your helmet.)
The early preparation days covered all the usual suspects: photography locations, cuisine must-tries (including an A-to-Z ramen list), specialty coffee shops, nightlife venues, stationery meccas, and logistics.
But despite the growing list of targets and attractions, the trip lacked a defining identity.
As often happens, the breakthrough came during a workout session — when your mind is oxygenated, and your thinking turns laser-sharp.
On April 1st, while taking a sauna after an intense chest day, several neural pathways finally lit up and connected:
Why not combine the blue-ocean search for inspiration behind Tokyo9 with the focused sense of purpose that Jam Nation— my new business venture — was bringing to my life? After all, one of the tenets of my search for new business adventures was that they would take me traveling to the places I love most.
The conjunction felt perfect: blending my nine-year project in Tokyo with my recently launched start-up by making Japan one of its primary markets. What better excuse to reach out and connect — to open doors, spark dialogues, meet people, and establish ongoing collaborations?
But wait, there was more.
I wouldn’t just dip into the local music scene, research live venues, explore schools and communities, and connect with musicians online.
No.
I was going to bring my trumpet. Hit clubs. And play.
*
I booked my flights and hotel — October 4th to 13th — and began my outreach.
I wrote to every music school I could find online. Whether prestigious institutions the like of Senzoku Gakuen College of Music, Showa University of Music, or Yamaha Music School; modern international programs like the Tokyo International Music School; or individual private teachers offering their services on various platforms.
All the messages followed a similar line:
“Good morning!
My name is Luca Ferrara; I live in Milan, Italy, and will travel to Tokyo between October 4th and October 13th.
I have been studying jazz trumpet for the past four years and am intermediate in level (I just finished my first year at Civica Scuola di Musica in Milan: https://musica.fondazionemilano.eu/).
I am looking for other jazz students — ideally those with a comping instrument such as pianist, guitar, bass, or double bass — to arrange for jam sessions during my time in Tokyo.
I am sure this is a wonderful opportunity to enjoy music practice and make friends from around the world!”
I knew these were messages in bottles — tossed into a storm, Force 12 on the Beaufort scale — and I wasn’t expecting much. If anything. But when you’re trying to create something out of nothing, you’re playing a game of odds. You have to trust the power of big numbers.
You only need one.
Next, I spoke to the concierge at my hotel. I described my project and asked if they had any suggestions.
I researched music studios and rehearsal spaces — figuring that’s where local musicians gather and possibly network. I identified two major chains: Studio Penta and Studio Noah. I connected with them via LINE (I downloaded it just for this), and asked if they could put me in touch with musicians, schools, or any relevant communities.
I even cold-emailed people seemingly connected to Tokyo’s jazz scene — authors of books or columns, curators of jazz websites, podcast hosts. I won’t name names, but I cast a wide net.
Then I waited.
Days passed. Then weeks.
Silence.
Not surprising. This might’ve been the first time they’d ever received a message from a complete stranger saying, “Hey, I’m flying halfway across the world just to jam — wanna meet?”
Give up? No sir.
I knew how to recharge my inspiration. And so, on June 10th — yes, in the sauna again — I had another idea: why not hire someone to help?
Back home, I posted a job on UpWork:
“I seek a smart, young-at-heart, and disciplined personal assistant to help me with selected arrangements during my trip to Tokyo in October this year. […] I am eager to meet other jazz music students who share my passion and arrange to meet up and jam together. […] I need help to: Identify jazz music schools in Tokyo or similar aggregators of jazz musicians […]; Open a channel of communication with students/musicians of jazz; […]; Inquire if they have an interest in setting up a jam to play together when I am in Tokyo; […] I am looking for students or musicians who love jazz music and would love to meet other music lovers from around the world and play together. […] As a SIDE NOTE, I am also the founder and CEO of Jam Nation (https://www.jam-nation.com), a platform aggregating music students and musicians for playing together. […] My trip to Japan also explores opportunities to bring my business to Japan. […] I look forward to hearing back from you!”
This wasn’t like my previous mid-tier job posts. Responses were few and slow.
Until, two weeks later — June 25th — this message landed in my inbox:
“Hi, Jazz Trumpeter!
My name is Makoto.
I am excited to apply for the personal assistant role to help with your upcoming trip to Tokyo in October.
Although I am not young, I am also an amateur jazz pianist familiar with Tokyo's vibrant jazz scene, I am well-equipped to assist you in making your trip both productive and enjoyable.
Hope you find this link to see my piano.
[…]
My favorite pianists are Oscar Peterson and Michel Petrucciani.
Beyond music, I can provide advice on itineraries and offer local insights to enjoy Japan food, nature and culture.
I look forward to the opportunity to assist you and help make your Tokyo experience extraordinary.
Best regards,
Makoto”
Bullseye. A Japanese professional, English-speaking, amateur jazz pianist with time and enthusiasm to help.
Makoto and I had several clarifying exchanges, and four days later I hired him.
Almost two months into my prep, things finally began to pick up speed.
Over the following weeks, Makoto delivered: he dig out three major music schools, ten smaller independent ones, 21 venues with live jazz, all hosting jam sessions, resident jazz clubs at Tokyo’s top three universities, dozens of jazz-focused social media groups, and even jam events hosted by a co-working space chain.
The number and range of options quickly became a logistic puzzle. Makoto and I agreed to regroup over dinner on the day of my arrival, Friday, October 4th, to review the fine arrangements for the following ten days.
Then came the next breakthrough: July 2nd.
Simon — the President of the Tokyo International Music School — replied.
Not only did he reply, he invited me to play at their big band rehearsals.
Now I was fired up. I wasn’t ready to sight-read new scores on the fly — not yet — but just being invited felt like a huge karmic green light.
Simon also turned out to be an ideal person to ask about Jam Nation — insightful, encouraging, connected: I made sure besides the “musical” encounter we had time to break bread and entertain the idea of working together in some capacity, and booked his time for an evening together.
And finally, I managed to schedule a private lesson on jazz improvisation with a Japanese jazz music teacher who replied to one of the inquiries I left on an educational platform.
My problem soon shifted from finding events… to finding time over the course of 10 days for them all.
*
Then there was the photography side of my mission.
This time, I decided that instead of writing a story about my trip, I’d turn the trip into a video — a properly scripted and produced one.
The fact that you're reading this tells you that didn’t quite happen. (More on that later.)
Videography only recently started making its way into my creative toolkit.
Like many photographers, I had resisted. It's staged. It disrupts the moment. It goes against the grain of a documentary photographer’s craft (my genre of choice in photography) i.e,. capturing spontaneity while hovering invisibly between participation and observation.
I spent hours, days, trying to reconcile how one can live an adventure and capture it on video — the way you can with the photographic medium, if you exercise that specific ability.
I never got to a satisfactory solution. (Until this very day… something I intend to write more extensively about.)
But I couldn’t deny the power of video: it brings time into the frame, music, sound design (I don’t mean Avengers FX, but environmental sounds that immerse you), and — of course — scripting.
It’s transporting. But it’s also far more complex than photography.
I spent August buying gear and doing test shoots around Milan — picture me biking with a selfie stick, tripod, mics, and camera gear, talking into a lens — uncompromisingly idiotic. I’m not a YouTuber. I’ll never be. But the experience gave me deep respect for the nerve and drive it takes to publicly monologue to a camera without flinching.
I also started building a production sheet. As I said, you can’t improvise video. Run-and-gun only works in limited doses, and even then, it has to be intentional. Otherwise, it’s just noise.
By late September, I had a six-pages breakdown of scenes — dates, times, locations, equipment, narration, everything.
I was pumped.
Until…
The day before the departure
The first scene on my production sheet was scheduled for the day of departure.
To ease into the experience, I thought: why not shoot it the day before? That way, I’d have the peace of mind that, if anything went off-plan, I wouldn’t miss my flight or jeopardize the trip.
So, on October 2nd, I gathered all my equipment, set up camp in the living room, and started shooting.
It went disastrously.
Setting up each shot took forever. Properly exposing the light — far from an art, let alone a science — felt like solving a riddle. (In my defense, while photography books cover exposure in about a chapter, in videography, mastering exposure is one of the aspirations of a cinematographer’s career.) Capturing clean audio alone would have been overwhelming — shotgun mic or lav? Gain levels? Low-cut filters? Then there was the performance itself, the timing of movements. Action. No. Action. No. Action. And again.
Meanwhile, I was piling up gigabytes of footage, adding to the hours I'd need to process later in post.
And this was just me, at home, in the comfort of my apartment. What was I going to do out in Tokyo?
I was floored.
(By the way, imagine all this happening during weeks of classic Milanese gloom — cold, damp, rainy days. That doesn’t help.)
The trip wasn’t supposed to be only about making a video. But I had placed so much expectation on telling the story of my journey through that format that, when I realized I’d bitten off far more than I could chew, I spiraled into a mini-depression.
I even considered cancelling the trip altogether.
I had to make a decision.
I could either power through — insist on documenting every step, tolerate the apparent chaos, and hope I could edit it all into something with a sense…
Or I could give up on the video entirely.
The latter felt like such a failure. Months of preparation, so much work done, such high hopes — and now, barely 24 hours before departure, everything for nothing?
In hindsight, I realize I was trying to prove something to myself. Letting go of the video felt like defeat.
But there was also a less “negative”, more constructive and inspirational note to my unwillingness to let go.
I have always felt that there is so much more in documenting your life than the vanity of watching it again or (even worse) showing it to others. Documenting your life expands it, stretches it left and right, allows you to accent the positives, dial down the negatives, process the experiences, discover new details and nuances, even completely reconsider your very own initial impressions, retain and remember more and in exactly the way you desire and need to remember, and eventually live more, for how can we live a large life if what we live through is lost the moment it’s gone?
But then, it was the softest voice in my head — the one I rarely listen to — that said: “You’re making this harder than it needs to be. With the preparation and agenda you’ve lined up, you already have more on your plate than most movie protagonists. Maybe you won’t come home with an epic film. But you’ll live the story — and that’s more than most get to do. Relax. You’ll be the star of the adventure. You’ll get to be the director some other day. Enjoy the journey.”
I’ll admit, I remained skeptical of that voice.
I kept looking back every single following hour and until the next day, wondering if I was making a huge mistake by putting the camera down.
But I also felt a burden lift.
My focus shifted back, undivided, to the journey ahead.
Departure day
The next morning — October 3rd, departure day — the rain continued. Cold, wet, loud, punishing.
What can I say — even more reason to leave.
The trip to the airport was uneventful. So was the first leg, Milan to Rome. Uneventful enough that I had the energy to pull out the camera again and record a few spontaneous thoughts. Not as part of a grand narrative — just fragments. Some were fun. A few insightful. Others, plain horrendous. (Nothing worth assembling as a document of the trip.)
After landing in Rome, I strolled through the international terminal at Fiumicino and made my way to the gate.
The flight was delayed. Seven and a half hours.
Perfect.
When your intercontinental flight is delayed that long, your first thought isn’t about how to rearrange things on the other end — it’s if you’ll fly at all.
I had no lounge access, no business-class seat to look forward to, and nothing remotely healthy or decent to eat. (Airports really require advance survival planning if you’re trying to stay healthy.)
So I started to wander the terminal, regroup my thoughts, and look for inspiration in this “half floor” my elevator got stuck at between the basecamp I left behind and the adventure in front of me.
And then I saw it: Ajisen Ramen. A chain I’ve had a long-standing relationship with, dating back to my early days in China — twenty years ago in Shenzhen. It had been a staple of my diet.
I treated myself to a heartwarming bowl of ramen and took advantage of the half-empty restaurant and big tables to dive into a much-needed journaling session.
By the time I finished, the ramen had lifted my mood, and the writing had helped me process what was going on — inside and out.
Then I remembered a promo email I’d once received from my credit card provider about airport benefits. I fumbled through the necessary portals and forms on my phone and, to my surprise, managed to gain access to one of the MasterCard lounges. I surveyed the place until I found a hidden enough corner, laid down on the floor, took my shoes off, and put my feet on the sofa (primitive, yes, but also very regenerative.)
Later that evening, we finally boarded — around 10:30 PM.
My seat felt even smaller than usual for economy, but I managed to doze off a few times. I stuck to my routine — kept my diet clean, drank plenty of water, avoided too much screen time. These small, healthy habits don’t just compound in the long run — they create an immediate sense of agency and intentionality. And that’s powerful for your mood and motivation.
Originally, I was supposed to land on Friday, October 4th, at 11 AM. With the delay, the new ETA was 5:30 PM — still enough time to reach the hotel, freshen up, and meet Makoto for dinner.
The arrival
I finally landed at 6:51 PM on Friday, October 4th.
There was still immigration to clear, bags to collect, and transportation to figure out — though thankfully, I’d flown into Haneda, a mercifully short 30-minute ride from my hotel. But my phone roaming wasn’t working, and I ran into issues with the airport WiFi registration process. I couldn’t get a steady connection, which meant I wasn’t able to reach Makoto properly.
I was painfully aware that he had agreed to meet for dinner purely out of kindness — taking the time and commuting to meet me to review the plan ahead wasn’t part of his assignment, nor was it compensated — and now he had to put up with the uncertainty of my delayed arrival while barely hearing from me. I did my best to communicate and suggest we possibly regroup the next day.
But Makoto, in his usual grace, made no fuss. No stress, no “bottom line,” no time constraints. He simply replied that he would wait for me — and not at the restaurant, but at the hotel, to welcome me at check-in.
His calm generosity was a balm for my travel-worn spirit. There was comfort in encountering a person — and a culture — that instinctively knows when and how to dial down the emphasis on schedules, performance, and the relentless to-do list we so often glorify back home. Instead, they tune in to the essence of things: the beauty of connection, shared moments, discovery, serendipity — and true hospitality.
I made it through immigration, picked up my bags, and was out of the terminal by 7:34 PM. I allowed myself the luxury of an Uber to save time and let Makoto know my ETA was 8:16 PM.
Things were slowly clicking back into place.
Then, I took out my camera gear, checked a few settings, and hit record.
The footage I captured from the backseat of that car — it changed everything.
Let me be clear: it’s bad. Technically speaking, it’s awful. The exposure is off. The sound is thin. The image isn’t steady (and not in deliberate ways). The lighting is harsh. It shows I’ve been run over by time zones.
And yet… it’s raw. It’s real. It’s present. It’s honest.
It captured exactly where I was: two hours of domestic travel, eight hours of delay in Rome, thirteen hours of economy-class flight. I was entering a week packed with high-adrenaline events — including public jam sessions — all while still quietly mourning the defeat of the “perfect video” I had dreamed of making.
And so, that imperfect, clumsy clip — that was me. That was the moment. Flawed, exhausted, vanishing and non-descriptive, but true.
[to be continued…]
L.F
