Niko Kamawari, a teenager, who was somewhere in the process of waking up and falling back asleep, groaned sleepily and rolled over inside of his warm, comfortable futon as he attempted to ignore the blaring sound of his alarm clock from across his four tatami mat room. ‘Maybe if I ignore it…it’ll just stop…’ he thought to himself, as the teenager attempted to resume his hibernation.

Just as Niko was beginning to drift back off to sleep again, he suddenly came to the quick realisation that he was going to be late for his train on his first day at his new school. That thought alone was more than enough to wake him up!

Scrambling out of his all-too-comfortable futon and letting the cold early morning air hit him was a choice the teenager would have liked to avoid, but ultimately, Niko was already in too much of a rush to really care. Just as he was about to run off in the direction of the communal bathroom to freshen up, the teenager realised that his alarm clock was still blaring, causing a slow but steady uproar in the rooms surrounding his own.

Transferring to a school in a very different country was never going to be an easy task. Niko Kamawari knew that much even before he had left his home in New York City to move to Shibuya, Japan. After his mother, Nevaeh Kamawari, had walked out on his father when the young boy was only around three, Junichi Kamawari decided to raise his only child by himself. His so-called wife was somewhere in Europe around this time, however Junichi was dedicated to seeing that his son was treated and brought up well.

Just as Niko was about to hit his eighteenth birthday, he became increasingly curious about his dual Caribbean and Japanese heritage. Therefore, Junichi, in order to assist his son in learning more about his East Asian heritage, paid for Niko’s flight over to Shibuya and his first three months of rent in a cheap Shibuya boarding house as an early birthday present.

“It’s not much, but it’s a roof over your head! You know, I actually stayed there when I was studying back in the day,” Junichi had said to his son a week before his flight. “It’ll be a fun experience, but don’t forget to e-mail and me and stuff, alright?”

“Sure, but Dad…I don’t know any Japanese…” Niko replied, sceptically, as his seemingly carefree father laughed, heartily. “How am I supposed to get anywhere and do anything? You can speak the language, so just come with me”

“And ruin your trip? Nah, this trip is all about you. A young man’s adventure to discover his roots! Oh! That sounds good; I should write that down somewhere…”

“Seriously Dad…”

“Don’t worry, the landlady at the boarding house speaks English, she’ll teach you Japanese as well”

“Right…Well, I’ll be back within the first week if I can’t handle it”

“Sure, come back whenever you want to; just make sure to pay the rent on your room after my month’s payment on it runs out”

“A month? You already paid that much in advance?”

“Heh heh…After a few weeks, you won’t want to leave, I can almost guarantee it! You’ll thank me later!”

A couple of days later, Junichi was hugging his one and only son tightly at the JFK International Airport on a cloudy Thursday morning; just a he was about to board his flight. Niko was grateful for the fact that all of his expenses had been covered by his father, but the teenager barely knew any actual Japanese apart from a few random of phrases that he’d picked up from some anime he’d watched from a while back; was this whole trip really going to be okay?

It looked like living in Japan was going to prove to be tough for Niko…