The Translation of Friendship

I was seven when I met Yuma Watanabe for the first time. It was a crisp fall day in Tokyo and I raced down the halls of Studio XZ with my mom not too far behind, scolding me for being unprofessional. Posters raced past me as I dashed in and out of the blue hallways and past employees trying to figure out why a little ginger boy was running around the studio. In hindsight they were probably right, they didn’t know I was a paid professional voice actor. I loved saying that, professional, acting all high and mighty like I’d get any credit in Detroit for playing a little boy in a Japanese animated movie. The hallways went on forever and my mom was long since behind, giving up on ever trying to catch me. It wasn’t until I crashed into a tall man wearing a suit that I suddenly became nervous. He was intimidating and stern, but I just thought he was scary. As the man in the suit led me and eventually my mother down another hallway, I heard the booming voice of who I would later find out was Hatsumi Tanaka himself, the director and my future long-time employer. Mr. Tanaka greeted me with a hug and lifted me up into the air. My mother was furious that some strange man felt he could do that, but that was just Mr. Tanaka. He was shorter than mom and was a bit stout, but his smile is what really captivated you. As I was up in the sky, I saw him for the first time. Sitting in a black chair at the end of the long meeting table with his father close beside him was Yuma, my co-worker and future partner in crime. My job was simple: re-record all of Yuma’s Japanese lines in English. While my mother talked to Mr. Tanaka and a lawyer about who knows what, I decided to test my luck with Yuma. He was shorter and smaller than me in every capacity, with his chubby cheeks and bangs that covered his forehead. I don’t really know what I was expecting going up to him like that. I knew it was polite to say “Hello” to people, but I guess when I was seven I didn’t account for the language barrier. But deep down I knew I wanted to be friends with him, needed to be friends with him. As expected, we said hello to each other the best we could. In the end, Mr. Tanaka ended up introducing us. My first day in Tokyo had been uneventful, despite booking a movie. The one person my age I thought I would become lifelong friends with barely understood me. Even at seven, I had these existential feelings whenever I met people, that every new person I connected with was somehow destined to be someone I would cherish for the rest of my life. In the first five seconds I saw Yuma, I envisioned our entire friendship together from inception until we died. I still catch myself doing that sometimes. Despite our underwhelming introduction, I still chose to sit beside him for the rest of the meetings through the week. I couldn’t even tell you what they were about now, let alone at seven. As I was about to pass out on that glorious wooden table one Friday afternoon, I felt a hand tap my shoulder. To my left, Yuma handed me a chocolate wrapped in blue foil. I found out years later it was a popular bittersweet chocolate, and that explained our entire relationship.

Throughout the next few weeks of production, Yuma and I discovered our mutual love of soccer and spent our breaks playing the sport in the Studio XZ hallways. I still don’t think I’ll ever truly admit to myself that I've always hated soccer and I just wanted something to get closer to Yuma, but I think the fondness of my memories will always outweigh the disdain. Regardless of my love or hate for the sport, I played with Yuma every day without fail. I enjoyed the genuine laughter on his face too much to pass it up. It was then that somehow we knew each other. Even though we could barely communicate, I understood him and he understood me. I still haven’t experienced anything like it. Soon enough, Mr. Tanaka had us enrolled in ASL classes, as we’d both discovered either of us learning English or Japanese was just too difficult. Sign language wasn’t my first choice of communication, but I could speak to Yuma and that was enough for me. It wasn’t long until we started asking the important questions.

“What’s it like in America?” He signed.

“I don’t know. Same as here, but different I guess.”

“I think Americans are kind of rude.”

“Not all of us are like that. There are rude people here too.”

“I know, but you’re nice. You’re the best.”

He called me his Best American Boy, I called him my best friend.

Soon enough, my voiceover work was done for Sunbeam Serpent and it was time to leave Tokyo. Yuma and his dad dropped me and mom off at the airport. I think I cried that day, but I don’t really remember. I just remember Yuma holding my hand until I got to the terminal. I knew even then it felt nice to have someone care for you like that.

“Why are you holding his hand?” His father asked.

Yuma said something in Japanese, I later found out it translated to something like “‘Cause I totally want to hold it.”

I was ten when Mr. Tanaka asked me to be in another one of his movies. I was excited at the revelation that I'd finally see Yuma again. I was tired of just receiving notes and letters from him and longed for endless days of soccer and chocolate. I was informed that there was no need for me to go to Tokyo and that I would record my lines at a studio in California. Suddenly, I wasn’t so keen on doing Beautiful World. While at the California studio, I heard Yuma’s original voice work. The phrases and sentences I once couldn’t understand seemed like they were somehow engraved in me. Every word felt like I was back in Tokyo with my best friend, being his Best American Boy. At 10, I still don’t think I fully understood what I was feeling. Maybe I was just lonely. Maybe I just had attachment issues.

This continued from when I was 12 and 16, recording more Tanaka films at the California studio. I accepted, each time with the hope I would be in Tokyo again, but each time I took the hit, as did my relationship with Yuma. As time and distance do, our letters and conversations became less and less frequent until they eventually stopped.

During my first year of university, I received a message from Mr. Tanaka, telling me that he needed me to record for his final film before retirement. At this point, I had already lost interest in voice acting and figured that I preferred to tell stories through words and not voice. I almost didn’t go until I found out Tokyo was involved. Like an idiot, I deferred university for a year to record Mr. Tanaka’s final film. Walking around Studio XZ made me nostalgic, my formative years were spent in narrow hallways and recording booths. As if on cue, Mr. Tanaka’s laugh boomed through the building like it did that fall day. Seeing him again in person was almost surreal. My memories were a bit fuzzy but he was more or less the same, albeit a little older and greyer. My first question was about Yuma. Mr. Tanaka told me to be patient. The shoebox of a recording room was still there all these years later, and I warmed myself up in one of the booths. While rehearsing lines, a boy my age walks in. His face was a dead giveaway, but I knew on some other level it was Yuma. He’d grown up to look exactly the same as he did at seven, with his features the same but matured, and his bowl cut traded for a trendier, slicked-back look. He watched me in the booth for a few moments and I felt I was going to die. He looked at me in a way I couldn’t describe. It was melancholic but euphoric, loving but platonic, but I knew it was genuine. That I will remember above all else. Yuma, now 18 and in business school, showed me around Tokyo and we caught up all these years later. I found out how, like me, he quit the acting business, except this was a choice he made, I just didn’t book roles anymore. I found out he was going to run his parents’ insurance company while I planned on being a writer or professor. Our conversations, both interesting and engaging, were empty and lacking in substance. It was banter you had with acquaintances and not friends. Something was off, this was not the same person I knew all those years before. I knew long before I even got to Japan, that time and distance do a lot and people grow and change, but I never thought it would happen to Yuma and I. I was no longer the boy he wanted to hold hands with, nor was I the same boy who wanted to play soccer every day. I envied the fact that things could have been different if I'd come back to visit in all the years since I was seven, and yet I knew there was the possibility that it would have led to the same outcome. Maybe we were just acquaintances. We reminisced on all the times we had, and the remainder of our relationship in Tokyo was friendly, but not a friendship. I think that’s what stings the most. As production ended months later, I cried for the second time in Tokyo. Hatsumi would no longer be making films, and my career was indefinitely over. I don’t know which one hurt more. There was also the fact that there was no longer a reason for me to come to Tokyo anymore. As he did years before, Yuma dropped me off at the airport, this time without his father or a handhold. As I reached the gate, he threw me into his arms and held me for what felt like hours. I knew it was because I’d never see him again, or maybe it was out of the hope that maybe one day we would again. He said something to me in Japanese, I still don’t exactly know what.

Now in my fourth year of undergrad, I still find myself haunted by the figure of Yuma Watanabe. I find myself creating futures and alternate realities where we somehow spent the rest of our lives together. Sometimes just as friends, sometimes as lovers, but every time together. I’m writing this as a hope that he will finally go away, that this Yuma possession will stop plaguing me. Everything I write, everything I create, and everything I do goes back to the little boy that gave me chocolate. I’ve accepted the fact that Yuma will always be my muse, but I don’t think I’ll ever accept the fact that I'm the artist.