In the shadow of the mountain

My creative project is an excerpt from a longer work called In the Shadow of the Mountain. In this manuscript I’ve submitted, I only included the first two chapters out of the original ten I’d written. It follows Saul, a recent college graduate visiting Japan for the first time with his friends, Megan and Jamie, who live and work in Tokyo as expats. Together with three additional friends, they travel as a group from Tokyo to Kyoto to see the ancient Gion Festival. During this trip, Saul confronts issues of identity, belonging, privilege, and exile. As someone who wants nothing more than to live identically as Megan, Jamie, and the rest, Saul consistently finds himself exploring options that would allow him to become an expat in Japan as well. At the same time, Saul confronts his own Americanness and what it means to be a tourist and foreigner in a country where xenophobia exists. As the novel progresses, he forms a brief romantic relationship with a Japanese woman in addition to having to manage tensions in his friend group that threaten to ruin the whole trip. Upon returning to Tokyo, these tensions result in a tragedy. The first two chapters which I have focused on for this creative project follow Saul with his friends on his first full day in Tokyo and then when he and his friends go to Kyoto. In working on this novel, I was particularly inspired by American expat literature that has come before it; additionally, my own travels in Japan were important for how the process of writing it went. It is my hope that In the Shadow of the Mountain will eventually be published, either as a full-length novel or as a short story. Both options would require additional work, and I look forward to continuing to improve what I have.