Introduction: Ignorance Is Bliss

Ignorance is bliss—that’s what they say, anyhow. And to a large degree, that adage holds a particular grain of truth. But not in the whole “what you don’t know can’t hurt you” sort of way we were all brought up hearing.

No.

I think the authors of that famous saying had something a little different in mind.

I think, if I may, they were discussing the dangers of seeing a bit too clearly—the dangers that come with pulling back the curtains to find that, to your horror, what you thought to be special was laced secretly with a handsome dose of drab reality.

There’s a certain power in not knowing. It lets you do things you’d not otherwise consider—believe in things you’d not otherwise believe.

A painter who’s found himself the perfect muse can sing his praises in her honor if he only remains blind to who she really is.

Likewise, many an average person can continue on, projecting their fantasies upon the glamorous so long as they cease to learn the price their heroes paid for their success.

There was once a time where I, too, was young and naive, and the world seemed filled with magic. But then I learned something. Then something else. And then something else—and as I did, the cracks in that magic began to show. Slowly, steadily.

I found that, upon close inspection, most anything namable is far more boring and logic-filled than it might initially seem.

Billionaires, for instance, are often just victims of productive substance abuse, rather than some rare spawn of man. They’re where they are because they chose, willingly, a life of pain and sacrifice. No wonder they still get divorced.

The world of fitness was next to let me down. I’ll never forget the time I thought my idols looked the way they looked from sets, and rest, and rice, and chicken, and never giving up. I liked working out back then.

And of course—who could forget the topic of language? The earth seemed a much more limitless place when I still believed in the existence of some alien species of polyglot—in the existence of people my age who, somehow, defied the laws of acquisition and Pareto curves to command flawlessly an endless lineup of world languages. I regret the day I chose to test one of them.

You know, for a while, I was so wholly convinced we lied this much as a species because we’re just a bunch of scumbag hooligans. But perhaps I had it wrong. Perhaps we do it because—because ignorance is bliss.

Want to know what I think? I think we want so desperately to believe in magic.

To believe the muse is a god among us. To believe the glamorous were chosen. To believe the stories that billionaires and fitness flops and fake polyglots sell to us about themselves. At least that version of reality’s one with a tad bit of hope.

But as is the case with all things, hope, too, eventually fades to dust. I gave up on testing people, on wishing that, somewhere, something real would appear. Something that couldn’t just be explained away.

I was nearly thirty, after all, and it was time, at long last, to move on from all this wishful thinking. It was time to grow up. To further my education. To accept that there were no miracles, no gods, no truth of any supernatural wonder hiding beneath the veil.

It was with this mindset that I traveled to West Singapore to continue my studies as a disgruntled grad student, and that, finally, is when it happened.

My name is Tomoya Amanegi, and this is the story of those four and a half days I experienced while overseas.