Splash No. 248 - Japan
Japan
It’s been a few weeks since I came back from my trip to Japan and only now am I starting to figure out my thoughts about the whole experience. I had a ton of fun exploring a country I had never been to before, but the and recovery time really did put a damper on things. After several great days, it was frustrating to lose a few days of my trip and have to fight both jet lag and my concussion symptoms in the following weeks.
Japan was different from how I expected. It was far from the alienating foreign world shown in Lost in Translation, while still being different enough from the Western countries I’d visited that it felt refreshing. It was strange to realize that the language barrier didn’t feel as intense as the barrier in Paris, since English was written on most signs and most Japanese people received some level of English education. In many ways, it felt like a cleaner, brighter version of London — a bustling metropolitan city tied together by a complex subway system, filled with commercial areas and convenience stores with prepackaged sandwiches.
And there were the aspects that felt entirely unique as well — seeing small Shinto shrines tucked between large modern buildings, the incredible atmosphere at a pre-season baseball game, people dressed up in kimonos at temples to celebrate the Spring Equinox, and enormous 14-story malls attached to train stations. And in general, public spaces felt like they were designed for human beings, with clean and incredible public bathrooms everywhere, vending machines for drinks on every corner, and all of the walkability and accessibility that comes from a city built around public transit.
Also, this trip was the first time in a while that I felt comfortable eating in restaurants and roaming without a mask. After so much time, I’ve accepted some level of risk will always be present and I might as well get on with my life. So, Tokyo also helped me to rediscover the beautiful pleasures of simply eating in restaurants with good company, even though finding restaurants with vegetarian options was consistently an uphill battle.
My TikTok feed keeps offering me tips on the most important things to see in Japan, and I feel wistful, wishing we could’ve seen more in our short ten days (made shorter by a trip to the hospital). It felt like I only got a glimpse of a really interesting place, one that I’ll return to sooner or later.
Drops of the Week
PLAYLIST - J-Pop Hits - Japanese pop hits!
POEM - "The Shifting Dapples of Sunlight" by James Tate - it's national poetry month!
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Daijobu,
Nikhil