I’ve been sitting on my Kyoto pocket room bed for a while trying to come up with a single-word-title that accurately portrays my current mood. The best I could do was “homesick”. I hadn’t felt this way in a loooong time, at least not with this intensity. What I sense right now is a watered-down version of what it was like to leave Spain on my own for the first time to partake in our Schulastauschprogramm der 6. Klasse.
Maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t been here long enough to truly adapt, or that I haven’t spent enough time with my travel buddies yet (pretty jealous of their ongoing trip to Hiroshima and Osaka). All I know is that I currently feel a sense of deep longing for the familiar: languages around me I can (at least partially) understand, written characters I can recognize, more predictable surroundings, aesthetics, movements, gestures… It’s so strange because I’m not used to feeling this way when I travel. Just now the young Polish guy at the Apple store seemed so… ecstatic to have moved here to make a living (never heard a Caucasian person speak Japanese so fluently before, by the way. It absolutely blew me away).
Overall, though, it’s been an incredible experience I never actually thought I’d have.
After Tokyo the captivating sites, sights and flavors just kept coming: visiting feudal Takayama in the gorgeous region of Gifu Prefecture, setting foot in the Takayama Jin’ya as well as the solemn and mysterious Hida Folk Village, taking a traditional Japanese bath and playing games on our knees on a tatami to end up spending the night on a shikibuton, enjoying amazing authentic Japanese meals at secluded, traditional restaurants, strolling around in Kyoto, its Geisha District, the covered market, visiting the famous Fushimi Inani Shrine, the mesmerizing Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, the Imperial Palace, the golden temple of Kinkaku-ji, all those delicious taiyakis… and the upcoming karaoke tonight (can’t wait!).
Or maybe my current mood is mostly due to the fact that I just spent the past 3 hours on my own, taking an hour long walk to the Pandora store on retrospectively pretty dodgy looking streets and alleys, and my first solo subway trip back… I realized how atrophied my survival skills had become after almost a week of following Fuji, A or P around. When hordes of people around me are constantly rushing in every direction with fearless determination, it just makes my baseline confusion and hesitation derived from being in a completely foreign continent the more intense by mere contrast.
In short, this has been a blast so far: enriching, stimulating, fun… But I miss home. I miss my friends, I miss my job, my time zone, Basel, Freiburg, Tenerife. I miss my gym, my bike, the hospital, I miss my parents and my brothers…
It's been only one week but I’ve been feeling so alienated and decontextualized often. I can’t help but think of how a Japanese person must feel when moving to any western country. The initial sense of indefinite disconnect and disorientation must be nothing short of overwhelming and scary…
Update:
I’m in a way better mood today. Karaoke was otherworldly: fancy, private staged room for our group with countless screens and lyrics displayed both in Japanese and English, all the songs to ever exist and more a couple of iPad screen taps away, finger food and drinks for all tastes… and sturdy mirror glass that resisted the wrecking soundwaves produced by our amateur singing voices.
The goodbye after that was very sad, especially considering the celebratory context of lovely H’s birthday after midnight and the sweet hug between her and Fugi, who I know I’ll probably never see again. And waking up early in the morning to take another lonesome subway trip to Kyoto main station to catch my Haruka train to the airport didn’t make things better.
Until the nice gentleman seated next to me in our otherwise empty wagon stablished conversation based on our delay due to an accident involving “contact with a person” (I find the fact that this seems to be a very common theme around here extremely saddening and concerning). He told me about his contact lens manufacturing business and how today is a big day for him, as he is moving his business to China. A very interesting conversation followed on a variety of topics, including cultural and behavioral differences between the Chinese and the Japanese (apparently the former speak “too much” and “too loud”), the Japanese language, the demographic problem of Japan’s aging population, Covid in Japan, school and healthcare systems… his eye doctor friend from Madrid and my mandatory recommendations on Tenerife while disclosing its location on his google maps. It all ended with an email/business card exchange and a selfie at Terminal 1 of Kansai International Airport.
Now I’m actually kind of daydreaming about Singapore and its art and science museum, the botanic garden, the fireworks by the bay… And, uh, yes, right, the musculoskeletal radiology course too, of course.
PS.: As a souvenir, my shoulders and nose are as red as Japan's flag. It was mostly pretty nice weather after all.
