June 5th, 2019
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
Neale Donald Walsch
It’s scribbled at the top of the page of a leather-bound journal I use on my trips, which is filled with tidbits of stories or sights or sounds or tastes from what I’d like to remember most. As a teacher I’ve learned to save everything–and when I say everything I do mean everything. The journal is littered with pamphlets and train tickets and postcards. Through the good and the bad (especially the bad) I try to push myself now to exit my comfort zone.
What an apt saying.
Nothing I’ve done so far in my short life has been so worth doing as the ones that have terrified me the most.
And now: Japan.
Japan!
In all honesty I planned the trip on a whim–I’ve wanted to travel to Japan since I was young (and embarrassingly nerdy), and having nothing and no one to really stop me gave me the excuse and peace of mind to literally just go for it. So, one fateful day in December, I booked the trip and directly left after the school year ended (and I had my students out of my hair). My good friend Katie and I headed across the other pond to Asia.
In Tokyo, Katie and I were virtually illiterate.
We could only really navigate our surroundings through puzzle solving and language missteps we were so apologetic for that most people seemed to pity us. I had the advantage of knowing the primary spoken language back home, but there it made me realize the very real difficulties of maneuvering through the world in an unknown one. I see this often, as a teacher–the confusion or few moments between comprehension, or the trepidation when saying what may be the wrong response. What may seem simple and easy, like ordering a coffee, becomes an intimidating or nearly insurmountable task. I knew no one there except for Katie, and already I missed the comfort of home even when I knew it was a simple phone call away.
Who wastes that precious time?
When we landed, we nearly got lost on the trains–we ended up at the wrong station (of course) on the way to the hostel. Katie had poked fun at me mere minutes before while we waited out the train ride from Narita airport.
I had stared at the blank Google Maps screen for a solid ten minutes, trying to will into existence the directions to our hostel near Akihabara. “Well,” I began, clicking refresh again in a futile attempt to get it to load. “at least if we get lost I have some experience in that department.”
“Well, look at it this way,” Katie yawned, utterly exhausted from the flight. She hadn’t slept. “The benefit is that we won’t end up in a completely different country this time.”
She was talking about Austria, and I knew it.
When we got to the final station I realized we bought the wrong ticket–we had to adjust the fare before heading out. Counting out the yen in my palm, I handed the attendant at the station the adjusted fare before slipping my way through the crowd and up the steps to the street above.
We emerged into the light of a new day–in a future a day ahead of home, at least.
Ueno Park
Instead of taking a nap, I forced Katie into going to Ueno Park with me. I had a whole plan: maybe if we didn’t stop till we dropped our jet lag wouldn’t kick in so quickly. In the end, I think it worked for a solid and total one of us. Katie wasn’t so lucky.
We wandered through Ueno Station and eventually ended up on the opposite side of the platform we were supposed to be on. I realized, then, that Tokyo’s Metro system was much more complex than the one I left behind in London’s Underground. It was a myriad of colors, intermixed, smudging together. Chaos I hadn’t yet learned to make sense of. We walked around the staircase leading to the walkway above and opted for the one that went straight through the park instead.
And we ended up at the zoo.
Unfortunately for her, we didn’t slow down.
We wandered through the forest of exhibits, including some trails that led through wooded areas that weaved through the mesh fencing. When we eventually emerged on the opposite side of the park, I was struck by the open landscaping that sloped lazily into the pond below which was absolutely covered in lotus. The day was mild but humid, the sun barely even peeking out of the clouds, so we had the opportunity to walk across the wooded bridge crossing the pond.
This was the first time I really felt far from home–far from friends and family, far from my classroom and students. I stopped for a bit to stare out at the pond, and we finished up the zoo rather quickly after–apparently there hadn’t been much left.
We ended the day with The Ueno Royal Museum, a collection of curated art that hung in its galleries. I love art museums–much to the chagrin of my friends–and I can spend hours in them. We walked through the halls and up into the third floor, a series of portraits and landscapes bleeding into a better picture of the values of the community to which Tokyo was home. There was one exhibit that made me stop in my tracks, taking in every detail or portrait, the lines in the faces of the subjects, the beauty and abhorrent violence.
It was a collection called “America the Beautiful”–I can’t remember the photographer’s name, unfortunately, didn’t think to write it down. But this series of photographs struck me, especially now that I’m home.
My eyes flicked from one image to the next–laughter by a fire, a cowboy with his hat tilted down, fireworks, a robed Ku Klux Klan member, a bloodied face, what looks like a riot, canisters littering the ground with smoke obscuring faces–thinking about the contrast of love and hate, emotions running high, the fear of the known and unknown. The contrast that so many people see from the outside looking in. This is what we look like to others, I realized–a country both beautiful and ugly, a confrontation between the seemingly (falsely) idyllic past and a future demanding to be acknowledged.
My place in the international community, as an educator and as a learner, is to listen, to see, and to feel. I get so many questions, so many comments, on my nationality while traveling that sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the weight of having to represent only one small part of my community. The only one I’ve known and have been incredibly lucky to have.
And sometimes, under the scrutiny, I feel ashamed.
Others, I feel hope for a better future.
Sam