WHY JAPAN?

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately. Not that anyone would know because I have failed to write here at least once a month as promised. But I have been. A lot of this thinking is relating back to my feelings I had while I was travelling abroad again for the first time since I had come to Japan. And that was, why do I even love Japan? Why did I come back here?

I love to travel but outside of Japan and a couple of family trips while I was small I really have not gone many places at all.

This summer I spent one month in Europe then flew to Thailand for a 1 week in length 'stopover' before going back one of my 'homes'.

While in Europe I spent a lot of time with friends. Most were friends I had met back in Japan and decided to drop by and see because I just happened to be on the same continent.

Yet on those times I traveled to a new destination without someone there waiting, I felt this small pang of loneliness that mingled among the excitement. Of course once I arrived and met new people the feeling was soon erased. However those times I walked about the city alone shooting photographs I caught myself thinking back on my friends I had left back in Sapporo.

I realised I was a pretty bad tourist, especially within Europe. The 'must see' destinations bored me and instead of trying to tick more countries off my 'been there done that' list I did things like go to newly made friend's home to bake cookies.

Then in another new city for the 3rd day in a row, having walked about 30km for also the 3rd day in a row, I remembered what a work friend had once told me while I lived in Tokyo about 5 years ago now.

I had questioned him why he had been living for a few months in Tokyo and hadn't seen many places around the city yet.

"It's not about the destination. It is about the people you meet. People are more important."

He told me.

I think I was sitting atop a park wall that looked down upon Prague's Vltava river, watching the tiny tourists hoarding atop Charles bridge when I remembered this.

Then I looked back on my memories and the things that came to mind first. They were not things like:

"The spectacular size of Cologne Cathedral"

or:

"Eating real German schnitzel"

It was: "Getting stranded in the rain in Germany and sheltering at McDonald's next to an old lady and trying to communicate despite a language barrier."

And:

"Watching my friend trip and fall down a cliff and see her get up laughing" (it was small!)

I had been pretty dumb. So that night I went back to my hostel and booked an extra two nights. Not because I had more places to see but because I had more people to meet. That evening passed drinking too many cheap beers in the hostel courtyard with a handful of fellow Aussies and others from various parts of the globe. We spoke about why we travel, what we wanted for the future and what crazy things had happened until now.

Then in Thailand I decided to skip the tourist destinations all together and spend my time going to the beach and sitting up until the early morning talking with other people staying in the hostel.

And man I met some fascinating people in Thailand just staying mostly at one destination.

So this goes back to the beginning - why Japan? Why did I come back?

It's beautiful? The culture?

None of those things.

It was because of the friends I had made here before. I wanted to see them again - be able to see them again without such distance between us.

But also because I have I bias. Japan is the first place I ever lived alone and it taught me so much. My working holiday in Japan marks this mileage stone in my life and being here is like a representation how far I have come.

I guess Japan is my life sensei.

I know I will need a new sensei to grow further still. Yet for now I have a new family here in my home away from home.

And this is the lead up to the video of my Modern Japanese Studies Program family.

Hokkaido University's school festival. You see a lot of butts.