kathennessy

Traveling from Tokyo to Kyoto was more of a hassle than I expected, especially with my luggage. I had to wait out the crowded JR line headed towards the city center, the trains of which were packed so full that as its cars whizzed by on the platform, it was normal to see a pale palm splayed against the window, belonging to the unlucky traveler who was cornered face-first into the door during the morning rush. When I finally found a slightly less crowded car, in which I could fit my suitcases and myself, I was able to make my way to Tokyo Station, where I was going to board the shinkansen (also known as the bullet train).

On the shinkansen, my reserved seat was in the aisle, where I had to awkwardly bend my legs in front of my luggage, so as not to crowd the walkway. The man sitting to my left had the window seat. He was a business man, probably traveling to Osaka for a meeting of sorts. We smiled and exchanged niceties when he had to wait for me to clear my bags away so he could reach his seat, but about twenty minutes into the fast-paced ride, he noticed my eagerness to see out the window, and probably my apparent newness to the country itself. He kindly switched seats with me so that I could see the view of the ocean and rolling seaside hills, and even got my attention when we passed Mount Fuji so that I could see it from the other windows.

When I was finally done traveling on the local train lines after arriving in Kyoto and about to ascend my last subway exit stairs before reaching my dorm, my luggage in each hand and my face once again red and sweaty and partially disoriented from all the travel, a woman passing by offered to help me carry my bags up the stairs. We each took the handle with one hand and lugged it up three flights, laughing when we realized how much further we had to go, and alleviating the weight by reassuring ourselves, “almost there!” Despite the physical burden and mental exhaustion from traveling on subway trains all day, the kindness of these two strangers carried my hope with me to Kyoto on an air light with possibility.

I am getting settled in here, and finally starting to feel like I am a student, not merely a tourist. Grocery shopping is much harder when you aren’t familiar with all the ingredients. Yet, the unknown of even the small obstacles of daily life is leaving me with a sense of curiosity and acceptance of my seemingly constant and inevitable discomfort. When deciding to study abroad, I wanted to prepare myself for boredom and loneliness as much as I could. I didn’t know how well I would be able to make friends, so I told myself that no matter how I felt, I would do things on my own. Even if I couldn’t make a single friend here, I would befriend my new self. I have been visiting a few temples on my own, which are incredibly solid in their abundant numbers in this city; many times I have ridden my bike (purchased second-hand from another exchange student who was leaving) around the city and come across a large shrine or temple, which I spontaneously pulled over to see. On these days, when I am alone and exploring, I do not speak aloud for hours. It is new to me how hungry my eyes can be and how satisfied my lips have been to be closed all day. Yet, I’ve made good friends in my dorm. We’ve made plans to visit various cafes and sweet shops around the city and campus. There is a strong sense of community in my dorm, which is relieving to feel after planning for the possibility of intense loneliness for so long.

Kyoto is a lovely, green city, dripping with golden light even on the rainy days when the sakuras are late to bloom and the clouds graze the mountains with their gentle tendrils of mist. There is a river, Kamogawa, which runs through the heart of the city, along which people bike and run and stroll quietly, or children jump across the stone crossings, or couples snap pictures of the plentiful herons cautiously striding through the shallow current. A man sat on a bench in the late afternoon among the yellow grass, serenading one of the many humming waterfalls of Kamogawa with his saxophone. It seems there is always something to bring my mind back to the minor wonders around me, even as my sight briefly passes this city in its long trajectory of time.

I arrived in Japan at around 4:30pm on Monday, March 12th. It was rainy, which I worried would make me gloomy, especially as I was about to land on a continent where I quite literally knew no one. Yet, as I looked out the window of the plane, descending to the farthest place from home I had ever been, I felt thankful for the rain. I was glad there was no grand, open sky for me to throw my lofty expectations of unending happiness and excitement at; I was glad that I was forced to notice the skinny streams of water droplets mere inches from my face, which were simultaneously a familiar sight and a strange comprehension- the water I was looking at was part of a complex web of movement and history and life- a whole way of being that was entirely foreign to me and everything I had ever known. In an honest way, I am glad that my first view of Japan was small intimate, and boring. It gave me the chance to look inward one last time before I would be changed so drastically again.

I have been here for 5 days now, although I feel I have lived another lifetime since landing! I have been trying my best to curb culture shock by speaking as much Japanese as I can- I am so glad I brought my textbooks so I can review and study what I’ve already learned. It is funny how being surrounded by a language can change how the physical world is taken in by your senses; I have been catching myself thinking small phrases in Japanese. For instance, when I realized one of my vacuum-seal bags had small holes in it, preventing it from flattening, my first thought was “ダメ！” (dame), which means “no good,” and in this case, with a feeling of “shucks!” Yuta, who is married to the owner of the hostel I am staying at, kindly brought me tape and sat with me while I tried to see if I could somehow mend the bag.

Yuta and his family (Nana- the owner, and their daughter, Anna), live in the Tokyo hostel with the guests. They have a passageway in the wall of the dining area- a hole about waist height with a curtain for privacy- through which they move between their home space and the hostel space. However, similarly to the thin barrier of the curtain, which divides more visually than it does physically, the boundary between their home and the hostel is quite open. Nana, Yuta, and Anna use the same showers and communal spaces as the guests do; often in the evenings when I come home for the night, Anna is watching cartoons on the TV in the front room. Observing Tokyo has been so interesting in this way- there is a mindfulness of space that does not seem to be so present in the United States. Efficiency is always considered, and usually, only what space is needed is what is allotted and used. On the side streets of Tokyo, where there are narrow roads not fitting for American SUVs or trucks, there is a painted green line on one side of the pavement, where pedestrians and bikes are designated to travel.

In my eyes, there were obviously “problems” with this, as bikes and people cannot fit on this narrow path together. With sharp corners, intermittent cars, and constant cyclists whizzing by, at first, it seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. I thought this is so dangerous! Yet, after walking these streets for a few days, it is ironic how accident-unprone they are, given how little space there is to maneuver. Bikers are always conscious of pedestrians and move around them with plenty of time to adjust and create more space. Cars move slowly in these side streets, and their drivers are always turning mindfully. Sometimes, they have a loudspeaker, bouncing the echo of their presence across the winding cement, brick, and pavement. They can squeeze through walls and people with mere inches on each side with ease! And the pedestrians don’t need much more space than the little green line. There is a flow to the function of it all that I have never seen before! Initially, I felt uncomfortable wondering if I was using the streets correctly, but there was a special charm in how easy it was to learn after only a day or so.

I have been contemplating how much of this experience I want to share on this blog, on my social media, and with my friends and family. Even admitting that I am struggling to know what to share and what to keep feels like I’ve let something intimate slip away, where I will never find it again. Yet, I want my blog posts to share not only what I see and do while studying abroad, but also what I feel. I think that any experience is a dynamic movement of all three- senses, actions, and feelings- in which each one cannot be fully complete without the others informing it. I decided that I was not going to worry so much about documenting everything- writing, photographing, telling someone- because as much as I love sharing this new life, it is still mine to hold. Even further, it is okay that some parts of my experience are forgotten, even to me.

With that being said, I only have one more thing I want to share in this post before I conclude my (first?) stay in Tokyo and move to Kyoto for the rest of my time in Japan. As I was leaving the airport, riding the busy local train cars, my face red and sweaty from all the transfers to new lines and treacherous stair climbing with my heavy luggage, a man pushed through the packed bodies of the subway to reach me. He recognized me as a fellow foreigner and could tell I was flustered, so he asked me in English if I was okay. I said yes, and I told him I had just arrived from the airport. What he said to me next I will never forget, as it seemed too serendipitous to be natural and unprompted, and I have carried the image of his face close to mine between the poles, and the exact words he said since it happened close to my heart, like a precious gem he gifted to me that I can never misplace: “Japan will change your life.” I asked him his name, which was Mohan, and he then proceeded to joke, “Maybe I will see you around here!” gesturing to the train car and acknowledging that we would really only know each other for that one brief moment. I might not see Mohan again, but it seems to me that our moment of connection was somehow the manifestation of a long chain of kindness that had no beginning or end within either of us but had woven itself into a thread of our lives, a thread that he passed to me on that train, which solidified the messy fibers of my overwhelming emotion into an attitude that has already changed me entirely. And I want to emphasize that although lovely and surreal, it was not magic that did it, but the natural urge towards the association that is so innate in humans, and that link between our eyes that holds the quiet substance of exactly how transformative study abroad can be.

In these past five days, of moments so small that they take up miles of my memory, full of old ladies at the laundromat, scattered oranges beneath fruit trees, and crisp, waving laundry on seemingly infinite balconies, I have felt a lack of reverberation within me, a dullness where I expected a sharp echo. I don’t know if it is a feeling universal to solo travelers, but its silence forces me to see how everything is changing (right now!) within me. I can’t stop it, but more importantly, I can choose where to direct it. I think that is what Mohan meant.

Author: kathennessy

First Week in Kyoto

Japan will change your life