Five hours from Tokyo
Day 0: LHR > HND
This trip is only just starting to feel real.
We have always wanted to visit Japan, but part of me thought we’d never make it. It’s such a long and expensive journey, so far from home in so many ways, that my stupid Western hemisphere brain would make the mistake of rolling it up into one epic, impossible adventure.
While we’re in Japan, we should probably hop across to Southeast Asia; if we’re there, it would be a shame to miss Australia; oh, and what about New Zealand? Start thinking like that and after a while you stop thinking about it altogether.
But we’re doing it. My wife and I blocked out time in our calendars, booked flights, accommodation and a fancy meal, and promptly forgot about our trip. Or rather, we didn’t give ourselves time to think about it — what with shutting down our coworking space, moving flat, travelling with work and smoking mad weed with a visiting friend (at which point I nearly forgot all about everything).
So I only really started to think about our holiday a week ago. And even then with a mix of excitement and fear. Or maybe excitement, fear, anxiety and nerves are all just the same feelings viewed through different lenses. Zoë gets excited. I get scared.
What is there to be scared of? Being outside of my comfort zone — that’s what I’ve been telling people. I don’t like planning and organisation, and I especially don’t like being made to do things I don’t like to do.
I’d rather develop my strengths than work on my weaknesses. But new experiences don’t work like that. I hate not being understanding and not being understood. Back in Berlin, I do my best to communicate using my limited German skills, to connect in a true sense. But when things get really hard, I settle for appearing to understand, for passing as a German, albeit a weirdly simple one. In Japan, that won’t be an option.
Now, just over halfway to this new place that people tell me will blow my mind in the best way possible, all this fear’s metabolising into excitement. Surrounded by a Battle Royale’s worth of schoolchildren, it’s clear that Zoë and I will stick out like sore thumbs. Big ol’ pale, grey-haired-and-bearded thumbzillas clomping all over their toybox country.
And that’s OK — at least they’ll be nice about it. No one comes back from Japan saying “they were all dicks”. If there was a World Cup of Apologetic Politeness, the Japanese and Brits would both make the finals.
I think Japan will suit us just fine. We probably should have honeymooned here, instead of the relatively cheap option of Morocco. That place was too much for me. I couldn’t see past the poverty, or the things that it compelled people to do. I hated having to extricate myself from situations like being led into the maze of Marrakech with the promise of visiting a shop we had no interest in, or being forcibly henna tattooed on the beach at Essaouira by a woman who then demanded payment. No judgement, and I’m fully aware of the hypocrisy of a tourist complaining about a country that’s only trying to maximise its tourism revenue, but I need to be somewhere where being nice doesn’t make you a target.
God, I hope someone doesn’t con us out of everything we have, and leave us standing in a back alley holding only this notebook.
