What I think about when I’m traveling

I’m currently reading “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”, a memoir by Haruki Murakami. This is a great read and some nice inflection from an author I feel I already know through his first-person narratives. The thing I love about Murakami is the simple beauty with which he composes his sentences. They’re easily accessible, yet always poignant. I feel like his words are pouring directly out of his brain into mine, without any interruption except for when I put the book down to do something else. Then it’s always there when I come back, ready to continue the flow.

I’m in Honolulu now. It’s been almost one week and this is my first trip back Stateside since I left almost a year ago to come to Japan for work. Before leaving, I was really excited to get away from my life in Tokyo for a few days. All the hustle and bustle and heat was starting to get to me. A beach vacation was just the sort of thing I was looking forward to.

But, after a week in - what most people would call paradise - Hawaii, I have to say, I’m actually looking forward to heading back to Tokyo. Call me crazy, but there’s something I love about the metropolis. I never know exactly what it is that I love, but after this trip back I think I’ve come to realize it a little bit better. Anonymity.

One thing that I noticed immediately coming to Hawaii was how functional I became again. Being able to speak your native language in your home country is something you take for granted unless you’ve been away from it for awhile. Not to say that living in Japan is especially difficult - I have tried to learn the language and can function with a certain degree of competency - but there are definitely things that I don’t understand and that get lost in certain situations (part of this is due to language barrier, part is due to cultural barrier). And there’s always that feeling of anxiety any time I need to speak Japanese over a subject or topic that I’m unfamiliar with (like dealing with a credit card bill over the phone for example), and that causes me to wish I could speak Japanese better. But being back in America, I find that I can instantly pick up on conversations, engage in activities that are unfamiliar to me, and even utilize some of my minimal sense of humor and wit.

On the flip side though, being able to speak the language and return to an environment that you’re familiar with, makes me realize how much I feel out of place in certain situations. Now, of course as a foreigner in Japan, this is bound to happen as well, sometimes on a daily basis. But, that’s where I’m saved by the blanket of my alien-identity (literally), my foreignerness (gaijin if you will), that kind of creates an anonymous cover for me. Being in America, I’m suddenly devoid of such a cover.

This is hard to describe of course. Somehow, I feel like I fit in well in a place like Tokyo because of this anonymity. Perhaps it has to do with my slightly introverted nature, but being on vacation here in Hawaii, being in America, I feel like I’ve been in many situations already where I feel slightly out of place. I’m not sure if it’s because of my dress or appearance or my mannerisms, and maybe it’s because I’ve been away too long, but I feel like at many places I go, people are always turning and saying or thinking, “Look at that guy. He doesn’t fit in here.”

This may seem trivial, but it’s something I’ve dealt with a lot in my life growing up as an Asian American in a predominately white, middle class environment. I almost always look beyond this issue because I feel there is more to myself and to others around me than outward apperances. Nonetheless, it’s still something I think about.

But back to Tokyo. In Japan, I feel I can blend in easier simply by the fact that people look similar and act similar. All I have to do is learn some of these ways since I already have a similar appearance. This let’s me go many places and feel like people aren’t always turning and staring at me. Of course this becomes a different issue once I open my mouth. In Tokyo though, it’s so full of people that there’s sort of this general consensus that everyone does their own thing and doesn’t really care what the people around them are doing. They just go about their own way paying little attention to their surroundings. I think part of what helps me feel this is the fact that I can’t understand everything that’s going on around me. This allows me to tune out whatever people are talking about.

I’m sure this would be true again if I were back in the big city in the US. But there’s still that feeling of alienation simply due to appearance. Perhaps this has been accentuated this time around because I’m in Hawaii which is full of tourists. As a tourist, I guess it’s easier for me to have this feeling of standing out since this isn’t exactly my home. But I have felt this before when I’ve gone back to a place that I’ve been away from for a while.

Perhaps security in uniformity is a rather unhealthy view. But for some reason, being in Japan makes this more acceptable and even somewhat comfortable. In that sense, I’m ready to head back. It’s been a nice vacation but I realize that that’s all it was.