For years my biggest dream had been to experience the neon lights of Tokyo, walking down the streets of Kyoto and eating takoyaki while dressed in a brightly coloured yukata watching fireworks. When I discovered a way to get there, I took it.
I spent four years in a small city in Japan, studying for a university degree. The city was a cluster of old houses and onsen. The harbour would smell of drying seaweed during the warmer part of the year and in winter the fishermen would disappear from the pier, not even the insects that usually crawled over the stone could be seen anywhere. There was a small local hot spring a short walk from the seaside apartment I shared with my partner. However, instead of sharing the small bath with the wrinkled locals, we would take the bus uphill to enjoy a private hour in one of the larger bath house’s family rooms.
As graduation came closer, my partner and I left the small, seaside city and moved to Tokyo to work. We found a two-floor apartment with a tiny garden (or rather, a small patch of grass) and despite the density of the houses and the sounds of the inhabitants around us, there was space.
Tokyo was always awake. On the weekends people would crowd out on the streets and during the summer festivals they would sit packed like sardines on blankets, watching the hanabi. When the show ended, the whole mass of sardines would start to make their way to the train. All at the same time. Like a stim of fish.
On Monday mornings, the trains would be just as packed. Suited salarymen and neatly dressed women desperately trying to get on trains where the doors barely closed. When the train rocked to the sides upon switching tracks, they would rock as one in the same direction. Then the train driver would announce Shinjuku and each one of the salarymen and women would press forward to get out. All in a hurry to reach their destination. Sometimes an appropriate black work shoe with a four centimetre heel would lie lost on the ground, the owner nowhere to be seen.
In the evenings at 9pm the same men and women would line up on the track with half-shut eyes, or in drunken conversation with colleagues. When the train opened its doors upon arrival at the station, a lucky few would hasten to a seat and then pretend to sleep until their stop - you may have guessed it; if you can’t see the old lady in need of sitting down she does not exist.
If you scanned the train for a blonde you would have seen me there. I would have been dressed in the same anonymous monochrome colours as the men and women around me, and I would have been wearing the same tired look on my face.
This was a scenario constantly on repeat. Until we moved to Finland.
Leaving Japan was about slowing down. About finding a way to live that does not revolve around constant action and doing. This blog is a reflection of that journey. It’s about pausing to smell the flowers along the road. The blog is personal and works as a medium to share thoughts and feelings, however, please feel free to share your experiences along the way.
When was the last time you stopped to smell the flowers?
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