Artifact & memory
I remember Japan through anime eyes
For the past few weeks, I’ve been hedging on booking my final tickets for my Indonesia trip, but today I made the reservation to complete my second circumnavigation. I’ll be flying west round the world this time on at least seven flights in a three week period to get to Java and back.
What an insane and terrifying prospect. I don’t know who gave me the audacity to make such a trip, but here I go again, and I doubt I’ll stop after this.
I was 15 when I took my first international flight, a solo trip to Japan to visit a friend from middle school in her home country. Before that, I hadn’t traveled beyond the east coast, didn’t like sleepovers, and had no great desire to jet set that I can recall. But the circumstances were incredible, and my family made it happen for me.
So young and homesick, I don’t remember as much as I wish I did from my weeks there. I’m not even sure I kept a journal.
I do have some scattered artifacts though, and when they reappear in my life I feel deeply connected to that time. These paper clips buried at the bottom of the craft supplies bag brought the feeling out in me this week.
There are some memories I know are real. Getting strapped into a kimono and then waddling to the 7-11 with limited breath to splurge on snacks. Holding hands with my host family through the scariest amusement park haunted houses I’ve ever been in. Watching the sea sparkle through sleepy eyes as I saw the Pacific for the very first time on our road trip across Hokkaido.
And then there are some memories that shimmer with hints of fantasy and are difficult to distinguish without much record and because of the innate whimsy of the culture. I think I remember going up in a hot air balloon over a woodland area. I know we definitely want to a thermal bath and I sat there naked with people I knew and people I didn’t, but I have no recollection of the feeling of that experience. I think I remember having the best milkshake of my young sweet life at a roadside stand with tall wooden tables. But I can neither confirm nor deny these memories nor tell you what flavor the milkshake was.
Travel overwhelms me in the best way. It forces me to keep a presence of mind which eludes me most of the time and which sometimes can elude writing. In those cases, emotion and imagination fill in the gaps and I’m left with a story of my experience that is as true as anything but which might not have happened as such.
These days, I find that writing comes easiest to me when I’m traveling, and my perception is heightened by novelty and overwhelm. But I do tend to leave details out, or just allude things to my future self, or take notes on a feeling out of context which screws up my own accounts sometimes. The story we tell ourselves shapes the thing that actually happened, and while I enjoy having a detailed record of events and people I met and wonders I saw, the meaning of the experience is best captured in smaller things and thoughts.