The story so far

I've not updated in a very long time, and with only two weeks left in my trip, I'm beginning to doubt  that I'll get caught up before I come home.  I lost my journal recently, which had my entries for the next few cities drafted, along with a few essays that I wanted to post, none of which I have the motivation--or time--to rewrite right now.  Instead, here's part of the letter that  I wrote to the administrators of my fellowship, catching them up on my progress to date.

I've been traveling for 7 weeks now.  Even just reading that is incredible to me.  The time has flown, and I have had one incredible experience after another.  From London to Tokyo to Busan and beyond, it is almost surreal to me how much my paradigm has been expanded by not just learning about cultures but experiencing them.  I've taken part in a esoteric Buddhist fire ceremony; I've partaken in an impromptu party of Koreans who didn't know one another; I've met travelers embarking and returning from yearlong trips; and I've been questioned by the police in a language I don't remotely speak.  And for all these experiences, I am a different person.

In London, I saw Big Ben, and sat in on sessions of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.  I watched America draw England in a World Cup match while standing outside of a pub, cheering with fellow expats.  I saw Buckingham Palace and I rode the London Eye, to see the massive old city spreading out on both sides of the Thames below.  I also missed my flight after lingering a little too long in the Tate Modern art gallery.

In transit to Japan the next day, my flight out of the Beijing airport was canceled due to weather.  My flight was one of some 600 flights canceled on the day, and I was one of many thousand people trying  to figure out how I was going to get to where I needed to be.  It's true that everyone at the Beijing airport speaks English, but unfortunately, that only extends to about a half-dozen words.  The experience of navigating a procedure that's complicated in one's own language was a nightmare in Chinese, but in retrospect, it tested my resources and wits in a beneficial way.  I found out early that with patience and diligence, I could overcome language barriers and worse.

In Tokyo--I did make it, finally--I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people, and by the scarcity of English.  I've studied Japanese for two semesters, but because of the proliferation of kanji, characters borrowed from Chinese, I have an extremely low level of Japanese literacy.  Having studied hard for a year, it was at the same time disheartening and amazing not to be able to read the names on a map.  The mass of humanity that occupies Tokyo also boggled my mind.  Tokyo is the most densely populated urban center in the world, and it's impossible to forget while there.  Sidewalks of people that flow like rivers, dammed conveniently at traffic stops only to let the mass of automobiles take their turn flooding through the city.  I climbed a 55-story tower in Tokyo's chic Roppongi district, and saw urban expansion as far as the horizon: flashing red lights marking sky scrapers like fireflies on a summer night.  I watched Japan lose to Holland in the World Cup on a giant screen in the Olympic Stadium and learned how to cheer in Japanese and how not to be discouraged when we lost.

In Kamakura I wandered the beach and was given an umbrella by a kind hostel proprietor.  I saw 800-year old temples, and was caught in a downpour in a traditional Buddhist garden.  I stood inside one of the largest bronze statues in the world, and I wandered through a sacred garden of beautifully blooming wisteria, flat petals glistening with fresh rain drops.

In Nara, I toured even older temples, 1200-year old sites which have been maintained and at which worship has happened continuously since their founding.  I petted sacred deer that wander the streets, and I strolled the forest grounds of an ancient Shinto shrine as still night settled creepily over the land.  I climbed a mountain via an unexpected trail and I saw the entire city spread out below me, and all I could hear was the train station's announcement echoing up incoherently from the valley.

In Koyasan, I visited the most sacred Buddhist sites in Japan, and I saw the many-acre graveyard where every serious Buddhist in Japan has some of themselves interred.  I saw the headstones for many of Japan's most influential historical figures and I saw the tiny memorials of average citizens, some dating back 1,000 years.  I spent the night in an actual, functioning temple, and I took part in meditation, worship, and a fire ceremony where I saw some of the majesty that ritual can bestow upon something as ubiquitous as fire.

In Kyoto, I wandered around Japan's ancient capital, marveling at the juxtaposition of 1980's skyscrapers and temples that date back to before Western Europe had any idea that North America existed.  I reunited with a Japanese-American friend that I made in Tokyo, and I learned about Japanese culture from him.  I learned about the dichotomy between inner and outer self that explains how Japanese can be some of the most polite people in the world, but also how you might never know exactly what a Japanese person is thinking.  I bathed in a neighborhood public bath, soaking in the blazingly hot water, and drawing stares from curious Japanese men and boys, unused to seeing westerners in such a Japanese institution.  I also lost my camera, my means of documentation, and spent two days trying to make myself understood to shopkeepers and policemen, chasing every lead I could find.  I never recovered it.

In Kojima, I spent a day on a beach that I had entirely to myself.  I swam in the Pacific Ocean for the first time, and gazed off at one of the largest suspension bridges in Japan.  I got sunburnt, and I bouldered across sea cliffs to get a better  view of the bay.  After missing the last bus on arrival, I walked 3 miles from the train station to the hostel in the dark, along precipitous streets, wearing only a headlamp to alert drivers to my presence.  I was the only resident of a hostel that was a converted old hospital, complete with pale green floors, light blue and pink walls, and an echo that could only be heard at night.  I was given sake and fish jerky by the proprietor, who didn't speak English but drove me to go sightseeing the following day.

In Hiroshima, I spent my nights in internet cafes, where one rents a computer-equipped booth just large enough to stretch out in, and can stay as long as twelve hours for less than the cheapest of hostels.  I saw Peace Park.  I read John Hersey's unrivaled Hiroshima, the account of the atomic bombing to which an entire issue of the New Yorker was devoted only a year after the blast, moving closer to the epicenter with every few pages.  I saw the atomic bomb dome, the standing skeleton that is a testament to the most dramatic act of violence ever perpetrated by humans.  I wandered through a museum of material remains of obliterated lives.  Clinical and dispassionate exhibits like 'Shirt of a schoolboy' or 'Skirt and jacket of a young girl' charred fabric that once clung to innocent children.  They did not survive.  Many of them made it home to their parents, but they did not survive.  I learned that since 1945, the mayor of Hiroshima has handwritten a letter for every test of nuclear weaponry, begging world leaders to disarm and to prevent another Hiroshima, another Nagasaki.

In Iwakuni, I saw the military base where my grandfather was stationed in 1973.  I took photos to send to him only to be asked by the friendly Marine guard to delete them.  I was told that this was for security purposes, and that this prerogative overrides any fundamental right to freedom of expression, either at home or in foreign countries.  I walked across a bridge once reserved for samurai, appreciating its arches as much for their former exclusivity as for their formal elegance.  I made great friends with an Osakan family man who used to backpack and who insisted on buying my meals and admission fees, suggesting I do the same once I was in the position.  I slept through torrential flooding only to wake up and find trees down, roads closed, and trains inoperational, only to find residents largely undeterred, used to such flooding in the rainy and typhoon seasons.  

In Shimonoseki, I had whale sashimi at a fish market and the potentially lethal pufferfish at a local restaurant.  Both were delicious.  I rode a ropeway up a tall mountain, and I looked down at the peninsular city, its strait, and Kyushu island spreading to the south.  I walked along the harbor and I got sunburnt again, sitting on a pier and writing for hours.  I also mailed my Kyushu rail pass home by mistake, ending my plans to head south and explore the southernmost main island.  Never to be discouraged, I seized the opportunity by finding a cheap ferry to Busan, South Korea.  I unsuccessfully tried twice to catch said ferry, before making it the third day.  After missing it once and scrambling for accommodation, I met a seemingly Japanese man who didn't speak Japanese, and could only tell me in English that he was a Harvard Divinity School teacher.  He grabbed my arm at every opportunity and followed me to my hotel where he tried to insist on staying in my single room until I explained to the receptionist that he was a stranger.

In Busan, I made incredible friends.  Unprepared of a sightseeing itinerary, and unable to speak more than three words of Korean, I spent my days hanging out with fellow international travelers.  I saw a Hollywood blockbuster in IMAX with Korean subtitles.  I went for a swim at the most popular beach in Korea.  I twice atevery recently dead octopus that wriggled and sucked on the way down.  I lost my journal, only to have two amazing friends insist on accompanying me while we retraced every step at 3:30 in the morning.  I returned with said friends at 4:30, only to be accosted by an incredibly drunk Korean hostelmate.  Convinced that our stealthy entry to the dormitory masked our theft of his belongings, he yelled for some time in incoherent English, Korean, and French before he slapped my friend and we managed to lock him out of the room.  Once locked out he called the police, who responded and, despite his obvious intoxication, pursued his claim and questioned the three of us.  Luckily, one friend was Korean and he explained the situation.  I learned quickly how intimidating a legal system you don't understand can be.

And now I'm in Osaka.  I have two weeks left, and in those two weeks I intend to climb the fourth highest and the highest mountains in Japan, and do some camping along the way.

So far this trip has allowed me to see things that I never would have seen had I stayed at home.  I've experienced very different cultures from my own, and I've interacted with people and made meaningful connections in a completely foreign environment.  My paradigm has been expanded beyond my own expectations, as much by the little things, like always giving and receiving things with two hands, to the huge, like unwavering respect for the elderly, a tradition born from centuries of religious and cultural beliefs.  If there is one thing I've gained from this trip so far, it's an unremitting desire to see even more of the world.  We inhabit such an enormous place--a fact we often lose sight of in today's globalized world--and the diversity of ways we've learned to engage with our environment is mind boggling.  

One of the most valuable things about this trip has been seeing that the obstacle preventing me doing this was solely financial.  This fellowship gave me the financial head start and the impetus to go.  I recognize now that all it takes to be a true world traveler is the money and the wherewithal.  Going forward, I intend to spend and consume less, in order to travel more.  Without this trip, I would have continued to see more of the same things that I see day in and day out, and I would have never really understood the vastness and complexity of our world.  With modern media, it's tempting  to believe that with documentaries or with research we can really understand a place or a people.  It is now my firm belief that experience trumps knowledge every time, and going forward, I won't rest until I've experienced as much as I can.