The Things You Forget: Japan Five Years Later

Recently I had the opportunity to visit Japan. I lived and worked in Japan as an ESL teacher from 2003-2009, but since then we (I met my wife in Japan) hadn’t returned. From the time we touched down in Narita, it felt like we were enacting the Japanese folktale, Urashima Taro. In the folktale, Urashima Taro returns from the ocean to find decades passed while he partied in the undersea kingdom and the world moved on. It really felt like decades passed while we were away rather than a few years, but I think it is just the things you forget when you aren’t in a country day in and day out.

For sure, some things are different. For example, Tokyo station has touch panel vending machines now, street lights have gotten slimmer and you can finally pay with a credit card in most large stores. However, there are all sorts of things that must have once been familiar and now seem strange and new. The counters and tables all felt a few inches too low, the airport and bullet trains were unbelievably clean, and the average combini (convenience store, but so different from Canada’s version) held all the products a person could possibly need in their daily lives. Even the cars were surprising as there seemed to be an endless selection of makes, models and colors.

One thing I was shocked to have forgotten was the natural beauty of Japan. It is easy to think of Tokyo as being Japan concentrated down into a single city of skyscrapers and concrete, but outside of Tokyo Japan is a country of mountains, oceans, fields and rivers. In Alberta, we can drive 600 kilometers in any direction without a huge change in the countryside. In Japan, 600 kilometers takes you from Ueno station in Tokyo to the snow covered forests of Aomori. For such a small country, Japan packs in a lot of scenery.

There were many other moments of rediscovery, including the quality of the food, the high-level of service, the mild weather, and the weight of history and culture in Japan. There are many things I wish I could bring back with me to Canada, and also some things I wish I could export to Japan. I wish my Japanese friends took more of a Canadian approach to work and took all the holidays they were entitled too. I wish Canadian restaurants could offer the service and food quality you get in Japan.

I guess I really wish I could live in a Canadianized Japan or Japanized Canada, but that’s not how the world works. That said, every time we travel to Japan or a Japanese person comes to Canada, you can’t help but take a piece of that culture with you. Piece by piece, the connection is built between both cultures. Sure, you can forget the little things like the spotless bathrooms and the talking ATMs, but the truly important things like respect and appreciation of nature stay with you forever.