Until next time, Japan

What a two months!

We have truly loved our time in Japan – from the food, to the cycling, the scenery, the history and culture, the onsen, the karaoke, the onigiri and the people. We’re so pleased we came back and carved out so much time to slow down and savour this place. This trip keeps surprising us, and revealing more about ourselves and our world – Japan has done both, and then some. So here’s an account of our final week in Japan, plus some thoughts from us both. (That’s right, a shared blog! But mostly Sarah… not that we’ve been keeping count).

But we needed to leave and there was only one way we were going to do so and that was via Tokyo (yay!), on an aeroplane (boo!)…

Flying is not our favourite activity (despite doing a lot of it on this trip). Two reasons – (1) We know that from an environmental perspective it isn’t the way we should be travelling, and (2) Packing up bikes to travel with us on said carbon guzzler is complicated (to say the least).

So our last few days in Japan were spent combining enjoying Tokyo and everything this huge city has to offer, whilst also sourcing two bike boxes and packaging, taking the bikes apart and arranging transport to the airport capable of accommodating us and the bikes.

We’ve been pretty lucky so far with flying – we have only had to source boxes once previously, in Istanbul – where we picked up two extra large ones at the first shop we visited. Tokyo proved a bit more tricky. Suffice to say, we got what we needed but it involved a fair amount of schlepping about, confusing conversations and copious quantities of tape to make the boxes we eventually got our hands on suitable.

In amongst the admin, we absolutely loved exploring as much of Tokyo as we had time for.

Despite having two months in Japan and exploring so many beautiful places, I was a little disappointed that we hadn’t made it to Mount Fuji. Until I realised that if we were lucky with the weather we might just be able to see it from one of Tokyo’s skyscrapers.

…and we did! The views from the top of the Tokyo City Region Municipal building were completely epic! A dream come true for me to see one of the most iconic mountains on the planet – somehow it brought a tear to my eye.

We also gawped at all of the neon, the crazy shopping and eating/drinking streets, the history in amongst the modernity and enjoyed our last delicious meals.

I (Matt!) had a mix of emotions before coming back to Japan. I’ve only ever been here once in my life – and that was for a whole year when I was fresh out of university. Sarah and I had been together for over two years and promised to give the whole ‘long distance relationship’ thing a go… and it worked! I thought I wanted to be a teacher, I definitely wanted to see the world – and truth be told knew little about Japan, contrary to my application form. The teaching aspect of those ambitions was shattered the more time I spent with unruly teenagers in the classroom (big respect to the teachers out there!) but the exploring the world element definitely came true.

I landed in a far away land when Skype was a pretty new thing and Wi-Fi was a rarity, smartphones were definitely not smart – and my Japanese was non-existent. I’d also asked for a rural town to live in, and the JET Programme definitely delivered on that! The culture was impenetrable, my house was freezing, family and friends were a long way away and yet slowly I had one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It wasn’t easy leaving, but I wanted to go back home – and had to sort out what my new career was going to be and find somewhere to live (16 years later, here we go again!) And of course be with Sarah…

So here I was coming back to Japan – this time with a grasp of the language (de-rusted with some frantic Duolingo practice), knowing how things worked, and a few connections – but also lots of amazing memories that I kind of wanted to leave untouched. My Japanese wasn’t what it used to be, my amazing friends I saw most weeknights and weekends have scattered back across the world, my fellow Japanese teachers have retired/died/moved away and I knew I was going to walk into a world that would be forever set in stone in my head from how I left but just wasn’t like that anymore. An example of which was excitedly going to see my old house behind the fire station, both of which had been knocked down!

So how was it going back? Some strong cognitive dissonance! I’m not sure where all the time has gone for starters. It was great to see such a familiar place, Ureshino, with fresh eyes. Some streets were identical, my favourite restaurant was boarded up, my Japanese ‘mum and dad’ had shut up their car dealership and moved away – yet I walked to the local high school at lunchtime and the kids were hanging off the balcony screaming excitedly at the foreigner as he finds his way to the staff room. Exactly like in 2006.

As it’s been such a long time since coming back to somewhere I know so well, I could also feel like I was a different person. I saw mountains in every direction round Ureshino – and only had a hazy memory of appreciating how beautiful they were, and climbing only a few of them. 2023 Matt would have been up in those mountains every day – 2006 Matt wasn’t quite so wholesome! The mountain roads around Ureshino were stunning, smooth and so quiet – a cyclist’s dream. But I didn’t enjoy cycling back then… I started wondering if I appreciated it as much as I should – perhaps not, I was young and it was my first job – but also, quite simply, I just enjoyed other things. And at first I missed my buddies: Japanese colleagues who were always up for a party and are now married, busy with careers and families. Or those fellow foreigners. Or having a car, a house, a phone, a bank card… And then it felt normal being on holiday here and being a different Matt. Sharing my passion for the culture, food and drinks with Sarah and helping out other foreigners along the way. Getting ourselves out of a few scrapes, and bending the rules a little to get a bit higher up closed roads.

In my experience, Japanese people have a reputation for being quite reserved – but we had wonderful interactions with many inquisitive and kind people along the way. The most memorable was when we were sat on the floor outside a convenience store door, inhaling a variety of calories as usual, and a man asks us in Japanese where we’re from and what we’re doing. He couldn’t speak English, but he really wanted to know why on earth we’d leave our jobs, sell our house and cycle round the world. My Japanese vocabulary about fertility, life choices and dreams isn’t great – so it became oversimplified and condensed down to “We wanted a family. We can’t have a family.” To which he simply replied “Two people are a family”. He then gave us some cookies, got in his car and drove away. A simple but lovely moment which I’ll always remember. It’s also a moment I struggle to imagine happening in many of the countries we’ve visited on this trip.

Japan is a wonderful, contrasting, sometimes infuriating, often delightful, beautiful and thought provoking country that I think is one of the most special places. Some people say happiness is a time, not a place… but coming back here for the second time makes me think it’s a blend of both.

Will we come again? Who knows… it’s a long way from home (and uses up a heck of a lot of carbon) – for now we’ll say また会いましょう、日本 (see you soon, Japan) and どうもありがとうございます (thank you so much).