For quite some time now, I’ve wanted to write a post about my time in Japan. Starting in October 2022, I did an internship in Tokyo for 7 months, and then travelled for another month with and girlfriend and some other friends!

I went to work in a new country where I met people who speak a different language, eat different food, have different values, and overall live very different lives than the one I do. I took the extremely efficient public transport systems, learned a bit of Japanese, and learned to play Valorant without knowing how to communicate strategies¹.

Yet after having immersed myself in a new society for that long… I don’t really think I have anything valuable to share with anyone. I haven’t uncovered any new insights about life and people, and I don’t know if I grew as a person either.

Ever since I received the job interview e-mail, I had started hyping up the trip in my mind. “I’m gonna learn Japanese! I’m gonna become more social! I’m gonna better understand what truly motivates me in life!” These thoughts echoed around in my head along with the other ones like “I’m finally gonna look like a member of the majority ethnicity! I’m gonna eat at local ramen shops! I’m gonna use Japanese toilets!”

I had so many of these thoughts and expectations of what type of journey I’d have that—and as silly as it sounds—I found it hard to grapple with the fact that I couldn’t come up with anything when I finally sat down to write a blog post.

In retrospect half a year later, I think I did learn something from my time in Japan. It’s more personal, and less a useful insight to share with other people, but nonetheless helps me understand myself better as a person.

I don’t like thinking

Despite starting off the post with this negative disappointing sentiment, I friggin LOVED my time in Japan. I can still remember vivid stories about the things I did, places I went, food I tried, sensations I felt, and all the very simple mindless things like that. Perhaps, worded very crudely, I am just not that smart, nor am I driven enough to be accurately insightful and inspiringly original.

I remember clearly the two-and-a-half hour train ride I took from Kita-Senju station to Nikko with my friend Mia when she came to visit. There lights inside the cabin were turned off because the sunlight was already beaming down intensely into the train, creating harsh borders between shadow and sunlight on the gray floor. The shadow silhouettes of the windows would slowly skew as the train reached bends along the tracks. I remember the sound and feeling of the smooth rumbling of the wheels underneath my feet, with the periodic noise that happens when the wheels cross from one connected rail to the next. The urban scenery started off being dominated by tall gray skyscrapers and colorful signage, but slowly downscaled over time as we started entering the more residential areas, with mostly white and brown family homes. Larger apartment buildings were still spread out here and there, but the typical bustling image of Tokyo retreated into something slightly more familiar—the city was giving itself space to breath more. Washed out sakura pinks, beach sand yellows, summer afternoon blues, mint greens, all sorts of different colors adorned the drooping clotheslines stretching across balconies. I watched windows flash by my vision. Surely there were some people at home at the time, watching TV? Studying for exams? Preparing dinner? Sleeping? I’ll never know.

And as I recounted this memory while writing, not once did I ever have to reason or evaluate. Reaching into the shallows of my mind, I simply channeled out the things I saw and felt into this text.

I’ve noticed that this feeling of bliss in the moment and uncomplicated thinking extends to other moments in life. My girlfriend Jasmine found it weird that I enjoyed chopping potatoes. We were cooking a shepherd’s pie together at her place, and part of the recipe involved washing, peeling, slicing, and then boiling somewhere like ten potatoes. But honestly, I enjoyed doing it all. Standing next to the sink with the sun getting blocked by the roof overhead, getting the temperature of the sink water just right so that I can keep my hands underneath the water while peeling potatoes, then having that water wash off the peeled skin, then transferring the potatoes to a colander, then slicing each potato one by one, slowly working out the most optimal slicing pattern for safety and efficiency via trial and error, and then transferring them all the pot of boiling water, that was a blissful experience in completing a task well.

I don’t like thinking too much. I like to experience, I like to observe, and I like to remember. Interpreting is hard, assessing is hard… thinking is hard. Sitting by the river and staring at the waves is easy. Picturing imaginary stickmen running atop the electricity lines while I stare out a bus window is easy. Turning your brain off and enjoying the feeling of security in a warm embraceful hug is nice. Ok I think I’m derailing the point of this post.

But to be honest, there really isn’t any important point to this post. I wanted to finally write a finale for that short chapter of my life when I lived far away from home in a new foreign country. This ending doesn’t feel particularly satisfying as a story ending, but explicitly acknowledging that makes it feel more okay, as if I’ve accepted the reailty.

I have reservations about saying things like “it’s okay to just live in the moment” and “it’s okay to do things with no goal” because I recognize that me being able to come up with words like that at all imply a baseline level of comfort if I were to do nothing at all. I have a supportive family, we live in Canada, we’re not necessarily strapped for cash. And sometimes you do have to chase goals if they’re important, or else you won’t be able to include certain things in your baseline. So I guess as with everything, do things in moderation.