Right now, I’m curled up on the window ledge of my hotel room, looking out over what feels like all of Japan from my 53rd storey window. It’s late, 1am, and the lights just seem to go forever and ever, like a blanket of man made stars covering the ground. We’re closer to the end of our vacation than the beginning, only three nights left, and it all still feels like a dream that I’m going to wake up from soon.
When I think back on the last week and a half, I have trouble believing we’ve managed to do all we did. A lot of it was planned, but the best moments were the ones I couldn’t plan if I tried. I’ve had some great seats at shows, met some wonderful people, and ran into others who are so unbelievable, I still have trouble believing it’s all true.
We’ve been to so many different types of sacred areas, to different people. We’ve walked the streets of Harajuku and Ginza, watching people from all over look for the latest and strangest fashions. We’ve visited the Great Buddha and main temple in Kamakura, the religious capital of Japan if they could ever have one, a place of serenity and peace. Today, we were handed a strong sense of reality as we visited the Hiroshima Atomic Dome and Memorial Park. It was a quick lesson in the fragility of life, and the stupidness of humanity at times. As a history major, I found myself thinking about all the times I spent sitting in a lecture hall, learning about places like this, only to find myself completely overwhelmed by seeing that history in person. Standing in front of the Children’s Memorial, looking at the thousands of paper cranes hoping for a miracle, I made a quiet prayer for one more, thinking of my friend’s mother who is battling the same disease the 1000 paper cranes are now associated with. I was choked up at seeing just how huge the Burial Mound is. To know you’re looking at a pile of ashes of people who passed, and seeing just how huge it it… It makes you so many things. Sad. Angry. Reflective.
I’ve watched fireworks as I whizzed by a city on the shinkansen, and also with about 100,000 of my closest friends. I’ve run into major celebrities, only to be reminded that, at the end of the day, after the music and the television shows and the silly things that happen with both, they are still just people. It was really amazing to get to see people who I though sacrificed the ability to go to events like that for their fame actually blending in (to a degree) and just being themselves.
This vacation isn’t over yet, but it feels like an opportune time to reflect. I feel a little like Simba right now, looking over Kanto as if my hotel room is Pride Rock, and this country is one that I will once again call my own. I know I may not fit in here, and I don’t think Japan will ever be a forever place. But for the time being, I know that I want to be back here, one day.