The torii of Itsukushima Shrine, which appears to float at high tide, April 2018.
We were on a ferry, after having been on not one but two trains, and it was a beautiful day. We were beginning our second week of our first trip to Japan and we were apparently going to an island (hence, the ferry). I’m taking a video of the ferry crossing, and then I ask, “where exactly are we going?”
“What do you mean, where are we going?”
“We are on this ferry to an island, but I don’t know what island.”
“Miyajima. It’s like the Mackinac Island of this part of Japan.”
Please believe me when I say that until this exchange, while on the ferry, I had literally never heard of Miyajima. I am sure it was listed on the detailed itinerary we were keeping on our trip; timetables for trains, addresses of accommodations printed out in Japanese for taxi drivers, recommendations from friends for sightseeing and shopping. An itinerary I had started, formatted, and organized, but eventually had stopped updating and reading. By the time we had exited Shibuya station in Tokyo from the airport train a week earlier, I had given myself over to the excitement of this trip, the novelty of being somewhere completely new. But I was grounded by my partner’s researched maps and knack for navigation; we were never truly lost and it is all thanks to him and his tireless Internet research.
So he knew all along that we were going to Miyajima; it was his idea and he got us there. As always, I was just along for the ride.
To say that Miyajima is the “Mackinac Island” of Japan (or at least Hiroshima Prefecture) is a hilarious comparison, but it kind of makes sense. To us, it meant that it was a tourist destination with some distinctive quirks: it had a mascot-like snack (instead of fudge, it’s Momiji manjū, pastries filled with azuki jam or custard, stamped in a maple leaf pattern), roaming wildlife (deer, in both places), and a 17th century history that is probably important and I know very little about (Miyajima is one of Hayashi Gahō's Three Views of Japan specified in 1643; on Mackinac Island the Jesuit priest Claude Dablon founded a mission for the Native Americans on Mackinac Island in 1670). Both are charming and beautiful. Both are pretty far away from a major airport. I could easily get to one on my own if I needed to, and obviously could not do the same for the other.
I have a terrible sense of direction and honestly can’t really read a map. I’ve lived in the DC area for more than 10 years, and I still regularly will choose the wrong exit from a metro station and find myself totally turned around and walking in the wrong direction for awhile before I realize my mistake. All the while I am following my blue dot self on Google maps.
I am not good at knowing where I am or how to get to where I am going.
This is on full display during our trips in Japan. It is not that Japan is inherently difficult to navigate for a non-Japanese speaker; there is a lot of very good signage everywhere. It is more that I am not trusted or tasked with this responsibility because I am not good at it; to designate me as the navigator would mean a lot of lost time, mistaken directions, and missed opportunities. It would mean arguing and bad vibes during the few weeks a year where we can fully experience joy and a sense of freedom (this is a privilege and we do not want to waste it).
Very useful directions at Miyajima, April 2018 (I refused to run, even a little).
But this also means my partner is responsible for always knowing where we are and how to get to where we are going. This is a burden for him, and something I feel guilty about when we travel. On this same first trip to Japan, when I would take a jet lag nap from 6pm to 10pm every night before attempting to take a bath in our tiny AirBnB bathroom, he would pour over train schedules and travel websites, meticulously mapping our moves for the next day so we would not waste any time getting lost.
There is this pattern, you see - “waste.” Or rather, avoiding waste - wasting our time, wasting our money, wasting our experience - in service of making the most of these tiny slivers of leisure squeezed in-between countless weeks of work and family holidays. Optimization. Efficiency. Living in a time and a place that gives us so little in terms of recreation that we feel compelled to treat it like an exercise in productivity. I hate doing this. But I also hate not doing this.
On that same trip to Japan, we were in Osaka over a weekend with the intent of not only getting to see Osaka (“the Chicago of Japan” we had been told, which, in tandem with the “Mackinac Island of Japan” is so dumb, so Midwestern, and so funny to me), but also getting to see a German disco DJ at a club (obviously). By the time we dragged ourselves out at 4am, we were of course hungry. We argued between ramen and gyudon, and splurged for a cab back to the hostel. I think our arguing made the driver nervous and it was an unpleasant ride for all of us. I think it ended in a stalemate, so our only late night snack was whatever candy I had stashed away in our mini-fridge. The next morning, as we dragged ourselves out of bed around midday, we discovered his wallet was gone. Like gone gone. We googled what we should do, and asked the front desk to write us a note to take to the local police station. We found the nearest police station and, using Google translate, made our case to the woman working at the reception desk. She did not have the wallet, and it seems no one else did either. We left information with her and the hostel, and got on the train to Kyoto, hoping for a miracle.
Three days later we were “hiking” in Kurama (I had been appeased by being told there would be an onsen at the end) and he got an email from the hostel via the booking website that his wallet had been found and needed to be picked up at the police station in Osaka. We didn’t both need to go, but leaving me alone in a different city in Japan made us both uneasy, even if I did not want to admit it.
But, as Chuckie on that episode of Rugrats once said - I’m a big brave dog, I’m a big brave dog (this scene is a driving force for me to do anything I’m afraid to do). So I stayed in Kyoto by myself for the afternoon. But because I literally had just followed him around the entire time we were in Japan I had NO idea where anything was or how to get there. The obvious solution then was to go somewhere I had already been so I wouldn’t get lost.
On a tip from a travel blog that his high school friend ran (which is also a major to-go resource for adult Disney folks, apparently), we had originally visited the highly popular Fushimi Inari shrine at night, when it was still open and totally deserted. It was magical and a tiny bit spooky. It was our first night in Kyoto, so it was also totally enchanting (Kyoto is better at night, imho). But when I returned that afternoon it was jam-packed with tourists, thus dissipating a lot of its original magic for me. But I honestly didn’t know where else to go.
My original walk through Senbon Torii, a path of 1,000 torii gates at Fushimi Inari Taisha.
My second walk through Senbon Torii, a path now with 1,000 torii gates and 1,000 tourists.
While the crowds at the shrine made it much less peaceful than my first visit, losing myself in it did give me that magical feeling I get when I travel, where at that given moment no one in the world knew exactly where I was, and that, for me, was just as good as the peace of the deserted shrine a few days before.
My solo halfway hike at Fushimi Inari Taisha, April 2018.
Do you remember when we went to Pompeii? Of course you do, we talk about it all the time. You picked us up at the Naples airport in that minivan and we went to the historic site, which I hadn’t realized was as large as it is - it makes sense, Pompeii was a whole-ass city in ancient Rome. The guidebook for it was literally probably 100 pages long and you grabbed it, flipped through it for maybe 5-7 minutes and then just said, “This way,” with such confidence I assumed you had abandoned using the guidebook as being too overwhelming and just started walking. But you didn’t. I swear to God you did that speed-reading thing people say John F. Kennedy could do and just read the whole goddamn thing in 7 minutes and then proceeded to act as a private tour guide. You knew where to go throughout the entire site! Block after block! Ruin after ruin! It absolutely mesmerized me (still does!) that you could synthesize that amount of information so quickly and then so confidently steer us in the right direction.
It was like that the entire time the four of us were in Italy together and I know my partner was so relieved he was not responsible for getting us anywhere. “This is what it feels like for you when we go places!” he expressed to me one day, while we were sitting in the backseat of this rented minivan hugging the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” I replied. “Places just appear like magic.”
Navigating the streets of Pompeii, September 2016.
But it isn’t exactly magic, is it? It’s that I literally don’t know how to read a map, use a GPS or a compass (lol). It’s that I don’t know which way is north anywhere besides my house and my childhood home. It’s that I can get lost in a parking lot, and regularly do. It’s my full (albeit sometimes blind) trust in the person I’m following. My partner, my best friend. It’s my belief in allowing someone with the stronger skillset in certain areas to lead the way. It’s this baked-in concept of avoiding “waste,” optimization, and efficiency (this is capitalism at work!), for better or worse. It’s also me not trusting myself, my paralyzing inability to make decisions, especially ones where other people’s time and energy are involved. It’s my fear of making mistakes.