Found in Translation: Returning to Japan After 38 Years

I was born during a typhoon under a full moon on a tropical beach on Okinawa, Japan in the mid-70s. The family lore is that my mother was rushed to the second floor of the hospital, my head crowning, when the windows in her room on the first floor shattered from the force of wind and rain. Ten years later, after a three-year stint on Okinawa, followed by three years on the southern tip of South Korea in a tiny town known for its annual cherry blossom festival, and then four years in a suburb of Tokyo, my family and I left Japan and I didn’t return again until two weeks ago, with my husband and two kids in tow, over 38 years later.

It was a visit full of nostalgia for things I had nearly forgotten – most of which revolved around food and drinks – like a soda my daughter, Joanie, ordered on our first night in Kyoto. When the bottle arrived – in the same exact packaging I suddenly remembered from my childhood – I could taste the sharp, lemon-lime flavor even before Joanie offered me a sip. How many times had I enjoyed a Mitsuya cider at six years old – seven, eight, nine? Too many to recollect. I hadn’t thought of this drink in close to 40 years and then unexpectedly, there it was – a portal to some part of my past inaccessible until that very moment. That’s how a lot of the trip was for me. I suspect anyone returning to a prominent place from their formative years might experience the same sensation upon visiting after a long, long time.

Because of this sense of nostalgia, and a complicated sense of familiarity in a place I didn’t feel entitled to claim any part of, I experienced the vacation as two distinct and meaningful narratives. There was the internal one I was having – the nostalgia, and locating parts of my personal history within a wider context that I’d been unable to tap into until this visit. And then there was the more typical narrative of a tourist from America on vacation with her family. In a sense, I was a tourist in both narratives – visiting both a foreign country as well as my own childhood through the memories that being in Japan unlocked.

An astrologer once told me that people born under full moons tend to be more sensitive than average, and people born under Pisces full moons, especially so. I was born under a Pisces full moon during a raging typhoon and I don’t know what astrology says about that exactly, but I do know that taking such an epic visit through the depths of nostalgia as an especially sensitive person felt disruptive to my nervous system. I was overstimulated by the collision of memories, new sensations, and the delight of experiencing this beautiful country through the filter of my family – Drew, and Jackson, and Joanie, all of whom were visiting for the first time.

Within two days of landing in Tokyo, I lost my voice. I couldn’t sleep. My stomach was in knots for days, and each of the four times I rode the subway in Tokyo, I had what I’m not sure whether to call an allergic reaction or a panic attack. Maybe it was both. I’ve traveled a lot. I’ve been the passenger on hundreds, if not thousands, of trains in cities and countries around the world, and I had never experienced what I did riding those subways in Tokyo; within minutes of boarding, my throat closed and I gasped for air, unable to adequately take a full breath until we exited the subway and got back out on the street. After the fourth such attack, we switched to Ubers and walking long distances.

And then something happened on the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto. Watching the expansive, dense green hills, the tops of many of them lost in low-lying clouds, roll past the windows, I felt as if my chest cracked open and I could breathe deeply for the first time in months. We passed rice paddies and farms that reminded me of a field trip I took in first grade to pick sweet potatoes that my mother baked into pies that I brought to school the next day.

In Kyoto, my nervous system calmed down, and I started sleeping more deeply. I had never been to Kyoto before. I liked the way the air felt there and how chill everyone seemed, even in places crawling with tourists. I became a “regular” at a coffee shop near our hotel and on our third morning, the barista knew my order without my needing to say it, making me feel a little bit like I was home.

On our second to last day in Kyoto, Jackson fell on hike up a mountain and Drew had to run down to find help while I camped out with the kids for over an hour waiting and worrying and trying to keep Jackson calm. Trying to keep myself calm. “Do they have socialized medicine in Japan, Mom?” Jackson asked, unable to bear any weight at all on his injured ankle. I imagined him needing to stay in Japan for weeks and how that would work, logistically, and what it would cost, with medical bills and lodging for whichever parent stayed with him and meals and new flights home.

We heard the sirens about twenty minutes before we saw the paramedics – 13 of them! – in hard hats, with a stretcher and a bunch of questions. I had questions of my own I hoped they could answer. “Do you think it’s broken?” I asked through Google translation. “Do you think he will need surgery?” “Can he fly back to the states in 36 hours?” A paramedic translated back: “Maybe.” In the ambulance, on the way to the ER, I whispered to Drew, careful not to let the kids hear: “Do you think this could bankrupt us?” He whispered back: “Maybe.”

Only two evenings earlier, at the famed Kiyomizu-dera temple at sunset, the colors aflame in the waning golden light, I’d felt a sense of peace I hadn’t accessed in years, maybe ever. The world is falling apart – the US is collapsing – but standing there at the top of a green hill crowned by a temple in the golden light of a setting sun in Kyoto felt like a prayer. I don’t think any part of person needs to be from any part of Japan to feel the sensation of holiness there – a feeling that healing can happen, even in the midst of despair.

In the ER, Jackson got X-rays and the doctors told us through Google translation that, thankfully, there was no damage to any bone. There was no break, no fracture, and maybe no need for surgery though they advised we take Jackson to be examined by a local doctor as soon as we got back to New York. “Can he fly in 36 hours?” I asked, and they said: “Yes. But keep him off his foot” and they sold us some crutches for $30.

A week later, following an arduous 29-hour commute home, complete with about six different wheelchair assists through two huge Japanese train stations and three international airports, we are home in Brooklyn and mostly recovered from the jet lag as well as the ankle injury.

“Do you think you’ll ever want to go back again?” Drew asked the other night.

“Maybe,” I replied, before turning out the lights and going to sleep.