These two photos are all I have left of Japan. All of our photos, from all our travels, were on Kyle's Macbook, which crashed soon after we got home, and we lost everything. It's a strange feeling, to lose photos forever. There's something bittersweet about it—suddenly, you're left with just imperfect, incomplete memories. And you come to appreciate just how rich memory is, how it may not record all the tiny details, but that it gives you a brief image, a sound, a scent, that you can't help but carry with you forever. But still. Pictures can help jog, refine, enhance memories. And of course they let you share memories with others. Without getting too melodramatic about it, there's a small kind of grief that comes with losing pictures like that.
I went to Japan four times over the three years that I lived in Korea. Sometimes via ferry, sometimes via airplane. Three years ago this week, we were in Nagasaki. Standing in this beautiful little port city, among some of the greenest parks you'll ever see, and only a bit of rubble, still preserved as a memory. In awe of how a place, a people, a country could possibly be so forgiving.
Tokyo is like nowhere else on earth. It is bright lights and neon and Pachinko and Harajuku (oh, how I love Harajuku) and Obama bobblehead dolls and the endless, beautiful shops of Shibuya. It's sound after sound after sound. But there's a harmony to the chaos. There's a sense of unity greater than any I've ever noticed in any other big city. People don't litter. They keep their city clean. And there are gardens and parks so quiet that if you close your eyes, you can still hear this distant, comforting buzz, but the birds are so much louder. The sky in Tokyo is clear as day. Eight months after I was there, it was shaken to its core. Tourists were afraid to go. The Tokyo people stayed put. Resolve amidst tragedy. Not just in Tokyo. Everywhere in Japan. A beautiful kind of resilience.
Nikko, Japan is the place I most long for. It's this small city, nestled in the mountains, about a three hour train ride from Tokyo. It's the most peaceful, serene, magical place I've ever been to. Kyle and I spent three perfect days there. Walking for miles and miles, exploring the moss-covered stone walls and following a burbling, ice-blue creek out of town and into the wilds. At one point, we found ourselves in a little clearing beside the water, surrounded by what had to be hundreds of Buddha statues, which were all wearing little red knit caps and bibs. Some of the statues—and caps—looked like they had been there for centuries; some looked brand new. It was beautiful.
Shinto is Japan's native religion. In Shinto, the world is populated with an almost infinite number of spirits that inhabit everything in nature, living, dead, or inanimate. It doesn't take long in Japan to see the appeal. The landscape, the forest, the mountains, the waters, the clearings, the gardens, the understated temples, the houses with their paper doors glowing with light from within: they all come together to form a place that feels ancient, timeless, and profoundly alive and present all at the same time.
I miss it. I miss Korea too, but Japan's easier to talk about. Because I didn't have a life there. I just had fleeting moments. Moments that I wish were still preserved on film, but now I just have to reach for in the recesses of my memory. It's my favorite place I've ever been, I think. It's really, really special and I hope that one day in the not-too-distant future, we'll have the chance to go back.
Kyle and I have been craving travel a lot lately. We miss it. It doesn't matter where we go, we just want to explore somewhere together. Travel was a near-constant part of our lives for the first three years we were together. I know we were lucky. I love being rooted somewhere, but I get restless. We're hoping to save up for a little trip in the fall. Probably somewhere close, like New York City, but it'll still be just perfect.
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On one last note: In case you didn't catch my last post, I'm hosting my first giveaway ever right now. The winner will receive a $200 gift card to DITTO eyewear (they carry brands that I'm just crazy about, like Ray-Ban and 3.1. Phillip Lim). Be sure to head over and enter if you think you might like to win!
