It’s Personal
Not So Lost in Translation
By Christian Nardi

Sometimes it takes traveling somewhere very foreign to realize that we’re all pretty much the same.

It has gotten to the point that without shame or guilt my husband and I have wholeheartedly embraced the beach vacation. It started out with some recreation attached to it. We’d go sea kayaking or hiking so we could feel like we were getting out there and doing something on our vacations. But gradually, as jobs and life became more demanding, adventure fell by the wayside. Now it is all about doing nothing. So long as we have read a couple of books, gotten tan lines, and had our fill of cocktails and greasy snacks, we consider it a success.

Last fall, however, our wanderlust resurfaced. The time had come to open our eyes a bit and go somewhere exotic and far away. With the plan of starting a family in the works, we weren’t sure how many more opportunities for far-flung vacations would present themselves.

It actually didn’t take too long to settle on Japan. To us it represented all things good: sushi, tea, Hello Kitty (I may have been a bit more excited about that than Chris), hot springs, gardens, pottery, etc, etc. With help from friends who had been to Japan, we set up an itinerary. We listened to the good stuff people had to say and ignored the bad, checked the weather, and off we went.

Being the travel pros that we fancy ourselves, finding our way around the Tokyo airport was no problem. We got our luggage, went through customs, and found ground transportation, but the simple act of getting money out of the cash machine became a challenge on par with summitting an Everest-size mountain. For whatever reason—it could have been the sleeping-pill-induced haze, the gazillion-hour time difference, the fact that we were in Tokyo—we could not get cash. To this day I’m not sure why all those people around us were able to get those machines to dispense money but we weren’t. Luckily, we had some traveler’s checks, but it wasn’t until we suffered much jet-lagged anguish and a fight that almost broke up our marriage that we figured that out. I think that’s when it hit me: Ohmygod—what have we done?! We’re in Japan! At that moment all I wanted was a sandy beach and a lounge chair. This is my precious vacation, dammit, I thought to myself. I don’t want to have to struggle.

After a bus ride that drove home the point that we were indeed in a large Asian city yet only partially demonstrated just how enormous the mass of humanity that resides in Tokyo is, we arrived at our hotel. It was our little bubble: people spoke English, they served pancakes for breakfast, there was BBC news in our room—and did I mention that people spoke English?

Over the next couple of days, the movie Lost in Translation took on a whole different meaning for me. There was one day, in the pouring rain, when Chris and I were looking for a restaurant that one of our outdated books said had the best tempura in Tokyo (which really means the world). We were completely lost and hungry and wet. But when we tried to ask for directions, no one seemed to be able to speak to us or have any idea what we were asking. I started to understand why Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray spent so much time in their hotel rooms. The temptation to just order room service (even if it is Singapore noodles from the Chinese restaurant) rather than try to interact with people who’s language doesn’t in the least resemble your own looms large.

For the next couple of days, we explored Tokyo. On the subway and on the streets, we hardly saw any other Westerners. Each Japanese urbanite seemed more hip than the last—busily text-messaging or rushing down the street or both. I got the feeling I was merely a spectator in this world that was spinning around me. If we needed to communicate with people, we’d point and smile and for the most part got along fine. We were getting used to our constant state of confusion and isolation—it’s part of the charm of traveling around Japan.

On our way to Kyoto, where we were going to spend the next five days, we made plans to stop at a hot springs resort on the coast. From Tokyo we got on a train that took us to the tip of the Izu Peninsula. It was a long but scenic ride, and we were the only Westerners among the passengers. We read our books, tried to unsuccessfully get a photo of Mount Fuji from the window of the swiftly moving train, and kept to ourselves. A middle-aged couple was sitting across the aisle from us. They were busily eating what looked like really delicious bento boxes—the kind I had been eyeing but couldn’t figure out how to order. We smiled at each other and at one point the woman turned to me and asked in thickly accented English, “Where are you going?”

Delighted someone wanted to talk to me, I replied “Shimano City.”

“Ohhh,” she said and smiled. A little while later, they started gathering their stuff to get off at the next stop. As they were leaving, she handed me one of two orchid stems she was carrying and said, “Have a good trip.” I was speechless. The four of us all smiled and bowed to each other, Chris and I tripping over ourselves with gratitude. After feeling so invisible in such a foreign place, I was so moved by her simple act of kindness that it brought tears to my eyes. At that moment I was sure it was the nicest random gesture anyone has ever made toward me.

From then on it was impossible not to notice the warmth of the Japanese people. The schoolchildren who greeted us with konichiwa on the street, the innkeepers who gave us both a gift and a ride to the train station on our last day in Kyoto, the sweet waitress who served us breakfast at the hotel who told us on our way out of town at the end of our trip, “I’ll miss you.”

I came back from that trip with the satisfying feeling I travel for: the open-eyed perspective that I’m small and the world doesn’t revolve around me yet I’m very much a citizen of it. As we discuss future travel, the globe is our oyster: Africa, China, Patagonia—all are on our list. But not before we hit the beach in Mexico, which is where we’ll be going on our next vacation.