A woman dressed in a kimono. Kyoto, June 2010.
I’d been there just twice: the first time as a 12-year-old on a 10-day tour of Tokyo with the family, and last year, when I went to Kobe and Kyoto for three days of work. I always thought I’d go back to Japan, maybe with some friends, to see more of the sights and appreciate the culture. It wasn’t on top of my travel list because I felt it was too near, and that I’d already been there somehow. I thought that I still had to see more of the world before going back to Japan. Little did I know that the Japan I thought I would be seeing would no longer exist.
I have faith in the Japanese. They can emerge from the situation faster than Filipinos can, and I have no doubt that they’ll have the country up and running in no time. I doubt CNN will be broadcasting the usual poverty-stricken scenes that are so common in their disaster reportage. But somehow, things will no longer be the same. It’s not just the physical landscape that would change: the people will bear battle scars, which will mark them forever. I would know.
Places will have been swept away; maybe a noodle shop that only Tokyo locals know about, or a store filled with quirky trinkets that the Japanese seem to be so fond of. I could’ve gone to those places. The restaurant that my family went to maybe 10 times back in 1997 (it served continental food, a welcome respite for children unused to foreign food) could be gone by now.
There will be new ones. Old shops could be resurrected; maybe better ones will replace them. But for now, I will mourn the Japan that I thought I would visit—the Japan that a lot of people know and are familiar with. Then we’ll wait for the new one to emerge from the ashes, maybe trembling and uncertain, but alive.
very well said.