Travel Journal: What a Gift

What a gift I think as I hurdle, for the 19th flying hour over the last 80 or so. What a gift to travel, to see, taste, experience.

The world is vast and I have history with its muchness. Fearful years of unknowns threatened my bubble upbringing, the ways I'd known we were right. Then, the world felt a conspiracy, all out to get me. Stranger danger, inedible foods, uncertain maps, and oh, religions - the pieties so like mine and so far apart that they were, on a globe, nearly shoulder to shoulder.

Then, my own breaking and rebuilding. A deconstruction, as my peers name it, and I adopt in some form. Yet I do not pull down every pillar or stone, just construct more doorways and hallways and ways to journey across town via tunnel to new ideas or different beliefs. I do not build on rubbled remains but stand on some firm foundations, stretching for glass ceilings and the sun, alike.

I have wrapped a whirlwind tour of Tokyo. Ikebukoro has my heart, small hole in the wall sushi shops next to girl bars advertising companionship, a thing I recognize for it’s importance and a marketing campaign I recognize for it’s sadness. Here, jetlagged and sake saturated, my friends and I knock on a door that offers a friendly welcome, with a slight ominous tone. “Welcome!” “Enter if you brave”.