We are on one of Tokyo's high speed rails and I'm staring at a map. My family and a few strangers are traveling with me and relying on me to show them around. I stare blankly at the map. It's all in Kanji and I can't recognize any of the familiar locations. Even the shapes the trains make are odd and new. I try searching for Shinjuku, yet still no luck. The people in the group are expecting me to know about Japan and how to navigate. I ask a Japanese person about Shinjuku. They don't understand the words I'm saying. We get off at the next stop and wait. I run around frantically trying to figure out there we are and where we are going. The pink line, the red line, the brown line, the green line, they all blend together and seem to go nowhere. After failed trips and failed attempts to show my family I am at least slightly familiar with Japan and I'm not a fraud, I wake up.
I had a similar experience in real life of getting lost in Tokyo, the maps didn't show every stop because it was too complex. I am afraid I talk too much about Japan and don't really know that much about it. People ask me to make generalizations about a country I've only spent a month in, what do they expect. I'm afraid people can see right through me.
6 years ago
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