Find Space in Japan
I used to think that the native, more than the tourist, understood place best, experienced it more fully and vitally. And certainly, there is some adamantine truth to this. But, tourists possess a particular, greedy vision that familiarity resists. They may not understand a place better, but they understand it differently and sometimes more attentively.
Over spring break, Dr. Michael Stamps and I took a crowd of thoughtful and curious students to Japan for the Place Studies trip. Our obvious outsider position meant we did not, for the most part, experience Japan like the Japanese, but instead peeked at it from somewhere between there and here. We had, before leaving, read the stories, watched the movies, written essays, and—in short—considered Japan. Once there, students crept down each alley in the overtly safe cities looking for some fresh something. They peered up at statues and down at manhole covers. Admired cedar, stone and rivulet. One student came up to me towards the beginning of the trip and said, “We’ve been in Tokyo for like three days, and I don’t think I have heard anyone beep their horn.” I don’t know how that particular silence resonates with locals. “The toilet seats are heated and clean,” another student announced, “in the train station.” Could someone from Japan have the same awe in her voice?
When I think about it, what I want the students to learn on the Place Studies trips is not really about place at all. Well, not, anyhow, how we might normally think about place. I want them to understand the traditions and history of the writers who helped craft the culture and landscapes, but more than this, I want them to learn about the spaces in between places. The change from the comfort of the familiar to the thrill of the different.
One of the great joys of travel is that change—change in attitude, change in state of mind, change of location, change in awareness. This crew of adventurous Place Studies students got it. And they taught it to me. They understood that change in place is greater than a simple shift in geography. Each new shrine, sculpted garden, black castle, bright skyscraper, grim memorial, beautiful museum, and delicious menu was an optical realignment, not in what we see but in how. We can take from our journeys this simple axiom: ours is not the only way—not the only way to worship, not the only way to travel, not the only way to greet, eat, or use the bathroom. Making space for possibilities might then be the purest joy of visiting new worlds and the primary aim of place studies.
