"Japan" Moments

Tucked alongside concrete apartments buildings and ramshackle townhouses lie buddhist temples and hidden shrines. In Japan the old and the new, the ancient and the modern, are juxitoposed in every city and town.

I moved to Nagoya, Japan three months ago to teach English for one year. Already I have seen dozens of shrines, more than a few temples, and three castles. From my apartment building, on a main street in the fourth-largest city in Japan, I have only to walk 5 minutes to see a beautiful shrine lined with red toriis, and long papers filled with kanji. Another few minutes, and I can find myself at a large buddhist temple. But should I choose to walk the other way, I can find a large train/subway station, unlimited restaurants: from Indian curry to Chinese and McDonalds to expensive sushi.

These unexpected discoveries continually astound and delight me. The shock of moving from a small town in New Hampshire to a thriving foreign city was intense, but slowly my explorations led to moment after "Japan" moment. Three months after arriving in Japan, I still step off the train, look up at the tall buildings of flashing lights and say "I'm in Japan" with a smile. And there are times where I take a wrong turn on my weekend, find a handicraft shop filled with wood carvings of Mt. Fuji and think "This is Japan." Or times where I find a $15 melon in the grocery store before passing a package of raw octapus and I have to laugh and say "It's a Japan moment."