When we travel, of course we move through space.
When we return to a place years later, we also move through time.
We walk alongside the ghosts of our former selves. The details of that first trip have faded, the memories are a feeling, a faint echo.
What have we learned? What is different, in ourselves and in the place, and what do we remember (and remember right)?
These are questions I found myself asking on a trip to Japan in 2018, a full twenty-one years after my first visit as a university student in 1997.
The experience became a fascinating microexploration, not just of a changed country, but of my own changed mind and the curious nature of memory itself.
The World of 1997: The Fading Sun
To understand my journey, you have to understand the world I departed from.
In the mid-90s, America was still in the grip of the “Japan Scare.”
The ink was barely dry on books like The Coming War with Japan, and movies like Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun painted a picture of an inscrutable, monolithic economic powerhouse that was about to own the world.
I was an exchange student, for a year, at a US high school. I already had some interest in other countries and cultures, so I found myself in the middle of that. I was in the USA, but the topic of Japan was still everywhere.
A few short years later, I started studying at university, and I got a chance to visit Japan.
I arrived in a country that was already entering its “Lost Decade.” The economic bubble had burst, but its mythos lingered.
My world as a traveler was analog. Japan already had mobile phones and personal digital assistants, the first inklings of our current, always-connected, smartphone world, perhaps.
If the trip had’t been a Japanese government-organized study tour, however, I felt like I would have been completely lost.
The World of 2018: The Capital of Cool
Fast forward to 2018. The world had tilted on its axis. The narrative of global economic ascendancy had shifted decisively towards China.
Japan, in the intervening two decades, had completed a remarkable transformation in the global imagination. It was no longer the feared competitor; it was an economic and social bad example, stagnant and not procreating… but also an undisputed global capital of cool.
People now flock to Japan not for its business secrets, but for its culture – the impossible perfection of its food, the quiet dignity of its crafts, the vibrant energy of its street fashion, and the deep, calming resonance of its ancient traditions.
My 2018 self navigated this world with a supercomputer in my pocket, my smartphone.
Kyoto’s public transport, which had stymied me just walking around Kyoto Station those decades before, was demystified by Google Maps.
The biggest problem I ever encountered on this later trip was when I got on a train back to my acommodation – or so I thought – a minute early, and it turned out to be the earlier commuter train going much farther outside town.
The friction was gone.
In its place was a seamless, flowing ease. But this raises a classic microexplorer’s question: when we smooth out all the edges, what do we lose? Does the ease of modern travel prevent us from engaging as deeply, from forging those memories of struggle, of being a foreigner in a foreign land, that lodge themselves so firmly in our minds?
The Value of a Fading Memory
And here’s the most interesting discovery. While I could recall the feeling of being a wide-eyed student in 1997, many of the specific details were gone, lost to the fog of time. Does this mean the trip was a failure?
I think not. It highlights a deeper truth.
Our experiences, especially those from our formative years, become part of our personal history. They are the sediment that settles and solidifies into the bedrock of who we are.
You may not remember the name of every temple or the taste of every meal, but the experience of navigating a foreign culture, of being an outsider, of seeing your own world from a distance – all that changes you in ways you can’t always articulate. You will not even be aware of most of it.
The forgotten details don’t represent a loss. They represent a successful integration. The journey has become so much a part of you that you no longer see it as a separate event.
It’s simply there, informing your perspective, shaping your curiosity, and reminding you – if you let it, if you look at it – that both the world and you are in a constant, beautiful state of flux.
You, however, have to integrate those experiences. The more you engage with them, the more you learn about the places you went, the sights you saw, the more it can inform your life and your knowledge.
If you just travel for the ‘gram, sleepwalk a guidebook’s routes, you may have “been there, done that” and be able to brag about it, but I have seen only too many people only get their preconceived notions reinforced by their own blinders on what they saw, their stereotypes supported by their experiences, and little real learning.
The real joy of returning wasn’t just seeing what had changed in Japan, but in discovering what had stayed the same, both on its streets and within myself, all while seeing many things with the experience and knowledge I had gained since then.
I’d love to hear from you: Have you ever returned to a place after a long absence? What did you discover about the place, and about the person you used to be? Let me know in the comments below.
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