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Published: February 21st 2010
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I believe that the best experience of travel is getting to know the people who live in the places that the traveler visits. But experiencing people usually requires some effort and time investment because of cultural and language differences that can become a shield that keeps travelers as outsiders.
But even living among a foreign culture for a while is no guarantee that we can pierce this shield and obtain the ultimate reward from travel; fortunately, patience and persistence are usually the catalysts needed to force the outcome.
Japan has been such an experience for me, and during this particular visit, one that started like other recent ones, I got closer than ever to experiencing the human side of this amazing country and its culture.
Oddly enough, the people of Japan and I actually crossed paths for the first time in Lillehammer, Norway in 1993. At the time, I was working on the preparations for the Lillehammer Winter Olympic Games when my team was joined by two Japanese members who had been selected to work for the next winter Olympic Games in Nagano. They came to Lillehammer to “learn the ropes” of the project.
Some culture shock
took place just a few days of working with my new colleagues... Unlike the rest of the team, they seemed more interested in asking a million questions and filling their notebooks with innumerable drawings, diagrams, and photos related to every aspect of the project.
A month or two went by and Nagasawa-san and Yamamoto-san continued filling their notebooks with what seemed to be a never-ending work of technical literature. In the meanwhile the rest of the team members were making considerable progress with their assigned work.
We were about to give up on them when suddenly, something extraordinary took place: a little machine made up of my two Japanese colleagues jump-started its engine and kicked off an amazing blitz of activity. Before too long, our friends quickly caught up with the rest of the team and even completed work that was not supposed to be completed until much later in the project. It was a true miracle!
All those notes, drawings, and diagrams were intended to provide a complete vision of the project to my Japanese colleagues. Once they understood the big picture and every aspect of it, they attacked the problem in a very disciplined and
thorough manner.
I learned a lot about Japan during the Lillehammer project and that experience became very useful when I moved to Japan with my family to start working for the Nagano Olympic Games.
I found Nagano to be a very “Japanese” city. Though much larger than Lillehammer, it was off-the-beaten-path and very few people there were used to “gaijins” (外人 or foreigners) or spoke anything other than Japanese. This was a perfect situation for my getting to know the real Japan and I had the opportunity to enjoy it through the end of the Nagano project.
Over the years, my many Japanese friends have enlightened me on many aspects of life in their country, but I am still impressed about the amazing combination of dichotomies that Japan is, the place where an ancient culture lives alongside with an ultra-modern civilization of the future.
In Japan, social life is intense and usually outside of the home. Perhaps an adaptation to the small living spaces in the typical Japanese home, people tend to meet in public places and unlike most Western people, Japanese prefer those places that are very crowded. So a busy restaurant with a long
queue is much preferable to another where you can be seated immediately, even if the two restaurants happen to be next to each other. The logic here is that the not-crowded one must not be very good.
On this visit to Japan, I was hosted at the home of a dear friend in Kamakura; I must mention that being invited to spend the night at someone’s home is very unusual and very special. The opportunity to visit one of my favorite towns in Japan and now see it from the perspective of a local resident, added yet another dimension to my appreciation of Japan and its people.
My friend Iwasaki-san is perhaps not a typical Kamakura resident since he spends a lot of time in Tokyo, but being an avid runner and bicyclist has given him a deep familiarity with all the hidden corners of this town.
After we met at the train station on my way in from Tokyo on Saturday morning, we spent some time visiting an area of town that I had never visited before; proof that in spite of many visits, there can still be magical places left to discover in town. Later,
we were joined by our mutual friend Janet and two of her friends. Iwasaki-san took all of us to visit several of the sites in the area, explaining details that would have remained unnoticed to any casual visitor.
Janet and her friends then proceeded to follow a trail that would take them on a hike through several of Kamakura’s historical temples. Iwasaki-san and I headed for his home to meet his family.
My day among the Iwasaki’s and my long conversations with them were certainly the highlights of my trip; an opportunity to get to know them and understand their perspectives on life and the World. As a two-career family, they are certainly members of a new generation of Japanese with great awareness of the World outside Japan. But what I enjoyed the most, was their strong appreciation of their traditions and culture.
Later that evening, we would meet again with Janet and her friends and enjoy a nice home-cooked dinner and wine over great conversation at Iwasaki-san’s place, with amazing views of Kamakura beach as the backdrop.
There would also be another great photographic opportunity during this visit in the early morning of the following
day. Iwasaki-san knocked at the door of my guest tatami room and reminded me that as a conscientious photographer, I needed to be out on the beach capturing images in the best light of the day.
This was a great initiative and one that I perhaps would not have had on my own after so many great experiences the day before. When I went out, I was rewarded by the sight of a swarm of surfers who were catching the waves in the early morning sunlight. I was surprised by the density of surfers in the water and the fact that they did not appear to be beheading each other with their surfboards as some of them glided the waves very close to others who remained half-submerged within their apparent path.
After breakfast with Iwasaki-san’s family, we parted ways and I returned to the train station to catch my train back to Tokyo. Having extra time before the next outbound train was to depart, I decided to visit one last temple near the station. After my visit and upon exiting the temple’s gate, I heard a familiar voice behind me. When I turned around, I saw a smiling
Iwasaki-san donning his runner’s outfit and in the process of making a run around Kamakura...
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