Traveling alone can be lonely when you don’t speak the language. But nothing is lonelier than trying to replace that lost human connection by cramming earbuds between yourself and the world, and tricking your brain into thinking you’re laughing and chatting with friends as you determinedly try to shut out real laughter and conversations like an ugly intrusion.
It was December, and I was leaving my home in subtropical Taiwan to face 5 days of a real winter in a quiet little Japanese city in the mountains of Shikoku (the island of “the four kingdoms”), called Kochi.
The airport was smaller than the Taipei train station, and in place of a gliding subway, the city had a streetcar that rattled and shook.
I had decided to stay off digital media throughout the trip. My plan, instead, was to wander the city, undistracted, connecting with the locals by being present and speaking Japanese whenever I could.
By this point, I wasn’t new to digital detoxing, or speaking a foreign language abroad. I’d been abstaining from digital media for 9 months prior, and I’d lived in Taiwan as an American expat – now in my thirties – exclusively speaking Chinese for over 9 years.
Unfortunately, I’d decided early on that I didn’t want to face the embarrassment of learning a foreign language from scratch all over again. And so despite having made over a dozen visa runs to various cities across the archipelago, I’d never actually spoken Japanese in Japan.
I took my fresh start seriously. Every morning before I left the hotel Wi-Fi, I looked up everything I thought I might need to say and screenshotted it.
Fortune seemed to smile on me on day one, as I took the streetcar. One of the few devices I’d brought was a decade-old Sony a5000 digital camera, and as I boarded, an old man smiled and pointed at it, repeating the phrase “ichi-ban,” which I knew to mean “number one,” or “fantastic.”
I stood next to him – fumbling with the camera and returning his smile – but struggled to produce any meaningful response. It was both exciting and embarrassing. But I certainly felt warmer than when I’d gotten off the plane.
Over the next few days, I got bolder, asking every bus driver and street car operator I met if they were going where I was headed, and requesting timetables at the stations.
By day two, I’d noticed a trend of nonconformists sporting wildly different clothing, and was considering complimenting them with a new phrase I’d looked up about “liking their fashion” and asking for a picture. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch anyone – though I did snag a photo of one rebel on a jumbo-tired bike with a loud stereo and monkey plushie.
On day three at Kochi Castle, I came across an old woman just as she’d fallen down a ridiculously-steep ancient step. I stammered, asking if she was okay, and she laughingly launched into a yarn – wholly undiscouraged by my repeated apologies that I didn’t understand.
Soon the trip was over, and I was back at the drafty Kochi airport.
A security worker complimented my bag in English, and I instinctively answered in Chinese. Apparently my instincts were on to something, as she answered in kind. We chatted for several minutes about her own travels in Kochi, where she’d been making a life for the past 30 years after moving there from Taiwan.
I wondered how I’d responded if she’d interrupted a podcast in my ear. The boarding gate slowly filled up with Taiwanese passengers. Already, I felt at home.
