reading maps & falling in love with rural japan

I pulled over to the side of narrow, two-lane road and turned on my flashers. I grabbed the ever-present notebook in my purse and a pen from my glove compartment and copied down the street sign in front of me. It was a mix of kanji - Chinese characters - and Hiragana - the Japanese alphabet. I didn't need to know when it meant - though I did feel proud when I picked out the symbol for "mountain;" I just needed to match it to the same characters on my map. I opened my atlas and flipped to the right page - I had memorized it by now. Like a children's game in a Scholastic magazine, I ran my pointer finger over the area I thought I was, looking back and forth between the map and my notebook, the map and my notebook. I circled over the small side streets and connecting roads until I found a match. A match! A huge grin spread across my face, and just as quickly I tensed up again. I found myself on a map of rural Japan, but I still had no clue where I was or how to get where I was going. I can't read maps.

When I moved to Japan, I leased a car. I lived in rural Yamaguchi prefecture, and I taught English at four schools. One of my schools was in the mountains, the other in a rice field, and the other down the mountain by a beach. I needed a car to get around. My first week, officials from my Board of Education kindly drove to each of my schools, teaching me the routes. I memorized them, instead of turning to a map.

My closest friends in Japan lived hours away from me, including Jamie - my favorite Brit. He lived in an area even more rural than me - Nagato. Without a major train line, by far the easiest way to reach him was to drive. Some of my favorite weekends in Japan were spent leaving my last class on Friday, car already packed, and jamming out to music on the three hour drive to Jamie's place. It took me over mountains, and by shimmering rivers, through cities and by farmers harvesting rice. And finally to Jamie's - whose house always smelled like a Thai palace and English black tea. But to see him, I had to figure out how to get there.

My predecessor (the woman who taught at the same schools before me) left all sorts of goodies in our apartment, including a trusty southern Japan atlas. I pulled it out before my first trip to Nagato, confidently thinking, I can do this - I'll just write out the directions, just like it's google maps. Easy peasy. I wrote down what I thought I needed to do to get there... guessing the whole time - is that a right or a left? Which direction is north and south? East and west?

On that first trip, trepidation filled me every time I felt lost. I didn't know the language so I couldn't easily ask for directions, I didn't have GPS to guide me, and I am so spatially unaware that I'd get more lost trying to retrace my steps. The truth is that I could have called any number of friends who would come to the nearest train station to me and helped me find my way. But in the moment, feeling lost with nothing but a map - it was scary. It was also wildly liberating.

 

Being on the road with nothing but a map and my own brain challenged me. I worked out which way to turn, talking to myself out loud the entire time. I learned to trust myself - to use my gut (sometimes because sometimes my gut when it comes to directions is better served digesting snack foods). When I pulled up to Jamie's house that first trip out there, I felt superhuman. I read a map. I did the impossible. That's the best part of travel to me - finding that I am capable of so much more than I think I am.