travel tuesday | a scene at a train station in japan

As a travel blogger it gets easy to rely on posts that provide itineraries, guides, tips, and "5 things..." about such and such. I like that format. I find it useful when I read blogs, and I aim to use my own blog to help others travel smartly, on a budget, and see and do the things that match their unique interests and talents. But from time to time, I try to remind myself that the reason I started this blog, have written a journal or even jotted words down on a napkin to capture a moment, and sought to publish occasional works, is because I love to write. Words on paper is the lens through which I see the world. So from time to time I want to get back to my roots and share some more journal-style entries, creative nonfiction, and even bits of pieces that never quite got there and found their way into a full essay.

Today's post is a slightly edited journal entry description of my experience waiting for a train on a rainy afternoon in a small southern town in Japan. Train stations became characters in my story and life in Japan. I do hope you enjoy it.  

March 2010, Tabuse Town, Japan 

 

It's raining on the train tracks. It's raining elsewhere - like on the stocky, gray-haired man who stepped out from under the awning to stomp out his cigarette butt. It's raining elsewhere, but in my line of sight - it's mostly just raining on the train tracks.

Five or six school boys sit on the weathered wooden seats to my right. Each holds a Nintendo DS and skillfully mashes every key at once. The boys rib one another all the while without looking up from their games - laughing at one comment and making a quick retort at the next. Maybe media doesn’t diminish human interactions; it just makes us all better multitaskers.

The contrast between the modernity of the technology and age of the tracks and the scene catches my attention, and holds my stereotypes of a sleepy, ancient Japanese town hostage. There’s room enough at this train station and in the mountains, rice fields, temples, and shrines around it to hold the old and new, to tell the stories of the past and create ones in the present.

The boys sport navy blue school uniforms. The tracks are dull brown, the pavement gray and the sound of the rain decidedly ash, if I had to say. It feels like it should be a lonely scene - a depressing day in a run-down, rural town - but it's not. It's simple. Sometimes it's not even simple really - in 20 minutes you can wait for a train for days.

Three high school girls walk into my line of sights on the platform, also to my right but not close enough to the boys or me to hear them speak. This is intentional, I gather, as they steal glances at the boys and giggle and animatedly lean in, whispering. Their umbrellas are pink, blue and orange. Combined with their yellow, blue, and red cell phones, they make up a complete rainbow.

Everyone's waiting, and we're all waiting in our own way. Some, like the girls and boys, with their phones and games to distract the time away, while the stocky man loses himself in his own thoughts or maybe the tranquil sound of the raindrops on the iron rails.

I'm waiting, too, with my pen and my journal, and my eyes alert. I shiver from the cold.

This is Tabuse Town, shadowed by the mountains in southern Japan - where today, it's raining on the train tracks.

writing beyond the blog | the equals record

In late August of last year, I covered the Republican National Convention as a journalist. It was my last hurrah as a TV news producer, and I spent a solid 60% of it serving as chauffeur to my correspondent and camera person. One afternoon they wanted to film a taped report near a run-down area of town, and they needed extensive B-roll, or stock footage of the area. I dropped them off on one street, with instructions to "park and wait" for their call. I smiled a smile so fake and somehow natural from my year and a half of perfecting it, and said, "Sure thing!"

I parked at a meter. It was something like 150 degrees outside, so I left the air conditioner on. I turned on music. I reclined. I lifted the seat up. I reclined again. I turned to a different radio station. I turned the music off. I turned the music on. I dug through my purse. I had finished my book. I went through my briefcase for the trip. I zipped it back up. I opened it again. I pulled out a 4-5 pages of google maps. I turned them over, grabbed the pen sticking out the top of my purse, balanced the paper on the steering wheel, and started to write.

I wrote for two hours, until my correspondent called and asked me to pick them up. I'd filled the backs of the sheets of paper with maps on the front, found more scrap paper in my notebook, and continued on, until I had no white space left.

That evening, after the convention's conclusion, I typed everything I'd written into a word document, emailed it to myself, and forgot about it for the next six months.

About a month ago, Melanie linked me to a post on the Equals Record, a quarterly print publication with a website dedicated to creative nonfiction written by women, that she thought I'd enjoy. I loved it, and I kept reading. Some of the pieces resonated with me, while others I skimmed.

I noticed a tab for submission information at the top of the website and read through it. I remembered the essay I had written that hot day in Florida back in August waiting for my crew, and without thinking or heavily editing it, I uploaded it, put in my personal information, and hit submit.

I feel like I've been lost lately, vacillating between whether to apply to grad school, how to pursue a career in travel writing that also pays my student loan debt, what I ultimately want, and so on. Since hitting "submit" to the Equals Record and hearing back from them that they'd like to publish my essay, and asking if I had a second part to it, I haven't felt as lost. I've been driven, inspired, and curious about what's next. Writing opportunities have opened up in other areas, as well.

All of these words and this very long post is to say that yesterday the Equals Record published my first essay, entitled, "A Fatherless Girl." The second part, "An Adopted Dad," is live today. It's wildly different from any writing I've ever published - it's not a blog, a byline, or a ghostwritten op-ed. I wrote yesterday on instagram that seeing it published made me nervous and "fulfilled." I felt awkward after saying that - "fulfilled." But it's true - writing for myself, about myself is scary, and it is fulfilling. Creative nonfiction has always been my favorite writing - it's downright awe-inspiring to see the various ways we all tell our stories, and I feel a little more centered having gone back to it.

I need to make more time to be alone with a pen and a few scratch sheets of paper.

"It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction." - Jonathan Franzen, The Guardian