Kyoto Travels: Awkward In-betweeners.

It was a sleepless night of traveling, but satisfying. Paul and I staggered away from Kyoto station and up Shijo-dori. On our walk northward I saw more foreigners than I ever previously had in Japan. But not a single person stared.

We rested at the Buddhist temple, Higashi Honganji. It was early morning and a coincidence. The sun had just risen and the sky had a seamless-gray overcast. There was a man with a leaf-blower polishing the grounds, and sleepy visitors were groggily bobbing about. We sat on the tatami-floor of the main building as the echo-singing of a ceremony started. Various young monks were tidying up and lighting candles. We sat unmoving; with more of a thirst for sleep than any religious enlightenment.

After our rest we continued north to the hostel. What I felt when we arrived is a difficult sensation to explain, but both Paul and I had it. For all the time we had spent in Kyushu we had never seen so many non-native people, and especially not congregated in one place. Its not as if we were shocked; we expected Kyoto to be a tourist center. Its more like we were unsettled.

And the sensation lingered.

I contribute that feeling to the slow cultural acclimation we experienced by going to school in Japan. Other foreigners seemed awestruck and slightly scared. Its not like we were unsociable with tourists, it just felt like we didn't belong. At the same time we aren't Japanese nor fluent, or even from Kyoto. We were in between everyone.

I thought it would be easy to slip into a crowd of people who look and talk like me; I thought it would be like putting on an old comfortable pair of shoes, but it wasn't. It was awkward.

It makes me wonder how I will react when I return to America. Have I had a sort of internal alteration; the quite kind, that doesn't show its face until its unavoidable? I know my perspective on the condition of our humanity as a whole has been altered by my time here, but I didn't know it would effect my individual behavior with people. If it even has at all.

I guess this proves I can never understand the resounding effects my experiences have on me. Even if I try.