There’s a moment at the beginning of this episode where a staff member steps outside a coffee shop in Shirahama and says something to me in Japanese, and my instinct is exactly what it usually is: smile, keep walking, don’t make it awkward. But this time I stopped. I asked what she said. Just to see what would happen.
She spoke English. We stood outside on the street and had a proper conversation. She asked where was I from, how long was I staying, and shared details about herself. I found out she’d had an English teacher from the Czech Republic. What are the odds? When I walked away, I had this feeling that in another life we would have been friends. And I keep thinking about what I would have missed if I’d just smiled and kept moving. It was a brief chat on a street so I wasn’t thinking of the conversation itself but about what I would have missed. I would have missed the confirmation of something I’m still learning about myself, which is that I want to be someone who notices opportunity. Who stops. Who gets curious rather than escaping.
This was a return trip to Japan twelve years after I lived there. And what I noticed most wasn’t the places. It was who I was inside the moments.
These decisions made over and over, they leave something behind, a kind of residue that changes you, that shapes you.
Damianne
This episode is about how travel changes you and why it’s almost never the big things.
In this episode:
- Crossing water to Naganoshima
- The yukata that finally fit
- When the chef paid attention
- Sakura, rain, and the highlight reel
- The coffee shop pause
An invitation before you go
Think about the last time you were somewhere unfamiliar and had that split second where you could engage or exit. What did you do, and how did you feel afterward?
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