Tonight, I had nothing short of a revelation—one that thankfully applies to other people.
I finally discovered a hint toward the inexplicable feeling I keep having here in Japan; a certain sense of significance that I hadn’t, until now, been able to pin down.
Regardless of Tokyo’s bold aesthetics, I understood that everything seems shiny and new and exciting to me because, the fact is, living abroad makes a child of us all.
Think of any time you’ve traveled to a foreign country and asked a local where you need to go: no matter what age, everyone feels like a lost child, searching for a sense of security without having the slightest idea of how to find it.
Furthermore, knowing that I’ll be living with the Suzuki family who already accept me as their own (both parents insist on my calling them “Mama and Papa”), I realized that I’m lucky enough to undergo a second childhood through their wisdom.
Due to their eagerness to both teach me and learn from me, the Suzukis seem happy to raise me, along with my surrogate brother and sister, Remon and Raimu (Japanese adaptations of the English words, “lemon” and “lime”), not only to help me understand Japan but to ultimately understand the world at large.
The sincerity through which they pursue this endeavor is constantly made clear to me through their affectionate use of “chan” in conjunction with my name and their friendly offers to go running, shopping and even drinking with me as their equal.
Somehow, in America, I doubt that we are usually so respectful to our foreign guests.
As I’ve said before, I feel tremendously lucky, especially as a Japanese major, to have this opportunity to spend so much bonding time with a people whom I have admired for so long.
At different moments in my life, people have told me that my enthusiasm for Japanese culture is almost childlike and I’m glad to say they’re right, considering my current silly, giddy state.
At least for me, childishness does not strike me as a necessarily bad trait.
Not to sound trite in borrowing the phrase, but “ignorance is,” indeed, “bliss.”
As time spent with my new little brother has taught me, there is a sort of purity in not knowing, a blank void to be filled in with colors of every kind.
Therefore, whether or not you’re reading this from home or abroad, consider ways to spontaneously tap into that “lost self,” or, in other words, your “child self.”
Cynics, skeptics, nihilists, all, heed this advice because it’s never too late to continue your childhood—there are simply different phases.