Tokyo + Kyoto. | September 2018

I sat on the train, a new and foreign world speeding past me through the crystal-clear glass. I hadn't slept. My mind was foggy and my head felt heavy and clouded - as if I needed just a second more to understand where I was, what was going on, or who I even was. Thousands of miles traveled. Countless sleepless nights and mornings and afternoons spent in semi-upright positions not sleeping on airplanes. Time changes, power adapters, layovers, delays, carry-on luggage, early arrivals. This was home. In all its discomfort and confusion and not knowing where to go, this is where I can finally close my eyes and breathe. So I did. And when I opened my eyelids, the air fully expunged from my lungs, I relaxed into my own existence in this new, unfamiliar world.

Everything spun past me faster than my pupils could register. They strained for a word - a letter, even - that I could understand. But the alphabet was foreign, and all my searching produced nothing more than characters and pictures and advertisements for products I wasn't familiar with. Suddenly we were speeding through skyscrapers and underneath other rail lines. Silver and gray bullet-like buildings towered towards the sky and enveloped us from every direction. We passed ramen shops and sushi restaurants and pharmacies and 7-Elevens. What felt like hundreds of people got on and off at each stop, the crowds busy and dizzying in my addled state. And as we neared my stop I gathered my things, triple checking to ensure everything was accounted for, and disembarked into a sea of hurried Saturday travelers into my home for the next few days: Shinjuku, Tokyo.

My first stop was a hole-in-the-wall ramen restaurant outside of Shinjuku Station. I sat at the counter, protectively slid my suitcase between my legs, and pointed to a photo on the laminated menu. Within a few minutes the waitress was eagerly serving me water and a steaming bowl of shio ramen. The smell and the heat were overwhelming, the vaporization adding to the soft sweat that had already begun to form on my brow from the summer heat. I took the hard plastic spoon in my left hand and dipped it into the simple broth before bringing it to my lips. The liquid filled my mouth and lazily slid down my throat. I closed my eyes in utter ecstasy. I followed with long, dangling, heaping strings of noodles that filled my belly too quickly, but I didn't stop. Slices of pork, onions, dried garlic, and a perfect soft-cooked egg followed - spoonful after spoonful - until my bowl was empty of every single drop. I put down my spoon and settled into a satisfaction I hadn't felt since I can't remember when, gathered my bags and braved the endless sea of people on the Shinjuku streets.

I spent my first night in Tokyo crossing busy streets and exploring narrow alleys lit with street lights and paper lanterns. I followed Anthony Bourdain to the Robot Restaurant and watched robots on wheels spin and dance around electronic drummers while dodging neon lasers. It was the most chaotic, intense, stimulating show I'd ever seen. I found my way to Golden Gai where tiny bars - some only seating 3-4 people - peppered the narrow streets and dark alleys. I drank shoju mixed with green tea. I drank cold sake from small porcelain cups. I ventured even further and stumbled into a yakitori restaurant where the only foreign face was mine. I sipped a cold beer and pointed to skewered cuts of meat cooking on an open grill. The bartender handed me a paper plate filled to the brim, and when I took a bite, my mouth exploded with flavors and textures like I'd never experienced before. I sipped my beer in between each bite of pig intestine dressed in green onion and soy, and nothing in that moment could have made it more perfect. There was no where I would rather have been; with no one but myself over this plate of food at that tiny, smokey bar in Tokyo.

The next few days were spent exploring Tokyo and Kyoto. I toured Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines that were thousands of years old. I walked with geisha in the Gion district and contemplated the meaning of life at the first zen garden ever built. I crossed sidewalks with hundreds of people at a time and ate green tea ice cream by the spoonful. The streets were bewildering. So many lights. So many sounds. Each of my senses were assaulted from every direction, all at the same time. An energy, a pace, a current infected my body. The trains and my legs carried me from neighborhood to neighborhood. Shinjuku. Asakusa. Yoyogi. Akihabara. Shibuya. Ginza. It was never ending.

There was a moment during my last night in Tokyo that I realized something had changed. I was different. I had grown up somehow. Tipsy on sake. My belly full with ramen. I walked the streets of Ginza as the sun set and the pink and blue clouds reflected off the skyscrapers. I was surrounded by people but utterly alone - hundreds, thousands, millions of miles away from anyone I knew, away from my life yet also so profoundly in it. It was as if in that very moment I had crossed some sort of hidden, unspoken, internal threshold. Maybe it was hours spent traveling this world alone, or the miles walked in my travel shoes, or adding another country into the world of international experiences that make up the more beautiful pieces of my heart. I'm not sure. But in that moment I finally found peace in a new identity. I'd finally earned my title. I am a traveler.