New Eyes

Several months ago when I first arrived in Japan I was aware, even through my jet-lagged eyes, of seeing things in a new way.  Being unable to read the signs, not knowing what side of the sidewalk on which I should walk, why all the cashiers kept yelling and what they were saying, how to properly decline a plastic bag at the grocery store.  And even then I was aware that this would slowly, perhaps imperceptibly change.  Slowly I would become accustomed to this new place.  Things would start to make more sense as the language and customs slowly emerged like a statue taking form from a rough piece of marble.  The people around me see something, hear something, taste something and feel something that I cannot yet sense.  Perhaps over time I'll see some part of it too and set it free.

Today a very good friend of mine arrived and will be staying for three weeks.  It is his first time in Japan and it is a chance for me to measure the experience of my senses through his untouched, travel-worn eyes.  How does one properly eat onigiri?  Do you hand the cashier your money or put it in the basket?  And how do you receive it?  My answers to these things are far less concrete than I might have expected them to become by this point, mostly responding with the truth that things vary from experience to experience, person to person.  Something about Japan seems to suggest that there is a way to do everything.  There seem to be rules and expectations from the way that bags are taped close at shopping stores to the manner in which the cashier flips the bills to count them.  And yet people are people.  We are all people just living, experiencing and acting as we see fit in the set of variables of any given moment.

There are still so many questions left open-ended to me.  As I look out the bus window, the world still amazes me.  Why is a person acting in such a way, why does a sign say such a thing, why a certain custom, why a certain rule?  My curiosity seems something much larger than Japan.  Perhaps there is no person, no place, no thing, no ritual sacred or profane that makes complete sense to me.  There is nothing that I know fully and it is just the shroud of a new set of words, gestures, and formalities that inspires the reminder to remain curious.