Sarah Snowden: Unpredictable Predicaments

It was 9am on Wednesday, December 23^rd. I was less than one week away from heading back to the United States after my semester abroad in Nagasaki, Japan. I had scheduled one last adventure for myself and was currently being driven to the train station by my host mother. The car ride, which should have lasted half an hour, flew by before I had a chance to fully process that this was the end. Upon arriving at Nagasaki Station, at my host mother’s request, I climbed numbly from the car to get my train tickets.

My last view of Nagasaki station before leaving for Kyoto.

Once the tickets were safely in my wallet, I approached my host mother who stood by my luggage. The final farewells were over far too quickly. With a hug and a “Gambatte!” (“Good Luck!”), I faced my biggest challenge thus far: travel to Kyoto using the trains, which I had never ridden before, and survive in an unfamiliar city for three days. Afterward, return to Fukuoka, find the airport and get on the right plane. This would all be accomplished on three-month’s worth of Japanese language classes. My vocabulary and grammar had improved drastically, but I was still on a very basic level. This challenge, however daunting, was one that I wanted to face, and face alone. It was my final test.

 

Taking a deep breath, I moved through the ticket barrier. There was no turning back now. I plowed on ahead and tried to shake off the feeling of sadness and anxiety that came with leaving Nagasaki, and instead, focused my energy toward finding the right train and the correct car number. In the end, I found my seat on the train with only a couple of minutes to spare. I slumped down in my seat as the initial adrenaline that came along with facing a new challenge seeped out of my body. Step one, making it onto the train: accomplished.

I was enjoying the mountainous, countryside scenery when my next great challenge hit me unexpectedly. A man was coming around verifying the tickets, and as he arrived at my seat, I hastily scrambled to find the tickets I had already put away. I tossed them at the man, and he scanned over them. He said something that I couldn’t distinguish, and I nodded in response, hoping that it wasn’t direly important, but I realized a short while later that I was wrong. The next time he passed around the car, he once again stopped at my seat. “Kippu,” he prompted, and once again I relinquished my tickets to him. “Mou ichido kippu ga arimasu.” One more ticket? Had I lost one somewhere? Frantically, I began ripping apart my wallet and small backpack trying to find it. A minute passed, then two. I didn’t see it anywhere, and he loomed over me with growing impatience. At last he said, “Sagashite. (Find it.)” I gave a shaky nod and returned to tearing open the pockets of everything I owned, but still the missing ticket did not appear.

I was one hundred percent certain it had come onto the train with me because all four of the tickets had been in my hands when I went through the ticket barrier. I grew increasingly anxious as time passed and even rummaged through my suitcase knowing full well that there was no chance it would be there. I hadn’t opened my suitcase since I had left my host mother’s house. What would happen to me if I couldn’t find it? Would they toss me off at the next lonely countryside station? If they did, what would I do then? How would I ever get to where I needed to be? What if they put me in jail??

The what-ifs engulfed my brain in a storm, and panic clawed its way from my stomach into my throat. I was now only fifty percent sure that my ticket had made it onto the train. In one last desperate attempt, I stood up, intending to crawl around looking for it on the floor… And there it was, laying perfectly in the middle of my seat. I stared dumbfounded at it for a moment before snatching it up and clutching it like a lifeline.

The next time the ticket man passed around the car, I handed over the ticket with a shy and embarrassed smile tugging at the corners of my lips. He smiled as well, stamped the ticket and returned it to me. With a calming breath, I returned to watching the scenery flash by.

This was an experience filled with the unknown; I could not even begin to guess what would have happened to me if I had not found the missing ticket. This was not the first time I had faced a situation in which I could not predict the outcome nor would it be my last, but every time, without exception, I found myself filled with anxiety, and so shaky that it became a challenge to hold my hand still or to speak without my voice quivering. Nothing gave me greater fear than having to face the shapeless, black monster that represented the unknown. In the train, I was glued to my seat and forced to fight it head-on with a sliver of luck on my side, but I couldn’t count on a stroke of fortune for the entirety of the trip. I needed to know for certain that I could rely on my wit and knowledge. That was the main purpose of this trip after all.

The view of Kyoto from a mountain hiking path on the outskirts of the city.

Once in Kyoto, I was pleased to find that I did indeed have more knowledge of the Japanese language than I initially gave myself credit for. I navigated though the infinitely larger Osaka-Shin station, made it onto the correct car of the right train with a few minutes to spare, and once at Kyoto, located and registered at the hotel. During the next two days, I encountered no bumps or set-backs in my path. However, there was one final challenge I needed to contend with before leaving Japan, and it was one that I had procrastinated on for the full three months of my abroad study. I had to order food at a restaurant. It seemed a trivial task, but I had not yet done this without the assistance of others who were able to answer questions that the waiters asked about the order.

Kyoto station on Christmas Eve.

Walking down the streets of Kyoto on my last evening there, I contemplated my choices. There was an Italian restaurant, but I didn’t want my last meals in Japan to be Japanese-styled spaghetti. A block down was a sukiyaki restaurant, and I loved sukiyaki, but it was not a meal I would be able to eat on my own, and it seemed awkward going into a fancier restaurant without a companion to eat with. With a sigh, I realized I was making excuses for myself. Alright, I’ll go to the Kyoto station then, I thought. They would be used to foreigners eating a meal alone, and would have Japanese dishes.

I trekked onward for another thirty minutes until I was in front of the station I had come out of just a couple of days previously. With my heart hammering, I headed inside and dove into the first Japanese restaurant I saw. It was a quiet and small place with just one other party of four in the back. I was led to my seat, sat down, and opened the menu. As usual, the dishes were difficult to read because of the kanji characters, but the pictures gave me a rough idea of what I could order. A few minutes later, I hit the bell that summoned the waiter back to my table.

When he arrived, I pointed at a picture of shrimp tempura on rice, and underlined the “set” option with my finger. He nodded and said something that I couldn’t quite understand. I froze as I mentally saw that familiar black monster rise out of the unknown. Giving myself a quick mental shake, I asked him to repeat the sentence once more. This time, I caught the words “soba” and “udon” and was immediately able to string together a meaning. The tempura set came with an option of either soba or udon, and I had to choose which I wanted.

“Udon.” I answered firmly.

“Atatakai? Tsumetai?” he prompted, and I knew that he was asking if I wanted my noodles hot or cold.

“Atatakai onegaishimasu.” I always preferred my noodles hot.

Then the moment was over. The moment I had built myself up for, for three months, was over in just a minute. Surely, the elation was evident on my face as I dug my chopsticks into the food a short while later. I went to Japan without knowing what to expect, and I conquered numerous challenges while there. In the process, I beat down the monster created from my overactive imagination, and although I never quite overcame the initial anxiety of facing the unexpected, I learned that I could deal with it. My “test” of surviving Kyoto was successful, and now that I’ve proved to myself I can survive in Japan on my own, I have nothing to fear from going back at a later point in my life. 








Sarah Snowden studied the Japanese culture and language in Nagasaki during fall 2015. She is an Honors Biology major and Chemistry minor who graduates from Lander University in spring 2017. After graduation she plans to take a gap year to gain experience in the Biology field before deciding whether to attend a graduate school or to find a more permanent job.