The Lobster Dance

In which our heroine returns to Kyoto.

I’m sure that those of you out there who have moved between regions or states (or what have you) of your home country have experienced in-country culture shock. Moving from a Midwestern suburb to a private school out west was a huge culture shock for me, and, yes, I CAN hear you humming “Don’t Stop Believing.”

Four years ago, I lived as a student in Osaka, and I knew that when I got my placement all the way out in the country that it would be very different. I’d be driving a car; there wouldn’t be a nice train line that ran nearly all night; and good luck finding Western food at the grocery.

And yet, I love it here. I love the scenery, the people, and even my creaky old apartment. I want to thrive here. By when the opportunity presented itself in the form of a five-day-weekend, a trip to Kyoto to stay with a grad school friend was too glorious to refuse. Kyoto, where the trains go everywhere! Kyoto, where the dialect is mostly comprehensible!

Kyoto, where I have hardcore culture shock!

I had a lovely time sightseeing, shopping, hanging out, and adding to my suteki lifestyle, but in some ways it was a little terrifying. Kyoto Station felt like an international airport after my two months’ worth of trips of the tiny rail-bus that services my town. The fact that I own and drive a car shocked a few people. The herds of other gaijin–mostly tourists, because of the holiday, but also exchange students and workers–stunned me, as I am used to being one of the only gaijin in the area and being fawned over by the locals as a result. And there was the fashion gap. Running around downtown Kyoto in a cotton dress and flats that would have been considered very fashionable in my town made me feel like a drab little country mouse next to the women my age wearing full silk kimono or outfits that seemed to be from the pages of high-end fashion magazines.

The whole time, I couldn’t stop thinking, “I used to go here every other weekend; why do I feel like this?” I walked past a tiny Douter Coffee where my friends and I had wedged ourselves into one evening. I returned to a temple I had bought charms at one night when I was tipsy from a winter festival. I rode my old train line with its familiar stops. It was overwhelmingly nostalgic, but I was no longer part of the landscape. I was a tourist myself, and a stranger in a once familiar land.