DO NOT CROSS

I’m shaking. You will never find a more chill airport in all of Christendom than Asheville Regional, and there are three connections between me and the big transpacific flight, but my pulse is like a dubstep crescendo as my mom pulls the minivan into the little departures drop-off deck.

The door pops, letting in humid summer and the internal countdown. It’s a lot of adrenaline for the middle of the afternoon. My mom and sister are saints; they couldn’t be happier to be an hour and half from home, helping their freshly-minted 20-year-old unload the single, bulging fuchsia roll-aboard from Walmart, pretending they can’t tell my cucumber-cool conversation and overly energetic giggling is a mask for a pulse that’s gone underaged EDM clubbing.

They both hug me. Mum asks Neechan to get a picture of me with my new suitcase.

This is it.

I’m walking into the airport alone, searching for where I belong. What do they do with passengers here? How do you get on a plane?

It’s not that I’ve never flown alone. I did that one time. Last year, I flew one-way from Asheville to DC to visit my sister, Cleo, and I thought I was hot stuff coz I had a connection at ATL and I didn’t die. I have one today, too, and I’m so ready. I have an airport map I printed off ATL’s website in my suitcase (not pictured).

The truth is, I’ve never been away from home for more than a week, and the closest I’ve come to leaving the country on my own is the park twenty minutes’ walk down the road from my house. I don’t drive yet. Too scared.

But I’m going to Japan for a month. This is fine.

It’s 2013; two years since the earthquake in Sendai that broke my heart and got my feet on this path for good. In that time, I’ve dug up everything my Western NC town of 1,424 people has on Japan. I found 2 reference books at the library. They were both written in the 50s and mostly talk about Toyota and World War II, and show blurry noir photos of salarymen playing sardines on the Tokyo commuter trains. But I did just learn the term “salaryman”!

I’m a child of the 2000s, born in that confusing section of the 90s where no one can decide if you’re a Millennial, a GenZer, or an alien. But the point is, I do know how to use the internet.

The internet has given me great, profound insight:

“Japan is super weird.”

– The Internet

It further explained that Japan is a fantasyland of robots, maid cafes, cosplayers, pretty temples, romantic traditions, and sushi. Did you know they have heated toilet seats vending machines that sell bugs there? Did you know there’s no crime and everyone’s always happy? Did you know you can hire someone to be your fake best friend for a day? Did you know they’re all overworked and everyone’s depressed?

The Japanese are funny, fascinating, unknowable.

They’re just wiser and better than everyone else, but also creepy, enigmatic whackos — kind of like an retro indie movie or a bawdy inside joke. The internet accuses me of only caring about them because I’m an anime otaku, a foodie, and fetishizer. The internet assures me I’m entirely too loud, rude, and white to go to Japan, but if I do, I’d better not talk on trains or wear shoes inside, and I’m not cool just coz I can use chopsticks, and by the way, Japan hates me.

Noted.

I’ve made it to ATL. Next stop: Seattle.

I don’t buy it. No one is a joke and no one is unknowable.

Over the last several years, Neechan and I have watched so many anime shows and listened to so much Japanese music. The entertainment of a people carries their unfiltered voices, displays their values and desires, weaves characters they admire or fear, puts words to music that pulls at their hearts and confesses their secrets.

You can tell a lot about someone by what they want to see and hear.

But it’s not enough; you always have to meet someone first, get to know them in person. Thanks to Neechan’s tenacious hunting, I’m confident I’ve seen every good anime show and memorized all the best songs. The internet has yielded its offerings (not much, tbh), I’ve done all 3 levels of Rosetta Stone (more like 2.8, I got so bored), and done an entire teenaged phase of Japanese girl-next-door fashion before discovering I am and will always be 5’10”.

I’ve been loving them from a distance for so long, wishing I could reach them, know them, tell them about the One they really need to see and hear.

It’s time to go see Japan for myself.

I made it Seattle. Hot dang, I’m terrified — stuff’s gett’n real up in here. I’m pretty sure the exchange kiosk ripped me off, but I don’t care, I’m holding real Japanese currency in my hands! I take a photo of it. The line to board is forming and I’m right at the front of it with my fuchsia suitcase (carry-on only, I heard that when you have a checked bag, the airline will absolutely lose it every time).

I look behind me. There are real Japanese people standing in this queue. I take a photo. Their passports are red instead of blue — that’s so cool! (Relax, I don’t take pictures of people’s passports, what do you take me for, an overzealous 20-year-old who’s never been out of the country and can’t drive?)

I step on board the biggest jet I’ve ever seen; three rows across and forty miles deep. I didn’t even know that was a thing. There’s a blanket wrapped in plastic sitting on my economy seat, how luxurious! I take a — oh, you get the idea.

I’m shaking again. A young couple has taken the middle and aisle seats. I hear them chatting softly together as they arrange their belongings.

They’re Japanese. This is it.

I’ve been waiting 4 years for this moment, I’m not going to let the nerves stop me. I’ve been practicing in the mirror and studying until my hand cramped and singing on my swing-set at home so my tongue would adjust to the consonants and come to adore the feeling of someone else’s heart-language.

The 3-mile-long 767 begins to push out. I run the test-sentence over and over in my head. We’re taxi-ng. I’ve been on enough flights now (all of 4) to know this is the moment where seatmates decide if they’re going to acknowledge one another’s existence or not.

I turn to the young woman next to me. Oh gosh, she’s so cute and wearing a lace blouse on a 14-hour-flight. The adrenaline makes my throat tight, but I open my mouth anyway and blurt out the words.

“Totemo waku-waku shitemasu!” — ‘I’m so excited!’

Yeah, I definitely said that wrong. And way too loud. The internet was right about me. The young woman stares at me, her eyes going wide over her facemask. She tugs it down to reveal a startled, delighted smile.

“Sugoi — nihongo dekimasuka?”

I immediately back-peddle as propriety dictates, waving my hand side-to-side, like I learned from anime. I insist I really don’t speak Japanese well, like I learned from etiquette blogs.

I’m full-on trembling as the plane approaches the runway. I did it. I spoke to a Japanese person. The distance is closed and we haven’t even taken off yet.

I’m so, so happy.

We continue our broken back and forth; I tell them about studying Japanese using online dictionaries and anime, they tell me about their trip to Arizona. The young woman is named Higuchi Erika* and she tries her English on me; she has clearly just recently learned the word “almost”. She shows me the photos she took of the Grand Canyon and the food they ate at Longhorn Steakhouse.
^{*All names changed for privacy}

An hour in, I need the bathroom and they both slide out for me. They’re so much smaller, and I feel so overly tall and American, and I apologize profusely, like I learned on the internet.

“Daijoubu,” Higuchi-san says with a reassuring laugh. “It’s okay, no worries.”

I thank them and stumble down the rocking aisle toward the restroom. I knew it. I knew I loved you.

I love you all so much and I’m not even to Tokyo yet.

It’s funny to think back on how wonderstruck I was by Japan and her people. It does make me laugh a little now. But for the most part, I have to check myself to make sure I never let it truly fade. After all, this isn’t my love, it’s their Father’s, and when he looks at each one of them, he smiles and shakes with how much he adores them, and he fights to close the distance.

Japan is an aging nation, weary from wars, loss, loneliness, and costly pride. They want to be joyous, youthful, and genki, but there’s no way to get there outside of true Hope.

But our God’s steadfast love has endured for them these hundreds of years. At every dawn in the land of the rising sun, he looks at them like they’re brand new, and he won’t stop until they are, until they have hope.

So I can’t stop either.

We’ve landed at NRT. This just got so real.