Japan Objects

I think the objects
knew before I ever did
where we would all go

After I wrote the Ariats post, several people messaged me some version of:

“Only you could turn boot shopping into an existential archaeology project.”

This is fair.

But I have been realizing something lately. Something adjacent to the boots, but perhaps larger.

Many of the objects quietly becoming central to my next trip, to Japan, were not newly purchased “travel gear.”

They were already here.

Waiting in drawers.
In closets.
On hooks.
In odd little piles around the house.

Not aspirational objects.
Not influencer objects.
Not sleek capsule-wardrobe objects artfully arranged beside minimalist carry-ons and matcha lattes.

Just . . . objects already here.

And somehow, lately, they have begun quietly revealing themselves as Japan objects.

A black puffer tote is perhaps the best example.

This bag entered my life sideways.

I drove one of my closest friends to a colonoscopy appointment because this is apparently what middle-aged friendship eventually becomes: “I will drive you home from your sedation, casually hand you a barf bag as necessary from my glove box, and then discuss Jamba Juice options that you will never remember ordering.”

At some point afterward, she mentioned that her ex-husband had bought a couple of giant “designer” puffer totes for their daughter, who hated them instantly, and now they simply wanted them out of the house.

Would I like them?

Honestly, I was not optimistic.

They looked enormous.
Slightly ridiculous.
Like something a fashionable marshmallow might carry through an airport.

For months they lived in the back of my closet, in the category of:

“Nice, but what exactly am I supposed to do with these?”

And now?

The black one has somehow become the entire emotional infrastructure of Japan.

Black bag by the door
waiting more patiently than
I have ever been

Along with the standard passport, coin purse, and the like, it will carry:

• camera
• iPad
• umbrella
• stamp books (“goshuincho”)
• chargers
• tiny pharmacy
• notebook & pen
• snacks
• train miscellany
• probably at least one emergency Japanese 7-11 egg sandwich

It has a trolley sleeve.
Deep pockets.
An odd zippered bottom compartment that already now holds my travel seat cushion and travel blanket; a compartment seemingly designed specifically for the “I suddenly need an extra layer and nowhere to put it” problem that travel produces every six hours.

Most importantly, the puffer tote is waterproof . . . and soft.

Soft on trains.
Soft in stations.
Soft against raincoats.
Soft enough to squash under seats.
Soft enough to become part of movement instead of fighting it.

I didn’t buy an influencer-touted bag for the trip. I already had a bag. It finally found its trip.

The orange accordion-paged book from my friend Dawn followed a similar trajectory.

Dawn brings me fun things back from her travels to Japan to visit her son and his family. Often these items are “Japanglish” shirts or towels. Often they’re orange (a favorite color). This object originally lived in what can only be described as the “What Even Is This?” pile.

You know the pile.

The pile containing:

• three cables to unknown devices
• an adapter from 2011
• mysterious plastic pieces
• one sentimental button
• stationery purchased during a phase
• optimism

Then one day, while planning Japan, I looked at the accordion-paged book and suddenly realized:

“Oh.”

It’s a book for travel stamps.

Not goshuin.

Not temple calligraphy.

The other stamps. Eki stamps.

Train stations.
Museums.
Tourist sites.
Roadside places.
Tiny commemorative stamps hidden near ticket counters and elevators and museum exits.

Japan is famous for them — you just have to look.

Instantly, the book was transformed.

It stopped being random.

It became infrastructure.

Soon to be a tiny portable archive for fleeting moments.

I love this idea so much I can barely stand it.

Japan, from everything I can tell, rewards this sort of attention.

Small rituals.
Repeated objects.
Pocket-sized usefulness.
Ordinary infrastructure elevated almost accidentally into beauty.

Which may be why the haiku have returned too.

Orange paper folds—
station stamps pressed carefully
upside down again

I loved haiku when I first learned about them in grammar school.

Not because I understood Japan particularly well at age ten.

I absolutely did not.

But because something about the shape itself felt magical to me.

Small enough to hold in your hand.
Small enough not to become overwhelming.
A little emotional container.

At that age, of course, most of my haiku were probably things like:

Purple flowers bloom
Nature is very pretty
I like horses best

Which, honestly, still contains certain emotional truths.

But lately I have found myself returning to haiku in an entirely different way.

Not as performance.
Not as literary cosplay.
Not as “look everyone, I am doing a Japan Thing.”

More like:

I think I finally found the right size for certain moments.

Travel produces thousands of tiny feelings that disappear almost immediately:

• the sound of station music
• steam rising from convenience store coffee
• the relief of finding your platform
• rain pelting train windows
• a vending machine glowing at dusk
• the strange emotional collapse caused by excellent soup

A full essay cannot always hold these things properly.

But perhaps three lines can.

And somehow this, too, feels connected to the larger realization slowly unfolding around this trip:

I am no longer trying to invent a new travel identity.

I am trying to travel more honestly inside the life I now have.

Not replacement.
Not reinvention.

Just small objects continuing.

A scarf that came with me to Africa may explain this best.

Old scarf waiting still—
small rips along the cashmere
like roads once traveled

It is an old circular cashmere scarf with quite heroic moth holes, visible wear, and absolutely no resale value whatsoever.

A luxury influencer would set it gently on fire.

I adore it.

It already carries history.

On our very first freezing jeep ride in Entabeni, one of my newly met, soon-to-be-favorite travel companions was shivering, and I wrapped the scarf around her shoulders and neck. Because that is what objects eventually become when you travel long enough together:

not possessions,
but participants.

Witnesses.

Companions.

The scarf had already crossed one continent.
Now it will likely cross another.

And somehow that feels emotionally correct to me.

The Ariats are part of this too, of course.

(Though if you missed the Great Boot Archaeology Saga involving cobblers, vanished Vasques, French Alps memories, and increasingly concerned discussions with Chad regarding toe-box width, you can find that post just before this one.)

But again, the boots are only an example.

The deeper realization is this:

Travel feels more emotionally true to me now, when the accompanying objects already belonged to my real life.

Not a curated travel self.

Not a fantasy version of myself.

Not “woman standing aesthetically in airport with matching neutral luggage.”

Just:
me.

Slightly overprepared.
Emotionally attached to office supplies.
Carrying too many chargers.
Trying to fit meaning into small portable systems.

And perhaps that is why Japan already feels oddly familiar to me before I have even arrived.

Because from afar, it seems to understand something I am only now learning myself:

that meaning accumulates through repeated use,
through care,
through ritual,
through ordinary objects allowed to keep accompanying us.

Perhaps the trip is not assembling a new identity after all.

Perhaps certain objects in my life have quietly been waiting for Japan.

And perhaps, if I am honest, certain versions of myself have been waiting too.

We said “when we’re old.”
The journey kept moving still—
one set of footsteps.