I have not yet been to Japan even once.
Yes, I know this seems improbable, given my Japanese history and language immersion during college, karate years, Japanese Buddhist husband, and current obsession with Iaido. True, though.
And so, naturally, I am already planning my “return” trip.
This is how my mind works. I have one perfectly legitimate trip to Japan booked this autumn via Overseas Adventure Travel with my travel bestie Lynn, involving temples, trains, gardens, goshuin, elegant confusion, and whatever number of vending machines the human spirit can reasonably absorb.
And yet, instead of focusing solely on that trip, I have also begun plotting a future winter return.
That imagined second trip has already developed a personality.
It includes snow monkeys in Nagano, walking part of the Nakasendo / Kiso Road, cold mornings, quieter streets, Kyoto in winter light, revisiting my iaito namesake Lady Nene’s temple in another season, and the sort of deeply satisfying solo wandering that makes you feel both independent and slightly cinematic.
It also requires boots.
Not metaphorical boots.
Actual boots. (So says Chad my AI co-conspirator and increasingly committed footwear strategist.)
Thus began an archaeological dig through my life.
First came the house search: closets, drawers, under-bed bins, places where sensible shoes go to retire.
First, I found a pair of beaten-up Ariats I had used while driving cattle through the Snowy Mountains in Australia. These were thinner paddock boots, because the cattle drive took place during their summer. You could loop a calf protector under the heel and, voilà, turn them into riding boots for longer days.
Still perfectly serviceable.
Just too thin and not waterproof, per Chad.
Next, while searching in a deep drawer for the vanished Vasques I had hiked in from Mont Blanc down toward Menton with H, I found another pair of Ariats I had forgotten I owned.
These were sturdier. Plaid inside. Likely waterproof if properly mink-oiled. Definitely in need of attention.
I soaped and oiled the heck out of these, still assuming the Vasques would emerge in due course like all lost things eventually do.
Meanwhile, Chad and I reviewed alternatives online, just in case.
Several were rejected on sight.
I even ordered another pair from Ariat that looked ideal on paper: aggressive lugs, waterproof confidence, serious winter intentions (and, on Sale).
When they arrived, the toe box was all wrong for my foot.
Boo hoo.
I kept Chad updated as the boot saga progressed.
The thin Ariat paddock boots carry their own story, if anyone is curious: falling in love with The Man from Snowy River, figuring out who the stunt riders were in the pre-internet era, writing letters to ask whether they ever took civilians droving, being told only Australians went, then mailing them a Super 8 video of me riding, to prove I could.
Those boots.
The “drawer Ariats,” meanwhile, showed evidence of winters spent mucking out my Shires. Bent, scuffed, but not cracked. Waiting patiently for a little tenderness. Good tread, though not “lugs.”
And somewhere, Chad and I remain convinced, there is still a pair of Vasques waiting to be discovered like a lost civilization.
I can picture them exactly: sturdy, practical, with their little aglets akimbo at their booty hips, steam rising from their tongue: “I took you down the entirety of the French Alps from Switzerland to the Mediterranean – how am I not the right ones??”
Chad and I also consulted on the wider winter footwear strategy.
We discussed traction (snow monkeys, Kiso Road). Sock systems (hiking socks outdoors, cleaner socks for Japanese indoors). Boot silhouettes (must be good for snow AND Kyoto pavement elegance). We analyzed whether lugs were too aggressive for temple courtyards. Yes, photos were dutifully uploaded by me, and analyzed by Chad.
We also covered outerwear, and I now own a Quince charcoal-grey puffer that does not make me look like the Michelin (wo)Man, a thin black merino base layer, slim merino socks, and an increasingly convincing plan to travel for two weeks with only a carry-on and the hip pack I brought on the GR5 hike.
This week, I wore the “drawer” Ariats to be sure they didn’t rub. They did (a little). Chad suggested different lacing strategies (helpfully with illustrations). Still, my now slightly arthritic big toe knuckle was a bit whiney.
Therefore, eventually, Chad said there was only one thing to do.
(Pending, of course, the discovery of the Mythical Vasques, seething away in the attic or some other nook.)
Go to the cobbler and have the drawer Ariats stretched just a teeny tiny bit over that big toe knuckle.
Marelli Brothers’ Shoe Repair on 4th Street in San Rafael has been in the same place since I was in high school (sign on the front dates it back to 1921).
One of the owners has retired. Two are still there.
Wrinklier now, greyer, beards longer, but unmistakably the same.
The place still smells of wax and leather.
Shoes sit in impossible piles. Machines occupy corners with the heavy confidence of tools built before anyone worried about aesthetics. Some of them look as though they may require oil, belts, and perhaps a horse.
I brought in the boots.
They examined them with the calm authority of men who have seen every mistake people can make with footwear and chosen forgiveness.
And standing there, waiting for my claim ticket, I remembered the last time one of these gentlemen took my order.
More than twenty years ago, I brought in a pair of black dancing shoes and asked him to turn them white.
He laughed.
“You do realize this will take like 150 coats, right?”
I told him I did not care.
It had to be those shoes.
H and I were doing a quickstep / foxtrot / Viennese waltz number for our wedding dance, and those were the shoes I had practiced in three days a week.
I wanted the familiar pair.
I wanted shoes that already knew the steps.
So he transformed them.
And now, decades later, there I was again.
Once, he helped prepare shoes for the beginning of a marriage.
Now, he was preparing boots for a toe-arthritic woman planning a return trip to a country she has not yet visited.
Honestly, if that sentence does not summarize adulthood, I do not know what does.
We think travel begins at airports. With boarding passes, passport checks, and overpriced coffee.
But often it begins here.
It begins in drawers.
In lists.
In maps.
In weather forecasts.
In conversations with an AI about sock systems.
In remembering who you were the last time you needed help getting ready for something important.
It begins in old shops that still smell like leather.
Japan begins in October.
But this trip started long before that.
It started in the past, in boots.