View of Tokyo from the observation deck.
As I’ve written before, in the summer of 2004 I went to Japan through a Sister Cities student exchange. We first spent a couple of days in Tokyo before heading over to Chino in Nagano prefecture. On our first day in Tokyo we decided to take a tour of various parts of Tokyo. While on the tour we met a young Japanese guy who said he wanted to work on his English with native speakers, so he got a ticket for this tour and said he would be happy to work as our translator for free. He wore a Mickey Mouse t-shirt and told us to call him Mickey.
He was kind enough to translate fortunes for us at the Asakusa temple, he pointed out famous buildings on the river part of the tour, and he showed us important landmarks at a tall observatory. It was a good tour but made even better by Mickey. Sadly we had to say goodbye.
Later we wandered back towards our hotel, stopping in shops along the way. I was enthralled, I had studied Japanese culture and I spoke a little Japanese, and so had dreamed of going to Japan. We stopped in a high end supermarket and I got a lot of Japanese candy, the kind that comes with little toys with it.
At some point we stopped in a store that carried a variety of items, including a stationary section. I got excited because they had these cute “window” highlighters. (Hard to explain, but the highlighter tip is rapped around a clear piece of plastic, so you can easily see what you are highlighting. So it helps so you don’t highlight more than what you wanted.) I had seen them before from exchange students I had hosted, but the ones they had given me before had died. So when I saw these I had to get a bunch as I would be starting college when I returned.
Well, after I finished paying I exited the store and…my group of 9 other high school students and my 2 chaperones…were nowhere to be seen. I must have taken to long, and they must not have realized I was still shopping.
I started to freak out. I was 18 years old, alone in  strange country, and the first time on my own. My mind raced trying to figure out what to do. My old Girl Scout training kicked in. “Hug A Tree” my mind said, while another part yelled “What the hell are you thinking? You are in the heart of Tokyo. There aren’t any trees here!” Then another thought came “When lost it is better to stay where you are, where your group last knew where you were.” I was panicing. I started asking people in Japanese “Have you seen the Americans?” And all I got was blank stares.
And thats when I realized. Yes I was 18, and yes I was alone. But I spoke Japanese, I was in a safe country, and I knew where I was. Sure I was pretty far from the hotel, and sure I’d need to take a subway back. But I was the primary navigator for our group. So while I was lost from the group, I wasn’t actually lost. After that realization I just decided to enjoy it. I continued to shop along the street and slowly making my way back. After about half an hour later I bumped into my group…who had only just realized I was gone and were panicing themselves.
I didn’t know it then, but that was my first taste of “Solo Travel” as well as realizing that I was becoming a self sufficient adult.
Travel Missteps is an every-Tother week series on how sometimes part of the journey is making mistakes and getting lost.
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