Saying goodbyes to the friends you’ve made while traveling is one of the hardest things to do. In 2004 I was part of the Sister Cities exchange program and stayed in Chino, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. I made great friends and had a great time. But getting up early to say our goodbyes before heading out on a 37 hour travel day was hard. There were lots of hugs, tears, and photos. And then…there were a lot of times I just keeled over.
Farewell to Kana, note the 3 bags on my person and the 4 bags on the ground.
I had been a little Japan obsessed prior to going to Japan. I loved manga and anime, I had studied Japanese culture and language while in high school. And so during my time in Japan I went a little overboard in my souvenir buying. I had two rolling suitcases, one purchased while I was there and was full of used manga.
Earlier in the week my host mother and her friend took me to a used bookstore at my instance. And I somehow managed to find all of my favorite authors and even the shop owner was laughing at me. They asked if I could read them and I replied “Not Yet!” enthusiastically. I also had so many other souvenirs from kimonos, umbrellas, wall tapestries, wooden dolls. Japan was my dream trip and I was taking as much home as I could. In addition to the two rolling suitcases I had numerous smaller drop string bags, duffels, and a backpack. (I was way way way over the 2 carry on limit.)
Sayonara Sayo!
Time was getting away from us, and it came to the point where we had to get ready to get on the train. I loaded myself up with all my bags…and fell over from the sheer weight of the bags. This happened multiple times and everyone just laughed at me. I laughed with them because I knew how ridiculous I looked.
I’m not sure how I managed to get onto the train with all those bags. The train is notorious to have less than 60 seconds to get people on/off. But somehow I made it on. The airport however…was a different matter. Because I was rolling multiple suitcases I was bringing up the rear of my exchange group. A few times I fell over, and one of the chaperones helped me back up. However, we were cutting it close, and were in the wrong terminal. So the group started to run.
I tripped, went down in a tangle of bags…and then couldn’t get back up. I felt like a turtle flipped on my back. I cried out but my group was gone. I was now worried that I would miss my flight, that my group would have forgotten me (again)! I wriggled out of my bags, re-organized myself, and continued on. I fell a few more times before I was able to re-meet the group and check some of my bags.
Travel Missteps is an every-other week series on how sometimes part of the journey is making mistakes and getting lost.
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