Oscar Jerome’s “The Spoon” is on the record player, filling the small, dimly lit main room of Hachi Record Shop and Bar in Kyoto. A movie I can’t quite make out is projected on the wall where perfectly centered record covers serve as art. Fresh Start, a lightly hopped Pale Ale from Kyoto Brewing Co., is in my glass. The few patrons seated at the bar are speaking Japanese in hushed tones. In each of these details, I’m reminded that I’m surrounded by unfamiliarity. And yet, paradoxically, I’m thinking about how things are starting to feel familiar.
I’ve been in Japan for two months now. My wife and I have joked that this trip serves as our semester abroad, albeit a delayed one. The first day here, after 26 sleep-deprived hours of travel, my eyes couldn’t have gotten any wider, my ears any more pricked up. Everything was new, strange, and slightly intimidating.
But slowly, that veil of strangeness has started to lift, and unfamiliarity has eroded.
When we enter Kurasu Coffee in our neighborhood, the bright smiles of the baristas greet us. “Konnichiwa” is now followed by “Hey, how are you?” as they’ve come to know us, and recall our inability to speak Japanese. There’s a local bar and bottle shop I frequent called Dig the Line; the shop owner and I now exchange nods and peace signs before he wanders over to excitedly tell me about the new beers he’s just received. I recently needed to fetch oat milk from our favorite food market, Yaoichi Honkan, and found myself intuitively walking directly to the aisle where it’s located. Most days, I head out the door without checking maps on my phone.
These little things begin to add up. There’s now accumulated knowledge, the opaque becoming more transparent. I suspect it’s what makes a home start to feel like a home. When familiarity creeps in, so too does comfort.
So for now, I’ll enjoy this unfamiliar music while drinking an unfamiliar beer and listening to a couple speak an unfamiliar language. Because on the walk home, I’ll probably stop in for an onigiri from the 7-Eleven that’s just a block from my place, something I’ve done a dozen times since arriving. And I’ll know exactly where I’m headed as those glass doors slide open.
